whether he is or not, if you stop and think about it it does seem pretty suspect.
'course, sometimes there's good and logical reasons for such things...
but when it comes to the USA, the more i read, the more i figure that when that sort of thing comes up, someone fucked up. or got bribed. or both.
(that said, in my own country I'd assume it's because the current service is either provided by a monopoly shown to be harmful to the public, or the current provider is unable to meet new standards or current demand, and if it's standards, somehow fails to qualify for assistance in doing so. That said, the NZ government isn't so prone to throwing money at corporations to fix it's problems. (it prefers to waste the money itself ;-) )
this is probably the biggest one. EULAs combined with laws (with the express purpose, surprise surprise, of stomping on piracy) preventing software (or movies, music, and possibly some other things) being returned except for in exchange for another identical (theoretically non-broken) item.
the problem is that, with software, if Any copy is bugged, they All will be.
the only reason i like those laws at all (as they apply in NZ) is because i can see no way, what so ever, that an EULA is Not signed under duress with them in place, and thus void as a contract even if it would otherwise be valid. not that i'm a lawyer. which i personaly find to be a good thing, most of the time :D
arguably, the place to post such a notice may well be in the forum (comment thread, site, actual forum, whatever) the issue is concerned with. the exact method would depend on the type of site, and one would have to make effort to ensure it was noticed, but it would be the most likely to actually be seen, i think.
putting it in the newspaper shouldn't really count anymore, i think, anyway. unless said newspaper is free and widely distributed, anyway. too likely to remain unseen.
Don't know about the USA, so my note here is of dubious relevance, but... here-abouts (New Zealand, for those who've not yet noticed that :D) it's a recipe to all but guarantee the thing passing without the public hearing about it.
but that doesn't really seem to fit here, does it?
who gains what from what? always an interesting question.
well, there are those trillions of dollars worth of debt to consider... (not that I'm an economist or anything, but I'm really wondering how that's meant to help...)
Don't know about the UK, but there are places where, in legal speak, 'person' includes corporations, and when they want to Specifically mean Only actual human beings, the law reads 'real person(s)' ... which just goes to show, once again, how ridiculous the modern corporation and it's associated laws actually are.
I think people are confusing 'freedom of speech' with 'the constitutional right to free speech'. the former is a concept. the latter is an American [and possibly other countries too] legal bit that prevents the government of that country from preventing freedom of speech.
so, while it's true you can't sue someone other than the government, just as a very loose example, for depriving you of freedom of speech in a given context, that isn't the same as them being unable to deprive you of the same.
and if you can pick your way through my admittedly tangled wording, i think that answers that one.
(also, i could have replied to several posts with this... assume it's a response to all applicable :))
dunno about France, but it always struck me that companies are people only when it helps them make money. whether that's true or not is a different story, m ind you.
"The NZ Cabinet paper also notes that the government is currently negotiating ACTA and free trade agreements that could require legislative reform. "
I really, REALLY wish our government would just get the FUCK OVER the whole free trade thing. every damn time it comes up they screw over the public for the mere Possibility of such, and the only visible end result from the consumer's point of view is domestically produced necessities going up in price because the international market will pay that much.
Implementing the three strikes thing at All is moronic (nothing new there. NZ's government's specialty isn't not screwing up, it's screwing up in new and interesting ways... very British, actually... but there's yet another rant there), though if it must be done the way it appears to be now looks to be the best way to be about it... but the Reason for it! gah!
Oh, and it should be noted that it's not unheard of for these things to go through the entire process of public hearings and votes and so on, be all corrected into something workable, or at least acceptable... then have most of the changes chucked or the most objectionable bits jammed back in just before the last, official vote (a single individual can do this by themselves if the MPs aren't paying attention in the final reading). The Politicians hear about it, but they vote the way the party tells them to. (not that they're as bought and payed for as American politicians, though there's a bit of that... just self interested and/or blinded to reality by ideology and tradition). Then our Governor General (Head of State when the monarch's not here (AKA all the time but maybe one week in five years or more, it feels like) ... so, Acting? meh ...meh) signs the thing... stupid rubber stamp process... the Governer is functionally filling the entire useful role of an upper house (we only have one house in our parliament) so you can see where the whole tradition of rubber stamping everything (to avoid a constitutional crisis... yeah, let's just piss all over the whole point of the exercise to avoid risking having to test it... sorry, another pet rant there) is a major problem.
whoa... way too many parentheses.
oh, and then there's the pattern of Party A proposing a thing, Party B saying "no, change this", Party A says no. Party B's like "meh, ok, we'll vote for it" ... A and B being National and Labour...
