Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the plenty-of-prenda dept
Apparently the community was feeling more funny than insightful this week—so much so that the top six funny comments all scored more votes than the most insightful comment. In fact, our most insightful comment of the week is also our second funniest, coming in response to the modder who made SimCity offline-capable. Beech racked up lots of votes by noting the inevitable near-future, and connecting this to EA's server woes:
So now all the filthy pirates need to do is insert some code to get the game to save locally, and the DRM is defeated for everyone but the legal purchasers of the game who abide by the To S. Any bets on how long til a cracked version shows up on TPB?
Really, on the plus side, once everyone hacks their copy of the game, Ea's servers should free right up!
While EA was suffering in the court of public opinion, Prenda was suffering in the actual court, which led Loki to deliver our second most insightful comment of the week by highlighting what this means in the big picture:
Just remember, for those playing at home, that like Righthaven, these are the sort of "upstanding people" the Copyright maximalists hire to represent their interests.
When your arguments are so hollow and without merit that you have to resort to essentially illegal/immoral activities that far exceed the perceived wrongs of so-called "pirates" you've lost the fight before it's even begun.
That's why the really hate the internet, because not only does it break their business model, but it allows people to see what one hand is doing while watching the other one. The days of sweeping things under the rug are long gone (at least until governments can find a way to break the internet).
For those keeping score on the Prenda debacle, DannyB provides a handy roundup that wins our first editor's choice:
List of what they are in trouble for
Please feel free to add to this list anything I am failing to remember.
1. Gibbs lying in court under oath, contradicted by lawyer in audience.
2. Order suppressing AT&T & Verizon subpoenas for IP addresses, was ignored.
3. Forging Alan Cooper's signature on documents.
4. Contacting a party Alan Cooper directly by phone.
5. Leaving threatening voicemail messages.
6. Threatening to use the courts as a club to silence Alan Cooper. (But that's business as usual, like their extortion racket of using courts as a club to extort copyright "settlements", which is what led to where we are today. They should have bypassed using the court and went directly to "sick strikes".)
7. Not disclosing the actual interested parties of the litigation to the court. (The attorneys themselves are the interested parties, using the courts for subpoenas, then threatening parties directly, then dropping claims in court once the shakedown is complete.)
8. Obstruction to conceal the true organization of the sham of shell companies.
Any others?
I know that Out of the Blue just hates it when the crimes of copyright criminals are listed out and recognized by a federal court.
While we wait for Prenda to get its comeuppance, there are still plenty of other things to worry about—like the fact that, despite the government's intentions, legalizing phone unlocking may be hard to do thanks to international treaties that only allow temporary exemptions. Jilocasin has a suggestion for dealing with that, winning our second editor's choice:
'temporary' solutions aren't a problem
Well if this is correct:
"KORUS does allow for administrative procedures like the DMCA's rule-making to adopt temporary exemptions, but not permanent ones."
That shouldn't be a problem, thanks to the helpful example of the copyright maximalists.
All we need to do is to craft a solution that's _limited_ to infinity minus a day.
If the Supreme Court says that's good enough to keep copyright terms 'limited', it should be just fine for some ol' treaty.
But lest you think we could forget about Prenda for long, it's time to go straight back there for our funniest comment of the week (and one of the best I've seen in a while). Jameshogg kept it short, sweet and awesome:
If these hearings were on DVD, pirates would probably pay for it.
We've already had our second place comment, but let's stick with Prenda just a moment longer for our first editor's choice. Ken brought to our attention an ironic quote from the horse's mouth:
From Prenda's "we fight piracy" website:
"Litigation is unpleasant for everyone involved."
Quite.
And, finally, we end with a positive post for our final editor's choice. On our case study of a band that embraced Grooveshark and succeeded wonderfully, ChurchHatesTucker offered the penultimate* incarnation of Masnick's Law:
This will only work for bands that are on the internet.
(*The ultimate would be "This will only work for bands that exist")
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Core dump
How is this mathematically possible?
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Re: Core dump
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Re: Core dump
Is this a trick question?
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That's funny. I thought Masnick's Law was: Sunk costs can be ignored.
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And the AC/Bob/OotB law would be something like, "Marginal costs can be ignored."
Seriously. Take Econ 101 sometime, audit it if you have to, it's enlightening as hell. In a competitive market prices are based on supply and demand, which in turn are based on the MARGINAL cost of the product. "Hot Dog Company A" can not get away with selling hot dogs that are identical to their competitors' for twice what those competitors are charging just because Company A bought a new "meat tubing machine." They would fail right out of the market. Company A has to price based on the marginal cost to stay competitive. The only reason we pretend things are different on the internet is because enough companies have enough clout (read, $$$$$$$$$) to purchase the opinions of those in charge.
TL;DR The Market cares not for sunk costs, unless said Market has been corrupted in some way.
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Odd. Never said that. I have said (as has pretty much anyone who actually learned basic economics), that in a competitive market, sunk costs have no impact on *pricing*. That doesn't mean you *ignore* sunk costs. Sunk costs matter tremendously in determining whether or not you make the initial go/no go decision.
But that initial decision is different than setting pricing. If you're calculating sunk costs when deciding pricing, well, then you're pretty much guaranteed to fail, since someone else will come along and price lower than you.
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The current Prenda scandal... Will they be put in jail or sued out of existence for the likely racial (and or other specifically targeted vulnerable social groups) vulture-like profiling? (since its port it's likely a variant of religious persecution) Probably not. Jail or at least large fines for submitting false documents? Likely.
This is documented at http://dietrolldie.com/2013/03/08/copyright-troll-offender-profiling-the-likely-suspect/
But the scope of the current charges against them do not encompass such a charge. Maybe at some later date. I know this topic is obscure but targeting social groups because of vulnerability has got to be classic discrimination.
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Prenda...
Prenda is the "band that doesn't exist"?
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