That Anonymous Coward (profile), 19 Jul 2019 @ 7:59pm
And we wonder why I have such dislike for most copyright lawyers.
This case at its core is Cloudflare has money, they should give us the money. The Judge ignoring the law should be on the list of things that result in an automatic tenure review...
The should also be an automatic bar complaint against the lawyers who brought this bullshit & wasted judicial resources trying to sue the deep pocket & not the bad actor. They are being paid by clients to do something they can't deliver on because its actually barred by the fscking law. Its not new law with no real structure or tests, this shit is settled & these motherfuckers are stealing from clients.
That Anonymous Coward (profile), 19 Jul 2019 @ 7:54pm
Re: What's in a name...
Its not easy seeing the future...
"Palantir (named for that creepy orb from Lord of the Rings that lets you spy on hobbit beauty queens changing), got $196 Million in funding. Let's ignore the absolute failure of the people behind it, and how they planned to use the tech to undermine Wikileaks for private customers. And they would have gotten away with it, if not for those pesky kids in trendy masks. So a company, who has no problem creating fake information, is being funded to gather more 'real' information for the government or anyone else with a briefcase full of cash. "
People are upset about facial rec being rolled out and its problems...
Has anyone actually mentioned how many flaws are on credit reports?
But TAC why bring in credit reports?
Because its a massive database of allegedly correct records that companies use to size you up... and its full of errors that even knowing they exist is a PITA to get corrected.
Now put the records in a private system, connect 2 people with the same name as 1 person.... hilarity!!! does not ensue.
People pay LifeLock to try and stop ID theft & they offer upto a Million dollars in help to fix the problem if needed. If I can't prove I wasn't in CA and opened 400 credit cards without a million dollars of helpers what chance do I stand against Palantir?
I mean its not like the founder is on record admitting creating fake information for the highest bidder... oh wait.
We have thousands of stories of cops misusing the smaller databases they have access to to stalk ex's, cute drivers, anyone who pissed them off.... so we're gonna roll out a bigger database for them to troll.
We have stories about 'the good guys' putting their wives on the no-fly lists because it was cheaper than a divorce to keep her from returning home.
So what could possibly go wrong with a massive database with no oversight & no controls???
That Anonymous Coward (profile), 19 Jul 2019 @ 7:43pm
I forget the actual number but people violate copyright on average a silly number of times a day.
They tried already to get Corporate Law with 6-Strikes, but that fell apart because it was really shitty.
Now we can make a pretend court where an IP address is 51% proof & the claims of well they liked GOT on FB so they totally "stole" the episode are treated as real.
I tried to discuss this with someone on teh Twitters, hes a law prof & he was falling over himself to explain how this couldn't be abused and would be way better for everyone. I pointed out that copyright law as it stands is flawed & perhaps we should fix it before we try bolting new things on. The same people who claimed they would die if the VCR was allowed, who then made record profits... are claiming they are dying again.
Lets run that risk this time.
Copyright law needs to be updated.
$750,000 makes sense as damages against someone who sets up a duplication facility to sell works they don't have the rights to in a retail style. (As well as labels in Canada who 'oops we forgot' to get permission & pay artists for (at the time the rate they wanted to charge citizens brought the total to like 6 billion).
Want a rocket docket? Sure.
Your damages are capped at 3x retail.
If I can rent your stream for $1 and I download a copy to watch from the deep dark web I'm on the hook for $3.
Even the insane lost sale doctrine can't argue with this, because they are getting 3 times the price (in full without any platform fees) the platform charged.
Having damages higher than the amount of money a 15 yr old might earn in their entire life b/c they downloaded a single music track doesn't put the fear of copyright into us, it shows how insane the law has become with punishment untethered from reality.
Copyright is completely one sided, the public bears all the costs of protecting the rights and all of the punishment, we can't even get the idea of a quarter per bad url in a DMCA notice taken seriously, despite the billions of flawed urls submitted in a never ending stream.
We own this birdsong, no you don't, YES WE DO!
And the reason we never see this challenged in court (despite there being hollow words laying out the process) is the rightholders have deep pockets & are willing to outlast you. Even if you win, there is still only like a 10% shot that as the prevailing party you'll recover costs... you spent defending a video of you walking in a forest where an actual bird tweeted that some idiotic label claimed they owned. Oh and YT has decided that your counter claims were without merit and shutdown your account... while labels bogusly take down authorized content & can never ever face even stern tsking.
3x Retail Cap.
Convince them that making the content easier to obtain legally is a much better use of their warchests than trying to recover $15.
