My rethinking joining Amazon Prime has more to do with my confidence in the company being shaken. My opinion of Amazon is that they are usually a fair company (with some early and current Kindle exceptions). I rely on them to assure me that third parties deal with me in a fair manner. I blame them first for allowing this provision in the contract, and blame them even more for not being up front about it. The movie companies may have forced the provision, but Amazon was 100% in control of burying notice to its customers.
Wow. I was just about to join Amazon Prime when I saw this.
Toddlers fall in love with a particular movie and watch it over and over for a while. Then they move on to another movie. As someone with a toddler in the family my fear is that I would have a movie suddenly yanked during the favorite period. Obviously the person who made this decision has never faced a two-year-old denied her Lion King.
Amazon may blame the studio, but as a customer I blame Amazon. A lot of times when I buy from Amazon I am actually dealing with a third party I don't know. To a large extent I depend on Amazon as an intermediary to make sure I get a fair deal. If Amazon agreed to this "feature" then they have failed their customers. I was tolerant of some of their bad Kindle decisions because they were dragging publishers into the 21st century. But in this case they utterly failed their customers with a blatantly unfair policy, then they compounded their failure by burying it in walls of text.
I develop apps on the side. Or at least I did. However, I am now at a point where every time I start with a fresh idea it turns out that there is a potential patent issue on the horizon. In industries which are naturally innovative the current patent system is stifling innovation, not encouraging it.
My concern is that the DV will continue its decline after removing the paywall. The paywall has already done its job by chasing former readers and writers to the competition. Users still have it blocked in news aggregators because the don't like browsing into paywalls. Good reporting might save the Daily Variety, but now it has to rebuild in a crowded market.
Every time I see a news article about wasted taxpayer money I suspect a bloated consulting contract is lurking somewhere in the shadows. I worked in government for too long to think otherwise.
In this case the AC might not have been a regular reader. In my mind* this is the scenario of how this comment came to be posted: AC is a Realtor who was upset about the rating system and was aware of the lawsuit. Someone walked into the MLS office and said "Hey, you know that NeighborCity lawsuit? Some jerk over at a website called Techdirt just wrote some nonsense about it." AC looked up TD and commented.
*Disclaimer: Things in my mind may not mesh with reality.
The question is not that clear cut. In the US facts by themselves cannot be copyrighted. Some European countries have forms of database copyright, but not the US. It does not matter if the facts are gathered from scraping pages or consulting an encyclopedia. I suspect the case will hinge on whether creative elements were copied.
Location shooting can dump a lot of money into the local economy. There have been enough big movies shot in New Zealand to create an industry around servicing movie production.
New Zealand has become a favorite location for movies. Hollywood has dumped a ton of money into movies shot in NZ, and there are more movies waiting to be made there. The NZ economy benefits enough from the movie industry to give the MPAA a fair amount of clout with the government.
It is going to be interesting to see how this plays out. Will the government give Hollywood what it wants or will the Dotcom fiasco be too toxic?
However the government goes, the MPAA probably loses. They have spent a huge amount of political capital on NZ. Even if they get everything they are asking for they will have a hollow victory in the long run. Of the many of the things they want in the TPP to fight piracy, none of it is likely to help movie profits. In the meantime exposure of the fiasco with Megaupload is making other countries much less likely to get involved in MPAA-driven tilting at windmills.
At some point attorneys need to be held liable for their actions. SLAPP laws should include sanctions against the attorneys who file them because these types of lawsuits have a clear intent to abuse the legal system.
>>Your problems as always is that you are caught in the very short term "what needed a license today" rather than the "what great things have been discovered".
Since you seem to be an ardent patent supporter let me ask you your own question. What great things have been patented in the last 12 months? There are roughly 250,000 patents granted in a year. I will set the bar very low at 10%. Could you show me 25,000 "great things" among them? I am also willing to set the bar low on the definition of "great things." Find 25,000 that are truly not based on prior art, and are not obvious to a skilled probationer in the field.
Apple and Google now spend more on patents and patent litigation than they do on research. When is someone going to do a study about how much each patent issued drags down the US economy?
So the GOP decided to help Lachowicz and Democrats win over the WoW players? How very thoughtful of them. There are a lot of independent voters who play, and now the GOP has made it clear to them that they are not welcome in the GOP. Brilliant.
I think most professional organizations do the same thing. In fact, I think think that there may be a statistical relationship that says the higher the dues, the more likely they are to sell and abuse your membership information. I one had a minor typo in my address on an insanely expensive professional membership. I got massive amounts of junk mail with the organization's typo for as long as I was a member. One year I started getting typo'd mail for strip clubs. My wife inquired about my suddenly colorful mail. I finally realized that they were having the national conference in Vegas, and that is where the strip clubs were located. That was one contributing factor to me cancelling my membership.
Modern business executives see everything as a zero-sum game; if someone else is making money then I must be loosing. Zero-sum thinking and the failure to understand basic economics are the hallmarks of the modern board room.
Ighome.com so far looks like the best of the alternatives. At least their customer support seems good. I sent in a suggestion this morning and got an email four hours later saying it was implemented.
Dodd isn't alone. That is why a lot of media companies are failing to understand what the public wants.
One example is the way the publishing industry embraced the iPad. They thought of the iPad as a way that the public would consume their products. They thought they would be saved by electronic subscriptions that let big publishers just replace physical magazines and newspapers with electronic ones that are a lot cheaper to produce and distribute. Unfortunately for the big media companies the public seems a lot more interested in applications that let them interact with other individuals and with the media itself. Some of them are starting to figure this out. The others are going out of business.
