TimothyAWiseman 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: The Unintended Consequences Of Trying To Overprotect Children From The Internet

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 25 Oct, 2011 @ 02:22pm

    Re:

    "If they are so simple minded as to not understand technology enough to know how to do this, they really get what they deserve. Stop asking for kids names, and you won't have to worry if you stored them or not."

    There are several problems with this. For one, it is children suffering from a lack of content tailored for them online more than it is a company sufferin for making the choice no to provide content for young children.

    Further, it is not that simple to comply. If you permit any form of commenting at all and knowingly permit someone under 13 to participate (without going through an incredibly burdensome process of getting verified consent from a parent), you have essentially violated this.

    And finally, even if there were somehow an easier and effective wa to comply, a chilling effect is created by the *perception* that compliance is difficult.

  • On the post: Why Some 'Easy' Legal Questions Aren't Always So Easy: Is A Burrito A Sandwich?

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 24 Oct, 2011 @ 12:28pm

    Its not just legal

    This does not just happen in the legal areas, but when you try to precisely define any term with some actual consequences assigned to the outcome of that definition. This is a common theme in science and mathematics as well as law and philosophy. In philosophy and logic it is related to "The Problem of Vagueness". And it is one of the major issues addressed in Lakatos' treatise "Proofs and Refutations."

    Most terms used in every day language are not well defined. But for most uses, people don't care. Context and knoweldge of the speaker will often provide further clarification beyond the mere definition, and beyond that we normally just don't care. We are highly tolerant of vagueness in normal communications and normally don't inquire too deeply into it.

    It just so happens that contracts and related legal areas are becoming increasing prevalent in the life of an average person. They have become for most people the one area where vagueness is often not well tolerated, and it can be surprising to see how hard it is to define a term and how high the stakes can be in an area where vagueness is not tolerated and nuanced implications can matter significantly.

  • On the post: Does Google Have What It Takes To Be A Platform, Rather Than A Product, Company?

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 14 Oct, 2011 @ 11:53am

    Re: The biggest problem with Google+

    You make an excellent point. I use both services, but I talk to friends and family on facebook (most of whom aren't on Google+). I use Google+ mostly to talk to other programmers and other Go players.

  • On the post: Does Google Have What It Takes To Be A Platform, Rather Than A Product, Company?

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 14 Oct, 2011 @ 11:51am

    Re:

    Damaging a marketplace throuh competition is quite difficult. Competition will generally only improve a marketplace by forcing all competitors to improve, or if done very poorly will have no effect on the market at all.

    There are a couple of exceptions, but they are pretty well. A company could fail so spectacularly that it makes consumers turn away from an entire class of products or forces the government to bring in heavy handed regulation. But that generally involves some sort of catastrophic failure in safety and goes far beyond competin poorly.

    Alternatively, a company could attempt to drive competitors out of business through anti-competitive means such as tying or dramtically subsidizing one product with with revenue from other products specifically to drive another company out of the market. But we already have ways of dealing with that scenario under the law.

  • On the post: Judge Makes Company Pay More For Infringement Because The CEO Complained Publicly About The Patent System

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 06 Oct, 2011 @ 01:43pm

    Re: Re: Erie v. Tompkins

    "The underlying point remains valid - the court is constrained by the First Amendment even though it is not Congress"

    Quite agreed. I fully concur with the majority of your post, but I thought that point was significant enough to clarify.

  • On the post: Judge Makes Company Pay More For Infringement Because The CEO Complained Publicly About The Patent System

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 06 Oct, 2011 @ 11:12am

    Erie v. Tompkins

    I think saying "since Erie v. Tompkins, there is no federal common law", may be either reading Erie v. Tompkins too broadly or else reading the term "common law" much more narrowly than it normally is.

    Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938) definitively rejected the idea of a "General" or "Universal" common law that should be applied in diversity cases. It did not affect the common law created by federal courts regarding matters under federal jurisidction.

  • On the post: More Misplaced Hatred For The Used Games Market

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 25 Aug, 2011 @ 09:47am

    I factor in resale when deciding whether to buy

    At the risk of being totally unoriginal, I always consider the resale value of a game when I am deciding whether to buy it. I routinely buy a $60 game, knowing I can resell (either to gamestop or through craigslist) for somewhere around $20, making what I am really paying closer to $40.