That Anonymous Coward (profile), 19 Jul 2019 @ 7:25pm
"I don’t know why Medtronic waits for researchers to create an app that could hurt or kill someone before they actually start to take this seriously. Nothing has changed between when we gave our Black Hat talk and three weeks ago."
Because the cost of a recall was > than having to pay survivors.
How often have we seen companies claim that they had the latest in security but the super hackers still managed to hack them so we can't hold them responsible... then the hackers leak how they did it using 15 yr old flaws that should have been patched & the login was admin admin and still nothing happens.
See also: Absolute Sownage; Sony Motion Pictures hack (I mean 12345 and abcde??); Equifax
The punishment for doing nothing is less than the average copyright troll extorts from 1 victim, why bother to improve?
These poor poor corporations have a duty to their shareholders to keep the stock price high & cutting security spending so the execs can have a bonus is a proper thing to do.
Now not all hacks are as serious as this, but my FSM is the FDA so toothless that we have to actually create the thing that exploits the flaw before they can get a company to think maybe kinda sorta we could do something?
That Anonymous Coward (profile), 19 Jul 2019 @ 6:31am
Re: Re:
Never heard of Green's Database before, while the comic linked is about SD cards in the driftnet of my mind there was another comic where maybe it was the alt text about how much data a coke can of cards could hold.
That Anonymous Coward (profile), 16 Jul 2019 @ 5:38pm
Re: Re: Store Liability
You can understand why this makes my head hurt.
We have reached the point where the law & progress have created a quagmire by ignoring each other.
A state consumer protection law, against an online retailer (which might not have enough actual ties to the state).
Multiply by 51.
While it wasn't that hard for Amazon to handle the 51 different state tax rates, having to crawl 51 sets of rules & laws (that I am sure Eleisver "owns" & gets well paid for access to) is crippling.
It shouldn't be impossible to create federal laws covering product fitness and such & spell out the rights & responsibilities for online retailers.
I might still have issues wrapping my mind around Amazon being responsible but if there was a single law covering the responsibilities & rights everyone would be better off.
Anything would be much better than having multiple rulings in multiple states appealed in multiple circuits giving split results confusing everyone as each one wants to apply various laws in various ways.
That Anonymous Coward (profile), 16 Jul 2019 @ 5:18pm
I totally didn't see this coming... nope nope nope...
(I'd link the comment I made about them screwing consumers this way when the announcement was made & they softly mentioned the telcos could charge to do it but I'm tired)
That Anonymous Coward (profile), 16 Jul 2019 @ 3:58am
Re: Re:
It is confusing to me...
If the grill was made by XYZ Exploding Grills Inc, I can't understand why I have a better case against Home Depot than XYZ, unless HD had been made aware that every 3rd grill explodes & kept selling them.
In this case a single (as far as we know) leash was alleged to be defective (not seen a report from a forensics expert stating such) leading to an injury. One wonders if they did reach out to 'The Furry Gang' or Amazon to get contact info or just thought kaching & filed.
If I bought a used grill on Ebay and it explodes I can sue Ebay?
If I bought something on one of the recent sell your crap to people quick apps & it explodes I can sue the platform?
That Anonymous Coward (profile), 15 Jul 2019 @ 1:47pm
"100 percent of the universal service obligation to serve the most rural and high-cost areas"
You have 100% of the obligation, but magically despite how much money you take, your service manages to get worse. Perhaps it is time we audit all the money from USF & see all of the rural and high-cost areas you haven't even managed to get close to yet.
Hell I am pretty sure for the billions that have been looted from the USF by your ilk could have been used by people in those rural areas to run their own lines & still have money left over.
That Anonymous Coward (profile), 15 Jul 2019 @ 1:40pm
Do we have the documents where they attempted to sue 'The Furry Gang'?
Is this just another the platform has deep pockets so they need to pay me?
Why not sue USPS, they delivered the defective leash.
Why not sue Customs, for allowing this defective item into the country?
If I went to Home Depot and bought a grill that then exploded, in my mind I am hard pressed to find a reason to sue Home Depot for another companies failures. If Home Depot had 10 reports of them blowing up & kept them on the shelves... I can see them being liable.
And while they want to play the popular game of 'on the internet' its different, I want to see how they will now demand that Home Depot test every widget, nut, bolt, washer on their shelves. They get items from multiple sellers & offer a platform to sell the items much like Amazon.
Amazon should/could demand better contact information from sellers & how they don't manage to have legal terms that protect them is sort of shocking. Buyer Beware was a thing I thought.
That Anonymous Coward (profile), 12 Jul 2019 @ 3:49pm
Oh those pesky courts are making things hard for our film making buddies, lets gut all of those protections.
