Rico R. 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (324) comment rss

  • On the post: Seuss Estate And ComicMix Copyright Case Settles In The Saddest Possible Way

    Rico R. ( profile ), 08 Oct, 2021 @ 07:42am

    Re:

    I mean, I believe there's a PDF online somewhere of The Cat NOT in the Hat, another book Dr. Seuss Enterprises shut down on copyright grounds. So, I guess anything's possible!

  • On the post: Trump Asks Court To Reinstate His Twitter Account ASAP

    Rico R. ( profile ), 07 Oct, 2021 @ 02:29pm

    Re:

    To Trump, lawyers are just magical wizards that can intimidate his enemies by waving legal threats like a magic wand, and regardless of whether or not the law is on his side, he can force them to comply with whatever his heart demands. I wouldn't even be surprised if Trump's lawyers knew all of this was bound to fail, got yelled at by Trump to do their jobs, and put together this motion that they knew was legally frivolous!

  • On the post: Seuss Estate And ComicMix Copyright Case Settles In The Saddest Possible Way

    Rico R. ( profile ), 07 Oct, 2021 @ 09:21pm

    Ode to the Wait For a New Circuit Split...

    Oh, the places some go
    To defend copyright
    And say they were on the right side of this fight

    Now, the culture’s grown thin
    Yet they do not care
    The author’s long dead
    But they are his heir

    The Trekkies held fast
    For as long as they could
    Their mashup was fair
    As they understood

    Yes, one court agreed
    Another did not
    The SCOTUS refused to weigh in as they fought

    This battle was lost
    The war boldly drags on
    Some new artists are chilled
    And this comic is gone

    Transformation’s now weakened
    Thanks to one Dr. Seuss
    ‘Cause the mashup is dead
    Long live fair use!

  • On the post: Yet Another Move To Funnel Money To Big Copyright Companies, Not Struggling Creators

    Rico R. ( profile ), 28 Sep, 2021 @ 05:16pm

    Great minds think alike!

    One of the cleverest moves by the copyright industry was to claim to speak for the very people it exploits must brutally.

    I was thinking about this very concept the other day. In the music industry, it's an especially vicious and exploitive cycle. The smallest musician usually tends to dream of a major label deal, so they can say they "made it" like the Katy Perry's, Coldplay's, and Taylor Swift's of this world. And if they ever get big enough to attract the attention of a major label, their number one concern tends to be creative control. They don't want the label to make creative decisions for them, be it their sound, lyrics, what songs do or don't appear on the tracklisting, who they collaborate with, etc.

    Unfortunately, they gloss over the more important aspect of any deal any label would write up: By signing on the dotted line, they gain very little in the short term while the label swallows up 100% of the rights of the master recordings released through the label, which they can use to pocket more money than they hand over to you.

    It gets worse once you consider how some musicians tend to be anti-copyright in one way or another. For example, Miley Cyrus once said on Jimmy Kimmel Live that she doesn't mind it if anyone downloads her music illegally, saying that they're just fans at the end of the day. Yet, you know who does mind very much? Miley's label! And unfortunately for the "pirate", it's the label and not Miley who has the copyright to the recording you've downloaded.

    And what's worse, whenever the label successfully defends its legal rights in court, the artist sees nothing from that payout. These are the very artists that the label claims to be defending in court. The very same artists whenever they lobby for more copyright maximalist policies in Congress. And whenever that hypothetical artist mentioned above does make it big and is signed to a label's roster, one of their fans looks up to them and dreams of following in their footsteps. Unfortunately, those footsteps are on the path to copyright maximalism, whether the artist ever wanted it or not.

  • On the post: Texas' Unconstitutional Social Media Censorship Bill Challenged In Court, Just As Texas Joins The Legal Fight For Florida's Unconstitutional Social Media Bill

    Rico R. ( profile ), 24 Sep, 2021 @ 03:53pm

    There's only one 1st amendment protection Republicans care about

    The entire amicus brief tries to claim that editorial discretion is "conduct" and not speech -- and that would upend basically all 1st Amendment precedent.

    If the first amendment only protects speech, does that mean the government can start regulating religious services? I mean, that's conduct, not speech! /s

  • On the post: 8th Circuit's Bizarre Ruling In Devin Nunes' SLAPP Suit Against Reporter Ryan Lizza

    Rico R. ( profile ), 16 Sep, 2021 @ 12:44pm

    Posting hyperlinks to original stories should not constitute republication. I mean, by that logic, what's next: copyright maximalists arguing that those who post hyperlinks to infringing content should be held liable for direct copyright infringement? Oh, wait...

