Yeah, um, this is nothing new. We had a strict "no answering the phone during dinner" rule when I was growing up. Plenty of families watch TV, or answer the phone, or something else during dinner. If these parents are having problems, it's because they have no authority in their own households.
Not textings fault. Raise your children better, please.
If that's your problem, it doesn't seem like a difficult one to solve. Write down ONE password somewhere safe, and a password you're likely to remember. Use that password to encrypt a .doc file with all your other passwords. It's a lot safer than leaving your passwords in plain site.
"To this point, he says that a show like Seinfeld, which didn't perform all that well in its initial four episodes, wouldn't survive today. But whose fault is that? It's hard to see how it's anybody but the networks'. If they can't do a better job of determining which shows will be hits, or crafting popular shows, that certainly seems to be their own problem."
Hmm, there are faults to both those things. I can name a few examples of shows like Seinfeld, and not quite like Seinfeld, that survived in both a harsher economic climate and survived with low ratings. It happens sometimes. It happened with How I Met Your Mother, which is now CBS second most popular Monday night comedy (as a fan of the show, I used to hope it wouldn't get cancelled every few weeks in its first season). Then there's the example of Dollhouse, which had exceptionally low ratings, with the season finale being the worst - and it still got renewed!
It's up to the networks to place their faith in shows. But Carlos, I think you're being unfair. A network can't afford to keep every good quality show on air if it's not pulling in an audience. Firefly was an amazing show, and Fox dropped the ball with it, but even so, they couldn't have known it would develop a very strong fanbase. The people choosing what shows stay and what shows can't always make the right decision. Sometimes great shows must suffer for that.
I blame Google. They're really dropping the ball. They have the resources to fight these things.
All the limitations on YouTube are only going to slowly, but surely, push consumers further away from the service. I wanted to share an SNL clip on Facebook, but YouTube removed it due to copyright infringement. So, I went to DailyMotion instead. Knock one down, another will rise in its place.
It's almost like record labels, TV networks and movie studios don't want fans.
Ronald J. Riley - what you're basically saying is that the second a fan makes any profit off what they're promoting, it becomes wrong. This is an entirely ludicrous claim, since it's a win-win situation. The fans aren't doing it for the money, they're doing it to promote what they love. If they make money in the process, that isn't money lost on the part of the original content creators.
"What Twitter is enabling is an entirely different form of information gathering online"?
I'm in agreement with the previous poster: the concept of obtaining information from people on the web, as opposed to search engines, is nothing new. There are specialized message boards(that are sometimes a hassle, because people have to go through the process of registration for every new message board) for this sort of thing.
Whereas in Twitter's case, this form of communication only exists as a matter of consquence, there are web sites built from the ground up for this sort of thing (i.e. Yahoo! Answers).
How is this even a problem? I didn't even know there was a company called Taser! I thought all taser-like products were tasers - I thought that was just the name for any device of that kind, like a gun is a handheld rifle that shoots pieces of metal at high speeds. I didn't know taser is to handheld shock devices as Kleenex is to tissues.
This could never cause confusion to anyone. This definitely wouldn't hurt brand in any way. How utterly silly.
"Are you saying, that under Section 230 that it's impossible and illegal to ever remove the alleged defamatory content? That it has to stay there forever, well, at least until Google decides to delete it."
... I don't even see where he implied something that implies that.
What are you even saying? The article was about a woman who alleges that a blog is defamatory, but the person who made the post is dead. She can't ask him to take it down, so she's suing Google, so that Google will take it down. However, Google isn't liable for the blogger's content - someone else is, so Mike can't see how Google would be liable in court.
Then, he says, "if this was really an issue" (perhaps the only unlcear part in the post, because it suggests that something else is the issue - like money), there are other ways to take action, as Goldman has noted.
So, I have to ask, why, exactly, are you so confused?
"Woman sues Google to remove allegedly defamatory comments made by a dead guy."
Your problem is with the title? Really? Maybe English isn't [i]your[/i] first language.
