Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the writin'-words dept

This week, both of our top comments on the insightful side come from our post about Apple deleting purchased movies from people's devices after losing the rights. In first place, it's Gwiz responding to the idea that people should known they are only licensing digital content, not buying it:

Then why does the button say "Buy" and not "Rent"?

As far as I'm concerned, when the terms of sale indicate that I am "purchasing" a digital copy, then that is exactly what I am doing. I will take "my copy" and do with it as I please, which includes removing any DRM and making backup copies.

This is exactly what I do periodically with my Kindle and the wife's Kindle. I save un-DRMed copies of everything to my laptop with Calibre.

In second place, it's Thad responding to the assertion that copyright law is more to blame than Apple:

But Apple implemented a system that allows purchases to become unavailable when the work is no longer for sale. That is on Apple.

There are other digital distributors that do not operate under those same terms.

To pick one example: Rifftrax no longer sells the two 1960s Doctor Who movies that used to be available on the site; it lost the rights to them. However, if you purchased them when they were available, then you can still stream or download them.

To pick another example: The Square Enix game Last Remnant was recently removed from Steam; it's no longer for sale. But if you bought it when it was for sale, you can still download and play it. If you bought a Steam code from a third-party seller, you can still redeem that code.

Rifftrax is located in the US. Valve is located in the US. Both companies are subject to exactly the same copyright laws that Apple is. And yet, they don't take away their customers' purchases when those items are removed from their stores.

There's plenty to criticize about US copyright law.

But this? This is Apple's fault. Not solely Apple's fault, but Apple's certainly not blameless.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we'll carry on the trend with two more comments from that post. First, it's Bergman with another rejection of the "it's just a license" idea:

If it was a rental, the price shouldn't be the same as a purchase. If it was a purchase, then Apple owes a refund since they charged for a purchase, not a rental.

And what if the customer(s) just licensed their money to Apple?

Next, it's Get off my cyber-lawn! painting an even broader picture of the ridiculousness of how digital goods often work:

I went onto a large, popular e-book website last month and looked up a book I wanted to purchase (still popular, still in print). I got an "out of stock" response for a freaking E-BOOK!

Its bad enough that you want to charge me as much OR MORE money than for a print copy, but then you tell me you are fresh out of 1s and 0s for that particular item?

And THAT is what contributes to a "pirate" culture.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is TheResidentSkeptic with an attempt to sort out government demands of social media companies:

At least the rules are getting clearer...

1) If you block posting of any user content, we will fine you.
2) if you fail to remove objectionable content within 1 hour we will fine you.
3) if you remove or otherwise censor any content, we will fine you.
4) If you don't block objectionable content from being posted, we will fine you.

or, to put it simply, "Send us all your money"

In second place, it's That One Guy expanding on the proposal that the SDCC's trademark war over the term "Con" could present some promotional opportunities:

Several opportunities in fact, given SDCC convinced a judge that shortening 'convention' to 'con' belongs only to them. Really, legal thuggery paired with trying to monopolize a word with multiple connotations, one of them not so pleasant? The jokes practically write themselves.

'When you think 'con', think SDCC.'

'SDCC: For when you want a first-class con.'

'Why settle for a lesser con where they might not know what they're doing when you can let the SDCC show you how a con-job really works.'

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with Stephen T. Stone, who has a question about Valve's latest foggy explanation of who it will ban from Steam:

Defining what separates a good faith effort to sell a game from a "troll" involves a "deep assessment" of the developer, Valve says, including a look at "what they've done in the past, their behavior on Steam as a developer, as a customer, their banking information, developers they associate with, and more."

So when do they ban games published by EA?

And last but not least, we've got an anonymous commenter catching another commenter out on an amusing typo about, er, rampant piracy:

Wonton piracy is only practical if you can get the goods fresh. Nobody wants stale wontons.

That's all for this week, folks!

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: September 2nd - 8th

from the depths-of-time dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, the NSA revelations continued with the discovery that the US was launching hundreds of cyberattacks and that AT&T had employees embedded in the government to provide real-time phone call searches. The various excuses and half-measures were coming frequently, with a former agency boss saying surveillance is important but the NSA should just lie less, President Obama saying the NSA needs more checks and balances while simultaneously claiming the existing ones are working well, and the agency itself asserting that it only spies on bad people while leaving open a giant loophole that covers spying on everyone else.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, there were two huge launches from Google: they introduced the Chrome browser, and the Android Market for apps (which they touted heavily as being more open than Apple's App Store. AT&T was bragging about the pursuit of patents while US Customs was raiding trade show booths over patent infringement. Facebook was, rather heavyhandedly, blocking all links to the very useful resource of BugMeNot. And we were starting to see how the proliferation of GPS-enabled devices was becoming a tool of the police.

