ShadowNinja 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: John Oliver Exposes The Sketchiness Of Political Grandstanding State Attorneys General

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 31 Oct, 2018 @ 10:51am

    Re:

    Even if you want to look up information about your candidates and where they stand on the issues, that's often impossible.

    Their websites are often filled with promises so vague that virtually anyone could agree with it, often because it only states end goals ("we want a stronger economy"), or vastly oversimplifies complex things ("we want to lower taxes to give us a strong economy").

    And it's even worse the lower the office. Good luck finding anything meaningful on them, especially if they have a common name.

  • On the post: Seventh Circuit Appeals Court Hands Fifth 'Good Faith' Win To FBI's Invalid Playpen Warrant

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 31 Oct, 2018 @ 09:03am

    Re: Why don't the rest of us get "good faith" exceptions...

    Silly AC, you only get "good faith" exceptions if you're going after some group of people everyone hates!

  • On the post: The Foxconn Wisconsin Deal Has Devolved Into A Pile Of Shifting Promises, Buzzwords, And Hype

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 31 Oct, 2018 @ 08:59am

    Re: what?

    No it worked plenty!

    We took it away from the poor individuals and gave it to wealthy corporations whose cash helps elect politicians like Scott Walker!

  • On the post: Florida Appeals Court Says Producing Passwords Is Testimonial And Protected By The Fifth Amendment

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 30 Oct, 2018 @ 01:39pm

    Re:

    Not to mention as others have pointed out it's possible to frame someone and get them a life sentence in jail with that kind of a precedent.

  • On the post: Pharrell Is Not At All Happy About Trump Using 'Happy' At His Rally… And He Might Actually Have A Case

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 30 Oct, 2018 @ 12:27pm

    Re: Who puts on the event?

    Well the President is supposed to be the head of their party. Both parties have traditionally rubber stamped basically anything their president wants when it comes to running the DNC/RNC.

  • On the post: Texas E-Voting Machines Switching Votes For Non-Nefarious But Still Stupid Reasons

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 29 Oct, 2018 @ 10:01am

    Re:

    Little known fact, in a number of areas it's actually illegal for straight party ticket buttons to auto-select local candidates. The machines force you to manually select all local candidates.

    It's a desperate way for local government officials to try and protect themselves in wave election years by hoping that voters for the other party won't check to make sure that they selected candidates in local offices.

  • On the post: Texas E-Voting Machines Switching Votes For Non-Nefarious But Still Stupid Reasons

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 29 Oct, 2018 @ 09:57am

    The state's government has pointed out e-voting machines only need to comply with state laws, not actually be accurate and/or idiot-proof.

    The state's laws are seriously fucked up if voting machines don't need to be accurate.

    The move to paperless voting has eliminated the backup system everyone looks to when things go wrong: the paper trail. The Hart eSlate machines produce no receipts, leaving it up to voters to catch errors before submitting their votes.

    This brings up another issue with electronic voting machines that's often ignored. Electronic voting machines with no paper record are actually illegal in a number of states that they're used in. They're illegal because they don't comply with the state's recount laws for close elections (which typically happen automatically if the margin of victory is below 0.5%).

    Yet those laws are not being enforced in many states.

  • On the post: Canadian ISPs Want To Amend Law To Outlaw Settlement Letters

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 26 Oct, 2018 @ 12:51pm

    Re: NO, the PIRATES did it to themselves.