sorry, this article just fed directly into so many of my objections to our political system here in New Zealand.
in other commentary, the republican, communist, and nazi parties [not all called by that] never get anywhere here, and the monarchist party doesn't even bother running, because the republican party never gets any traction...
now if only we actually had a party that Didn't suck (you've got a choice of various types of radicals (who typically have about half their ideas brilliantly right... and whoever came up with the rest should be shot. into the sun. this applies to all of them.) and traditionalists (still want everyone to think we're running first past the post elections and that voting for anyone other than one of them is a wasted vote. it's not. they're also 'center left' and 'center right' and seem to aspire only to holding onto their seats and pay packets. they typically respond to crisis well, but don't Ever let them get bored or you get, well... stuff like this.)
ok, i have no Idea how much (little) of that is on topic, and the parenthetical remarks are rediculous, but... this needed saying.
now if only people who could do something with it would read it and not dismiss it as who knows what due to it not meshing with their ideology... whee...
meanwhile, most Techdirt readers just get to see yet another broken system in action.
i wonder how much of the post will get cut off due to my odd use of punctuation this time? i did avoid everything but .,()?! and capital letters. maybe it'll be ok...
I actually think you're right that the logic isn't quite following, AC. well, the bit about time, anyway. you do have some points here. I'm not Quite sure you and Mike are arguing the same issue just here though... you both seem to be completely right, which is a fair indication that you're not talking about Quite the same thing. [of course, i may just be misunderstanding]
anyway
Books, it seems to me, have the least to fear from internet piracy, but also the smallest number of [obvious] ways of doing anything useful about what piracy they do have to deal with.
which isn't to say there's no way to gain from this, of course. if one can become popular enough, there's always the 'I'm writing a book about X. i require $Y to have it published, and the resulting book will need to cost Z. Anyone who contributes to Y pays Z/2 for a copy of the book, signed' or something like that.
... i lost my train of thought part way through there. oh well.
that said, e-books always strike me as being at least half a solution to a problem that doesn't exist in the first place, and dedicated e-book readers nothing but... but maybe I'm just old fashioned there.
one of the biggest problems with law, mind you, seems to be a lack of sanity in it's application.
that and a tendency for, depending on your country, lobbyists, politicians, and sundry others with less than wonderfully ideal motivation to intentionally create laws with gaps in them so that they can, or even Must, be applied in a way completely contrary to common sense.
See, in NZ a while back, they changed the post codes, at least here abouts. big reshuffle...
They then delivered cards with the appropriate new ones on them to every home telling them which one applied to them.
this is interesting in that, personally, i've only Ever had to supply a post code when buying stuff online from overseas.
that said, packages usually seem to come with their postcodes marked. nothing else, but the packages do.
Frosty840's comment sounds depressingly likely, at least in terms of the general gist of it.
privatisation of infrastructure here has had mixed results [in part due to mixed methodology... some elements were turned into State Owned Enterprises instead... basically going from government departments to... well, 'corporations' in which the government is the only shareholder, i believe.]... the government ended up buying back what was left of the tracks from the rail system for NZ$1 [it's worth untold thousands just as scrap metal, let alone any other considerations!] and taking on the cost of maintaining it because the various American and Australian interests who owned it at various times stuffed it up so badly. More recently they spent a few million buying back the rest of it.
the post office here is an interesting creature... at various times it's been a monopoly, or not, part of the government, or not, the same entity as the telephone company, or not, the same entity as a bank [twice, no less! though I'm not sure how close the ties are in the current incarnation other than sharing premises to cut costs], or not...
anyway, the above ramble aside, it's always nice to see governments doing something smart, or at least logical from a 'actually good for the general populous' point of view. so, whatever their intentions, making this information easily available does seem like a good idea.
as for making the postal system profitable, well, raise stamp prices?
seriously, the number of infrastructure elements that cannot be profitable because NZ is too small is quite significant... yet one never hears about the post office here having money problems. or... any large scale problems, actually, come to think of it. [well, aside from the occasional 'oh no! dishonest mail clerk stole money from letters!' to which the usual response is 'what idiot sends cash through the post?' (unfortunately, i have to say 'my granny, for one'
On the post: CenturyLink Won't Provide DSL, Wants To Block Competitor From Getting Fed Funds To Offer Wireless
Re: Re: Am I the only one with a problem
'course, sometimes there's good and logical reasons for such things...
but when it comes to the USA, the more i read, the more i figure that when that sort of thing comes up, someone fucked up. or got bribed. or both.
