Agreed. Just looking at the ad, I didn't even notice the "A" at first, and it certainly does look like they're trying to very deliberately invoke the singer and one of his famous sings. If I were on a jury I'd call this a pretty clear-cut case of false advertising/false endorsement.
What's "a huge area"? With today's technology, 100 square miles of solar panels could power the entire US continuously, if you had some way to store the power so it keeps flowing at night.
That may sound like a huge area, until you realize that somewhere, someplace in the deserts of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico, there has to be a 10x10 mile plot of land that's so inhospitable (and overly hot and sunny!) that no one wants it.
I know why one specific subset of people still use Apple tech no matter how much they screw everyone over. A close friend of mine is blind, and she describes Apple's VoiceOver accessibility technology as light-years beyond anything available for either Windows or Android devices.
Seems to me the folks at Google need to close that gap...
- The cost of medical treatment has increased several times faster than the rate of inflation for decades. - The biggest driver of this trend has been the increase in costs of pharmaceuticals. (The second-biggest is our ridiculous, insane medical insurance system, but that's a matter for a different comment.) - The biggest factor behind high pharmaceutical prices is a lack of competition, as shown by the far lower prices at which generic versions of the same drug are offered for almost every drug that has a generic version. - The reason little to no competition exists in so many cases is the ability for pharmaceutical companies to obtain patent coverage on their drugs and charge monopoly prices rather than market prices. - The baby boom generation, the largest demographic group in America, is currently beginning to retire, to age, and to draw on government benefits such as Medicare. - With aging comes health problems, and the increased need to use Medicare. - An exponentially increasing demand for expensive pharmaceuticals will inevitably strain our already-overstressed, over-indebted Treasury beyond the breaking point. - A nation running out of money has far greater repercussions than simply a financial crisis; it historically leads to systemic meltdown, riots, shortages of food and other basic supplies, and the breakdown of social order very quickly.
Conclusion: We are on the verge of reaching the point at which there is an irreconcilable conflict between the existence of pharmaceutical patents and the national security of the USA. It will be interesting to watch politicians who are strongly in favor of both concepts try to deal with this simple truth.
So this guy's all in favor of expanding patent protection for Big Pharma. Let's lay out a few points here...
- The cost of medical treatment has increased several times faster than the rate of inflation for decades. - The biggest driver of this trend has been the increase in costs of pharmaceuticals. (The second-biggest is our ridiculous, insane medical insurance system, but that's a matter for a different comment.) - The biggest factor behind high pharmaceutical prices is a lack of competition, as shown by the far lower prices at which generic versions of the same drug are offered for almost every drug that has a generic version. - The reason little to no competition exists in so many cases is the ability for pharmaceutical companies to obtain patent coverage on their drugs and charge monopoly prices rather than market prices. - The baby boom generation, the largest demographic group in America, is currently beginning to retire, to age, and to draw on government benefits such as Medicare. - With aging comes health problems, and the increased need to use Medicare. - An exponentially increasing demand for expensive pharmaceuticals will inevitably strain our already-overstressed, over-indebted Treasury beyond the breaking point. - A nation running out of money has far greater repercussions than simply a financial crisis; it historically leads to systemic meltdown, riots, shortages of food and other basic supplies, and the breakdown of social order very quickly.
Conclusion: We are on the verge of reaching the point at which there is an irreconcilable conflict between the existence of pharmaceutical patents and the national security of the USA. It will be interesting to watch politicians who are strongly in favor of both concepts try to deal with this simple truth.
Again, what DMCA safe harbors? The DMCA Takedown system is not a safe harbor. An actual safe harbor doesn't have strings attached; when someone says "do what I want or you will be subjected to [unpleasant thing,] that's not "safety," that's not "protecting them from [unpleasant thing]". That's extortion, plain and simple.
CDA 230 is a safe harbor. It tells the bad guys "no, you can't do that, period."