    Have to start at the very foundation by stating that creators have (in the US / UK legal tradition) CLEAR EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO THEIR WORKS. It's explicitly in the US Constitution. -- But of course Techdirt doesn't agree with the Constitution, SO completely overlooks the fundamental Right of Creators and asserts that pirates somehow have the better moral case.
    Except this story is about Canada, where the constitution doesn't apply. Also:
    • Copyright was defined for a limited 14 year period in the founding father's time. And it's gotten more and more absurdly long since, it's up to Life plus 70 years today, and life plus 100 years in some countries.
    • The Constitution can be changed, the founding fathers knew they weren't perfect, hence they put a thing called amendments in the constitution, which is where the bill of rights came from. The founding fathers also rarely ever all agreed unanimously on anything.
    Now, since we know there's a whole lotta infringement going, on any given notice isn't unlikely to be false accusation. There are special provisions of laws to handle the volume of a type of small-claims not worth clogging real courts with. That's the system, pirates: you claim creators aren't losing money, but it's IRRELEVANT:they do have the Rights attending creation to BILL you for unauthorized downloading. PERIOD.
    Except a few problems with that:
    • The accuser isn't the only to have rights, so do the accused.
    • No, these 'small-claims' are NOT authorized through 'special provisions'. It's an attempt to abuse out of court settlements to shake down a ton of people for quick cash.
    • Their 'evidence' against the vast majority of these people is shaky at best, and would likely not survive in actual court, due to lack of proof that it was that person who did the piracy.
    Also: no ISP, supposedly neutral carrier, gets to control the free speech of the parties alleging infringement in communicating to the alleged infringer.
    Umm... what? So it's a violation of your free speech rights if you tell me to send a message and I say no?
    The always interesting point is that apparently all ISPs believe it's their place if not duty to lay out money for attorneys / lawsuits to protect pirates. Pretty clearly it's because promoting piracy and the notion of free content easily available DOES put money into ISP accounts. -- What needs changed in law is ISPs taking the side of pirates. That makes them legally liable in the US. See Grande Comm suit et al.
    ... You know it costs the ISP's money to act as the copyright troll's messenger, right? Not only do they need to hire a bunch of people to process these claims (assuming they just roll over and never question anything the copyright holders tell them), it can cause them negative publicity for blindly handing customer info over to third parties & violating their privacy rights, which can cost them customers. Plus there's customer privacy laws they could potentially violate as well for turning said info over.

  • On the post: Another Terrible Court Decision In Europe: Insulting A Religion Is Not Free Speech

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 26 Oct, 2018 @ 12:11pm

    Re: This is going to be Fun..

    and I REALLY love Christians(and other) that dont know their OWN religious history..
    Or their own religious teachings. A poll from a half decade ago found that a majority of Christians in Western countries believe that non-Christians who live a good & moral life can get into heaven. But if they read the bible or listened to their preacher they'd realize that such beliefs contradict their own religion. (they worship other gods a sin in Christianity & haven't been baptized) Another piece of irony, when they polled a ton of Americans on their knowledge of Christianity and other major religions, the ones who knew the most about those religions were... Atheists. And the Christian denomination that scored highest on knowledge of Christianity? Mormons, even though a lot of Christians don't consider them a part of Christianity.

  • On the post: EU 'Protecting Consumers' By Forcing Them To Pay More For Android?

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 26 Oct, 2018 @ 06:35am

    Re:

    Are you sure about that not violating any laws?

    Anti-circumvention of DRM is definitely illegal in the US, and I'd guess may be in Europe to.

    And then there's the EULA/TOS for Android. Circumventing the fees to get stuff for free (and thus violating the EULA/TOS) would probably make it illegal in the US under CFAA because of how broadly it's written.

  • On the post: NSA Will Try To Stop Turning Whistleblowers Into Leakers With Kinder, Gentler Official Channels

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 26 Oct, 2018 @ 10:48am

    Years too late to work

    It's way too late for any changes now to be believable, this is no better than a pinky swear. And it's not like the NSA has a good reputation to begin with to add to their credibility.

    If the NSA really wanted to be taken seriously here they need to do something big to show a real change in policy. As in say actually take the abuses and bill of rights violations exposed by previous whistle-blowers like Snowden seriously instead of trying to shoot the messenger and keep doing those things behind closed doors.

    People like Snowden wouldn't have gone public if they thought that the proper channels would have actually gotten something done about said abuses and bill of rights violations.

  • On the post: Breitbart Snowflakes Threaten To Sue People Who Have Asked Advertisers To Stop Advertising On Breitbart

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 26 Oct, 2018 @ 05:40am

    I should say up front, that I think all of these attempts to push advertisers to drop ads is actually pretty silly. It's mostly symbolic and rarely has a real economic impact. It's just a silly game of tit for tat.

    Not quite. Remember the controversy when Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a slut and a bunch of advertisers dumped him?

    Well it turns out Rush Limbaugh and the boycott of him didn't just hurt Rush, it hurt a crapload of other political talk radio (right and left talk show hosts). Advertisers decided it was just too risky to run ads on political talk radio shows, where the personality might say something outrageous and highly controversial any time that could shit on your company's reputation for associating with them.

    They've all seen a drop in ad revenue as a result. Even though political talk radio audiences tend to be closer to the slice of demographic that advertisers want (right age range, and wealthier then the average American).

  • On the post: Ninth Circuit Aligns With Other Circuits: The FBI's Playpen Warrant Was Bad, But The FBI's Faith Was Good

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 24 Oct, 2018 @ 01:47pm

    Re: Grow a spine or get out

    I think it's more like we need judges willing to stand up for the most vile of the accused, aka pedophiles.

