Yakko Warner 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (227)

• On the post: MTV Europe Has Things To Say About Piracy And/Or Loading Bars Being Bad For Musicians

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 30 Jul, 2012 @ 02:01pm

  Re: Ironic

  Unfortunately, we can't rewind, we've gone too far.

• On the post: Obama And Romney Each Have An Ad Disappear As The Olympics Gets Snippy About Anyone Referencing The Olympics

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 27 Jul, 2012 @ 09:20am

  Re:

  I'm sure ACORN will work hard to get those Brits registered to vote, too.

• On the post: When Every Practical Economic Idea Is Political Suicide, Something's Wrong With Politics

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 25 Jul, 2012 @ 12:41pm

  Re: Re: Re: Hmmm

  Fascinating that you would describe a tax break -- the government not taking money earned -- as "giv[ing] free cash".

• On the post: Court Says State Department Can Live In Fantasyland & Pretend Documents Leaked By Wikileaks Are Still Secret

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 24 Jul, 2012 @ 11:33am

  Plausible deniability?

  Is there any guarantee that the information published by Wikileaks is legitimate? How do you really know that a document on Wikileaks isn't some manner of forgery? If the actual documents are declassified, then you have a way to prove (or disprove) the Wikileaks document's truthfulness. But if the original remains "classified", all you really have is a situation where some random, unverified document makes an accusation of the truth, which still needs "proof".
  
  Maybe they're just trying to retain their "nuh-uh, prove it" defense to "he said you were doing this".

• On the post: Is A Petition Calling For A Pardon Of The Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde 'Offensive'?

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 16 Jul, 2012 @ 01:08pm

  Is it automated?

  There's a "Report this as inappropriate" link at the bottom of the petition page. I wonder if it gets clicked enough, it prompts the system to send out an automated email to get a general opinion on the survey.
  
  It could be that some number of people found it "wrong" and clicked the link. It could also be that the "number of people" in question happen to be affiliated with the MAFIAA and are attempting to silence this dissent to their favorable ruling -- but I can't possibly imagine they would stoop to something so petty and childish.

• On the post: Olympic Level Ridiculousness: You Can't Link To The Olympics Website If You Say Something Mean About Them

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 13 Jul, 2012 @ 02:33pm

  Re: Re: Re:

  You mean these Jesus-hating socialists?

• On the post: Greenpeace Parody Site Censored Using Copyright Infringement Claim

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 26 Jun, 2012 @ 10:48am

  Re:

  As a lawyer representing the troll group Angry Cowards Anonymous, I hereby notify the owners of the website techdirt.com to immediately remove this blatant violation of my clients' intellectual property. This so-called "parody" is a direct affront to my clients' extremely fragile sense of well-being, and attempting to mock their speech is a clear infringement on copyrights and patents (see patent #129,465,302: Method of Debasing Content Creators by Misattribution; #129,465,303: Method of Debasing Content Creators by Misattribution on the Internet; #129,465,307: Method of Disrupting Discussion by Non-Sequitur; and #129,465,308: Method of Disrupting Discussion by Non-Sequitur on the Internet) owned by my clients.

• On the post: The Oatmeal v. Funnyjunk: How The Court Of Public Opinion Beats The Court Of Baseless Legal Threats

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 12 Jun, 2012 @ 01:28pm

  Please let Funnyjunk pursue this

  For purely selfish reasons, I hope Funnyjunk presses their attack. Not that I want Oatmeal to have to go through the hassle of the courts (he's had a couple offers of free help, so it would likely only cost him time and annoyance), but I find it quite entertaining seeing him draw new cartoons to publicly shame and trounce Funnyjunk.

• On the post: The DOJ's Truly Disgusting Argument For Denying A Megaupload User Access To His Legal Content

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 12 Jun, 2012 @ 12:55pm

  Re: Re: Re: Re:

  Sure, if you want to throw your vote away.
  
  Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

• On the post: EA Believes That Making A Lot Of Money Is Less Important Than Keeping Games Expensive

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2012 @ 11:56am

  DLC! DLC!

  They intend to make more money by raping those fewer customers for more dollars.
  
  Seriously, what do you expect when the company opens their E3 press conference with "Welcome to Download 2012!" and the question, "Remember when the game you bought was the game you got?"

• On the post: This Is Reporting? Fox News Ties Flame Malware To Angry Birds Because Both Use Lua

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 05 Jun, 2012 @ 08:01am

  It's absurd

  A lot of viruses are written in C, the same language as the Windows operating system! This does not mean that Windows is a virus!
  
