velox 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: People Who Have Actually Heard of the Supreme Court Don't Like It Very Much

    velox ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2013 @ 07:35pm

    Let's also not forget that by the very definition of normal population curves at least 2% of the population falls more than 2 standard deviations below the mean for IQ.

  • On the post: Shockingly Unshocking: 'Cybersecurity' FUD Has Been Big Big Business For Contractors

    velox ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2013 @ 01:41pm

    First sell the problem... so then you can sell the solution.

  • On the post: Prenda Law Tries To Close The Barn Door After The Horse Has Lawyered Up

    velox ( profile ), 15 Mar, 2013 @ 09:02pm

    Prenda has been wasting public money

    Maybe by dismissing the cases there will be a reduction in material damages, but even if all the claims are dismissed, there's still the fact that Prenda Law has caused a lot of time to be wasted in courtrooms which are funded and maintained by the taxpayers.

  • On the post: Dutch Government Realizes That Non-Original Works Don't Deserve Copyright

    velox ( profile ), 14 Feb, 2013 @ 09:00am

    It will be interesting to see how this turns out since Dutch museums hold some of the world's most famous paintings -- think "Old Dutch Masters" such as Rembrandt, and those museums have been in the forefront of claiming copyright on images of paintings.
    Que the "national heritage" claims in 3,2,1...

  • On the post: If You Want Two-Thirds Of Americans To Agree That Violent Video Games Are More Dangerous Than Guns, All You Have To Do Is Ask The Right Americans

    velox ( profile ), 12 Feb, 2013 @ 09:16am

    Re: Misunderstanding the poll...

    "they throw in questions to show the bizarre beliefs of the current incarnation of the Republican party"
    If the factors which explain a poll's results are obscured by those who are publishing them, then it still remains an attempt to manipulate opinion rather than explain opinion.

  • On the post: If You Want Two-Thirds Of Americans To Agree That Violent Video Games Are More Dangerous Than Guns, All You Have To Do Is Ask The Right Americans

    velox ( profile ), 12 Feb, 2013 @ 08:49am

    Poll manipulation has become a high art form. Edward Bernays would be proud if he could see what is being accomplished these days.

  • On the post: Copyright Boss: 'It's Great Mechanics Now Need To Know About Copyright'

    velox ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2013 @ 01:42pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    "In the future, expect copyright locks, wherein you cannot use the machine you're using, listen to music or drive a car without paying copyright royalties out of the ass"
    That isn't the future, its the present.
    Here is an example from the medical world:
    Consider the most commonly used surgical robot which was developed at taxpayer expense by DARPA for battlefield use. The Army decided they didn't want it so a private company now sells the devices for millions of dollars each. The arms of this robot which are stainless steel and don't wear out not anywhere quick enough to suit the company's stockholders, are designed to detect when they enter a human body. After a certain number of passes into the body, the robot is disabled until you pay thousands so you can attach a new piece of equipment for it. The old one, which is just a usable as when you took it new out of the package is thrown away.
    Now how do you think this scam is defended? By the DMCA of course. If you hacked their software to circumvent the inactivation process, you would be breaking the law.
    It's a perfect example of the monumental waste and expense borne by the public as a result of IP law.

    I might add that up to this point, hospitals haven't cared a bit about this kind of thing since they were just passing all of their expenses, along with a hefty markup, on to the insurance companies, or in the unlucky cases - directly to the patients. We will see how much this changes in the next few years since it remains unclear exactly how Obamacare is going to play out.

  • On the post: Court Says Pfizer May Be Liable For Side Effects Of Drug, Even Though Man Took Non-Pfizer Generic Version

    velox ( profile ), 07 Feb, 2013 @ 07:46am

    Re: Re: Re:

    "changes are if you have 100% chance of dying, it would be a 0.00000000000001 chance of the drug killing you "
    Tom NJ makes some valid points above, but you're not helping him when to resort to math challenged hyperbole in order to appear to strengthen his argument.

    Here are the facts: According to an Institute of Medicine estimate 7,000 people die in the US every year due to medications. Do the math: 7,000/315,000,000 people = 0.00002

    That means the annual risk is about 2 Billion times more likely than your lifetime "estimate" -

  • On the post: Cable Industry Finally Admits That Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Congestion

    velox ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2013 @ 11:17am

    More truthfully stated

    "Our principal purpose is how to fairly monetize a high fixed cost."
    That should actually read: "Our principal purpose is how to fairly maintain a high fixed price."