(that said, in my own country I'd assume it's because the current service is either provided by a monopoly shown to be harmful to the public, or the current provider is unable to meet new standards or current demand, and if it's standards, somehow fails to qualify for assistance in doing so. That said, the NZ government isn't so prone to throwing money at corporations to fix it's problems. (it prefers to waste the money itself ;-) )
On the post: Debate Heats Up On Liability For Buggy Software: Will Buggy Games Be Illegal?
Re: Re:
the problem is that, with software, if Any copy is bugged, they All will be.
the only reason i like those laws at all (as they apply in NZ) is because i can see no way, what so ever, that an EULA is Not signed under duress with them in place, and thus void as a contract even if it would otherwise be valid. not that i'm a lawyer. which i personaly find to be a good thing, most of the time :D
On the post: Should A Site Be Forced To Takedown Content If A Court Rules Against The User?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
putting it in the newspaper shouldn't really count anymore, i think, anyway. unless said newspaper is free and widely distributed, anyway. too likely to remain unseen.
that's my thoughts, anyway.
On the post: Federal Anti-SLAPP Law Introduced
Re: At the end of the session?
but that doesn't really seem to fit here, does it?
who gains what from what? always an interesting question.
On the post: Patent Office Releases New Temporary Post-Bilski Test For Software Patents
Re: WTH????
not that that helps.
On the post: Connected Nation, Created By Telco Lobbyists, Gets Millions In Gov't Funding To Hide Broadband Data From The Gov't
Re: Fail
On the post: CAFC Upholds Huge Fine; Injunction Against Selling Microsoft Word
Re: Re:
On the post: Lord Lucas Wants UK Digital Economy Bill To Include Remedy For Bogus Copyright Threats
Re: umm.
On the post: Oh Look, People Are Already Looking At Expanding How Selectable Output Control Will Be Abused
Nice Idea
Not to likely any time soon, I think.
On the post: Canadian Record Labels Get Indie Record Store Owner To Plead Guilty... For Getting Rare CDs
Re: Re:
On the post: Libel Tourism Down Under: US Company Tries Suing UK Blogger In Australia For Libel
Re:
so, while it's true you can't sue someone other than the government, just as a very loose example, for depriving you of freedom of speech in a given context, that isn't the same as them being unable to deprive you of the same.
and if you can pick your way through my admittedly tangled wording, i think that answers that one.
(also, i could have replied to several posts with this... assume it's a response to all applicable :))
On the post: Sarkozy's Party Found Violating Copyright Yet Again With Awful Lipdub
Re: Re:
On the post: New Zealand Brings Back Three Strikes... With Some Oversight
Oh, bloody hell...
"The NZ Cabinet paper also notes that the government is currently negotiating ACTA and free trade agreements that could require legislative reform. "
I really, REALLY wish our government would just get the FUCK OVER the whole free trade thing. every damn time it comes up they screw over the public for the mere Possibility of such, and the only visible end result from the consumer's point of view is domestically produced necessities going up in price because the international market will pay that much.
Implementing the three strikes thing at All is moronic (nothing new there. NZ's government's specialty isn't not screwing up, it's screwing up in new and interesting ways... very British, actually... but there's yet another rant there), though if it must be done the way it appears to be now looks to be the best way to be about it... but the Reason for it! gah!
Oh, and it should be noted that it's not unheard of for these things to go through the entire process of public hearings and votes and so on, be all corrected into something workable, or at least acceptable... then have most of the changes chucked or the most objectionable bits jammed back in just before the last, official vote (a single individual can do this by themselves if the MPs aren't paying attention in the final reading). The Politicians hear about it, but they vote the way the party tells them to. (not that they're as bought and payed for as American politicians, though there's a bit of that... just self interested and/or blinded to reality by ideology and tradition). Then our Governor General (Head of State when the monarch's not here (AKA all the time but maybe one week in five years or more, it feels like) ... so, Acting? meh ...meh) signs the thing... stupid rubber stamp process... the Governer is functionally filling the entire useful role of an upper house (we only have one house in our parliament) so you can see where the whole tradition of rubber stamping everything (to avoid a constitutional crisis... yeah, let's just piss all over the whole point of the exercise to avoid risking having to test it... sorry, another pet rant there) is a major problem.
whoa... way too many parentheses.
oh, and then there's the pattern of Party A proposing a thing, Party B saying "no, change this", Party A says no. Party B's like "meh, ok, we'll vote for it" ... A and B being National and Labour...
sorry, this article just fed directly into so many of my objections to our political system here in New Zealand.
