Chosen Reject's Favorite Techdirt Stories Of The Week

from the don't-reject-these dept

Welcome to my little soiree, hosted graciously by The Mazburglar, who I'm sure copied the keys to this place using some illegal number his friends at Big Search found for him. Unfortunately, the hors d'oevres are harder to copy, so you'll have to be content with cake and other such lies.

I'll start off with introductions. I'm The Chosen Reject. If you google my nom de plume, you'll find that I am not alone in being a Nirvana fan. To pay for my own bread and circuses, I develop software. Since introductions are done, let's skip ahead to the entertainment in this repastless fete.

I'm a believer in the free market, and using government regulation only where necessary to obtain that free market (such as laws against fraud, false advertising, antitrust, etc). An important aspect of keeping markets free are low barriers to entry. Which is exactly what the government doesn't do when it grants monopolies, whether those are for electrical service, internet service, or the so called intellectual property laws.

But I don't see the free market as the end unto itself, but mostly a means to better the public good. That is why I'll allow encroachments onto the free market if those encroachments actually do the public any good, which is what I believe the free market does. But if those encroachments don't do the public any good, then they need to be eliminated and shunned. Now you might know why I feel the way I do about IP. I'll allow for it, if it helps the public good, but it ought to be done away with if it doesn't help.

With that being said, let's look at all the reasons from just this week why copyright laws ought to be abandoned for sake of the public good:

Patents also took some time this week to show that they also can be abused. So let's take a moment to see why patents ought to be abandoned for sake of the public good:

Not to be outdone, monopolists have even taken the consumer protection laws known as Trademark law, and turned it around, not just to hurt the public, but even to hurt the very customers businesses strive for. Let's take a look.

Finally, let's not sit around thinking that government granted monopolists are the only idiots in this world looking to make life worse for the public. Heavens no. The biggest, meanest monopolists of all are sure to want to get their share of the fun. And of course, we're talking about governments.

So there you have it. My list. But I don't want to be the sole life of our little party, so comment away down below.

Hide this

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


  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2011 @ 12:40pm

    ahem,

    tl;dr

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    The eejit (profile), 29 Oct 2011 @ 12:58pm

    Re:

    Well, GOOD for you! Once again, you proved that life isn't always a bunch of roses. I...may have to rethink my outlook after such a convincing argument...


    Or not.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2011 @ 1:38pm

    Re: Re:

    You shouldn't make fun of someone who is clearly illiterate.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    Jeffrey Nonken (profile), 29 Oct 2011 @ 2:04pm

    Very nice!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2011 @ 2:08pm

    "let's look at all the reasons from just this week why copyright laws ought to be abandoned for sake of the public good:"

    Those aren't reasons... those are just opinion posts on a blog.

    Perhaps next time you get asked you can just post "everything on Techdirt" and get it over with.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    lcloria2 (profile), 29 Oct 2011 @ 2:12pm

    Have you seen the movie 1984? if not, you should. It may not be so far fetched any longer. Add Brazil to that short list also.

    Our Government isn't protecting us, it is protecting itself from us. A truelly open and free society would render them almost un-needed. Wouldn't that be nice.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Spaceman Spiff, 29 Oct 2011 @ 4:53pm

    As if they know the side effects...

    Re: EU Politician Wants Internet Surveillance Built Into Every Operating System

    I think we should tap into this pinhead's systems and publish every thing that he/she does to the net and post it on the NYTimes and other major news sites. I think they will change their tune very quickly...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    Spaceman Spiff, 29 Oct 2011 @ 5:01pm

    Great post

    Over all, a hat tip to Chosen Reject for his post of the week. Nothing like lighting up the cruft that the "powers that be" would like to keep in the dark! :-)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. identicon
    DMNTD, 29 Oct 2011 @ 5:37pm

    Re:

    Umm I think even you underestimate what's already going on. "Any longer" was a loooong way back years ago.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. icon
    That Anonymous Coward (profile), 29 Oct 2011 @ 7:16pm

    Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

    It is nice to find someone who shares the idea that the current system is broken and harming the people. That we do need some laws but we need to reexamine the way they are being used and how it is harming what they claim it is to protect.

    There is nothing wrong with a business making money, so long as it is not at the expense of everyone else.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
    identicon
    kaan kara, 29 Oct 2011 @ 7:32pm

    thanks.Good job.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. icon
    Marcus Carab (profile), 29 Oct 2011 @ 7:42pm

    Re:

    Those aren't reasons... those are just opinion posts on a blog.