Weird Harold, there are a few assumptions you're making that I don't seem very informed. But before I reply, I have to ask you this: Are you saying that you agree that the First Amendment should be ignored to protect copyright holders? In other words, are corporations and artists in such imminent dangers that lawmakers need to ignore one of this society's most important values in certain scenarios?
This isn't about dismissing copyright, either. It's about putting the burden of proof on the copyright holders, to protect the consumers so that copyright law is not abused. Your post is basically one huge straw man to divert attention from the main issue here, and you never actually stated your stance on it. So what is your stance, Weird Harold. Do you believe the law NEEDS to be bent for the good of the entire country?
"Why innovate or create if you cannot profit from it?"
Are you saying copyright is the only way people can profit off their work? For this to be true, you'd have to claim that for thousands of years, people have NOT been innovating or creating and profiting from that, or, at the very least, that people have been stealing the work of others for thousands of years and profitting greatly off of it. I am a big believer in history repeats itself, so if you can find historical examples of such occurences, that'd go a long way in helping your argument.
But I think that, if you look at it with a clear mind, you'll see that people WANT to support artists they love. Look at the HUGE adoration fans have for their favourite rock stars, or video game nerds have for their favourite company. Humans naturally attach themselves to things they appreciate, and support those things. In the end, its fans that drive sales. Fans WANT to see their favourites succeed.
If you write a book, and someone plagiarizes the entire thing and releases it right after, WORD will get out. Yes, that person might make some money off it, but people would catch on (especially in the age of hyper-communication) and support for that person would go away, and they'd lose all their credibility. For example, someone can't create a carbon copy of Harry Potter and expect to make money, even if copyright didn't exist - I'm sure if there were a bootleg Harry Potter book being sold for a quarter of the price, some people would consider buying it, but in all reality, those people probably wouldn't have bought the book in the first place.
And, you know what, if someone creates something similar to what you wrote, but does it in their own words, or changes characters or whatever, and it becomes massively successful... Do you deserve credit for it? There are knock-off Harry Potter books starring a female lead and other massive variations Russia, and JK Rowling can't shut it down, but that brings up questions like, "Do those books harm or help JK Rowling's sales?" If the books help JK Rowlings (because people are likely to figure out the source material and want to read that, too), then she shouldn't be complaining, even if it does infringe on copyright law.
Unfortunately, and this is a truth that is hard to deny these days, most people want their cake and want to eat it, too - copyright holders are the ones who want to profit off their own work, and off the work of others. If they made some success off something, and someone else made more success off a similar thing, they want to leech off that success. We see it all the time, in all sorts of avenues, including newspapers that try to make Google pay them for traffic they're getting from Google, or musicians trying to make Google pay for hits that are getting them attention on YouTube... It's all pretty ridiculous, and at this point, I think if people don't start working on restricting copyright to make it more fair, lots of people are going to lose some pretty basic rights.
"That harm cannot be proven completely, but the potential harm is clear and even likely."
It's neither of those things. If it were clear, it wouldn't just be likely, and if it were just likely, it wouldn't be clear.
Weird Harold, some of the comments you make do you no good and really do a discredit to any intelligence you have
"Why offer VPN? Why try to offer a way to hide? What are you hiding from? Why is TPB hiding in Sweden, and not operating in any other country?"
They're not HIDING in Sweden, but Sweden is the one place that hasn't been CORRUPTED by lobbyists - although, it's well on the road to that now. They run their site from Sweden because it's legal to run it from there and the corporations don't have as much ability to shut them down.
Let's be fair here - the pirate bay has NEVER hidden. They've always been forthright about their claims, their beliefs, and their attitudes toward file sharing and the law. They have always been right out there in plain site, and have even made strong attempts to aggravate copyright lawyers by sending them frivolous and often hilarious responses.
The Pirate Bay does this because in a fair legal system, their site should be viewed like GOOGLE. You search for all manners of torrents on it, and none of the uploading or downloading goes on through the pirate bay. CONSUMERS make the decision to infringe upon copyrights. If the companies have a problem with this, why aren't they trying to stop it through LEGAL means, instead of crafting the law to their advantage.