  • On the post: Carmen Ortiz Refuses To Reflect; Insists Her Office Will Do Everything The Same As Before

    velox ( profile ), 22 Jan, 2013 @ 04:58pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Many prosecutors are not concerned with morality. They are only concerned with legality.

    Certain lawyers (such as rather average regular here) will argue that is as it should be. The problem is - as was discussed by Orin Kerr a few days ago at The Volokh Conspiracy, there's a lot of poorly written and unwise law out there creating discrepancy between legal and moral.

  • On the post: Carmen Ortiz Refuses To Reflect; Insists Her Office Will Do Everything The Same As Before

    velox ( profile ), 22 Jan, 2013 @ 07:48am

    Re: Re: Background

    I am in agreement with Jay and anonymouse here. I think Ortiz's stubborn public statements will increase scrutiny of her performance as prosecutor and hopefully of the entire situation wherein overcriminalization invites prosecutorial misbehavior.
    Over the past few decades, judges lost much of their discretion because of instances in which the public, and subsequently lawmakers became furious at apparent abuse of judicial discretion. The loss of discretionary power suffered by judges became a gain for prosecutors. Most unfortunately, prosecutors have not uniformly used this discretion in a wise pursuit of justice. One can only hope that there will be another redirection of our legal system in the near future.

  • On the post: Justice Department 'Complies' With FOIA Request For GPS Tracking Memos; Hands ACLU 111 Fully Redacted Pages

    velox ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2013 @ 08:48pm

    Fascinating...
    The two memoranda above which have a little bit visible were issued by the DOJ Chief, Criminal Appellate Division, Patty Merkamp Stemler.
    Couldn't this possibly be the same Patty Merkamp Stemler who was part of the Federal prosecution team held in contempt of court for failing to turn over information to the judge after being explicitly ordered to do so? That misconduct resulted in the collapse of the criminal case against Senator Ted Stevens.
    It looks like the episode didn't teach DOJ attorneys anything. Maybe the lesson we should have learned is that the members of the executive branch are now so powerful that they can flout rules, ignore law and nothing happens. After all, none of the DOJ attorneys involved in the Stevens case suffered any career damage.
    Ms. Merkamp Stemler even got promoted.

  • On the post: USPTO And DOJ Shocked (Shocked!) That Companies Abuse Patents, But For The Wrong Reasons

    velox ( profile ), 10 Jan, 2013 @ 07:55am

    "when you give someone the right to exclude others, limit competition and drive up the price of things, that's what's going to happen -- and it's not going to be the best thing for the public health"
    Indeed

    Following profit-motive, the next 3 most important factors for the production of goods and services at a fair price are: competition, competition and competition.

  • On the post: FAA Facing More Pressure To Change Its Rules On Electronic Device Usage

    velox ( profile ), 03 Jan, 2013 @ 08:07pm

    Re:

    AC: Read the IEEE article again and apply a little critical thinking this time.

    As the very first comment below your referenced article noted, the author of the article proved nothing except that
    1) Cell phones have emissions that can be detected
    2) People break the rules on every. single. flight.

    The rest of the article consists of describing a collection of recorded opinions from air-crew members about events during the 1990's where they believed there may have been some interference caused by personal electronic devices. Such collection of anecdote is useful only to stimulate scientific investigation, but it certainly isn't controlled scientific inquiry which can lead to conclusive data.

    Meanwhile... veritable years of nothing happening on millions of flights when these devices are on makes one highly prone to believe that this article is pure FUD. Note that the use of the word "millions" is not an exaggeration.

    And no, I don't care that the paper's author was an ex-astronaut.

  • On the post: People Freak Out About Privacy On Facebook, But Ignore Widespread Government Surveillance

    velox ( profile ), 02 Jan, 2013 @ 10:37pm

    Re: Re: Warrantless surveillance

    "consumers need to know how to use tools to inhibit that data collection"
    Yes, but unfortunately the most well known tools such as 'Do Not Track' browser configurations virtually worthless. Do Not Track is nothing more than politely asking people who profit from your data not to take your data.

    The only thing that works with certainty is a firewall with outbound blocking ability. Most consumer firewalls don't block outbound traffic, and even if you run those that do, they are somewhat of a pain to manage because they not infrequently hinder your online experience. Using outbound blocking requires the user to use judgement, and to take the time to manually unblock at times.
    IT security firms have largely ignored outbound firewall strategies and have only focused on what to keep out instead.

    If you wonder why the most popular computer security programs don't have outbound firewalls, well here's a little fact they don't want you to know: Many of the big name security and anti-viral firms are actually right in there purloining your data for sale to others. They are scarcely any different in this regard that the companies who more openly acknowledge that they take your information. To name a couple of names -- AVG and Symantec.

