vivaelamor 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Yes, People Can Comment On Content Business Models Without Having Produced Hit Content

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 29 Jul, 2010 @ 04:57am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    "or would it be part of fixed cost?"

    Depends on what you're looking at. If you've got to pay royalties, per unit, then that's a marginal cost. If you've just got to pay the author back, royalties aside, then that is a fixed cost.

  • On the post: Yes, People Can Comment On Content Business Models Without Having Produced Hit Content

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 29 Jul, 2010 @ 04:54am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    "Overall costs dictate price. That price includes compensation for the author. Usually either a flat rate or a royalty or a low flat rate with a conditional royalty attached. As books are usually ordered months in advance, a book with orders to low to cover said costs may be canceled."

    Freudian slip? You said price includes compensation for the author; I'm pretty sure you meant cost.

  • On the post: Yes, People Can Comment On Content Business Models Without Having Produced Hit Content

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 29 Jul, 2010 @ 04:45am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    "It doesn't help your argument if you make facts up."

    For all you know their plumber does cost $10~$50. It doesn't help your argument if you complain about assumptions while making your own.

  • On the post: Dear Warner Bros., It's Not 'Word Of Mouth' If You Have To Pay People To Promote Your Movies

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 29 Jul, 2010 @ 04:37am

    Re: Blog Post

    "Let's look at the basic definition of Word of Mouth, as defined by WOMMA:"

    Let's not look at the definition of the phrase as given by an organisation with 'marketing' in the name, please.

    The point of the article is that word of mouth is supposed to be a way to get FREE marketing. You may design your product or provide services to promote word of mouth, but if you're paying for the actual word of mouth then you're missing the point. Word of mouth is a good thing because it scales and because people listen to each other. It doesn't scale if you're paying for it directly and people don't tend to listen if (as required by law) you disclose what you are doing.

  • On the post: Dear Warner Bros., It's Not 'Word Of Mouth' If You Have To Pay People To Promote Your Movies

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 29 Jul, 2010 @ 04:30am

    Re: Response

    "All of the work done by the WB Word Team is also fully disclosed and transparent and team members chose which projects they want to promote based on their individual likes and opinions of each specific project."

    The issue is not whether 'team members' know what is going on, it is whether you require those members to disclose what is going on in their blog/twitter/facebook posts.

    "We are dismayed that you wouldn't call first and check your facts before writing this inaccurate story."

    You have identified one inaccuracy, that of referring to films rather than TV programs. Even that was a reasonable assumption considering the information provided to Mike only stated 'content/products' and WB is primarily recognised as a film company. He should be dismayed that you wouldn't call first and check your facts before writing this inaccurate comment.

    Besides all that, you completely missed the point which was that if you have to pay directly for word of mouth then you are doing it wrong.

  • On the post: ASCAP Boss Refuses To Debate Lessig; Claims That It's An Attempt To 'Silence' ASCAP

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 29 Jul, 2010 @ 03:12am

    Re: Re: Intelligent Design

    "If certain things in Nature are too complex to have arisen by chance, wouldn’t that apply to the hypothetical Designer of them as well? After all, such a Designer must be far more complex than any of those Designs."

    Nicely sums up the difference between science and organised religion. One embraces the unknown as a new challenge, the other just gives it a label and turns its back. That is why the Big Bang is still a theory and why the only way organised religion survives is to deny itself. Every time they get something wrong the excuse is 'well that isn't supposed to be taken literally'. It was until people stopped believing it.

  • On the post: ASCAP Boss Refuses To Debate Lessig; Claims That It's An Attempt To 'Silence' ASCAP

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 29 Jul, 2010 @ 02:54am

    Re: Re: Re:

    "While I agree with you, the problem is most people are not rational."

    No one is wholly rational, neither is anyone wholly irrational.

  • On the post: Facebook Apparently Won't Let Users Talk About Facebook's Lawsuit With Power.com

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 28 Jul, 2010 @ 10:57am

    Re: Re:

    "I'm beginning to think that all of Facebook is an error...."