The question you need to be asking, Weird Harold, and the question I like you (if you respond to me, answer this) is why is it okay for corporations to influence the law in ways that criminalize people who weren't previously criminals?
"It's all to hide away from the law, because they make their living offering "infringing" files."
Why do you have to be so biased? You're just completely irrational. SOME people here might listen to you if you weren't clearly so one-sided. A rational beings can have two different opinions on two different subjects. A rational person can agree that copyright infringement is not stealing, while still thinking it is very wrong or just as bad for different reasons, for example.
It's funny how mistaken you are. Mike's article clearly says that the pirate bay doesn't make a living off copyright infringement. Lots of their money comes from other means, and they make money off advertisements for hits to their sites.
It's like saying pro-gun sites make money off murder. It's exactly like that. Is that what you're saying?
"Actually, this one has potential - they are now offering services in all of these countries. They are so going to get slapped from this one."
I hope not. I hope The Pirate Bay continues to fight for our freedoms, and I hope people begin to realize who the real righteous ones are in this situation, because the public needs to wake up and start fighting for its rights before it loses even more of them.
@16: You're almost saying Techdirt is right, but you think it sucks. It's not easy to make come up with new business models, but the artists who are trying them ARE finding successes. It's high-risk to try something new simply because you're one of the first people trying it, so you have no idea what to expect. Not all business models work and maybe none of the ones currently available are the perfect model, but what it comes down to is that musicians NEED to adapt, and the recording industry needs to die out, or drastically change.
It's not piracy that's "killing" the recording industry, it's TECHNOLOGY that's changing the very face of it. Music isn't dying - if I'm not mistaken it's being produced more than ever. And many musicians, especially those experimenting with better models, are finding their own successes. What it comes down to is that it's a lot easier to record music, to produce music, and to distribute music than it ever was. I think you're missing the point, really. Mike says that piracy needs to be UNDERCUT by free models, because piracy is already free and you can't compete with that. The point is to distribute your music, even if you're not making money on a per-song basis (if music is such an widely available product and so many people are willing to create it, why do artists deserve to be paid on a per-song basis?) and garner fans who will pay for the content you produce.
An excellent way to do that is using bittorrent. It's not the only good way, but it's quick, reliable, and you know that the more your music is being shared, the more well-known you are becoming. And then what it comes down to is giving people a reason to pay. People pay for quality and convenience, and artists can always make their products more accessible and higher-quality than can be provided through illegal means.
You're saying that it sucks when older industries die out because of a changing market, and maybe it does suck, but in most cases it results in a lot more opportunity and better results for consumers. Newspapers, music, and everything that is hurting right now will inevitably become more profitable once people pin down exactly how to become more profitable from them. You can only resist change for so long, and it only sucks for those who don't accept it. That's a truth that applies in every area of life.
No, Harold, but there are cases where they are simply hurting the company - or, at the very least, not benefitting it. I want to bring up the example of Square Enix forcing that company that was selling the Cloud sword to stop selling it. Square Enix wasn't making a sword, and the only thing that sword could possibly do is please hardcore fans, or get people obsessed with swords wondering about the background of it.
I remember how much buzz there was about the length of time it would take to complete The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, with many people claiming pre-release that it's an 80-hour game. That thought alone made gamers very happy.
For hardcore gamers, 40 hours is the minimum you want to be playing a game, and it's not just about value. It's the fact that if a game is doing something right, we want as much of that as possible. When it's a game heavily focused on online multiplayer, the single-player experience can be short; but for games like Zelda or Mario, breezing through them in a couple of hours would not only be unacceptable to most gamers, it would be offensive!
These games take years to come out, a really stellar title often only comes around twice a decade, and for it to have a long-lasting impression, it needs solid gameplay that lasts for as long as possible. the trend towards shorter games has been seen on the Xbox 360, and it's perfectly acceptable for the mainstream gamers who aren't very picky about content anyway, but I think there's a niche and a huge appreciation for a long, epic, varied, solid game.