Someone might want to mention to those in Congress pushing this that the biggest beneficiaries is porn makers.
Do they support pornography?
Do they support women being exploited?
How many of these questions until they cave?
Its one thing to get a fat donation from hollywood, it is another to face their boomer voters who think porn is the same as rape.
That Anonymous Coward (profile), 12 Jul 2019 @ 1:39pm
Microsoft recently decided to shut down their ebook server which rendered purchased material unuseable.
The price paid did not reflect its ephemeral existence.
Now this portion of the law says that if you were to decouple the ebook from the defunct DRM system you are committing a huge crime. Isn't it a larger crime to entice people to 'purchase' ebooks & then later decide the DRM is costing to much to keep functioning & take the purchases away.
Copyright is completely lopsided because Congress has been convinced that the public not only needs to issue exclusive rights for a limited time (which now is the heat death of the universe) but the rights to shift the burdens & costs of protecting those rights unto everyone else. We no longer get any real benefits for granting these rights, as the corporations begin to demand the rights to say where, when, how you can enjoy content you 'purchased' up until its more beneficial to claim it wasn't a purchase so they can take away the content & demand you 'purchase' it again at the full price and still have only the rights they decide to allow you to have until they decide you should pay them again.
That Anonymous Coward (profile), 12 Jul 2019 @ 1:27pm
Corporations are people, and they are fine upstanding people like politicians and police never ever fib. The fact we have a record showing they lied 1000 times prior is not something to consider.
On the post: Very Confused Judge Allows Bizarre Copyright Lawsuit Against Cloudflare To Continue
And we wonder why I have such dislike for most copyright lawyers.
This case at its core is Cloudflare has money, they should give us the money. The Judge ignoring the law should be on the list of things that result in an automatic tenure review...
The should also be an automatic bar complaint against the lawyers who brought this bullshit & wasted judicial resources trying to sue the deep pocket & not the bad actor. They are being paid by clients to do something they can't deliver on because its actually barred by the fscking law. Its not new law with no real structure or tests, this shit is settled & these motherfuckers are stealing from clients.
On the post: Public Records Request Nets User's Manual For Palantir's Souped-Up Surveillance Software
Re: What's in a name...
Its not easy seeing the future...
"Palantir (named for that creepy orb from Lord of the Rings that lets you spy on hobbit beauty queens changing), got $196 Million in funding. Let's ignore the absolute failure of the people behind it, and how they planned to use the tech to undermine Wikileaks for private customers. And they would have gotten away with it, if not for those pesky kids in trendy masks. So a company, who has no problem creating fake information, is being funded to gather more 'real' information for the government or anyone else with a briefcase full of cash. "
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131004/15313824758/that-anonymous-cowards-second-techdirt -favorites-post-week.shtml
People are upset about facial rec being rolled out and its problems...
Has anyone actually mentioned how many flaws are on credit reports?
But TAC why bring in credit reports?
Because its a massive database of allegedly correct records that companies use to size you up... and its full of errors that even knowing they exist is a PITA to get corrected.
Now put the records in a private system, connect 2 people with the same name as 1 person.... hilarity!!! does not ensue.
People pay LifeLock to try and stop ID theft & they offer upto a Million dollars in help to fix the problem if needed. If I can't prove I wasn't in CA and opened 400 credit cards without a million dollars of helpers what chance do I stand against Palantir?
I mean its not like the founder is on record admitting creating fake information for the highest bidder... oh wait.
We have thousands of stories of cops misusing the smaller databases they have access to to stalk ex's, cute drivers, anyone who pissed them off.... so we're gonna roll out a bigger database for them to troll.
We have stories about 'the good guys' putting their wives on the no-fly lists because it was cheaper than a divorce to keep her from returning home.
So what could possibly go wrong with a massive database with no oversight & no controls???
On the post: The CASE Act: The Road To Copyright Trolling Is Paved With Good Intentions
I forget the actual number but people violate copyright on average a silly number of times a day.
They tried already to get Corporate Law with 6-Strikes, but that fell apart because it was really shitty.
Now we can make a pretend court where an IP address is 51% proof & the claims of well they liked GOT on FB so they totally "stole" the episode are treated as real.
I tried to discuss this with someone on teh Twitters, hes a law prof & he was falling over himself to explain how this couldn't be abused and would be way better for everyone. I pointed out that copyright law as it stands is flawed & perhaps we should fix it before we try bolting new things on. The same people who claimed they would die if the VCR was allowed, who then made record profits... are claiming they are dying again.
Lets run that risk this time.
Copyright law needs to be updated.
