wvhillbilly 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Do You Need Permission To Take A Photo With A Chair In It? You Might In France…

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2012 @ 09:57am

    Re: Perfect Picture of Paris

    Oh! You just violated the copyright on blank copy paper!!!

  • On the post: Do You Need Permission To Take A Photo With A Chair In It? You Might In France…

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2012 @ 09:54am

    Re:

    Why just a couple of thousand? How about ten million? Then maybe after they climb out from under all that mountain of paper they'll get the message!

  • On the post: Do You Need Permission To Take A Photo With A Chair In It? You Might In France…

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2012 @ 09:45am

    Re: Re:

    Ah, now the French can sue anyone who uses the letter "h" in anything he writes!!! Better start turning all our office buildings into courthouses and all our hotels into prisons, so we can handle all the infringement cases of all the people who write anything using the letter "h".

    Oops! I just did it at least 7 times above and more here. I better run and hide somewhere where the French can't find me.

  • On the post: Do You Need Permission To Take A Photo With A Chair In It? You Might In France…

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2012 @ 09:29am

    Re:

    I wonder how long will it be before some greedy idiot photographs a national landmark like the Washington Monument and then tries to assert copyright on the landmark itself?

    This isn't copyright infringement, it's out and out copyright abuse, claiming rights that are not and were never granted by copyright law. And that in itself is a crime.

  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 13 Feb, 2012 @ 11:36am

    PTT and ephemeral copies

    Hey guys! Ever seen about all these FEMA camps scattered all over the US? They're probably for all us Internet users so so when PTT passes they can put us all away for infringing copyright by all the millions of buffer copies our computers routinely make in the course of displaying Web pages, and all the buffer copies our digital TVs make of the data passing through them in the course of updating screen displays.

    Yes, PTT is going to bring all temporary copies of all data anywhere under copyright protection, and since everything in the world is copyright by default, there's no escape. We'll all have to throw our TVs and computers in the river or expect the copyright police to come knocking our doors down and dragging us away. But if we do that they'll get us for illegal dumping and polluting the rivers. They'll get us either way.

    [Yes this is sarcasm, but it is the truth that PTT will bring all copies of any form of data, even temporary buffer copies, under copyright protection. Utterly stupid. I think they want to make criminals out of all of us.]

  • On the post: It's Time To Let Politicians Know That Using Secretive Trade Agreements To Meddle With The Internet Is Unacceptable

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2012 @ 08:29pm

    Re: Re:

    Hey, who paid you to write this tripe anyway?

  • On the post: Schrödinger's Download: Whether Or Not An iTunes Music Sale Is A 'Sale' Depends On Who's Suing

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2012 @ 07:37pm

    To me this seems like the Schr?dinger's Cat of copyright law. According to the record labels, if we're talking about it from the seller's perspective, it's a sale. But the second you flip the equation and look at it from the buyer's perspective, it's a license. The cat is simultaneously dead and alive. Either the major labels are full of it...

    The RIAA is an oxymoron...

  • On the post: One Reason Why The USPTO Granted Ridiculously Stupid Internet Patents: Patent Examiners Were Banned From Using The Internet

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2012 @ 07:21pm

    Patent trolls

    If congress would use some common sense in passing patent law instead of just listening to greedy corporations who want it all, we might not have all these patent parasites running around suing world plus dog with all these bogus, overbroad patents that are their only real invention. The rule ought to be, you don't own the invention, patent is unenforceable. If two or more people patent the same thing, patent is invalidated for obviousness. If you patent something that already exists, patent is invalid because of prior art. And so on.

    Patent trolls are nothing but parasites and shouldn't be allowed to exist.

  • On the post: Lithuanian Minister Of Justice Says ACTA Is Unnecessary, Doesn't Actually Help Creators And It's Time To Reevaluate IP

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2012 @ 07:03pm

    Re: ACTA, Patents and trolls oh my

    It's about time somebody showed some sense on all this IP overreaching. It's like the IP industry wants to lock everything up solid forever, do away with all safeguards against misuse, do away with any form of fair use and tilt everything completely in their favor. And the penalties for even minor infringement I would liken to 20 years at hard labor for jaywalking.

    I wish somebody would pound some sense into the heads of these IP freaks that want everything all for themselves and nobody else and understand that this has to be a two-way street, not all take and no give.

  • On the post: Lithuanian Minister Of Justice Says ACTA Is Unnecessary, Doesn't Actually Help Creators And It's Time To Reevaluate IP

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2012 @ 06:51pm

    Failed business model logo

    Wanna see something hilarious? Go here:
    http://craphound.com/images/failedbizmodelcleft.jpg

  • On the post: 'The Economist' And 'Financial Times' Already Writing Off ACTA As Dead

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2012 @ 10:38am

    Re:

    Congress REALLY wants to go another round with the Internet?

    They're going to keep trying until either they succeed or until the entrenched corporate interests behind this stop feeding them money.

    The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Never forget this!

  • On the post: 'The Economist' And 'Financial Times' Already Writing Off ACTA As Dead

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2012 @ 09:12am

    ACTA strategy

    The FT quotes an unnamed diplomat who suggests that this delay may "give enough time for the post-SOPA venom to clear," so that governments can quietly ratify ACTA in their national parliaments and in Brussels next year.


