xebikr 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: RIAA: There's Been No Innovation Stifling Here!

    xebikr ( profile ), 30 May, 2013 @ 08:51am

    Re:

    You constantly complain about how IP rights hinder innovation, but can you explain how it could work any other way?

    That's an easy one. Drastically scale back IP laws. Rewrite them to favor innovation. Stop giving established content industries effective veto power over new technologies.

    All innovation must take place within the existing legal framework.

    The existing legal framework is the result of lobbying and regulatory capture by existing players. The legal framework is wrong.

    Furthermore, the content industries have tried to obliterate practically EVERY DAMN NEW TECHNOLOGY that has anything to do with IP at all and a lot that had very little to do with it. Their strategy is "new? Kill it." The law has very little to do with it. They try to bury it in legal costs whether their case has a basis in law, or not. How many new technologies can you name that they haven't tried to kill?

    You say: "These aren't 'tradeoffs.' These are maxima reductions. They're removing efficiency from the system to protect an inefficient, legacy way of doing business." Can you please give us a concrete answer as to what you mean by this?

    How easy is it to move media around these days? I can download entire libraries in 1/1000th of the time it would take to go to the store and buy each copy of each work. Now how easy is it to legally move media around? How much easier would it be to find anything if the *AA's would just get out of the way?

    You often repeat your claim that their business models are outdated and inefficient. What precisely do you want them to do?

    Don't try to kill everything new. Relax their stranglehold on the market. Provide something that people want to buy.

  • On the post: Senate Judiciary Committee Votes That Accessing Your Email Should Require A Warrant

    xebikr ( profile ), 25 Apr, 2013 @ 09:41am

    Re: Re:

    This is bill is expected to pass. CISPA is expected to pass. I'm sure there are some who are voting for this bill and not CISPA or vice versa; but the ones who are voting for both? MPD.

  • On the post: Senate Judiciary Committee Votes That Accessing Your Email Should Require A Warrant

    xebikr ( profile ), 25 Apr, 2013 @ 07:36am

    Senate Judiciary Committee Votes That Accessing Your Email Should Require A Warrant

    Unless the government asks really really nicely, and then it can just be handed over to them. With this and CISPA you get the feeling people in congress have multiple personality disorder.

  • On the post: The Copyright Lobotomy: How Intellectual Property Makes Us Pretend To Be Stupid

    xebikr ( profile ), 23 Apr, 2013 @ 06:01pm

    Re: Re: Re: OP is an idiot

    The CD is just a token of ownership that's easy for most people to wrap their heads around.

    Wow. You are exactly backwards. The CD is a physical object. You can claim ownership of it. You can pick it up. Lend it out. Break it. Someone tries to take it from you, you can defend it. You OWN it.

    An MP3 file is a token. It represents something. You can make thousands of identical files in seconds. These "copies" will be identical and consume virtually no matter or resources. You cannot lend it. You cannot own it. You cannot pick it up or defend it. The data it represents can be wiped from existence, utterly, with nothing left over to show for it.

    This is the difference between something real and something imaginary.

  • On the post: Authors Guild's Scott Turow: The Supreme Court, Google, Ebooks, Libraries & Amazon Are All Destroying Authors

    xebikr ( profile ), 08 Apr, 2013 @ 01:41pm

    Re: Scott probably understands pretty well what he's saying

    Given that Turow is a Sonnenschein partner and an author, he's probably pretty knowledgeable about what he's writing

    He's doing a great job of hiding it, then.

  • On the post: Apple Threatens To Kick Out Comic Book App Over 'Adult' Content, Forcing Publisher To Pull 40% Of Its 4,000 Titles

    xebikr ( profile ), 08 Apr, 2013 @ 01:45pm

    I stopped giving money to Apple when they demanded a 30% cut of everything sold inside the apps, even when the developers didn't use Apple API's to do it. They have done entirely nothing to reverse my view since then.

  • On the post: Movie Studios Filing DMCA Takedowns Over DMCA Takedowns

    xebikr ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2013 @ 03:25pm

    Heh. I can see this becoming recursive. Next year it'll be notices on notices that were for notices.