The DMCA Takedown system does not do that. It tells the bad guys "you can use the threat of lawsuits as leverage to get extrajudicial remedies for things you really should have to use the legal system for," and it leads directly to exactly the sort of stuff this sleazebag is complaining about:
According to Danny, I would have to file a lawsuit and obtain a subpoena before Etsy would disclose Kharma Lu’s contact information. Yes, that’s right. In order to simply find out who is stealing my photo, I would have to a) hire an attorney, b) go to court and c) request a subpeona for Etsy.
Yes, you do have to do that, but not for long, not if the DMCA continues to provide a foundation to build further bad laws on. As long as the "safe harbors" exist, the ratchet will continue to turn further, and it likely won't be long before guys like this will be able to get exactly what he wants here without having to actually go through the oh-so-inconvenient process of Due Process.
Despite multiple requests when I've brought up this topic on Techdirt, no one has yet pointed out a single case where the so-called "safe harbors" actually kept anyone safe when the bad guys wanted them gone. So why don't we face reality here? It's not good, it doesn't protect people, it doesn't protect websites, and all it does it make things worse. It has to go.
The entire DMCA needs to be repealed as the first step if we're going to make any real progress on rolling back copyright abuse, and the DMCA Takedown system is one of the prime reasons why, not one of the few points that makes it worth keeping.
Librarians and readers should be up in arms over this, and looking for alternatives.
I've been looking for an alternative for seven years now, and the alternative is: let's call a spade a spade. Give DRM a legal status to match reality: it's a hacking tool, nothing but malware, and creating and distributing it should be subject to the exact same legal restrictions as viruses, trojans, etc.
What high tax rates? You do realize that corporate taxes are currently at historic lows, the lowest they've been in this country since the Great Depression, right?
Here's a much simpler solution: DRM, by definition, is malware. Its only reason for existence is to cause someone else's computer (ie not belonging to the author of the DRM'd software) to be less capable and to refuse to do what the computer's owner wants, unless the computer owner complies with the arbitrary wishes of the DRM author. On a conceptual level, this is nothing but an act of hacking, no different from ransomware.
As such, the use and distribution of DRM should be illegal. Period. Then we wouldn't have to worry about arcane details of antitrust law. Does Apple put DRM on its products? Yes. Then it's in violation of the law.
Why are we still talking about the DMCA takedown system as if it's something good that protects the Internet, when it's been obvious for years that that's anything but the case?
This article even calls out one of the best examples of this phenomenon... as support for the DMCA takedown system: YouTube. The DMCA did nothing to keep Viacom from trying to sue YouTube out of existence, and if a company with Google's resources hadn't bought them out, there's no way YouTube would have survived.
Similarly, it did nothing to protect Aereo, MegaUpload, or any number of other cases that Techdirt has covered over the years, but Techdirt always seems to have this particular blind spot that the DMCA takedown system provides a "safe harbor" that benefits and protects legitimate websites.
As Mark Twain famously put it, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." And in this case, the existence of "safe harbors" just ain't so. Maybe in theory they're supposed to be there, but where are the examples of it actually protecting companies that the bad guys want gone?
All the DMCA takedown system does is gets (frequently illegitimate) censorship for copyright owners, without them having to go to the trouble of actually establishing in a court of law that the alleged infringer did something wrong. The entire system is an abomination and needs to be thrown out in its entirety.
From the article: "Any keylogger is already a dangerous tool."
Well so is a power saw, but only if you don't know how to use it safely. The same could be said of automobiles, of ladders, matches, or antibiotics. Just about any useful tool has the potential to be dangerous if used badly, but it's highly irresponsible to go around insinuating that the whole class of tool is a bad thing when one particular model is found to have a safety defect.
Again, good godamn parenting should be far enough to protect the kids.
Yeah, it really should, but often it's not, especially when one of the parents is actively being part of the problem.
When my (underage) brother was being *ahem* "groomed" by his father's boyfriend (long story) with the full knowledge of his father, our family suspected something was going on, but it wasn't until I found and installed software similar to this that we were able to get evidence on the guy and get some court-ordered protection in time to avert some serious tragedies.
