Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the the-word-is-out dept
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Pixelation with a response to the AT&T executive bragging about the company's misleading 5G claims, with the comment "if I have now occupied beachfront real estate in my competitors' heads, that makes me smile":
You haven't occupied beachfront property. You have occupied property a mile from the water, thrown some sand on the lawn and called it beachfront.
In second place, we've got an anonymous response to the description of Techdirt as a "left-leaning publication":
It's not a left-leaning "publication". It's a realist blog site. Granted, some of the blog posts are less than realistic but, in general, this is a rather balanced site.
"Left" and "right" both suck and have no place in critical thinking on any topic.
For editor's choice on the insightful side, we've got a pair of responses to the EU Parliament's ridiculous defense of the Copyright Directive. First, it's an anonymous commenter bringing some perspective to the situation for artists with a comparison:
The counter-argument:
In the art world if you want to exhibit your works you pay a venue to host the exhibition. They don't pay you.
On the internet you can have your works hosted for free and the venue (site) gets paid by attaching ads to the exhibition.
An exhibition is done to promote your skill as an artist, not directly to make money. Though some art may be purchased during the exhibition, in the online world your services may be contracted due to having seen your work.
Precisely how is an artist not being "fairly remunerated" on the internet? And how is it the venue/site's responsibility to make sure they are?
Next, it's James Burkhardt doing the same by passing along an artist's perspective:
So, I know an artist, Gavin Dunne aka Miracle of Sound, who is an EU Musician/Music Writer on YouTube. He has a number of revenue streams. From my understanding based on his discussions on podquisition, the Jim Sterling-lead Podcast, he doesn't see YouTube as a significant revenue source, it's an advertising source driving people to buy his music or get royalties from spotify (where he gets far more traffic) or pay him directly on patreon. One one the reasons it isn't a revenue source is how YouTube filters allow gatekeepers to claim copyright over his original works. The other is that Youtube has become more and more inconsistent in traffic volume. Nothing in Article 13 fixes that issue. Nothing in Article 13 makes YouTube a greater driver of traffic or suddenly fix its automated filtering system. Article 13 only says "You need to pay royalties, and filter out infringing content, and associate all copyright content with the correct copyright owner, and respect fair use, and do all of that perfectly without error or you pay massive fines." That doesn't help Miracle of Sound. That doesn't fix Youtube as a revenue source.
Over on the funny side, our first place comment comes from Gary in response to the trademark battle over Pinkerton detectives in Red Dead Redemption 2:
Confused?
I immediately went out and tried to hire Take Two to beat up some union activists but they refused. It's hard to hire good thugs these days!
In second place, we've got wshuff anticipating the EU's next move after Google showed how empty Google News would be under Article 11:
European lawmakers are now furiously drafting Article 14, a law which will require Google to link to European news sites using snippets that Google will be required to license under Article 11.
For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with stderric, who offered a follow-up to that comment:
Article 15: all EU citizens granted an annual, Google-funded, two weeks paid holiday in Mountain View California.
And last but not least, we've got an anonymous response to McDonald's losing its Big Mac trademark in Europe:
"So Vincent, what do they call a Big Mac™ in Europe?"
"A Big Mac"
That's all for this week, folks!
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Ramblings
Early 2000, and abit after, there were a few Artists that had a problem.. they wondered the net and found their music being distributed, and they hadnt gotten any Money from the RIAA/others..
Those responsible had to goto court, spend mney to GET what they were owed..
With all those groups being paid to Watch over your Art/music...and the deals that have been made. At least with legal sites you can NOW TELL how much your music is worth..AND POSSIBLY get paid..
Pinkerton is bored, and needs better adverts..
The EU , has a problem..its WHO is complaining..REALLY, I would like a list showing us WHO is complaining.
The only real complaint would be that INSTED of needing a 386, 20 year old server, you are getting so many hits you have to UPGRADE..
You know what they is...THAT is the Sci/Fi channel finding out that 1 million people visiting your site to watch your shows LAGS THE WHOLE SYSTEM, and dont work... They finally snet their movies to HULU, and had to deal with HULU.. and now? they think they can handle the load, and Took the movies back...AND STILL.. having everyone watch from the internet, Almost breaks the servers..
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It didn't make the funniest of the week, but btr1701 had a spittake-worthy response to an AC's comment that mentioned Monica Lewinsky during a discussion about journalism:
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We’ll stop as soon as the POTUS does.
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Womp womp
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Hey! I do my quarterbacking at 4:30 pm on the third Tuesday of every month, thank you very much.
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Section 230 will go the way of piracy, sued into oblivion. And Masnick, purveyor of child porn, along with it. Good riddance. I hate him with every fiber of my being.
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Since he likes to claim only one or two users actually post here, Techdirt probably only has one or two chronic trolls posting under piracy-enabling VPNs.