  • On the post: Damaging The Internet Is Not Acceptable Collateral Damage In The Copyright Wars

    xebikr ( profile ), 02 Apr, 2013 @ 11:30am

    Re: Re: Re:

    the complete absence of articles discussing anything positive about copyright tell us...
    ...that there isn't anything positive about copyright?

    Seriously, dude. Please post links to all the stories you've found that explain how copyright saved the day. If you could put them in separate posts with a summary, that'd be great. I seriously feel they would add to the discussion.

  • On the post: HBO Admits That Perhaps Cable-Free Access Might Possibly Make Sense One Day, Maybe

    xebikr ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2013 @ 08:25am

    Re:

    It's not necessarily the monthly subscription. I'm actually fine with being able to pay just for the 'channels' I want. It's more that they are all separate with their own apps or websites. It's a pain to try to go back and forth between them. I'd subscribe to more than just Netflix if I could get them all to just be embedded in the media center app of my choice.

  • On the post: One Step Closer To Sales Taxes On All Internet Purchases

    xebikr ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2013 @ 08:18am

    Re: FFS, it's not an "internet" tax

    My standard response to increased taxes: If you can show that for all practical purposes you've eliminated waste, and you still don't have enough money for what the taxpayers want you to do, then raise taxes. Otherwise, go back to the books and find money that I've already paid you and stop throwing it down the toilet.

  • On the post: Rather Than Fix The CFAA, House Judiciary Committee Planning To Make It Worse… Way Worse

    xebikr ( profile ), 25 Mar, 2013 @ 09:42am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Yes. But you are already ignoring someone who, against his better judgement I'm guessing, gave you serious replies.

    Besides, burden of proof is on you. Explain why racketeering laws should be applied to crimes that used a computer irrespective of their relation to what was previously regarded as racketeering. Use examples based in reality, please.

  • On the post: Details Come Out On US Attorneys Withholding Evidence In Aaron Swartz Case

    xebikr ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2013 @ 08:22am

    Re: Re: Re:

    No, I think I then have some measure of control of your car. I certainly don't have "no control".

    I usually don't do ad homs, but dang. You are dumb.

  • On the post: Details Come Out On US Attorneys Withholding Evidence In Aaron Swartz Case

    xebikr ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2013 @ 08:18am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    I'd love to hear the prosecutor's side of this.

    Prosecution: We did nothing wrong! Everything is being mischaracterized. Pay no attention to anyone who says otherwise.

    That's been pretty much their whole approach so far. It has worked for you, despite any lack of substance.

  • On the post: Upon Further Review… Judge Realizes The Jury In Apple/Samsung Case Screwed Up

    xebikr ( profile ), 04 Mar, 2013 @ 07:39am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    So what is income correlated to? Hard work? Cunning?

    No, mostly it's where you where born and who raised you. Your ability to improve your income levels within your own lifetime or past that of your parents' might involve some measure of intelligence, but not necessarily. A four year degree makes a big difference, but that doesn't equate with intelligence, just an ability to get a college loan and stick it out until you graduate.

    What you're really looking at is 'economic mobility'. If you are born at the top or the bottom, you are likely to stay there. If you are born at the bottom, but your income improves, it's unlikely that you would exceed the middle area. Hard work, intelligence, cunning, whatever, have very little to do with it. It's a big part of why people who have money just can't comprehend why poor people don't just change things so they have money too. They must be stupid or lazy, right?

  • On the post: Comcast: We Won't Terminate Your Account Under Six Strikes; We'll Just Block Every Single Website

    xebikr ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2013 @ 12:48pm

    Re: Re: Re: @ Mike: I ask you to state that the first out_of_the_blue is false.

    Do you really not see the difference between your 'Gwiz' and his? Even using Lynx you should see the '(profile)' hyperlink. Make an account, and that '(profile)' could be yours!

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

    xebikr ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2013 @ 08:39am

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

    Wow. There's even one from today!
    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130224/22411222089/nascar-abuses-dmca-to-try-to-delete-fan-videos-daytona-crash.shtml

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

    xebikr ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2013 @ 08:37am

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

    Well, I don't have time to post thousands of links (or even 500). However: Let me google it for you:

    Some general topics for your personal research:
    https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+contentid+false+positives

    https://www.google.com/search?q=dmca+suppress+speech

    https://www.google.com/search?q=copyright+chilling+effects&oq=copyright+chilling+effects

    http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=copyright+as+censorship

    But this is what I mean by willfully blind. You will immediately ignore and/or dismiss any examples that are presented. If you've actually read any articles from Techdirt you'd be able to think of quite a few cases very quickly.

