Soundy 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Greek Site That Links To Legal Videos By Rightsholders… Sued For Infringement

    Soundy ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2011 @ 10:11am

    *facepalm*

  • On the post: It Took The NY Times 14 Months And $40 Million Dollars To Build The World's Stupidest Paywall?

    Soundy ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2011 @ 12:31pm

    Re: Canuck weighing in here...

    Poutine is the most amazing cholesterol-delivery method ever invented. God eats poutine when he wants to put on weight.

  • On the post: Who Owns Employee Social Media Accounts? 'The Correct Answer Is: Shut Up'

    Soundy ( profile ), 08 Mar, 2011 @ 06:39am

    Interesting piece, especially in light of this recent little "skirmish" in our Provincial politics: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/03/07/bc-nicholas-simons-passwords-agreement.html

  • On the post: How 'Reasonable Andy' Stopped NPR's Lawyers From Threatening Fan, And Actually Connected With Him

    Soundy ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2011 @ 07:09am

    Good points, hobo...

    ...but hey, it's a BIG step in the right direction!

  • On the post: How Lawyers For Settlers Of Catan Abuse IP Law To Take Down Perfectly Legal Competitors

    Soundy ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2011 @ 08:26pm

    Sounds all too familiar...

    I used to play a great game on Facebook, called Wordscraper... a take on the Scrabble idea, with the added ability to create your own custom boards.

    Then Hasbro stepped in and bullied and shut down Wordscraper, and its "cousin", Lexulous. Oddly enough, they also released their own online version of Scrabble about the same time... and it was DREADFUL.

    Wordscraper and Lexulous eventually returned... with a changed layout and several "tweaked" rules... but to a Scrabble player, scores are like trophies, and with fixed values (tile values, double/triple score squares, etc.) it's easy to compare crowns with other Scrabble aficionados.

    But now there are 8 tiles to a rack instead of 7; most of the tile values have changed (Q and Z are 12 points instead of 10, etc.), there are 4x and 5x multipliers, and the new default layouts make it too easy to cross two word-multipliers at once, something that is (by design) very rare and difficult to do in Scrabble. In short, it really takes a lot of the challenge out of the game, as well as most of the meaning of the scores. And the ultimate insult: creating your own custom Scrabble-layout board is blocked.

    In essence, Hasbro has used legal wrangling to strike down the competition. Nice.

  • On the post: Did The Record Labels Kill The Golden Goose In Music Video Games?

    Soundy ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2011 @ 08:23am

    S.O.P.

    Same reason I refused to buy WKRP when it finally came out on DVD: the relicensing fees for the small snippets of music in most of the episodes meant the episodes had long ago been butchered for syndication - most of the commercial music replaced, and some of the dialog even altered, which in at least one case, completely ruined the punchline. I mean, this is probably my favorite sitcom of all time, but I won't buy the DVDs, because most of the episodes have been spoiled.