    If I could not resell my games, I would not be willing to pay so much for most of them. I have never paid $60 for a download only game. And if video games keep getting more expensive, I may just have to drop that hobby and focus on playing Go.

  • On the post: What's In A Name: The Importance Of Pseudonymity & The Dangers Of Requiring 'Real Names'

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 08 Aug, 2011 @ 10:25am

    There is some irony here in the fact George Orwell was a pen name.

    Also, I think there is a lot of ambiguity in how you definie a real name. Some people who come to the USA from non-western countries occassionally adopt a Western name or a westernized version of their name for use here. Even when they keep the same pronounciation, there are sometimes wide varieties of proper ways to transliterate it into Roman letters. Some people go by their middle names, and others are known by a non-standard shortening of their first name. Would those cases be considered a real name or a pseudonym in violation of these policies?

  • On the post: Court Finds Megaupload Could Be Guilty Of Direct Infringement In Perfect 10 Case

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 02 Aug, 2011 @ 03:39pm

    Re: Re: This was a summary judgment motion

    That is possible though the small snippet reads more like summary judgement ruling than a 12(b)(6) which is really only concerned about whether the plaintiff made a prima facie allegation of a claim for which relief can be granted where it would not matter what inferences were made or what was even possible.

    Does anyone have the entire judgment or at least the full case citation to make looking it up easier?

  • On the post: Court Finds Megaupload Could Be Guilty Of Direct Infringement In Perfect 10 Case

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2011 @ 12:33pm

    This was a summary judgment motion

    I have not looked into the details of the case, but based on the short snippet you provide, it looks like this was rejection of a request for summary judgment. When considering a request for summary judgment, the judge must make every possible inference in favor of the non-moving party.

    So, remember this is not saying MegaUpload is even likely to be liable for direct infringement. It is merely saying that when every possible inference is made against MegaUpload that what the other side has alleged is enough that it might possibly constitute direct infringement.

  • On the post: Score One For The Trolls: Supreme Court Says Congress Intended It To Be Very Difficult To Invalidate Patents

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 09 Jun, 2011 @ 01:09pm

    I believe your commentary somewhat conflates two related but definitely distinct questions.

    The first is "Should a lower standard be used in judging these patents?" I do not really know the answer to this question, but I know you have made some very compelling arguments.

    The second is "Should the Supreme Court mandate that a lower standard be used?" I believe the answer to this one is a resounding No. Even if a lower standard should be used, Congress did, as the Supreme Court itself points out, seem to ratify the higher standard in legislation. It is not the Supreme Court's place to modify this legislation unless it is in direct conflict with a higher authority such as the Constitution. Whether or not the members of Congress actually understood what they were doing in passing this legislation is largely irrelevant in deciding if The Surpeme Court should be able to change it, it remains Congress's bailiwick, and not the court systems, to change it now that it stands as statute.

  • On the post: Would People Stop Using Mobile Phones If More Evidence Shows Them To Be Carcinogenic?

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 03 Jun, 2011 @ 09:45am

    No

    Neither have I stopped eating barbeque.

    Life itself is 100% fatal, and while I take reasonable precautions to ensure that my life is long and healthy, fear of remote risks should not stop someone from living their life fully.

  • On the post: Should Young People Have Their Votes Count More?

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 17 May, 2011 @ 09:25am

    I hope this is satire, because it makes relatively little sense. For one thing, while there is some truth to the idea that the younger generation will have to deal with the consequences longer, only some. A 50 or even 60 year can expect to live for several more decades reasonably and will likely see a lot of the consequences foisted upon them by the results of the votes.

    Moreover, while it is true that giving the younger generation more power would help hasten certain good social reform, it is also likely to bring in many short sighted policies that would have been blocked wtih greater wisedom.

  • On the post: Settling Lawsuits Sometimes Makes Sense. Period.

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 13 May, 2011 @ 10:24am

    He's right

    Sadly, this article makes a number of excellent points. A company, especially a publicly traded company that is accountable to many people, needs to make rational decisions. Those rational decisions often involve settling even when the claim is weak.