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

    xebikr ( profile ), 24 Feb, 2013 @ 07:27pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Willfully blind, you are. It's simple to point to any case where a work was ruled infringing, even though it was political or cultural satire, or only contained 'elements' of the original. Even easier is to point to the thousands and thousands of works removed simply because they were alleged to infringe.

    Any original work that is suppressed by means of some form of legal action is a first amendment casualty of the copyright war of extermination. To suggest otherwise is to put yourself in the place of deciding what kind of speech is acceptable.

  • On the post: Chris Dodd Sounding Like A Broken Recording Industry

    xebikr ( profile ), 16 Feb, 2013 @ 12:03pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Radical Mike

    Remember that the public domain grows with the number of works created. This is a simple mathematical fact.
    The public domain currently does not grow at all, whether there are new works being created.

    Would you agree that incentives by definition encourage people to do or abstain from doing things?
    No, I would not. I would agree that incentives are an attempt to encourage or abstain, but their efficacy is very much a matter of debate. Copyright seems a particularly odd incentive. It appears to encourage some and discourage others. Is it encouraging more than it is discouraging? I don't think so. Right now most creation is in spite of copyright and even more would be created without it.

    In my opinion, while most creators don't need copyright at all, some need it a lot.
    And yet it is granted immediately to all without any regard to need. Furthermore, the fact that some need it a lot isn't itself an indication that we as a society need copyright.

    The reason why having it is necessarily better than not having it is because the people who do not wish to enforce their copyright don't have to.
    And yet they might, at anytime. It is a lot more work to get rid of your copyright than it is to get it in the first place. Just look at what Nina had to go through to try renounce her claim to 'Sita Sings the Blues'. This is an obscenely inefficient system.

    But what about the minority of creators who still do want to protect their work? Why shouldn't they be allowed to?
    Wrong question. The correct question is: Why should we give them that ability. Does granting them the monopoly protections create more public good than the harms it creates?

    While most performance artists make more money off performance, I don't see anything wrong with having another revenue stream.
    I do, when the cost of that revenue stream is a government granted monopoly that is used to extract money from everyone else at higher costs and poorer quality than if there was no monopoly granted.

    What if the copyright term were a flat 10 years. That would mean that everything created before 2003 would be fair game today. That seems like a pretty robust and rich public domain to me.
    That would be light years better than what we have now, but it wouldn't last. Grant any monopoly, and it will be extended, and extended again and again. This is not conjecture, it is history. It is our current world. I see no indication that human nature has changed recently in this regard.

    I believe the above scenario is a case where the public and private interests aren't locked into a zero sum death match. You're clearly bright and you've clearly thought this through. I would be surprised if you didn't agree here.
    Now you're either just being condescending or you really haven't thought this through. Your belief decries a lack of knowledge of history and human nature. What are the behaviors of the monopolists? To increase their monopoly. Do they limit themselves to well reasoned arguments and logic? No, they produce the most extreme examples of reason that they are capable of to persuade lawmakers and the public that the only right thing in the world is to maintain and increase their power. They will frame those who oppose the monopolies in the worst light imaginable. They are not afraid of hyperbole, inaccuracies, or outright lies to do so. Just suggest to Chris Dodd that 10 years of copyright should be enough. The more reasoned your arguments are, the more he'd attack you. Not your ideas. You.

    The only way to prevent monopolists' behaviors is by not creating the monopoly in the first place. I'd be surprised if you didn't agree here.

  • On the post: Chris Dodd Sounding Like A Broken Recording Industry

    xebikr ( profile ), 16 Feb, 2013 @ 10:45am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Radical Mike

    If you say that copyright is broken, I agree. If you say new law is required, I agree. But notice that we're not talking about abolition anymore.

    I don't think your thinking encompasses all possible reforms or all possible laws. Absolution is definitely a possible reform which would require a legislative act to repeal it. New laws might also be to prohibit measures to reduce access to created works; an anti-dmca, as it were.

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