in other commentary, the republican, communist, and nazi parties [not all called by that] never get anywhere here, and the monarchist party doesn't even bother running, because the republican party never gets any traction...
now if only we actually had a party that Didn't suck (you've got a choice of various types of radicals (who typically have about half their ideas brilliantly right... and whoever came up with the rest should be shot. into the sun. this applies to all of them.) and traditionalists (still want everyone to think we're running first past the post elections and that voting for anyone other than one of them is a wasted vote. it's not. they're also 'center left' and 'center right' and seem to aspire only to holding onto their seats and pay packets. they typically respond to crisis well, but don't Ever let them get bored or you get, well... stuff like this.)
ok, i have no Idea how much (little) of that is on topic, and the parenthetical remarks are rediculous, but... this needed saying.
now if only people who could do something with it would read it and not dismiss it as who knows what due to it not meshing with their ideology... whee...
meanwhile, most Techdirt readers just get to see yet another broken system in action.
i wonder how much of the post will get cut off due to my odd use of punctuation this time? i did avoid everything but .,()?! and capital letters. maybe it'll be ok...
On the post: ASCAP Now Demanding License From Venues That Let People Play Guitar Hero
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I guess i am lost
That's the point.
On the post: Jurors Cause Trouble By Friending Each Other On Facebook, Using Wikipedia For Research
Re: Tabloid Justice
On the post: Tiger Woods Gags UK Media; Alerts World To Nude Photos
Re: Re:
On the post: Creating Living Books: A Defense Against 'Piracy'?
Re: Re: Re:
anyway
Books, it seems to me, have the least to fear from internet piracy, but also the smallest number of [obvious] ways of doing anything useful about what piracy they do have to deal with.
which isn't to say there's no way to gain from this, of course. if one can become popular enough, there's always the 'I'm writing a book about X. i require $Y to have it published, and the resulting book will need to cost Z. Anyone who contributes to Y pays Z/2 for a copy of the book, signed' or something like that.
... i lost my train of thought part way through there. oh well.
that said, e-books always strike me as being at least half a solution to a problem that doesn't exist in the first place, and dedicated e-book readers nothing but... but maybe I'm just old fashioned there.
On the post: After Forcing Down Some Sites For Revealing Postal Codes, UK Decides To Open The Data Up
Re:
i can't actually remember what i said in that paragraph, but still.
On the post: Is Everyone Who Received Monday's Metro Toronto Guilty Of Child Porn Possession?
one of the biggest problems with law, mind you, seems to be a lack of sanity in it's application.
that and a tendency for, depending on your country, lobbyists, politicians, and sundry others with less than wonderfully ideal motivation to intentionally create laws with gaps in them so that they can, or even Must, be applied in a way completely contrary to common sense.
On the post: After Forcing Down Some Sites For Revealing Postal Codes, UK Decides To Open The Data Up
They then delivered cards with the appropriate new ones on them to every home telling them which one applied to them.
this is interesting in that, personally, i've only Ever had to supply a post code when buying stuff online from overseas.
that said, packages usually seem to come with their postcodes marked. nothing else, but the packages do.
Frosty840's comment sounds depressingly likely, at least in terms of the general gist of it.
privatisation of infrastructure here has had mixed results [in part due to mixed methodology... some elements were turned into State Owned Enterprises instead... basically going from government departments to... well, 'corporations' in which the government is the only shareholder, i believe.]... the government ended up buying back what was left of the tracks from the rail system for NZ$1 [it's worth untold thousands just as scrap metal, let alone any other considerations!] and taking on the cost of maintaining it because the various American and Australian interests who owned it at various times stuffed it up so badly. More recently they spent a few million buying back the rest of it.
the post office here is an interesting creature... at various times it's been a monopoly, or not, part of the government, or not, the same entity as the telephone company, or not, the same entity as a bank [twice, no less! though I'm not sure how close the ties are in the current incarnation other than sharing premises to cut costs], or not...
anyway, the above ramble aside, it's always nice to see governments doing something smart, or at least logical from a 'actually good for the general populous' point of view. so, whatever their intentions, making this information easily available does seem like a good idea.
as for making the postal system profitable, well, raise stamp prices?
seriously, the number of infrastructure elements that cannot be profitable because NZ is too small is quite significant... yet one never hears about the post office here having money problems. or... any large scale problems, actually, come to think of it. [well, aside from the occasional 'oh no! dishonest mail clerk stole money from letters!' to which the usual response is 'what idiot sends cash through the post?' (unfortunately, i have to say 'my granny, for one'
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