Fifteen Years Ago

There was a big launch this week in 2003 as well, with the folks behind Kazaa (who had also recently made the ill-advised choice to send DMCA notices to Google) launched the soon-to-be-nearly-ubiquitous Skype. It was also the very early days of the RSS protocol, and our post questioning whether it was a bit overhyped somehow got us lumped in with the supposed "RSS backlash". Meanwhile, the RIAA was preparing to upgrade its legal campaign from subpoenas to actual lawsuits, while also offering a hilarious amnesty program for anyone who would sign a file sharing confession and delete all their songs.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: August 26th - September 1st

from the on-the-record dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, we learned that the NSA had tapped the UN and various embassies and cracked the UN's video conferencing encryption. We also got a look at the agency's "black budget" and realized how much effort they were putting into breaking encryption. The DOJ began making the "just metadata" argument, while we looked at how well Ed Snowden covered his tracks and wondered how many intentional surveillance abuses were hidden the same way, not to mention how many of the 1000 other sysadmins with the same access copied documents too. Meanwhile, the UK's Deputy Prime Minister was defending the destruction of Guardian hard drives but not the detention of David Miranda, the latter of which was also condemned by the author of the UK anti-terrorism act. Barry Eisler argued that both incidents were all about creating a chilling effect on journalism, and later in the week we learned that the UK government asked the NY Times to delete the Snowden documents too (they didn't listen).

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, people were scrutinizing the true nature of Disney's Mickey Mouse copyrights, AMC was stupidly freaking out over the new trend of fans creating Twitter accounts for fictional TV show characters, and in an early version of the Ubers and Lyfts to come, we saw a bus company in Canada try to shut down a carpool-matching service. Meanwhile, Mattel sadly followed in Hasbro's footsteps and brought the war on Scrabble-clone apps to the rest of the world where it owns the rights to the game, and the Tetris Company started getting in on the same anti-app action. The RIAA won a copyright case because the defendant had foolishly destroyed evidence, while a different and excellent court ruling found that Veoh was protected by safe harbors for videos uploaded by users. But the FBI still had nothing better to do than arrest the leaker of a Guns N' Roses album.

Fifteen Years Ago

Lots of innovations were still in their nascent stages this week in 2003, with everyone struggling to figure out what exactly to do with location-based tech, US wireless carriers doing a not-so-great job of supporting and promoting camera phones, a growing number of consumer electronics starting to come with broadband connectivity (as more and more computer makers started becoming general consumer electronics companies), and of course the beginning of the ascent of the famous/infamous (depending on who you ask) autotune technology. Meanwhile, porn websites were getting in on the file sharing subpoena game while the RIAA (which also got sued by webcasters for monopoly actions) was firing back at a woman who was fighting just such a subpoena.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: August 19th - 25th

from the special-focus dept

Five Years Ago

Once in a while, when evens really heat up in a given week, we skip the five/ten/fifteen-year retrospective and focus in on the big events — and this is one of those times, with the NSA spying debacle elevating to another level this week in 2013.

Firstly, hings heated up on the other side of the Atlantic, with the UK government detaining David Miranda and seizing all his electronics and telling him he'd go to jail if he didn't turn over his passwords in a blatant act of intimidation. While the UK Home office claimed the detention was fully justified, a US official told Reuters that it was done to send a message. That admission was buried in a report about another disturbing action by the UK: forcing The Guardian to destroy hard drives with info from Snowden — an order that came directly from the Prime Minister. On top of all that, a new and questionable revelation in The Independent prompted Edward Snowden to accuse the UK government of leaking additional documents itself to make him look bad.

Back in the US, we were getting a closer look at the loopholes that allowed the NSA to withhold information from Congress, and a glimpse of the agency culture that encouraged deception. Defenders threw up their hands and claimed "we didn't mean it", and got some help from the guy who wrote legal memos defending the CIA torture program. Then the agency revealed that it performs a staggering 20-million database queries per month. It seemed that if some of these more serious leaks had come out a bit earlier, a bill to defund the NSA may have stood more of a chance, while a new bill was introduced to make the agency pay for every abuse of power.

And then things continued to escalate. A new leak showed that the NSA truly could spy on almost anything and set its own filters. The EFF's success in getting a key FISA court ruling declassified revealed that the NSA repeatedly lied to the court, too. Documents showed that a program continued for three years after it was declared unconstitutional, right after tech companies (who the NSA was paying for their help) got immunity in warrantless wiretapping cases. And during the 2002 Olympics, the NSA and FBI spied on every single email in Salt Lake City.

Meanwhile, the US still couldn't even figure out what exactly Snowden took, but it could put together a surveillance review board packed with Washington insiders and NSA sympathizers. By the end of the week, the agency was fumbling to accuse the Wall Street Journal of misleading the public, but then finally (buried on a Friday night in the hopes of avoiding coverage) admitted that yes, there had been a lot of intentional abuses of the system (in contrast to the many denials of this idea).