    Heh. Well, nobody's surprised that you don't associate opinion with reason.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  13. icon
    Marcus Carab (profile), 29 Oct 2011 @ 7:45pm

    Re:

    This appears to be spam for a Turkish Rummy Club... but I'm not sure, because Chrome's translator appears to be shaky with agglutinous languages

    link to this | view in thread ]

  14. identicon
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 29 Oct 2011 @ 7:47pm

    Free Market

    Do you think the free market has done anything positive for the health industry at all?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  15. icon
    Atkray (profile), 29 Oct 2011 @ 8:53pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    Mom?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  16. icon
    Atkray (profile), 29 Oct 2011 @ 8:58pm

    Re: Free Market

    The health industry is in no way, shape, or form related to a free market.

    Well maybe in some of the isolated parts of the world where trading beads or a fish will get you cured.

    But not around here.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  17. icon
    jakerome (profile), 29 Oct 2011 @ 11:31pm

    Twenty Six!!?

    How many stories does TechDirt publish a week? Sure it's a great list, but if's more than half the posts, not sure it's so much a best of list.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  18. identicon
    That Anonymous Coward, 29 Oct 2011 @ 11:32pm

    Re: Re:

    I think they are trying to game the new Google Ranking by trying to make it appear there are inbound links for good sites to them, boosting them up.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  19. icon
    That Anonymous Coward (profile), 29 Oct 2011 @ 11:35pm

    Re: Twenty Six!!?

    But each link is there to support an observation being made about how they relate.

    But then I'm one to talk, my favorites list included a story from another site.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  20. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 30 Oct 2011 @ 2:16am

    About availability and infringement.
    I love SciFi, I also suspect I may like it to the point to be called hardcore.

    So once I tried to find Earth 2, an oldie but goodie one(at least for me), I couldn't find it for sell and I couldn't find it to rent, well guess were I found that one, you guessed, I found it on the pirates side of the fence.

    By no means that is the only one, there are many others that I found that way, including some that I have never heard off before.

    They say piracy is bad, they say it is immoral, they called me a thief, but I'm not the one expecting to get life + 95 years of a evil granted monopoly, I'm not the one with the power to tell others what they could do with what they bought, I'm not the one putting DRM's in everything that annoys everyone, I'm not the one asking for money but calls everyone who hands you some a thief, is not me who sue children, mothers, teenagers, old people and even the dead, it was not me using those laws to create a extortion scheme that resembles so much Nigerian scams that even the scammers are doing it now, it is not me who closes venues for starting artists, the only thing I'm guilty of is being a dirty pirate that copies and share what he found with others, that is right the only thing I do is copy and share and somehow I'm evil too, well at least I take comfort in the knowledge that my little evil is nothing compared to what I see entertainment executives trying to do to their customers.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  21. icon
    ethorad (profile), 30 Oct 2011 @ 10:09am

    Re:

    Hey, don't complain. Looks like a handy post as it saves you running the "show me all posts in the last week" search.

    The favourite post articles do seem to be ballooning in size these weeks ...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  22. icon
    Jeffrey Nonken (profile), 30 Oct 2011 @ 8:16pm

    You seem to have something against monopolies. I can't imagine what.

    My AT&T DSL line had some kind of weird DNS issue or transmission delay something that I could never resolve. For example, it would take 30 seconds (or more, I never timed it) for a Youtube video to start. Every Youtube video. Every time. And lest you think they had something against Youtube, trying to navigate my credit card account site was a lesson in frustration. And lest you think it was because the site was having problems, a) it happened all year and b) I was able to VNC into my work computer and access the same site, at the same time, quickly and with ease. Funny thing is, once it started it was fine. Once the page started loading it loaded quickly. Just took three forevers to go from a mouse click to actually doing something.

    I never did figure out WTF the problem was.

    So after my year's contract was up I carefully studied the list of alternatives:
    - Comcast

    I've got Comcast now, and let me tell you, 12mb is blazing. It's a damned shame the latency is over 800ms and the packet loss is about 80%. Oh, not all the time. Just when I'm trying to play Team Fortress online. Sometimes. At random. Good luck trying to get tech support on "random, usually at night and worst at night on weekends".

    Of course I've tried an new modem and had a technician out and reset my modem and router about a dozen times and rewired my network and bypassed the router. I'm still in the process of trying to definitively determine if it's the router. It's an expensive router, but an old one. One of the problems is, of course, if I switch from one internal connection to another, I have to power-cycle the modem, because it WILL NOT SERVE UP AN IP ADDRESS twice in a row. Any other DHCP server in the world will do that, but not Comcast's. So there's no way to, say, swap my laptop in for my router and see if the problem persists, without power-cycling the modem.