$750,000 makes sense as damages against someone who sets up a duplication facility to sell works they don't have the rights to in a retail style. (As well as labels in Canada who 'oops we forgot' to get permission & pay artists for (at the time the rate they wanted to charge citizens brought the total to like 6 billion).
Want a rocket docket? Sure.
Your damages are capped at 3x retail.
If I can rent your stream for $1 and I download a copy to watch from the deep dark web I'm on the hook for $3.
Even the insane lost sale doctrine can't argue with this, because they are getting 3 times the price (in full without any platform fees) the platform charged.
Having damages higher than the amount of money a 15 yr old might earn in their entire life b/c they downloaded a single music track doesn't put the fear of copyright into us, it shows how insane the law has become with punishment untethered from reality.
Copyright is completely one sided, the public bears all the costs of protecting the rights and all of the punishment, we can't even get the idea of a quarter per bad url in a DMCA notice taken seriously, despite the billions of flawed urls submitted in a never ending stream.
We own this birdsong, no you don't, YES WE DO!
And the reason we never see this challenged in court (despite there being hollow words laying out the process) is the rightholders have deep pockets & are willing to outlast you. Even if you win, there is still only like a 10% shot that as the prevailing party you'll recover costs... you spent defending a video of you walking in a forest where an actual bird tweeted that some idiotic label claimed they owned. Oh and YT has decided that your counter claims were without merit and shutdown your account... while labels bogusly take down authorized content & can never ever face even stern tsking.
3x Retail Cap.
Convince them that making the content easier to obtain legally is a much better use of their warchests than trying to recover $15.
On the post: Researchers Build App That Kills To Highlight Insulin Pump Exploit
"I don’t know why Medtronic waits for researchers to create an app that could hurt or kill someone before they actually start to take this seriously. Nothing has changed between when we gave our Black Hat talk and three weeks ago."
Because the cost of a recall was > than having to pay survivors.
How often have we seen companies claim that they had the latest in security but the super hackers still managed to hack them so we can't hold them responsible... then the hackers leak how they did it using 15 yr old flaws that should have been patched & the login was admin admin and still nothing happens.
See also: Absolute Sownage; Sony Motion Pictures hack (I mean 12345 and abcde??); Equifax
The punishment for doing nothing is less than the average copyright troll extorts from 1 victim, why bother to improve?
These poor poor corporations have a duty to their shareholders to keep the stock price high & cutting security spending so the execs can have a bonus is a proper thing to do.
Now not all hacks are as serious as this, but my FSM is the FDA so toothless that we have to actually create the thing that exploits the flaw before they can get a company to think maybe kinda sorta we could do something?
On the post: Why The Appearance Of A One Terabyte microSD Card Means The War On Unauthorized Music Downloads Is (Almost) Over
Re: Re:
Never heard of Green's Database before, while the comic linked is about SD cards in the driftnet of my mind there was another comic where maybe it was the alt text about how much data a coke can of cards could hold.
On the post: Why The Appearance Of A One Terabyte microSD Card Means The War On Unauthorized Music Downloads Is (Almost) Over
Re: Re:
Thank you kind stranger
On the post: Claims Of 5G Health Risks Are Frequently Based On A Single, 20 Year Old Flawed Graph
Re: Re:
Mainly because they would die off from hunger.
On the post: Why The Appearance Of A One Terabyte microSD Card Means The War On Unauthorized Music Downloads Is (Almost) Over
The Library of Congress in a coke can dot xkcd foresaw this.
On the post: Claims Of 5G Health Risks Are Frequently Based On A Single, 20 Year Old Flawed Graph
5G will travel further on our flat planet!!!
5G causes autism!!!
5G insert any other panic here...
Reality is so screwed up we're inventing new boogeymen to be scared of rather than deal with the very real ones.
On the post: The Third Circuit Joins The Ninth In Excluding E-Commerce Platforms From Section 230's Protection
Re: Re: Store Liability
You can understand why this makes my head hurt.
We have reached the point where the law & progress have created a quagmire by ignoring each other.
A state consumer protection law, against an online retailer (which might not have enough actual ties to the state).
Multiply by 51.
While it wasn't that hard for Amazon to handle the 51 different state tax rates, having to crawl 51 sets of rules & laws (that I am sure Eleisver "owns" & gets well paid for access to) is crippling.
It shouldn't be impossible to create federal laws covering product fitness and such & spell out the rights & responsibilities for online retailers.
I might still have issues wrapping my mind around Amazon being responsible but if there was a single law covering the responsibilities & rights everyone would be better off.
Anything would be much better than having multiple rulings in multiple states appealed in multiple circuits giving split results confusing everyone as each one wants to apply various laws in various ways.