This could work, but it certainly will begin to hurt DVD rentals. If you like the movie enough to watch the extras, you're probably going to want to buy it. Taking it off the DVD rentals just means people will turn away from renting DVDs - especially when you can easily access the same exact content online for free, and sometimes quicker than it takes to go out to the store and rent a movie.
I don't think it will have any effect what-so-ever, negative or positive, on DVD sales.
On the post: Streisand To Publish An Entire Book Detailing The Malibu Home She Once Wanted To Keep Very, Very Secret
Re: Re: Re:
Have fun with that.
On the post: Theater Ordered To Pay $10,000 For Searching Customers
Re: Re:
On the post: Study Says Listening To Sports While Driving Is Dangerous, So Let's Ban That, Too
Re: Other Activities
Driving under the influence is a big difference from driving with distractions.
On the post: Today, It's Good Manners Being Killed By Texting
Not textings fault. Raise your children better, please.
On the post: Encrypting Data Doesn't Do Much Good If You Tape The Password To The Storage Device...
Re:
On the post: NBC's Zucker Still Seems Like He's Feeling Around In The Dark
Hmm, there are faults to both those things. I can name a few examples of shows like Seinfeld, and not quite like Seinfeld, that survived in both a harsher economic climate and survived with low ratings. It happens sometimes. It happened with How I Met Your Mother, which is now CBS second most popular Monday night comedy (as a fan of the show, I used to hope it wouldn't get cancelled every few weeks in its first season). Then there's the example of Dollhouse, which had exceptionally low ratings, with the season finale being the worst - and it still got renewed!
It's up to the networks to place their faith in shows. But Carlos, I think you're being unfair. A network can't afford to keep every good quality show on air if it's not pulling in an audience. Firefly was an amazing show, and Fox dropped the ball with it, but even so, they couldn't have known it would develop a very strong fanbase. The people choosing what shows stay and what shows can't always make the right decision. Sometimes great shows must suffer for that.
On the post: YouTube Ordered To Pay $1.6 Million To ASCAP
Google's fault.
All the limitations on YouTube are only going to slowly, but surely, push consumers further away from the service. I wanted to share an SNL clip on Facebook, but YouTube removed it due to copyright infringement. So, I went to DailyMotion instead. Knock one down, another will rise in its place.
It's almost like record labels, TV networks and movie studios don't want fans.
On the post: Why Isn't There A Fan-Use Exception To Copyright Law?
Re:
On the post: The Value Of Twitter As Compared To Google
"What Twitter is enabling is an entirely different form of information gathering online"?
Whereas in Twitter's case, this form of communication only exists as a matter of consquence, there are web sites built from the ground up for this sort of thing (i.e. Yahoo! Answers).
On the post: Taser Sues Second Life For Having Virtual Tasers
How is this even a problem? I didn't even know there was a company called Taser! I thought all taser-like products were tasers - I thought that was just the name for any device of that kind, like a gun is a handheld rifle that shoots pieces of metal at high speeds. I didn't know taser is to handheld shock devices as Kleenex is to tissues.
This could never cause confusion to anyone. This definitely wouldn't hurt brand in any way. How utterly silly.
On the post: Woman Sues Google Over Dead Blogger's Allegedly Defamatory Comments
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
... I don't even see where he implied something that implies that.
What are you even saying? The article was about a woman who alleges that a blog is defamatory, but the person who made the post is dead. She can't ask him to take it down, so she's suing Google, so that Google will take it down. However, Google isn't liable for the blogger's content - someone else is, so Mike can't see how Google would be liable in court.
Then, he says, "if this was really an issue" (perhaps the only unlcear part in the post, because it suggests that something else is the issue - like money), there are other ways to take action, as Goldman has noted.
So, I have to ask, why, exactly, are you so confused?
"Woman sues Google to remove allegedly defamatory comments made by a dead guy."