And the circus wasn't over yet — tune in next week...

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: Augusts 12th - 18th

from the so-that's-what-happened dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, the White House incredibly put James Clapper in charge of independent NSA review, then tried to change its tune a bit when people rightly pointed out that this was insane. Meanwhile, Rep. Justin Amash discovered that the House Intelligence Committee had withheld important NSA documents from the rest of Congress, and that the White House knew it. Then, the latest leak revealed that the NSA abused the rules to spy on Americans thousands of times every year — since there was no real oversight, the FISC court just relied on the NSA's own statements to determine what was legal, and agents were told to withhold information from those in charge of oversight. Senators Wyden and Udall hinted that this was just the tip of the iceberg, while NSA defenders claimed the abuses were evidence of the system working well and that the numbers were impressive compared to the amount of spying the NSA does.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, Italy tried and failed to block all access to The Pirate Bay, with the predictable result of a spike in Italian traffic to the site. Universities were realizing that the RIAA was taking advantage of them in its crusade against file-sharing students, while one teenager targeted in a lawsuit managed to get damages reduced with an "innocent infringement" defense. Nintendo was freaking out about memory cards for the Nintendo DS, while Tiffany was continuing its futile efforts to hold eBay accountable for counterfeit products by appealing a court ruling that said they weren't (and this same week, a Belgian court was ruling the same thing).

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, eBay was only just starting to become the ecommerce platform of choice with folks setting up entire businesses on the site. ISPs were the ones fighting back against the RIAA, along with one accused file-sharer who was hitting the agency with a countersuit arguing that sharing does not equal distribution. There were early rumblings of "personalization" as the future of search engines, and the fairly new technology of MMS picture messages was being put to use for networked security cameras and medical emergencies. And nearly seven years before the iPad, there were lots of tablet computers hitting the market, but nobody wanted them.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: August 5th - 11th

from the rear-view dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, we learned that lots of government agencies were trying to access that sweet, sweet NSA data — and that the DEA was not only getting it, but being instructed to cover up where it came from. Some data even made it to the IRS, with the same instructions. Once all this was revealed, the DOJ decided it should perhaps be "reviewed", which was small comfort. Then, it was revealed that the NSA scans all emails in and out of the country, and we got a look at the loophole the NSA uses to claim authority to spy on Americans. It turned out this loophole was created on the same day that the FISA court smacked down the NSA for violating the fourth amendment — a ruling people were eager to see, and the DOJ agreed to release a redacted version.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, copyright expert William Patry shut down his excellent blog because covering copyright issues had become "too depressing". To see what he means, look at other events that very same week: the Jammie Thomas trial was turning into a huge mess, Blizzard was trying to block a bot-maker from open-sourcing his code, a fight between TorrentSpy and the MPAA was turning into a major privacy battle thanks to some email spying, and Uri Geller was suing someone for debunking his psychic claims using an eight-second copyrighted clip. Mac clone-maker Psystar, facing a major lawsuit from Apple, was fighting back with an antitrust claim, and a Sony executive was apparently so aware of the failings of legal offerings that he encouraged customers in Australia and New Zealand to pirate PSP games.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, people were beginning to dig deeper into just how spammers make money and discovering it doesn't require a lot of customer sales as long as you can keep selling lists of spam targets — and because of this chain of list sales, even well-known companies were profiting from spam. Of course, there also were at least some people buying penis enlargement pills, too. Meanwhile, both Red Hat and IBM were fighting back against SCO's IP lawsuits, while the RIAA was still fighting hard to get info on filesharing students and generally warring with the EFF. And in an example of how much free culture terrifies some people, when Creative Commons reached out to MP3.com about partnering to give artists the option of using CC licenses, the company angrily responded by not just declining but demanding CC "cease and desist" from contacting any artists on MP3.com.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: July 29th - August 4th

from the on-and-on dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, between Keith Alexander joking about how he has the number of congressional reps and the Senate being very unimpressed with James Clapper's evasiveness, it appeared the tide in congress was turning against the NSA — as was public opinion. Of course, the congressional reps who voted in favor of NSA surveillance had one obvious thing in common: they received twice as much money from the defense industry.

Meanwhile, as congress ironically considered declaring national whistleblower day, Bradley Manning was convicted (but acquitted of the aiding the enemy charge) in a verdict that we knew would have massive chilling effects. But of course, cable news only granted this five minutes of coverage on average.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, one final ruling confirmed that the RIAA had to pay legal fees in one of its misdirected file sharing lawsuits, while the IFPI was halfheartedly apologizing for taking down a song from a blog that the artist wanted up, and ISPs in the UK were acting as copyright cops. Another of the RIAA's targets stood up to challenge the constitutionality of the Copyright Act itself in an interesting but ill-fated defense. And the MPAA, while cluelessly claiming that The Dark Knight owed its success to anti-piracy efforts, sued to sites and raised the critical question of whether embedding is infringement.