    Now, in a larger sense this may make a point that our patent system needs to be reformed to make it more difficult for patent trolls to function and to ensure that fewer low quality patents are issued. But that is a job for Congress and does not factor into the strategic decision that an executive facing a patent lawsuit must make.

  • On the post: Why Every News Site Should Focus On Being First Class All The Time

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 09 May, 2011 @ 03:49pm

    You seem to be quite against the idea, but this seems to be precisely what ArsTechnica is doing ( http://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/ ) and it seems to be working out relatively well for them, and at least conceptually I would say it makes sense to me.

  • On the post: AC/DC Says Their Songs Will Never Be Available For Download; Rest Of Internet Laughs

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 09 May, 2011 @ 12:01pm

    TransSiberian Orchestra (TSO) is one of the few bands that puts out actual albums where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and I have listened to their albums in order start to finish as a cohesive experience. And yet, even for them I tend to have certain tracks that I will also listen to in isolation.

    For most other bands, there is no reason to listen in order and the album is a compilation of largely unrelated songs. for them, I don't even bother ever listening to the album as a whole.

    My point, is the band and fans both are best served by permitting the fans to listen as they chose. This is true even if you are putting out real albums, and if you are putting out compilations of songs then you cannot even claim an artistic reason to encourage fans to listen to the album.

  • On the post: More Video Game Makers Fear The Free Market And Don't Know How To Compete

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 22 Apr, 2011 @ 11:07am

    This is just my personal opinion, but I do not see the phone games for a couple of bucks competing with a full scale production game on, say, a PS3.

    I buy some of both and I've never chosen one of the other or said I won't buy the PS3 game because I laid down a dollar for a game I play while waitin for the checkout counter. They serve different entertainment purposes for me.

    Now, I do see the $1 games competing with things like the nintendo DS, and I recently questioned whether I should buy a Ipod touch or the DS for my son when preparing for a long trip, but that is somewhat different.

  • On the post: Judge Lets Sony Go After PS3 Jailbreaker's PayPal Account

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 17 Mar, 2011 @ 02:30pm

    Re: Re: Jurisdiction

    "What gives CA precedent over other states where donations originated from?"

    California has precedent because that is where the plaintiff filed suit. I am in no way a lawyer, but at least initially the plaintiff is "the master of the claim." and may file suit in any place where jurisdiction is proper. That does not meant that that place is the only one where they could have filed.

    "All I can see is that they want CA because it works in their favor."

    Yes, precisely, that is what "forum shopping" is.

  • On the post: Judge Lets Sony Go After PS3 Jailbreaker's PayPal Account

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 17 Mar, 2011 @ 02:25pm

    Re: Re: Jurisdiction

    It sounds like you are assuming that jurisdiction must be proper in one and only one place, but that is not true. Again, I am not a lawyer, but most of the time jurisdiction may be proper in multiple places. It is then up to the plaintiff to decide which of those possible jurisdiction to file the case in.

    If jurisdiction is being challenged as improper, then the key question is the "minimum contacts" analysis to determine if it is proper. Even if it is proper, the defendant may attempt to show that it is more appropriate through a challenge such as forum non conviens. However, when such a transfer (rather than dismissal for lack of jurisdiction) is requested the court has wide discretion and will often give the benefit of the doubt to the plaintiff.

  • On the post: Judge Lets Sony Go After PS3 Jailbreaker's PayPal Account

    TimothyAWiseman ( profile ), 17 Mar, 2011 @ 11:25am

    Jurisdiction

    I am not a lawyer, but where he received money from is quite relevant in determining proper jurisdiction.

    The landmark case that set the initial precedent was International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310 (1945). This has been interpreted by cases such as Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court, 480 U.S. 102 (1987). The precise test is still somewhat open to interpretation, but the basic idea is that if you direct your business at a state then you are availing yourself of that state's laws and therefore it is at least consistent with the Constitution for that state (or a federal court located in that state) to exercise jurisdiction.

    Again I am not a lawyer, but it seems whether or not he solicited and received donations from California in connection with his work on the PS3 is very relevant to seeing if jurisdiction may be exercised there. Of course, he may still try to have it removed from that court under doctrines such as forum non conviens even if jurisdiction may be properly exercised there.

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