    Two monopolies in the area, nothing else, and you know their customer service is amazing because, well, they've forgotten what customer service is. When you call the only thing they know how to do is reset the modem and, oh, by the way, power-cycle EVERYTHING IN YOUR HOUSE. Including the refrigerator. Release/renew isn't good enough. Oh right, their DHCP server sucks balls, I forgot about that.

    Well, I suppose I could just move. Yeah, just like that, it's easy, right? And it's not like I'm in the capitol city of the most populous, and one of the highest tech, states in the US. No, I'm stuck here in the sticks, here in Sacramento, CA. Heck, we even have trees here! Somewhere. I'll have to drive around a while to find it, but I know there's one around somewhere.

    I don't know if having real competition would actually cause Comcast and AT&T to actually pay attention to their customers and provide a good, high-quality experience. What I do know is that not having competition has not enabled them to give their customers a good, high quality experience, and it means that here in the benighted and remote hamlet of Sacramento, California I do not have any options (aside from moving... where? Rhode Island?) other than putting up with the incompetence and indifference of two monopoly giants, because the two of them are the Only Game In Town and no consumer advocacy or regulatory organizations actually gives a rat's ass whether they apply Vaseline before they screw me or not.

    P.S. They don't actually appear to understand the difference between latency and bandwidth, because every time I talk latency, they go on and on about my bandwidth. Oh, and their tech support people lie. Blatantly and unapologetically.

    P.P.S. I just tried to find a US state-by-state bandwidth report I saw last night, but I can't find it now. But here's another. You'd think high-tech California would be near the top, right? Nope. Guess who is? No, go on, you'll never guess. Yep, the aforementioned Rhode Island. Hey, you know, when I think "high tech Internet" I think "Rhode Island". OK, I'm making fun, I'm not suggesting RI is 3rd world or something. But it wouldn't have been my first guess. You know where CA is? 35. Wow, 30th percentile, go us! Our motto: "We don't suck as bad as some other states."

    I dunno, maybe it's time to reconnect with my New England roots? Oh hey, our new CA state motto: "We just got our asses kicked by the smallest state in the US."

    P.P.P.S. I'm thinking about replacing the router (a Sonicwall TZ 190) in spite of the fact that I don't actually think it's the router. I was looking at this nice Asus as a possible replacement.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  23. icon
    wvhillbilly (profile), 30 Oct 2011 @ 10:23pm

    too many bureaucrats...

    I think all this IP maximalist nonsense is a prime symptom of bureaucratic overstuffing--too many bureaucrats with not enough to do. The result of this is they spend all their time making up all these inane regulations and laws that are going to end up strangling our country to death. I think we should fire 90 percent of them and tell the rest to get busy doing something useful.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  24. icon
    That Anonymous Coward (profile), 31 Oct 2011 @ 4:59am

    Re: too many bureaucrats...

    Well part of the problem is they have to do something to protect their job.
    ICE is currently making sure they deport at least 400K people a year so they can keep their current level of funding. They could prepare a nice report on all of the other things they do, but nothing screams louder to the people with the purse strings than handing them the ability to say we go rid of all the dangerous brown people who stole your job.

    Congress exists to keep themselves in office, and the money they get from the "donations" of corporations speaks louder than anything else. They have made themselves immune from the laws they seek to impose on everyone else and live in a fantasyland.

    I saw Warren Buffett's idea for fixing Congress, I just wish we could get more people to think of the greater good rather than their own pet concerns and make it happen.

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/25/1029793/-28th-Amendment:-Warren-Buffetts-How-to- fix-Congress

    link to this | view in thread ]

  25. identicon
    AJBarnes, 31 Oct 2011 @ 5:43am

    Thou MUST love your gub'ment

    There are myriad stories of how gub'ment just screws up what it touches. When you have bureaucrats who have no 'skin in the game' running the game, you have waste, inefficiencies and stupidity. One glaring case in point... before the do-gooders in the gub'ment passed the ADA, the employment rate of individuals with disabilities was between 70 and 80%. Then, in the 1990's, the gub'ment decided to fix that. So they passed this law which has been nothing more than a full-employement bill for lawyers with clients who make it their life's work to find companies not in compliance with this 'miracle' law and sue them. Since the ADA, employment of people with disabilities has falled to less than 50%. Turns out companies are getting wise to the extortion plays and are just not hiring them anymore becasue they're afraid of getting sued.

    This is just one of many examples. Obozo wants the same thing for healthcare. Gub'ment run healthcare with death panels will destroy that industry too.

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.