This Week In Techdirt History: September 8th - 14th
from the stifled dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2014, popular websites across the web participated in Internet Slowdown Day to demand net neutrality from the FCC — driving 1,000 calls per minute to Congress at some points, for a total of 300,000 calls plus 2-million emails and 700,000 FCC comments. It also spurred the big cable companies to waste their money on ads misleadingly pretending to support net neutrality themselves.
Also this week in 2014, a court ruling gave a big win for fair use and against "hot news", one cab company was extra-angry about Uber and labeled it a cyber-terrorist group, and newly released memos justifying warrantless wiretapping showed crazy levels of executive branch authority.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2009, Hollywood was continuing its zealous war against Redbox by fearmongering about kids renting R-rated movies, the recording industry in Japan was working with the government on a plan to disable phones that are used to listen to pirated music, yet another DVD release of a classic TV show had to replace its music with new generic stuff due to licensing headaches, some ridiculous exaggeration was exposed in the UK's oft-repeated figure of 7-million file sharers, we got a look at the RIAA's copyright propaganda for schools, and there was yet another attempt to turn content into physical property with universal DRM. After all this, it was nice to read a judge eloquently explaining why copyright is not property... all the way back in 1773.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2004, the war against spam continued as WiFi spammers got caught and a major spam ISP finally kicked off 148 spammers — but so did the counterattacks, with a lawsuit against the spam blacklist headed to court and everyone bracing for the incoming deluge of election spam, though there was hope that might not be as bad as expected. One strategy that definitely didn't make sense was combating spam by turning email into a walled garden.
Meanwhile, a university was trying to ban independent wifi networks with questionable authority, congress was moving forward with a draconian plan to criminalize file-sharing, and we saw the terrible appeals court ruling in Bridgeport v. Dimension that eliminated the de minimis defense for music sampling (even when the sample is completely unrecognizable) and issued the absurd edict "Get a license or do not sample. We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way."
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Desperate Pirate Mike shows his little piece on SuprBay!
Couple days late catching him this time.
https://pirates-forum.org/Thread-Intellectual-Property-Is-Neither-Intellectual-Nor-Property-Di scuss
In early 2015 Pirate Mike -- he goes by just plain "Mike" there, not least because they're ALL pirates -- was putting 70 Techdirt pieces a month on SuprBay. I chanced upon it just by curiosity of where else his text was used: Google ratted him out. -- Easy to find because are FEW places where Masnick is repub'd.
So I started pointing it out here to promote his efforts, and yet his posting by August 2015 dropped to almost none! Been sparse ever since: one in July this year, November 2018 before that.
He's got 127 views, zero replies when I looked in. But is at least twice the views that his pieces were getting in 2015; apparently the other pirates are getting desperate for good news.
[By the way, again confirmed Masnick's piece is effectively locked down. Made two starts but couldn't get the above in. Pirate Mike can't take criticism of his loony notions.]
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Re:
Pirate Mike can't take criticism of his loony notions.
Hi! Please let us know if you spot any and all attacks on the high seas. This is serious business. Keeping pirates at bay is obviously very important to you too.
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You’re a very determined lunatic, aren’t you, Squidward?
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Re: you got one of them walls with string all over it?
So what you are saying is that you obsessively search the internet for anything mike says so you can come here and get mocked for being a raving lunatic.
That’s some strange life choices bro.
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Re:
I finally figured you out, you are one of the failed prototypes of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's GPP - kind of an evil version of Marvin the Paranoid Android.
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Re:
Uh, we've told you before, but I have no idea what that site is and have nothing to do with it. Someone is copying posts from here to there. And, of course, that's totally fine by me. We have said many times that people are free to copy our content wherever they like.
You seem (1) incredibly obsessed over really odd things and (2) wildly prone to making wildly wrong assumptions. You do it here all the time. I'm not entirely sure I understand what you think you're doing other than making yourself look like a paranoid fool.
(For what it's worth, you're also wrong about our spam filters. You get caught in it because you comments frequently are determined to be spammish -- not because of any "locking down." And I'm fine with criticism. I just wish it was actually productive as opposed to the complete nonsense you post).
Also, for what it's worth, I've noticed a few times recently that you've actually dropped your act and posted normal, reasonable, comments. You should do more of that. They were good comments. And you'll note that the community didn't flag them.
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While I do think encouraging this kind of behavior (normal comments that is... I wont talk about details since you didn't post links, and I don't know which ones you refer to... which probably ok) is good. But I'm also saddened that you (and I) feel it nessisary. It feels kind of like saying "I see you didn't wet your pants on Tuesday and Thursday, maybe try that on Mondays and Fridays."
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“Wet your pants?”
Are you 5?
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Also, for what it's worth, I've noticed a few times recently that you've actually dropped your act and posted normal, reasonable, comments.
Which comments were those?
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Re: Re: Re:
Mike posts here all the time, in fact the vast majority of posts here are Mike.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Cool story bro.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
So you're saying you're Mike?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
No, I am Sparti- Mike!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Are you saying you’re not?
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We are all Mike?
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We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I am not Mike - I'm TIM. Haven't you been paying attention? :)
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Re: Re: Re:
I've clicked through every out_of_the_blue comment and... honestly, if blue has made legitimately reasonable comments that aren't hidden, I'd have to conclude that blue's style is the result of someone intentionally acting like a copyright-cocksucking dumbfuck.
That might be the scariest shit I've thought all week.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
I've got a better idea.
Masnick is being kind by trying to suggest the presence of something that doesn't exist in this plane of reality.
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