Your problem is with the title? Really? Maybe English isn't [i]your[/i] first language.
On the post: Copyright And The First Amendment
Re:
This isn't about dismissing copyright, either. It's about putting the burden of proof on the copyright holders, to protect the consumers so that copyright law is not abused. Your post is basically one huge straw man to divert attention from the main issue here, and you never actually stated your stance on it. So what is your stance, Weird Harold. Do you believe the law NEEDS to be bent for the good of the entire country?
"Why innovate or create if you cannot profit from it?"
Are you saying copyright is the only way people can profit off their work? For this to be true, you'd have to claim that for thousands of years, people have NOT been innovating or creating and profiting from that, or, at the very least, that people have been stealing the work of others for thousands of years and profitting greatly off of it. I am a big believer in history repeats itself, so if you can find historical examples of such occurences, that'd go a long way in helping your argument.
But I think that, if you look at it with a clear mind, you'll see that people WANT to support artists they love. Look at the HUGE adoration fans have for their favourite rock stars, or video game nerds have for their favourite company. Humans naturally attach themselves to things they appreciate, and support those things. In the end, its fans that drive sales. Fans WANT to see their favourites succeed.
If you write a book, and someone plagiarizes the entire thing and releases it right after, WORD will get out. Yes, that person might make some money off it, but people would catch on (especially in the age of hyper-communication) and support for that person would go away, and they'd lose all their credibility. For example, someone can't create a carbon copy of Harry Potter and expect to make money, even if copyright didn't exist - I'm sure if there were a bootleg Harry Potter book being sold for a quarter of the price, some people would consider buying it, but in all reality, those people probably wouldn't have bought the book in the first place.
And, you know what, if someone creates something similar to what you wrote, but does it in their own words, or changes characters or whatever, and it becomes massively successful... Do you deserve credit for it? There are knock-off Harry Potter books starring a female lead and other massive variations Russia, and JK Rowling can't shut it down, but that brings up questions like, "Do those books harm or help JK Rowling's sales?" If the books help JK Rowlings (because people are likely to figure out the source material and want to read that, too), then she shouldn't be complaining, even if it does infringe on copyright law.
Unfortunately, and this is a truth that is hard to deny these days, most people want their cake and want to eat it, too - copyright holders are the ones who want to profit off their own work, and off the work of others. If they made some success off something, and someone else made more success off a similar thing, they want to leech off that success. We see it all the time, in all sorts of avenues, including newspapers that try to make Google pay them for traffic they're getting from Google, or musicians trying to make Google pay for hits that are getting them attention on YouTube... It's all pretty ridiculous, and at this point, I think if people don't start working on restricting copyright to make it more fair, lots of people are going to lose some pretty basic rights.
"That harm cannot be proven completely, but the potential harm is clear and even likely."
It's neither of those things. If it were clear, it wouldn't just be likely, and if it were just likely, it wouldn't be clear.
On the post: The Pirate Bay's New Business Model Apparently Working Wonders
"Why offer VPN? Why try to offer a way to hide? What are you hiding from? Why is TPB hiding in Sweden, and not operating in any other country?"
They're not HIDING in Sweden, but Sweden is the one place that hasn't been CORRUPTED by lobbyists - although, it's well on the road to that now. They run their site from Sweden because it's legal to run it from there and the corporations don't have as much ability to shut them down.
Let's be fair here - the pirate bay has NEVER hidden. They've always been forthright about their claims, their beliefs, and their attitudes toward file sharing and the law. They have always been right out there in plain site, and have even made strong attempts to aggravate copyright lawyers by sending them frivolous and often hilarious responses.
The Pirate Bay does this because in a fair legal system, their site should be viewed like GOOGLE. You search for all manners of torrents on it, and none of the uploading or downloading goes on through the pirate bay. CONSUMERS make the decision to infringe upon copyrights. If the companies have a problem with this, why aren't they trying to stop it through LEGAL means, instead of crafting the law to their advantage.