...Oh my god you guys, John Smith was out_of_the_blue all along!
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Like the baseless 'purveyor of child porn' you pulled out of your ass?
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Oh I'd say that goes well beyond 'ad hominem' and straight into flat out defamation, funnily enough the very thing good old John is constantly losing his shit over and declaring to be a huge problem, as though his gross dishonesty and hypocrisy wasn't clear enough already.
As if people really needed more reason to report every comment left by such a repulsive individual.
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Of course in the REAL WORLD, populated by non-pirates, this conclusion would be obvious outside of this 4chan echo chamber.
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Nikki Haley Ivanka Trump 2024
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Re: Re: Re: Your dick still don’t work.
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Please don't stop.
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Assault your name? You’re an anonymous coward, there’s no name to assault!
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“permits this assault on my good name”
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Yet again, someone doesn't know what an argumentum ad hominem is. But hey, you have apparently know how to do libel. Good job.
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they may just upload it for free advertising and promotion .
Every film and video game has a trailer on youtube.
The artists do not have to pay for hosting costs ,
the cost of streaming video ,bandwidth etc
they reach their fans and make new fans .
Most artists do not have the time or the expertise
to make a website or deal with hosting, dns servers etc
If someone gets over 100k views or subs they can opt to become a youtube partner and earn revenue
from ads .
So who is getting ripped off here ?
who is losing revenue ?
Creators can also opt to go to patreon or twitch
or other websites where they can recieve direct
payments from fans .
The record companys and some german newspapers were willing to destroy all
this and block millions of user,s uploads and reduce free
speech in order to get more money from
facebook or youtube .
Yes there are major problems with youtube and its dmca policys taking down videos that are fair use
or not owned by the person who makes a dmca claim .
But youtube ,twitch and other websites have created
a platform where artists can make a living without
getting ripped off or giving up the rights to their work and reach an audience that might
be judged of minority or specialist appeal.
eg no tv channel would broadcast a 5 hour video
of someone playing a 10 year old video game
or 2 hour podcast about video game news .
Under article 13 much of this content would be blocked as theres no filter that can check millions of video,s and audio clips uploaded every day to see if its infringing or fair use .
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The scale of publishing on the Internet. Registration worked when it was the gatekeepers doing the registration after selecting a few submitted works for publication. It becomes an enormously expensive system when every photo, blog article, sound track, book and video published on the Internet has to be dealt with.
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So yes, in general, going back to pre-Bicentennial copyright would generally be a much better idea in most cases.
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There will still be the, now usual, complaints of plagiarism, or as is more commonly known remixing, short snippets of notes, words, video clips, few of which might actually be called original, as much passed prior to the advent of copyright, or current laws (See Disney and the Brothers Grimm for example).
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Also, how are registrations validated, and how are disputes resolved. If registration is not mandatory, what will proven theft of a works by the registration of the unregistered works of other people?
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Therefore it's public domain. Just as it was in the whole history of the world before automatic copyright.
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Just to be clear, That's the whole history of the world before 1978.
It's only been 40 years, but what a mess such a seemingly simple change has made of it all.
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Copyright, in its original form as permission from a censor for a printer to publish a book, and latter as the way publishers controlled the production of books is only as old as the printing press. Most of human history has been free of copyright, and indeed people copying works were how they spread and were kept alive.
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No system is perfect. The thing here is being able to produce 'prior art'. If one contests something that they believe is copyrighted under false pretenses, all one needs to do is show some prior art. It might be some sheet music produced in the 1800's or it might be a digital recording with a time stamp prior to the 'requested copyright'.
There will be battles, no question, but those battles (rightly or wrongly) will depend upon the perceived current and/or future value of the copyrighted piece, as those battles won't be cheap. Of course copyright should be much shorter, like maybe the original, what was it, 14 years with a possible extension to 28 years (which should require some significant payment or else the extension isn't actually worth it)?
To some degree, copyright is about economics. The rest is about crediting creators for whatever intrinsic value that has, which is not inconsiderable, though not necessarily fungible for money.
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It is primarily about money, and who can make money off of the works of creators. It give corporations the advantage over individuals, because the corporation can afford the lawyers, while the individuals cannot.
I think the real intent of article 13 was to allow the legacy publishers to destroy the competition on the Internet by enabling them to sue any site into bankruptcy. Hint derivative work is an easy claim to make, and expensive to disprove.
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ESPECIALLY if they didn't create it. Being able to say, "But I own it - I have a REGISTERED Copyright" would be real thing. Just look at how folks are gaming the system now with Content ID. It would be a race to "First to file" with $5 to register and tens of thousands of dollars to contest a registered copyright. (See Trademarks, Patents, etc. for how this works even with obviously invalid inventions and marks.)
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Say one thing no one likes and suddenly you get lumped in with the devil
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