    Any slower and you'd bump into MySpace..

    Seriously though, the only reason most informed people seem to use Facebook is because it is popular. The sooner something comes along that makes social network lock-in redundant the better.

  • On the post: Music Publishers Demanding Musicians Hand Over More Rights

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 28 Jul, 2010 @ 10:48am

    Re:

    "Seems odd to me that in the age of the internet we still have so many middlemen. Amazon? One huge middleman. Walmart? Gets between the producer and the consumer."

    I don't know a lot about Walmart, but Amazon at least are pretty good at offering useful services at reasonable prices. Middlemen who make things easier are a good thing.

    As an example, Amazon offer a hosting service. The service is targeted at middlemen because hosting is a great example of economies of scale. If the middlemen all hosted their own stuff then it would cost them far more than it costs to use Amazon's service. If Amazon tried to serve everyone directly then it would not have the resources. It's easy to offer a lot of bandwidth and space, it's not so easy to deal with each user of that bandwidth and space as a customer.

  • On the post: Author Claims Patents Made Industrial Revolution Possible; Then Shows Why He's Wrong

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 28 Jul, 2010 @ 12:58am

    Re:

    "and seriously, the day that The Daily Show or some other mainstream media outlet televises someone like Mike Masnick to discuss patents and copyrights"

    I know Lessig was on The Colbert Report, but I think he was selling his book.

  • On the post: Theater Owner Begs Hollywood Not To Give Consumers What They Want

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 28 Jul, 2010 @ 12:40am

    Re: Re: Re: Typo

    "While you're fixing things, perhaps double check that the top-level menu item Entrepreneur’s should have that apostrophe. :-)"

    Shouldn't it be The Entrepreneurs' Corner? Otherwise I feel like I'm intruding on someone's private space.

  • On the post: How Is It That New Copyrights Are Being Claimed On Work Done By An Artist Who Died 70 Years Ago?

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 28 Jul, 2010 @ 12:23am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: sweat of the brow, and creative input. (physics textbook).

    Whether I understand 'and' is not the issue, whether you understand 'that' is the issue. To what were you referring when you said: "Thats why my physics text books, that contain raw facts, equations and information, but formated and presented in a specific format, and narrative. Is subject to copyright"? Your preceding two paragraphs where describing sweat of the brow in detail, there was nothing else for the word to refer to.

    If that was not what you meant (see how I referred to the previous paragraph there, using 'that') then why do you keep trying to explain around your bad English when you can just admit your English is bad and move on? It is hard to have a conversation with someone who fervently argues that what they said was, in fact, not true. If you had meant to refer to something else, like the preceding post, then you should have explicitly said so or put 'that' at the start of your post.

    If you'd said in the first place 'that is not what I meant', instead of trying to argue that I had somehow misinterpreted your words then we might be discussing the issue at hand, instead of arguing over whether you meant what you actually said.

  • On the post: How Is It That New Copyrights Are Being Claimed On Work Done By An Artist Who Died 70 Years Ago?

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 27 Jul, 2010 @ 06:15am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: sweat of the brow, and creative input. (physics textbook).

    "Sorry, are you that stupid, I mean, can you not understand that there are OTHER methods for gaining IP and copyright protection for your works."

    Then why did you refer to sweat of the brow specifically? I have to ask, is English your native language? If it is not then that might explain why you appear to be talking a different language.

  • On the post: Website Company Threatens To Sue Guy Who Criticizes Quality Of Gordon Brown's Website

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 27 Jul, 2010 @ 06:03am

    Re:

    "But honestly CMS sucks. It's a pretext to cutting down work and actually it is more work to learn the stupid system".

    Ah yes, the noble tradition of updating websites manually. Did I say noble? I meant stupid.