Fifteen Years Ago

Five years earlier in 2003, one senator was launching an inquiry into the RIAA's legal practices, while the organization itself was getting a new leader. We took on the myth that copying is theft, and the misguided industry focus on "replacing" CD sales with legal downloads — which wasn't going to happen, but that wasn't the point. People did know about legal download services of course — but one study showed they didn't care, much like how teenagers were losing interest in going to the movies.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: July 22nd - 28th

from the looking-back dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, the congressional backlash against the NSA kicked into high gear with an amendment to end phone data collection from Rep. Justin Amash. Naturally the NSA's defenders flipped out, Obama opposed the amendment by insulting congress, and Keith Alexander called an emergency briefing to lobby against it. After a heated debate, the amendment narrowly failed thanks to "no" votes from 217 representatives — including several democrats led by Nancy Pelosi because, hey, you might be in communication with terrorists, right?

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, we saw the first legal battle specifically over whether people sending DMCA notices must consider fair use, while the IFPI was taking down music that the creators wanted up, the MPAA was spouting doubletalk in its war against DVRs, and Viacom had to apologize for sending a bogus DMCA notice to YouTube after promising not to. Amidst all this, we saw the introduction of the Senate bill to create a copyright czar position (which Victoria Espinel would end up filling).

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, the RIAA's lawsuit dragnet was sweeping up bewildered parents and grandparents. Some folks claimed there were protests in response, but this seemed pretty dubious — except online where some sites were blocking RIAA and MPAA IP addresses (Techdirt declined to participate, preferring they have access to our arguments against them). Meanwhile, movie studios got ready to launch a series of file-sharing guilt trip ads, a Spanish lawyer began following the RIAA lawsuit model, and software company SCO made the staggering claim that all Linux users are pirates.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: July 15th - 21st

from the on-and-on dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, as new leaks made it clear that NSA surveillance went even further than everyone thought, we got disturbing comments from NSA boss Keith Alexander about the need to "collect it all" (which also happens to be the name of our CIA card game which you can still preorder...) and from a former top agency lawyer who blamed the 9/11 attacks on civil libertarians. But the backlash grew too, with the EFF filing a massive lawsuit along with several other groups, and one congressional rep trying to strip the NSA's funding while another aimed to repeal the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, a closer look at the Viacom/YouTube lawsuit revealed Viacom's focus on finding out what Google employees uploaded as a sneaky way to hopefully eliminate some DMCA protections. Apple launched its much expected lawsuit against Mac clone maker Psystar, and a UK law firm went big on the pre-settlement shakedown game with over 100 lawsuits against file sharers. A court ruling about bots in World of Warcraft set a dangerous copyright precedent, and we saw some amusing DRM irony when Ubisoft broke its own game then fixed it by issuing a third-party DRM cracking tool as an official patch. And, sadly, despite an earlier rejection, the EU brought up copyright extension again and voted to bump the term of performance rights up from 50 to 95 years.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, while the MPAA was fighting a bill just to spite the EFF, the RIAA was going nuts with its subpoenas to identify file sharers at a rate of about 75 per day. Two Catholic Universities quickly caved and turned students over to the RIAA, and while some studies suggested that file sharing was diminishing, there were also a lot of people passionately defending it.

Filed Under: history, look back

This Week In Techdirt History: July 8th - 14th

from the looking-back dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, as dissection of the NSA leaks continued, we began to take a closer look at the secret FISA courts — which the DOJ didn't want anyone knowing about, even as a former FISC judge explained that he quit the court because it was out of control. We began to understand more about just how much the agency could learn from metadata, and saw the emergence of the silly argument that Facebook usage means people don't care about privacy. The NSA faced cultural backlash, with recruiters smacked down by university students and a disinvitation from the DEF CON conference. Then, the leaks revealed the NSA's cozy relationship with telcos and Microsoft — collaboration the agency cutely referred to as "team sports".

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, it became more and more clear how the entertainment industry was trying to use ACTA to sneak through copyright extension, and we balked at the capitulation of some computer makers to the RIAA's demands by disabling sound recording capabilities. We saw a mixed ruling in a case over limitations on the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause, a ruling from a German court saying that open WiFi owners are not responsible for file sharing done by users, and a massive backlash against Sweden's internet spying bill.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, we saw an important ruling in favor of displaying thumbnails of copyrighted images. The RIAA launched an expected lawsuit against a Spanish site that claimed to offer legal downloads, a group of webcasters was threatening to sue the RIAA if they won't renegotiate royalty rates, and Kazaa failed with its wild swing at an antitrust lawsuit against the entertainment industry, while we took a look at the growing industry of folks getting rich by selling anti-filesharing services.

Filed Under: history, look back