  • On the post: Satire Site Gets Ridiculous Threat Letter From Baseball Team; cc's Barbra Streisand In Its Response

    Rico R. ( profile ), 15 Sep, 2021 @ 01:18pm

    Yet another incorrect movie quote:

    Are you issuing baseless legal threats? There's no issuing baseless legal threats in baseball!

    — A League of Their Own

  • On the post: Kickstarter For Hand-Drawn Video Game Manuals Shuts Down Due To IP Threat

    Rico R. ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2021 @ 09:53pm

    Is there anything involving Nintendo that Nintendo won't DMCA?

    At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo issued legal threats against a documentary crew that films an interview with a parent while kids play Nintendo video games in the background.

  • On the post: US Judge Gets It Right: AI Doesn't Get Patents

    Rico R. ( profile ), 10 Sep, 2021 @ 08:12pm

    AI's don't monkey around...

    [H]ow long will it be until some sucker of a Senator or Member of Congress, convinced by Thaler's nonsense, will introduce a bill to amend the Patent Act to enable AI patents?

    That will happen when some other sucker in Congress is convinced by PETA's equally astounding nonsense and introduces a bill that amends the Copyright Act to enable monkeys to become copyright holders!

  • On the post: Rupert Murdoch Learns Why Intermediary Liability Protections Matter: Australia Says Media Orgs Can Be Sued Over Facebook Comments

    Rico R. ( profile ), 08 Sep, 2021 @ 02:35pm

    Hey, News Organizations:

    Now that you know what it's like to be forced to pay someone you don't owe money to for something done by a third party completely out of your control, does that mean you're going to stop asking for Facebook to pay you money when a third party decides to post links to stories on your news sites?

  • On the post: More Pro-Trump Lawyers Sanctioned For BS Election Fraud Lawsuits

    Rico R. ( profile ), 30 Aug, 2021 @ 03:18pm

    Hmm, sounds familiar...

    Lawyers filing lawsuits need to do so in good faith. Due diligence is expected. Extensive research is expected before filing lawsuits...

    Let's see, where else have I heard this on Techdirt? What other lawyer is frequently mentioned here as someone who doesn't do their due diligence before filing lawsuits? Someone else who has been heavily sanctioned as a result?

    Man, the name must have escaped my mind...
    (cough-cough)Liebowitz(cough-cough)

  • On the post: PSA: Universal Music Group Has Copyrighted The Moon. That is All.

    Rico R. ( profile ), 27 Aug, 2021 @ 07:27pm

    Re: Re: Incorrect Star Wars quote

    To be fair, the actual Star Wars quote came from A New Hope, but I didn't find it as fitting as riffing off of the sequel's title.

    But hey, you forgot about The Copyfraud Awakens!

  • On the post: PSA: Universal Music Group Has Copyrighted The Moon. That is All.

    Rico R. ( profile ), 27 Aug, 2021 @ 03:30pm

    Incorrect Star Wars quote

    “That’s no moon. It’s copyright infringement!”

    — Star Wars: The Copyright Empire Strikes Back

  • On the post: Judge Says Voting Machine Company Can Continue To Sue Trump's Buddies Over Bogus Election Fraud Claims

    Rico R. ( profile ), 18 Aug, 2021 @ 02:17pm

    Re:

    That's because that "mountain of evidence" is really a molehill of unfounded conspiracy theories...

  • On the post: Home Depot Tech Will Brick Power Tools If They're Stolen. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

    Rico R. ( profile ), 05 Aug, 2021 @ 10:43am

    As problematic as this is, I'll give them this much...

    At least this DRM scheme is aimed at stopping actual theft!

  • On the post: UFC COO Publicly Pushing 'Notice And Stay Down' Reforms To DMCA, Despite That Being Horrible For Almost Everyone

    Rico R. ( profile ), 04 Aug, 2021 @ 02:08pm

    Re:

    In that case, piracy seems more like a boogeyman than an actual problem. Notwithstanding any copyright policy argument, if people are generally no longer interested in the product/service/content you're providing, then the solution is to change it up and offer something your customers will like. That's Business 101. Competition is bound to be more successful if your product is inferior to what your competitors are offering. And piracy has always been about competition and not legality. Tougher anti-piracy measures and changing the law to better benefit your position are not just wrong, but they're also bound to still fail if people legitimately aren't interested in what you're offering them.