    Furthermore Microsoft has a long history of aiding and abetting anyone who wants to get data out of your computer by making tools such as LSP and more recently WFP technology which can allow silent interception of all of your IP traffic, including SSL. WFP is embedded in the kernel and is meant to be undetectable and not removable. Microsoft does not provide the user with any way to prevent this kind of activity.

  • On the post: People Freak Out About Privacy On Facebook, But Ignore Widespread Government Surveillance

    velox ( profile ), 02 Jan, 2013 @ 05:04pm

    Warrantless surveillance

    As a practical matter, the government is able to vacuum up large troves of information because all 3 branches of government appear to have agreed to ignore the seemingly plain language in the 4th amendment requiring a warrant, issued upon probable cause to suspect that a crime has been committed, prior to searching "persons, houses, papers, and effects". If the requirement for a warrant was being respected, the government would be restricted to only collecting information related to actual suspicion of crime.

    Unfortunately many Americans can't wrap their head around the word "warrantless".
    They like the idea that the government is wiretapping suspected terrorists, but they don't appear to understand or have an interest in the idea that wiretapping a person who is suspected of terror or other criminal activity is not the same thing as tapping anyone, anytime, for any reason that law enforcement desires.
    Warrants are a paper trail that protect us from government employees acting in a malevolent fashion. Warrants ensure that a second opinion about the necessity or appropriateness of the tap is obtained. Law enforcement complains that warrants get in the way and they don't have time in an emergency situation.
    My response to all of the above is to compare to the medical community. Physicians must do their paperwork if they want to operate. Imagine a surgeon who could do anything he/she wanted during an operation but was not required to have any paper-trail to document it. Without question the public would be less safe.
    With respect to emergent situations, I do not see that a warrant requirement has to slow down law enforcement. We have doctors on call in order to keep the public safe from middle of the night emergencies. There is no reason that judges couldn't be on call for middle of the night emergencies as well.

  • On the post: So, What Didn't Enter The Public Domain This Week, That Should Have

    velox ( profile ), 02 Jan, 2013 @ 07:58am

    Re:

    " most of the books listed there are famous largely due to adaptations into other media, rather than famous as books on their own"
    Do you want another example of a currently copyrighted work that is an adaption of much earlier work?
    How about the Bible?

    The Revised Standard Version --NT copyright 1946, OT copyright 1952. Those copyrights continue to be enforced, perhaps because the National Council of Churches of Christ believes in spreading to the gospel only to those who have properly licensed it.

    For those who haven't read the Bible, it should be clear that the RSV owes a great deal to the 1611 King James Version. Now for the KJV, 402 years ought to safely ensure that the work is in the public domain right? In most of the world the answer is yes, but in the UK, the Crown still claims a Royal prerogative on the publishing rights to the King James Bible. This use of this prerogative with respect to the KJV has been granted to Cambridge University which still attempts to exert their rights to restrict publishing anything longer than 500 verses without permission.

  • On the post: Israeli Bill Would Allow Secret Courts To Issue Confidential Warrants To Block Web Sites Allegedly Involved In Copyright Infringement

    velox ( profile ), 02 Jan, 2013 @ 10:27am

    **AA assault on fundamental freedoms

    AC's here have assailed and ridiculed accusations that the media industry was seeking to have laws passed which directly erode constitutional freedoms. I believe I've seen the words "wild-eyed", and "tinfoil hat" used.

    Now I'm not familiar with the Israeli constitution, but I have to believe that the right of citizens to due process in a public court of law is found somewhere within it.

    No tinfoil hat is required to see that if such a law were passed in the US it would very likely violate at least the 5th amendment.

  • On the post: Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Instagram Because People Still Don't Like Its Terms Of Service

    velox ( profile ), 26 Dec, 2012 @ 09:52am

    Re: Re: Solution

    " if you don't agree with the terms then STOP USING THE SERVICE! "
    You can easily switch to Flickr which arguably has better filters and features than Instagram anyway.
    A blogger has put together step by step instructions to migrate your photos from Instagram to Flickr here.

  • On the post: RIAA Lawyers Trying To Rewrite History Of Copyright Clause Through Shoddy Scholarship And Selective Quotation

    velox ( profile ), 20 Dec, 2012 @ 12:29pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    "The major thing about Perceptional Properties, such as copyright, is that if it didn't exist, there would be no physical harm that could be proven. With Perceptional Property laws, there is provable harm"
    What physical harm did you have in mind?
    Please provide some examples/citations of "provable" "physical" harm.

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