zcat 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Vanessa Hudgens Claims She Owns Copyright On Nude Photos Of Herself

    zcat ( profile ), 09 Jan, 2010 @ 12:56am

    Re: Re:

    Not correcting; agreeing.

    It's my understanding that the Photographer gets the copyright unless it's specifically transferred / waived (thus copy-shops refusing to copy wedding photos, etc) but a model release is required before the photographer can do anything else with the photos. The photographer has 'copyright', the subject(s) has/have 'privacy rights' or something similar.

  • On the post: Man Sues Neighbor For Not Turning Off WiFi And Cell Phone

    zcat ( profile ), 08 Jan, 2010 @ 06:58pm

    With any luck the silly prick will develop alzheimers while sleeping in his car and then we can have a really good laugh about it.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/07/mobile_alzheimer/

    on a serious note; this represents the first study that proves cellphone RF _CAN_ have some effect on brain activity. The fact that it's a beneficial effect in this particular study is somewhat irrelevant. It means to some extent that the nutcases were right, and just because we didn't have evidence of any effect before did not mean that there was no effect...

  • On the post: BMI Sues T-Mobile, Claims It Needs To Pay Up Over Ringback Tones

    zcat ( profile ), 08 Jan, 2010 @ 06:14pm

    Re:

    Oh, and also IMHO a ringback tone is very much in the same category as 'hold music' in terms of performance. I don't agree that hold music should have to pay a performance licence, but given that it does it seems quite consistent that ringback tones should pay the same.

  • On the post: BMI Sues T-Mobile, Claims It Needs To Pay Up Over Ringback Tones

    zcat ( profile ), 08 Jan, 2010 @ 05:50pm

    To be honest, I totally agree with ANY move that makes 'ringbacks' go away. The couple of times I've called a number with 'ringback' music I have immediately hung up assuming a faulty line, because the only time I expect to hear music over the top of an outgoing call is when there's a faulty connection and my phone is picking up a nearby AM station. The entire concept of ringback music is pointless technowankery and basically annoys the hell out of me.

  • On the post: Lord Lucas Proposes That Copyright Holders Detail Actual Damages From Infringement Under Mandelson Bill

    zcat ( profile ), 07 Jan, 2010 @ 07:15pm

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

    5000 people have a file. That's 5000 copyright violations.

    Each of them is 'equally responsible' .. that means you divide the total 'damage' (5000 violations) by the number of filesharers involved (5000)

    5000 / 5000 = 1

    And you don't get any more copyright violations by counting each partial download of a file either.. 5000 connections sharing an average 1/5000th segment of a file still only works out to one full file per downloader

  • On the post: Elementary My Dear Watson….It's Called The Public Domain… Or Is It?

    zcat ( profile ), 28 Dec, 2009 @ 12:37pm

    Re: Re:

    Duh, sorry.. 'not even close to public domain', still very much copyright.

  • On the post: Elementary My Dear Watson….It's Called The Public Domain… Or Is It?

    zcat ( profile ), 28 Dec, 2009 @ 12:36pm

    Re:

    I'd just like to correct you a little there. Disney kicked off with Steamboat Willie by blatantly plagiarising a Buster Keaton film made THE SAME YEAR. Not even close to copyright.

    Many people claim this is OK because the Disney work was a parody, but I wouldn't give them so much slack. The original work was slapstick comedy. Disney's 'copy' was basically a cartoon adaptation of it. If anyone did the same thing to a Disney movie today (eg make a cartoon parody of the Hannah Montana movie) they'd be in court so fast their head would spin.

  • On the post: Why Are Publications Trying To Bite The Google Hand That Feeds Them?

    zcat ( profile ), 24 Dec, 2009 @ 11:37pm

    Google have the power to end this nonsense overnight....

    It's not like there's any shortage of online news sources who DO want to be indexed. All Google need to do is just stop listing/indexing/giving traffic to any news site that complains.. or if they want to get really nasty, any news site that even publishes stories about any other news site complaining. It's not like it's censorship, just make the policy "complaint about indexing" == "robots.txt" and let them decide if they really still want to complain.

  • On the post: Former Musician Now Lawyer Comes To Terms With What's Happening To His Music Online

    zcat ( profile ), 24 Dec, 2009 @ 10:28pm

    Re:

    I have a better analogy.

    I figured out the pizza hutt recipe by buying a store-bought pizza and identifying (rip) what was in it by sight and taste, then I went and got the same ingredients (blank cd) and made by own pizzas at home.

    So now pizza hut says I'm stealing pizzas and wants to sue me for $80,000 per pizza. Yeah, that seems fair.

  • On the post: China Raises The Great Firewall Even Higher, Claims It's To Stop Piracy

    zcat ( profile ), 21 Dec, 2009 @ 07:52pm

    #nocleanfeed ?