  • On the post: Website Company Threatens To Sue Guy Who Criticizes Quality Of Gordon Brown's Website

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 27 Jul, 2010 @ 05:59am

    Re: Re: Re:

    "Agreed - it is also no worse than any of the other former prime minister's websites (Tony Blair's seems to be done by the same people - and John Major's is even blander - as you would expect!)"

    From Mr Bozier's blog: "Tony Blair’s is far better, and it isn’t a Tangent website". I can't find who did design Blair's.

  • On the post: Amanda Palmer Sells $15,000 Worth Of Music & Merch In Three Minutes

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 26 Jul, 2010 @ 04:54pm

    Re:

    "Amanda Palmer = Doing It Right"

    I've finally got around to buying the album and I'm actually now tempted to listen to some Radiohead. Not even The Pretenders' cover of Creep managed to do that previously.

  • On the post: Why Does The Press Still Blindly Believe 'Studies' Put Out By The Entertainment Industry?

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 26 Jul, 2010 @ 04:25pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wow... someone tell Blizzard!

    "The study is basically "we ignored the major sources of legitimate BitTorrent traffic and found that most of the remaining BitTorrent traffic was illegitimate". Well, d'uh."

    What's really priceless is their response to the criticism:

    "Thank you for your enquiry regarding our research report "Investigation into the extent of infringing content on BitTorrent networks". As researchers, we not only stand by the findings that we have arrived at, but - having made our methodology public - we are providing other bona fide researchers to replicate and/or dispute our findings. Their results can in turn be assessed through the peer review process; this is the process that normal research activity takes.

    You have raised some interesting points that are fundamental to the validitiy of any study in this area: the sampling strategy; verification of results and so on. We believe that our methodology was rigorously applied to the sample that we obtained. Over time, we will replicate the sampling process, so that we will gain better estimates of the population results. This is the fundamental tenet of statistical sampling."

  • On the post: Reviewer Caught Posting Marketing Material As A Review… Uses DMCA To Takedown Site Of Guy Who Exposed Him

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 26 Jul, 2010 @ 04:10pm

    Re:

    "Try not to let him or his delusions alarm you - he's pathetic and harmless, and is endlessly amusing, particularly when accusing other people of using sock puppets when he's just been caught out using at least six different identities to back himself up in a single thread."

    Don't worry; we're used to schizophrenics here. Often they don't even bother with more than one account. Or different posts.

  • On the post: Reviewer Caught Posting Marketing Material As A Review… Uses DMCA To Takedown Site Of Guy Who Exposed Him

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 26 Jul, 2010 @ 03:53pm

    Re:

    '"It's difficult to see how much deeper a hole Coles wants to dig himself here."

    If the pun in this sentence was unintentional, it makes it all the more brilliant.'

    That's a pun? I'm reminded of the 'A bit of Fry and Laurie' joke:

    (Fry says something that has absolutely no pun)

    Fry: 'If you'll pardon the pun.'

    Laurie: 'What pun?'

    Fry: 'Oh, wasn't there one? I'm sorry.'

  • On the post: How Is It That New Copyrights Are Being Claimed On Work Done By An Artist Who Died 70 Years Ago?

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 26 Jul, 2010 @ 03:20pm

    Re: Re: RE: sweat of the brow, and creative input. (physics textbook).

    "Im confused, my statement in that case was not related to 'sweat of the brow' but more to the point you were getting at that you can have copyrighted works, and is full of essentually uncompyrightable information."

    You gave two paragraphs describing what 'sweat of the brow' is and then said: "That is why my physics text books, that contain raw facts, equations and information, but formated and presented in a specific format, and narrative. Is subject to copyright". How can you then claim that your statement was not referring to 'sweat of the brow'? If you were speaking English (grammar aside, you were), then yes you were referring to 'sweat of the brow'.

    Honestly, I cannot see how you can really be so ignorant. If you're trolling then well done for bringing the other side down by making them look so bad, though I'd prefer to do without your help.

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