cc's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
from the han-solo dept
This week's favorite posts come courtesy of cc, who's been having fun doing battle in the comments
Do you ever get the feeling that Techdirt has just way too many departments? Yes? Well, it's thanks to that abundance thing Mike is always on about... And it looks like today I'm adding my own: I think I'll call it the DHS, short for "Department of Han Solo". Just because I can.
So on with my highlights for this week.
ICE are living up to their name, trying to create a chilling effect on people linking to stuff they don't like. As Mike noted, they are skating on very thin ice, and hopefully the courts will put them in their place pretty quick. If not, the US gov't will be getting some cool new internet censorship toys soon.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren has come forward with blistering criticism of the lack of due process in ICE's domain seizures, and has given IP Czar Victoria Espinel a thorough grilling about their legality. Lofgren later suggested that the 84,000 websites slandered as child pornographers in the botched mooo.com seizure should turn up the heat on ICE, and made one thing clear: speak up! If you want your Representatives to listen to you, write them physical letters and you might get some attention.
Funnily enough, it wasn't ICE who responded to Lofgren's comments, but the RIAA. Not surprisingly, a response written by industry lobbyists is full of lies and deception, which Techdirt kindly took the time to debunk.
In other important news, a US proposal for the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement), the sequel to ACTA, has been leaked. As those paying attention have come to expect, it's just a list of the things they wanted but didn't get in ACTA. At the same time, we get the news that a major 'piracy' report has concluded that more enforcement is not the right solution -- thus bringing all of US foreign IP policy into question. Hey, now even WIPO has said copyright has been pushed too far.
Of interest may also be that the US Supreme Court have agreed to look at the Golan v. Holder case, and specifically whether it's constitutional to yank public domain works back into copyright. Fingers crossed the supremes will come to the right decision.
On the trademark insanity front, Zynga is trying to trademark most of France, Apple is trying to trademark 'app', and the Twilight vampires are on the prowl for anything with the word 'twilight' in it.
And while we're speaking of insanity, I might as well mention how the consumer rights organisations were treated during the joke hearings about the Special 301 report. Keep it classy, boys.
And that's it for now. May the force... well, you know.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
ಠ_ಠ
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: ಠ_ಠ
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Looking forward to it...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Looking forward to it...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
France hasn't cut a single infringer off with their laws.
So where would we get this evidence from? The future via time travel?
That report was just typical pirate blather. "Cut prices down and we'll pay!" No you won't. Evidence is already quite strong that you can keep cutting and cutting prices. People will still go for the "free" option, whether it is legal or not, as long as it is available.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
http://piracy.ssrc.org/
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/eng/h_ip01456.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4VsTm3TPj4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2FOrx41N0
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
You can keep cutting all you want. It won't change the fact that unbridled piracy makes the same product available for the infinitely lower price of $0.00.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I'll give you a hint. It's not $0.00.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
As for pharmaceuticals, billions goes into R&D every year. And patent lifespan, including the 3-5 years of medical trials to get approval, is very short.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
If you took the effort to look at the charts, you'd see that in 2010 the top-grossing films have NOT been sequels, with the exception of Toy Story 3. In fact in 2009, Avatar, the highest-grossing film of all time, was an original film.
Pharma spends "billions" on R&D, but they spend way more on marketing, and their profits dwarf most other industries by a huge margin (high-risk business my arse). Their patent lengths are too short? Ask the people who need access to stupidly-priced patented drugs NOW to stay alive, I'm sure they'll agree.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Irony
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Irony
Talking about irony...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Irony
If they won't do it voluntarily, it is the job of the government to make them. Fortunately, governments seem to be grasping that concept as the costs of piracy increase.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Irony
http://torrentfreak.com/internet-piracy-b oosts-anime-sales-study-concludes-110203/
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,71 0976,00.html
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Irony
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Irony
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Irony
Pirate radio on FM, San Francisco, late 60's to mid 70's.
You just exponentially increased my dislike for music distribution companies. I had forgotten all about how good FM radio was before it was corrupted.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Irony
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Irony
Citation requested.
Please show me where in the US Constitution or anywhere else where it is clearly spelled out that the job of the US gov't is to make anybody do anything related to internet based services.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
So we see a strong indication that piracy is not really a problem at all, but you can keep saying otherwise.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
God I hope free legal alternatives for video start appearing left and right so I can dump your asses once and for all, music is not a problem anymore people can find alternatives like Jamendo and Magnatune that are just great, for books there is at least a thousand years reading on archive.org and Gutenberg.
Tell me, to whom you are going to sell that snake oil of yours?
Because I can say with all honesty I don't need you people and those laws doesn't matter that much you people are going down one way or another and the more rigid copyright becomes more powerful legal free alternatives become also.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
That was a good one.
All the music and movies you rip off were produced for free in a basement, right?
LOL
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
If you want to have me as a customer, you should treat me like a customer. If not, well, there are other people selling.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
But that's not how reality works.
Remember, Masnick is lying when he says that studies have debunked the fact that piracy is hurtful. It is quite obvious to anyone that isn't willfully blind that it is very hurtful.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Pay no attention to the facts, studies, and other distractions. We know it's hurtful because we know it's hurtful. Trust me, the RIAA wouldn't hire shills like me if they didn't think so!"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
First, I often feel a need to access copyrighted content and I'm not sure even the person that you're replying to suggested otherwise. They seem to be suggesting that actually people do still feel the need to access copyrighted video content.
Second, 'pirating' isn't reliant on people needing to access copyrighted content, but people merely wanting to access it. I've already admitted that I often need to access copyrighted content, but much of the unauthorised copyrighted content I access is because I want to, not need to.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
There's no such thing as "strong anti-piracy", because when an anti-piracy measure fails, you move the goalposts for what constitutes "strong".
A year from now you'll say "We don't know if strong anti-piracy measures work yet, because China is the only country in the world that executes file-sharers by firing squad. The rest of the world merely boots them off the internet!"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
ICE protects Americans
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: ICE protects Americans
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: ICE protects Americans
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9LU4N281.htm
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]