  • On the post: David Pogue Weighs In On Ebook DRM: Non-DRM'd Ebook Increased His Sales

    zcat ( profile ), 18 Dec, 2009 @ 09:14pm

    Baen have been running the experiment a little longer, putting significant numbers of titles online in plain text and with no drm. (So has Cory Doctrow of course, but he's only a single datapoint)

    A year after starting this experiment Eric Flynt laid down some facts and figures;

    http://www.baen.com/library/palaver6.htm

    That was quite a while ago, but apparently they started adding cdroms to the library in 2002 and they're still adding books on a fairly regular basis. It's a pretty safe bet that Baen would not continue putting these books and cds online if they even remotely though it was costing them sales.

  • On the post: How Monsanto Used Gene Patents To Corner The Market In Seeds

    zcat ( profile ), 16 Dec, 2009 @ 05:41pm

    Re: Re: Food inc.

    Which is why we need international IP enforcement treaties like TRIPS an ACTA. Otherwise we have sneaky 'pirates' like Nelson Mandela declaring patents invalid in their own country in order to save lives. And we can't let something as trivial as millions of completely unnecessary deaths get in the way of profit!

  • On the post: More Charts The Record Labels Don't Want You To See: Swedish Musicians Making More Money

    zcat ( profile ), 14 Dec, 2009 @ 11:28am

    I would like to see a version of this graph with 'losses due to piracy' added on top; an estimate of what the music industry think they ought to be making (over and above the record profits they're making at the moment.)

    And please try to find numbers back into the 80's so we have a good pre-p2p baseline. I strongly suspect the curve goes UP as people discover more music and I'd like to see a graph that confirms it.

  • On the post: Bow-Wow-Wow-Yippie-Yo-Yippie-Yea Is Infringing, And Fair Use Won't Save It

    zcat ( profile ), 10 Dec, 2009 @ 05:51pm

    I'm confused; I don't associate the phrase with ANY of the artists mentioned thus far;

    http://www.mp3lyrics.org/l/lil-bow-wow/bow-wow-thats-my-name/

    But I'm not exactly into rap music, so perhaps I missed something.

  • On the post: Study Shows Counterfeit Buyers Frequently Buy Real Products Later

    zcat ( profile ), 07 Dec, 2009 @ 11:10am

    Re:

    For every one person killed by 'counterfeit' drugs, I will bet there are dozen killed by trusting completely legal but utterly worthless 'homeopathic medicine' (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-395568/Dont-rely-homeopathy-beat-malaria-doctors-warn.html) and a million killed by the lack of access to cheap generic drugs denied to them by treaties such as TRIPS. http://www.africanaidsaction.org/ (sorry about the attack site warning, I think they got hacked recently. Seems clean now though)

    Seriously, over three million aids-related deaths a year in Africa, almost entirely due to a lack of affordable. antiviral medication.. Find me solid references for just three 'counterfeit' drugs-related deaths this year and I'll retract my million-to-one estimate.

  • On the post: The Language Of 'Piracy' As A Spectacle

    zcat ( profile ), 05 Dec, 2009 @ 12:25am

    Re:

    .. the good guys now?

    They always were..

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html

  • On the post: Good Luck Trying To Delete Stuff Off The Internet

    zcat ( profile ), 04 Dec, 2009 @ 01:37am

    Re:

    http://www.archive.org/index.php

    150 billion pages archived. That's pretty fanatical...

    There are various other projects that do the same thing too, eg Archives NZ recently decided to download as much of the .nz webspace as they could find, plus a whole lot of NZ-related sites in other domains. They're not fanatics, it's actually part of their job description...

  • On the post: If We Don't Kick People Off The Internet For File Sharing, Football Will Die

    zcat ( profile ), 30 Nov, 2009 @ 06:41pm

    Re: Re:

    I wish they were only 'hoping' it will go away.

    They're pushing for laws and secret multilateral treaties to make many of the technological advances and benefits of the 21th century go away. "We can't or wont adapt, so instead we'll throw all our influence and power into trying to halt the inevitable progress of technology"

    And all this even though the evidence (record profits year after year just about everywhere in the 'content industry') seems to indicate that piracy isn't really doing that much damage anyhow.

  • On the post: No, ACTA Secrecy Is Not 'Normal' — Nor Is It A 'Distraction'

    zcat ( profile ), 20 Nov, 2009 @ 12:50pm

    Re: Re:

    I never understood the problem either. They spend years arguing about something completely pointless, then eventaully do nothing about it. But they hardy mentioned MSFT's licence agreements that made sure no OEM would pre-install any OS but Windows, not even as a 'dual-boot' option.

  • On the post: Intel Lawyers Again Go Too Far In Trademark Bullying

    zcat ( profile ), 19 Nov, 2009 @ 11:23pm

    Re: Abundant examples

    Yeahbut... there's also a good reason why iTunes is called iTunes and not the Apple Music Store. And Apple Corps could never market a personal computer for the same reason.

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