  • On the post: Social Network GETTR, Which Promised To Support 'Free Speech' Now Full Of Islamic State Jihadi Propaganda

    Rico R. ( profile ), 03 Aug, 2021 @ 12:27pm

    Re: You fail to see the big picture as usual.

    In one breath, you say that you're fine with not allowing "all speech" and go on to say what particular limits go too far, and then you say that platforms should just be "mere hosts". Well, which is it? Even if we accept your Brandenburg limit argument (which I had to look up; it's the "imminent lawless action" rule proposed by the SCOTUS in Brandenberg v. Ohio), you have to admit that you still need some level of human moderation to achieve that. But still, as many others have pointed out, Facebook, Twitter, et. al have their own free speech rights as well. They are private entities, so they have the same right to kick Trump and others off of their platforms like I would have the right to kick you out of my house should you come in and start spewing this nonsense. That doesn't mean you aren't allowed to say those things; that's protected by the first amendment. But forcing platforms to host everything unless it falls under the Brandenburg limits is still compelled speech, which is prohibited under the first amendment. GETTR has a right to kick a progressive liberal like me off of their platform just as much as Facebook has the right to kick insurrectionists off of theirs. Content moderation is inevitable; it's just a matter of how sites choose to do it.

  • On the post: Techdirt Is Now Entirely Without Any Google Ads Or Tracking Code

    Rico R. ( profile ), 27 Jul, 2021 @ 10:03am

    I can’t believe Google would want to cut funding from a blog ran by one of Google’s own biggest shills. /s

  • On the post: Senators Klobuchar And Lujan Release Ridiculous, Blatantly Unconstitutional Bill To Make Facebook Liable For Health Misinformation

    Rico R. ( profile ), 23 Jul, 2021 @ 03:59pm

    Re: Re: Error 404: Libel not found

    I have to disagree with this statement, too. Being wrong about something is a requirement for it to be libel. Libel is written defamation, while slander is spoken defamation. For something to constitute defamation, you must make a statement of fact that is false (and therefore be "wrong" about something), AND, unless it's defamation per se, it has to cause actual harm to the plaintiff. I still agree libel isn't found here, though. In the case of "health misinformation", it's not defamation per se, and it can't constitute harm to a plaintiff as required by law. To have standing to sue, you have to have a particular injury-in-fact that is caused by the defendant (i.e., Facebook) that can be redressed by a favorable court ruling. In this hypothetical libel case, any "harm" would merely be conjectural (i.e., Simply saying, "Facebook's spreading of misinformation may cause people to avoid getting vaccinated, become infected with COVID, and die," is merely conjecture and not a concrete or particularized injury), thus proving fatal to OP's claim that "libel laws" can provide a cause of action. But either way, this bill is an unconstitutional disgrace. We need to do something to combat misinformation. But merely blaming Facebook and "Big Tech" for everything because they refuse to "nerd harder" and eliminate all misinformation is pointless. There are other, constitutional, better ways of informing people about the pandemic and COVID-19 vaccines, including things that DON'T require action by Congress to do so. Let's try to come up with those kinds of solutions. But this bill... it ain't it!

  • On the post: Patent Quality Week: This One Weird Trick Could Solve Most Patent Quality Problems

    Rico R. ( profile ), 19 Jul, 2021 @ 01:20pm

    PHOSITA is part of the equation

    I'd also argue that this relevant section should also prohibit patents that fall under BOAC syndrome. A few years ago, I remember almost every month, the EFF's bad patent of the month suffered from the same problem: Existing, well-recognized invention, But On A Computer. This was everything from watching a video (which would affect streaming content) to organizing files and folders in a file cabinet-like system (what almost every file system already does on a computer). Even in the case of the most novel physical invention, anyone familiar with it and how it works could reverse engineer and either simulate or emulate said invention on the computer in software form. How does that not also run afoul under this interpretation of the phrase, "person having ordinary skill in the art"? I'd argue it does, and a lot of those patents would (and should) thus be invalidated, let alone never granted in the first place.

Next >>