You raise an interesting point. When most large bubbles break they hurt the entire economy. However, the IP bubble bursting might actually invigorate the economy as a whole. Some businesses would be hurt, but the industries those businesses are part of might actually have a surge of innovation and growth.
Disclosure: This comment has not been endorsed by the MPAA, RIAA, and the West Texas court system.
Using patents as incentives has some serious weaknesses, and some of the cracks in the system are beginning to show. Several recent drug patents are for minor adjustments to existing drugs, or for drugs which are only minimally better than existing medicines. A lot of drugs that are badly needed still go neglected because they will be major profit centers.
Drug companies have gotten extremely dependent on patents and the monopoly rents they can command. Even huge drug companies are now in danger of collapsing when a couple of patents expire. The industry has become complacent and relies on marketing rather than research to bolster quarterly profits and executive bonuses.
On the post: Studio To Amazon Instant Video Customer: Thanks For The $$$. Enjoy Your Blank Screen.
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On the post: Studio To Amazon Instant Video Customer: Thanks For The $$$. Enjoy Your Blank Screen.
Toddlers fall in love with a particular movie and watch it over and over for a while. Then they move on to another movie. As someone with a toddler in the family my fear is that I would have a movie suddenly yanked during the favorite period. Obviously the person who made this decision has never faced a two-year-old denied her Lion King.
Amazon may blame the studio, but as a customer I blame Amazon. A lot of times when I buy from Amazon I am actually dealing with a third party I don't know. To a large extent I depend on Amazon as an intermediary to make sure I get a fair deal. If Amazon agreed to this "feature" then they have failed their customers. I was tolerant of some of their bad Kindle decisions because they were dragging publishers into the 21st century. But in this case they utterly failed their customers with a blatantly unfair policy, then they compounded their failure by burying it in walls of text.
On the post: Nobel Prize Winning Economist Eric Maskin: In Highly Innovative Industries, It May Be Better To Scrap Patents
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On the post: Another Failed Paywall Bites The Dust; Daily Variety Goes Free
On the post: New Jersey Transit's 'Text Against Terror' Program Exchanges $5.8 Million For ZERO Terrorists
On the post: Fight Over Real Estate Listings Escalates As NeighborCity Counters Copyright Claims With Antitrust Accusations
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*Disclaimer: Things in my mind may not mesh with reality.
On the post: Fight Over Real Estate Listings Escalates As NeighborCity Counters Copyright Claims With Antitrust Accusations
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On the post: Hollywood Wines & Dines Kiwi Politicians To Get Them To Support Hollywood's Copyright Insanity In TPP
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Location shooting can dump a lot of money into the local economy. There have been enough big movies shot in New Zealand to create an industry around servicing movie production.
On the post: Hollywood Wines & Dines Kiwi Politicians To Get Them To Support Hollywood's Copyright Insanity In TPP
It is going to be interesting to see how this plays out. Will the government give Hollywood what it wants or will the Dotcom fiasco be too toxic?
However the government goes, the MPAA probably loses. They have spent a huge amount of political capital on NZ. Even if they get everything they are asking for they will have a hollow victory in the long run. Of the many of the things they want in the TPP to fight piracy, none of it is likely to help movie profits. In the meantime exposure of the fiasco with Megaupload is making other countries much less likely to get involved in MPAA-driven tilting at windmills.
On the post: Innocence Of Muslims Actress Now Argues That The Movie Violates Her Copyright
Re: She Is Now Officially Unemployable As An Actress
From the part of the movie I saw, I don't think she has to worry about getting hired again by any producer.
On the post: Innocence Of Muslims Actress Now Argues That The Movie Violates Her Copyright
On the post: Is It Really A Good Idea To Open A 'Mini' Patent Office Directly Within Cornell's NYC Tech Campus?
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Since you seem to be an ardent patent supporter let me ask you your own question. What great things have been patented in the last 12 months? There are roughly 250,000 patents granted in a year. I will set the bar very low at 10%. Could you show me 25,000 "great things" among them? I am also willing to set the bar low on the definition of "great things." Find 25,000 that are truly not based on prior art, and are not obvious to a skilled probationer in the field.
On the post: Is It Really A Good Idea To Open A 'Mini' Patent Office Directly Within Cornell's NYC Tech Campus?
On the post: Maine GOP Apparently Believes That Playing World Of Warcraft Makes You Unfit For Office
On the post: Not This Again: IEEE Plays Up Bogus 'Digital Sharecropping' Argument Again
Re: Oh IEEE...
On the post: Not This Again: IEEE Plays Up Bogus 'Digital Sharecropping' Argument Again
On the post: Google's Copyright Crackdown Punishes Author For Torrenting His Own Book
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On the post: The MPAA's Problem In A Nutshell: Views Relationship With The Public As One Way
One example is the way the publishing industry embraced the iPad. They thought of the iPad as a way that the public would consume their products. They thought they would be saved by electronic subscriptions that let big publishers just replace physical magazines and newspapers with electronic ones that are a lot cheaper to produce and distribute. Unfortunately for the big media companies the public seems a lot more interested in applications that let them interact with other individuals and with the media itself. Some of them are starting to figure this out. The others are going out of business.
On the post: Becker & Posner: Time To Minimize Patent & Copyright Law
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Disclosure: This comment has not been endorsed by the MPAA, RIAA, and the West Texas court system.
On the post: Becker & Posner: Time To Minimize Patent & Copyright Law
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Drug companies have gotten extremely dependent on patents and the monopoly rents they can command. Even huge drug companies are now in danger of collapsing when a couple of patents expire. The industry has become complacent and relies on marketing rather than research to bolster quarterly profits and executive bonuses.
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