The question you need to be asking, Weird Harold, and the question I like you (if you respond to me, answer this) is why is it okay for corporations to influence the law in ways that criminalize people who weren't previously criminals?
"It's all to hide away from the law, because they make their living offering "infringing" files."
Why do you have to be so biased? You're just completely irrational. SOME people here might listen to you if you weren't clearly so one-sided. A rational beings can have two different opinions on two different subjects. A rational person can agree that copyright infringement is not stealing, while still thinking it is very wrong or just as bad for different reasons, for example.
It's funny how mistaken you are. Mike's article clearly says that the pirate bay doesn't make a living off copyright infringement. Lots of their money comes from other means, and they make money off advertisements for hits to their sites.
It's like saying pro-gun sites make money off murder. It's exactly like that. Is that what you're saying?
"Actually, this one has potential - they are now offering services in all of these countries. They are so going to get slapped from this one."
I hope not. I hope The Pirate Bay continues to fight for our freedoms, and I hope people begin to realize who the real righteous ones are in this situation, because the public needs to wake up and start fighting for its rights before it loses even more of them.
On the post: Andrew Lloyd Weber Trashes The Internet As 'Somalia Of Theft And Piracy'
Re: Drums Please...
On the post: Can We Please End The Myth That Anyone Is Trying To Take Away 'The Right Of Musicians To Get Paid'?
It's not piracy that's "killing" the recording industry, it's TECHNOLOGY that's changing the very face of it. Music isn't dying - if I'm not mistaken it's being produced more than ever. And many musicians, especially those experimenting with better models, are finding their own successes. What it comes down to is that it's a lot easier to record music, to produce music, and to distribute music than it ever was. I think you're missing the point, really. Mike says that piracy needs to be UNDERCUT by free models, because piracy is already free and you can't compete with that. The point is to distribute your music, even if you're not making money on a per-song basis (if music is such an widely available product and so many people are willing to create it, why do artists deserve to be paid on a per-song basis?) and garner fans who will pay for the content you produce.
An excellent way to do that is using bittorrent. It's not the only good way, but it's quick, reliable, and you know that the more your music is being shared, the more well-known you are becoming. And then what it comes down to is giving people a reason to pay. People pay for quality and convenience, and artists can always make their products more accessible and higher-quality than can be provided through illegal means.
You're saying that it sucks when older industries die out because of a changing market, and maybe it does suck, but in most cases it results in a lot more opportunity and better results for consumers. Newspapers, music, and everything that is hurting right now will inevitably become more profitable once people pin down exactly how to become more profitable from them. You can only resist change for so long, and it only sucks for those who don't accept it. That's a truth that applies in every area of life.
On the post: Electro-Harmonix Shows You Can Handle Trademark Infringement Without The Legal Nastygrams
On the post: Is Carbonite's Lawsuit Over Lost Data A Bad Idea?
It could hurt your reputation.
On the post: What's Wrong With Video Games That You Can Finish In Three Hours?
For hardcore gamers, 40 hours is the minimum you want to be playing a game, and it's not just about value. It's the fact that if a game is doing something right, we want as much of that as possible. When it's a game heavily focused on online multiplayer, the single-player experience can be short; but for games like Zelda or Mario, breezing through them in a couple of hours would not only be unacceptable to most gamers, it would be offensive!
These games take years to come out, a really stellar title often only comes around twice a decade, and for it to have a long-lasting impression, it needs solid gameplay that lasts for as long as possible. the trend towards shorter games has been seen on the Xbox 360, and it's perfectly acceptable for the mainstream gamers who aren't very picky about content anyway, but I think there's a niche and a huge appreciation for a long, epic, varied, solid game.
On the post: White House Says Feds Should Have Unfettered Access To Mobile Phone Location Info
But how much change can one man really make? If he comes through on a quarter of his promises many, many promises, I think I'll be impresseed.
On the post: If Your Business Model Revolves Around Taking Some Feature Away From People, You're Doing It Wrong
I don't think it will have any effect what-so-ever, negative or positive, on DVD sales.
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