On the post: Another Way In Which Patents Contributed To The Opioid Crisis: Hospitals Ordered Not To Use Better, Less Problematic Medicines
IP making our lives better...
On the post: AT&T Will Now Filter Robocall Spam, If You Pay Them Extra
I totally didn't see this coming... nope nope nope...
(I'd link the comment I made about them screwing consumers this way when the announcement was made & they softly mentioned the telcos could charge to do it but I'm tired)
On the post: The Third Circuit Joins The Ninth In Excluding E-Commerce Platforms From Section 230's Protection
Re: Re:
It is confusing to me...
If the grill was made by XYZ Exploding Grills Inc, I can't understand why I have a better case against Home Depot than XYZ, unless HD had been made aware that every 3rd grill explodes & kept selling them.
In this case a single (as far as we know) leash was alleged to be defective (not seen a report from a forensics expert stating such) leading to an injury. One wonders if they did reach out to 'The Furry Gang' or Amazon to get contact info or just thought kaching & filed.
If I bought a used grill on Ebay and it explodes I can sue Ebay?
If I bought something on one of the recent sell your crap to people quick apps & it explodes I can sue the platform?
On the post: West Virginia's Biggest Telco Says Broadband Business 'Unsustainable'
"100 percent of the universal service obligation to serve the most rural and high-cost areas"
You have 100% of the obligation, but magically despite how much money you take, your service manages to get worse. Perhaps it is time we audit all the money from USF & see all of the rural and high-cost areas you haven't even managed to get close to yet.
Hell I am pretty sure for the billions that have been looted from the USF by your ilk could have been used by people in those rural areas to run their own lines & still have money left over.
On the post: The Third Circuit Joins The Ninth In Excluding E-Commerce Platforms From Section 230's Protection
Do we have the documents where they attempted to sue 'The Furry Gang'?
Is this just another the platform has deep pockets so they need to pay me?
Why not sue USPS, they delivered the defective leash.
Why not sue Customs, for allowing this defective item into the country?
If I went to Home Depot and bought a grill that then exploded, in my mind I am hard pressed to find a reason to sue Home Depot for another companies failures. If Home Depot had 10 reports of them blowing up & kept them on the shelves... I can see them being liable.
And while they want to play the popular game of 'on the internet' its different, I want to see how they will now demand that Home Depot test every widget, nut, bolt, washer on their shelves. They get items from multiple sellers & offer a platform to sell the items much like Amazon.
Amazon should/could demand better contact information from sellers & how they don't manage to have legal terms that protect them is sort of shocking. Buyer Beware was a thing I thought.
On the post: Congress Moving Forward With Copyright-For-Censorship 'Small Claims' Act
Oh those pesky courts are making things hard for our film making buddies, lets gut all of those protections.
Someone might want to mention to those in Congress pushing this that the biggest beneficiaries is porn makers.
Do they support pornography?
Do they support women being exploited?
How many of these questions until they cave?
Its one thing to get a fat donation from hollywood, it is another to face their boomer voters who think porn is the same as rape.
On the post: Laura Loomer Files Defamation Suit Against Facebook For Calling Her 'Dangerous' When Booting Her From The Platform
Does anyone remember when lawyers were afraid of the bar imposing sanctions for stupid shit??? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
On the post: Senator Graham Spreads A Bunch Of Nonsense About 'Protecting Digital Innocence' Online
Google should do the job we should be doing if we weren't busy collecting campagin donations from groups pushing this.
On the post: Three Years Later: 1st Amendment Challenge Over DMCA's Anti-Circumvention Provisions Can Move Forward
Microsoft recently decided to shut down their ebook server which rendered purchased material unuseable.
The price paid did not reflect its ephemeral existence.
Now this portion of the law says that if you were to decouple the ebook from the defunct DRM system you are committing a huge crime. Isn't it a larger crime to entice people to 'purchase' ebooks & then later decide the DRM is costing to much to keep functioning & take the purchases away.
Copyright is completely lopsided because Congress has been convinced that the public not only needs to issue exclusive rights for a limited time (which now is the heat death of the universe) but the rights to shift the burdens & costs of protecting those rights unto everyone else. We no longer get any real benefits for granting these rights, as the corporations begin to demand the rights to say where, when, how you can enjoy content you 'purchased' up until its more beneficial to claim it wasn't a purchase so they can take away the content & demand you 'purchase' it again at the full price and still have only the rights they decide to allow you to have until they decide you should pay them again.
On the post: AT&T Breaks Another Merger Promise In Making 'Friends' Exclusive
Corporations are people, and they are fine upstanding people like politicians and police never ever fib. The fact we have a record showing they lied 1000 times prior is not something to consider.
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