    I suspect that is exactly their strategy--wait till the uproar dies down, then convene only the ACTA supporters and sneak it through when they think nobody's looking.

    This is just as dishonest as ACTA itself.

  • On the post: Park Ranger Tases Guy Walking Dogs Without A Leash

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2012 @ 11:25am

    Tazing people in the park...

    is a good way to drive business away.

    But I guess they never consider that angle.

  • On the post: Big News: Germany Says It Won't Sign ACTA [Update: … Yet]

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2012 @ 11:18am

    Re:

    "sign that shit now...oh wait... DON'T sign that shit now!".

    No they'll wait till they think nobody's watching, then they'll convene only those in favor of it and do it in secret.

    Gotta watch these politicians, they're sneaky.

  • On the post: If The RIAA Wants To Talk About Misinformation Campaigns, Let's Start With The RIAA's Misinformation Campaign

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2012 @ 10:36am

    Police state

    I see this nation on a fast track to implementing a police state, a surveillance state where our every move will be monitored, comments we make on Internet blogs will be monitored, our financial transactions, all will be monitored by our government. Already we have the TSA harassing passengers in airports, setting up checkpoints on highways, showing up at sports events etc. And now we have facial recognition software which with surveillance cameras on every street corner can aid police in locating and arresting any person they want to.

    SOPA/PIPA to the best of my knowledge have no safeguards against false reporting, no due process before blocking a website, no way of an accused website of defending itself, etc. These bills if passed into law will be open to massive abuse. Any corporation or the US Government itself will have the power to shut down any website it doesn't like. And now we have ACTA and TPP each of which outdoes previous bills on restrictions. And worst of all these bills have been put on a fast track and have been negotiated in strictest secrecy by insiders, while the public has been left in the dark, except for what few documents have been leaked by insiders.

    I see all of these as more tools to be used in implementing said police state than anything else. I could be wrong, I hope I am wrong. But that's what I see coming.

  • On the post: People Realizing That It Wasn't Google Lobbying That Stopped PIPA/SOPA

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 09 Feb, 2012 @ 09:39pm

    Steam engines vs electric motors

    Hey Sherm! Why are you insisting on running a steam engine business model in the electric motor era?

    And why do you tie down the pressure relief valve to get more power out of that creaky old steam engine? Go ahead, tie it down tight, but don't blame anyone else when the boiler blows to kingdom come and takes your creaky, obsolete business model with it.

    You've fought tooth and toenail against every new technology that has come along, claiming it is going to destroy your entertainment industry, then when you've accepted and worked with that new technology you've greatly benefited from it. And now that the Internet and sharing has come along, it's deja vu all over again. You'd save all of us a lot of grief if you'd learn to accommodate to changes and give people what they want, instead of fighting every new thing that comes along and making bogus, grossly inflated damage claims when all the facts show the very opposite.

    . . .

    Oh, and suing your customers back to the stone age is no way to attract new business.

  • On the post: People Realizing That It Wasn't Google Lobbying That Stopped PIPA/SOPA

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 09 Feb, 2012 @ 09:18pm

    Re: Yes, it was Google-- and the people Google pays....

    Oh, and I guess Google has 400 million people working for them? If I recall right this is about how many people joined this protest.

    Even if Google and Wikipedia hadn't joined in, it would have made very little difference. And I don't buy Carey Sherman's argument that piracy costs the US economy 19 million jobs, when his little fiefdom only has 10,000 total working for him.

    Get real!

  • On the post: The Web Is Saved: East Texas Jury Says Eolas Patents Are Invalid

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 09 Feb, 2012 @ 08:59pm

    Eolas patents

    Do all those who settled get any of their money back?

    If trolls who litigate using bogus patents were required to repay all the money collected when said patents are invalidated, it might provide some disincentive for this kind of extortion.

  • On the post: The Real Goal Of Regulating Buffer Copies? So Hollywood Can Put A Tollbooth On Innovation

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 07 Feb, 2012 @ 09:58pm

    Re: Re: I am against regulation, but...

    Hmmm... About this idea of requiring a separate license for each buffer copy your computer makes to show an image... Videos generally run at 30 frames per second. Now think of a 10 minute You Tube video... this would be 1800 separate images per minute, or 18,000 separate licenses for that 10 minute video. If the MPAA decided to license these copies at $10.00 per each, it would cost you $180,000 just for licenses to watch that 10 minute video. Now suppose you wanted to watch a 90 minute video. $1.8 million clams for that 90 minutes.

    Yes I know this is ridiculous, but this whole idea of requiring a license for buffer copies is just as ridiculous and I want to show just how ridiculous it is. If this passes, no one will be able to afford just to turn his computer on, let alone access the Internet in any meaningful way. Or we'll be criminals and they'll have to build thousands of new prisons to house all of us. But these entertainment industry pointy haired bean counters never think of things like this, all they think about is how can they milk more $$$$$$$$$ from the public and everybody else.

  • On the post: ICE Seizes 300 More Sites; Can't Have People Watching Super Bowl Ads Without Permission

    wvhillbilly ( profile ), 03 Feb, 2012 @ 05:25pm

    Re: Re:

    I think I'll not watch the Super Bowl at all. ICE might decide to seize all my TV sets and arrest me for infringing copyright by watching the ultra-hyper-super-over-the-moon copyrighted game. ;-)

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