  Wait, bad example...

• On the post: Regina Spektor: I'm Lucky That People Can Get All My Music For Free

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 30 May, 2012 @ 02:26pm

  She's just an edge case.

  This model only works for someone whose fans are very poor. For the majority of musicians that have fans that actually have money to buy CDs, they need to have tough anti-piracy laws to protect their IP.

• On the post: CEO Says SOPA & CISPA Are Needed Because A Disgruntled Customer Once Set Up A Parody Site To Mock Him

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 30 May, 2012 @ 08:41am

  Get some nerds in Congress

  See, this is why they need to get some nerds -- or, in other words, subject matter experts -- to tell them what it is they're voting on, instead of just relying on well-paid (and well-paying) industry lobbyists making things up.

• On the post: Senator Coons Admits That SOPA 'Really Did Pose Some Risk To The Internet'

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 29 May, 2012 @ 11:15am

  Where were the industry experts?

  Reminds me of that bit from the John Stewart show, where he had clips showing various congressmen admitting they didn't know details as they said, "I'm not a nerd". Stewart's epic comment: "I believe the word you're looking for is experts." Perhaps if they had invited some of these experts to the debate, they might've had a clue much earlier.
  
  Except, of course, these same experts were specifically excluded from every part of the debate.
  
  It's not so much that they didn't know about the consequences, it's that they willfully excluded anyone who could've told them about the consequences.

• On the post: Broadband In Crisis: Does The US Need Regulation To Force Meaningful Competition?

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 24 May, 2012 @ 03:11pm

  It should be a utility by now

  Telephone service is a utility. Even though it's deregulated, companies that provide the service still have to maintain a level of service.
  
  Something I learned as a Comcast subscriber -- if you want better service, subscribe to their phone service (which is VOIP and is carried by their internet service). Both I and my mother subscribe to Comcast service in our respective homes (which are separate dwellings, thank you). We each had internet and phone service through them. When we had a problem, all we had to do was remind the customer service tech that we had phone service, and it was fixed the same day.
  
  I've since gone to a much cheaper VOIP provider (about a third of the price for about twenty times more features). We had an internet outage just last week, and we were down better than 30 hours until they got around to fixing it, because they didn't provide phone service and didn't have that obligation. (Funny how that distinction is made.)

• On the post: Broadband In Crisis: Does The US Need Regulation To Force Meaningful Competition?

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 24 May, 2012 @ 02:59pm

  Did I miss something in Geography?

  When did South Korea become a Western country?

• On the post: Why Hollywood Is Doomed: It Takes Sensible Advice Like 'Make Good Movies' And Turns It Into A Screed About Piracy

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 22 May, 2012 @ 09:33am

  Current government policy argues otherwise

  As for those protections, last I checked, we were supposed to live in a capitalist free market economy, where even the most basic economics student learns that you don't "protect" industries, you let them compete. And if they fail, they fail.

  
  Unless of course someone determines you're "too big to fail", and then apparently the government will give you lots of the public's money to protect you from failing.

• On the post: Old Habits Or New Envy? Microsoft Bans 3rd Party Browsers On Windows RT

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 11 May, 2012 @ 08:57am

  Windows RT is their "tablet"

  This isn't a case of "banning", it's a case of creating a locked-in system on their tablet version of the OS. It's their answer to the iPad. (So, to answer the question in the title, it's "New Envy" more than "Old Habits".)
  
  If they tried banning browsers in the standard desktop version of Windows 8, you'd have a story.

• On the post: Indie Film Maker Is Creating A DRM-Free Open HD Video Format

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 11 May, 2012 @ 08:46am

  Required on DVD??

  DRM is not required to distribute movies on DVD. You can burn a DVD without any DRM at all (region-free and CSS-free) and play it on any DVD player. I don't know enough about Blu-ray to know if players require DRM -- I don't own a Blu-ray burner or software. I would guess the same holds true, but that's just a guess.
  
  Encoding movies in the existing codecs may require a license to use for distribution, but that's not the same thing as DRM. If the issue is that major distributors just won't produce movies without DRM, then coming up with a new video format isn't going to solve that.

• On the post: Honeywell's Lawsuit Against Nest: The Perfect Example Of Legacy Players Using Patents To Stifle Innovation

  

  Yakko Warner ( profile ), 09 May, 2012 @ 08:47am

  Re: well

  Speedbumps would serve to slow the descent into hell.
  
  I prefer to think of the lawyers as oil slicks.

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