    I think a very applicable comparison here is the red scare in the US under Senator Joseph McCarthy. In his era the mere accusation (without proof) of being a communist was enough to pretty much destroy your life and turn you into a pariah. That was why his committee of Unamerican activities was so dangerous and ruined so many lives.

    Joseph McCarthy got away with his crap for so long because no one was willing to stand up for the communists and say "this is a clear violation of the 1st amendment. It's not illegal to advocate for communism". And because of that many non-communists got their lives ruined.

    The same is happening here. No one is willing to stand up for the rights of hated pedophiles and say that their evidence is clearly inadmissible under the 4th amendment, so we'll all suffer for it in the long run from that precedent.

  • On the post: City Council Seized, Crushed Resident's Legally-Parked BMW While He Was In The Hospital

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 23 Oct, 2018 @ 06:24am

    Re:

    Read the article, he did report it as stolen, it's how he found out what happened to it from the police.

  • On the post: Another Report Shows That FOSTA Increased (Not Decreased) Sex Trafficking; Where Is The Outrage?

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 22 Oct, 2018 @ 10:49am

    Re: Fosta

    Nah, congressional leaders don't need FOSTA, they already got away with being caught red handed soliciting prostitutes.

    See Senator David Vitter (or as he was mocking called later, 'Diaper David') who never even saw a grand jury for soliciting prostitutes.

  • On the post: Streaming Exclusives Will Drive Users Back To Piracy And The Industry Is Largely Oblivious

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 19 Oct, 2018 @ 10:16am

    Re: I forsee...

    The biggest fight will be with advertisers, who rely on people flipping on the TV and just letting it play all day or evening long. Won't happen if you're paying by the movie or episode.
    I haven't looked it up in the last couple of years, but advertisers are already being fucked over hard in the last 15 years even in places where they still show ads. As of 5 or so years ago, broadcast TV's numbers have been cut in half. All while advertising prices only dropped by 6 to 7 percent. If that's not advertisers getting ripped off I don't know what is. In more recent years analysis of DVRs/TiVo's data has found that while less people are skipping through the ads then before, that's because they're too busy playing on their phones during the commercial breaks to pay attention to the ads. Hence advertising is quite frankly just not worth the same bang for the buck that it used to be. They've flooded the planet with so many ads that people are used to just ignoring them entirely. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if in another decade or two politicians stop throwing money into TV & radio ads for all of these reasons. Grabbing attention on news stations is cheaper and more effective at persuading voters, especially when running for a more prominent office (see Trump, who got an estimated $2+ billion dollars worth of free TV advertising from the news media).

  • On the post: The Good Censor Document Shows Google Struggling With The Challenges Of Content Moderation

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2018 @ 07:45am

    Re: Re: Breitbart

    Don't forget serial liars who viciously slander the reputations of innocent people.

    Like the black woman who they claimed gleefully watched a white couple lose their farm instead of doing her job and helping them (the media found said white couple from the story. They said the black woman saved their farm and they were eternally grateful to her).

  • On the post: Just As Expected: GDPR Has Made Google Even More Dominant In Europe

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2018 @ 08:15am

    Honestly, Facebook's decline in numbers had more to do with their downward trend then GDPR.

    Facebook's number of active users have been declining for several years in the US, where it first took off. Europe and the rest of the world is a few years or more behind the US on Facebook, so it's only natural that their declines in users and ad revenue will start a few years later as well.

  • On the post: ISU Student Groups Changing Names En Masse To Protest School's Ridiculous New Trademark Policy

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2018 @ 08:11am

    The blow-back is probably made even worse by the state legislature's interference, and the fact that they were trying to censor a pro-marijuana group.

    You're not going to find too many college students who feel strongly that marijuana should be kept illegal, and that number is only going to get smaller overtime. Marijuana prohibitions have already lost, they just haven't admitted it yet.

  • On the post: Massachusetts Supreme Court Looking To Define Where The Fifth Amendment Ends And Compelled Decryption Begins

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 17 Oct, 2018 @ 10:01am

    Re: Just get rid of the 5th

    Agreed!

    Speaking of which, I hear that a certain AC advocating the removal of the 5th amendment is guilty of a number of horrible crimes. We should lock him up and tell him he's not getting out until he confesses to all his many crimes. And then when he confesses we should lock him up for life for committing all those crimes.

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