Even if this particular program is poorly designed, it's a horrible overreaction to say they're all no good. A properly-configured, properly-deployed keylogger really can help protect children, and the focus should be on making sure the software is up to standards, not on blanket condemnations of useful tools. I'm very disappointed in Techdirt's hasty generalizations on this topic.
What Julia Reda calls victims, I call negligent individuals.
If Car A and Car B got in a wreck, and the driver of Car B was unquestionably at fault in the collision, and the driver of Car A ended up dead or severely injured because they were not wearing their seat belt, and it appears that they almost certainly would have been safe if they'd been wearing a seat belt, would you call it "victim-blaming" to point out this fact?
On the post: DailyDirt: Fuel From The Sun
Re: Re: Solar is very expensive
On the post: DailyDirt: Fuel From The Sun
Re: Solar is very expensive
On the post: Don Henley Sues Clothing Retailer Over Its Use Of Common English Words
Re: Re: I'm not persuaded
On the post: DailyDirt: Fuel From The Sun
That may sound like a huge area, until you realize that somewhere, someplace in the deserts of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico, there has to be a 10x10 mile plot of land that's so inhospitable (and overly hot and sunny!) that no one wants it.
On the post: How Australia's New 'Anti-Terror' Censorship Law Could Cover Up Botched Intelligence Operations
On the post: New iOS Update To Break Emulators On iPhones Just Because
Re: Re:
Seems to me the folks at Google need to close that gap...
On the post: More Abuse Of The Orphan Drug System: Taking Treatment From Free To $80,000 A Year
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Cable Astroturfing Effort Comes Off Like When Your Dad Tries To Sound Like A Teenager
On the post: More Abuse Of The Orphan Drug System: Taking Treatment From Free To $80,000 A Year
Re: Re: Re: Re:
- The cost of medical treatment has increased several times faster than the rate of inflation for decades.
- The biggest driver of this trend has been the increase in costs of pharmaceuticals. (The second-biggest is our ridiculous, insane medical insurance system, but that's a matter for a different comment.)
- The biggest factor behind high pharmaceutical prices is a lack of competition, as shown by the far lower prices at which generic versions of the same drug are offered for almost every drug that has a generic version.
- The reason little to no competition exists in so many cases is the ability for pharmaceutical companies to obtain patent coverage on their drugs and charge monopoly prices rather than market prices.
- The baby boom generation, the largest demographic group in America, is currently beginning to retire, to age, and to draw on government benefits such as Medicare.
- With aging comes health problems, and the increased need to use Medicare.
- An exponentially increasing demand for expensive pharmaceuticals will inevitably strain our already-overstressed, over-indebted Treasury beyond the breaking point.
- A nation running out of money has far greater repercussions than simply a financial crisis; it historically leads to systemic meltdown, riots, shortages of food and other basic supplies, and the breakdown of social order very quickly.
Conclusion: We are on the verge of reaching the point at which there is an irreconcilable conflict between the existence of pharmaceutical patents and the national security of the USA. It will be interesting to watch politicians who are strongly in favor of both concepts try to deal with this simple truth.
On the post: If You're Going To Spread FUD About Evil Cyberlockers, Maybe Don't Use Two Debunked Studies As The Basis?
Things are about to get interesting
- The cost of medical treatment has increased several times faster than the rate of inflation for decades.
- The biggest driver of this trend has been the increase in costs of pharmaceuticals. (The second-biggest is our ridiculous, insane medical insurance system, but that's a matter for a different comment.)
- The biggest factor behind high pharmaceutical prices is a lack of competition, as shown by the far lower prices at which generic versions of the same drug are offered for almost every drug that has a generic version.
- The reason little to no competition exists in so many cases is the ability for pharmaceutical companies to obtain patent coverage on their drugs and charge monopoly prices rather than market prices.
- The baby boom generation, the largest demographic group in America, is currently beginning to retire, to age, and to draw on government benefits such as Medicare.
- With aging comes health problems, and the increased need to use Medicare.
- An exponentially increasing demand for expensive pharmaceuticals will inevitably strain our already-overstressed, over-indebted Treasury beyond the breaking point.
- A nation running out of money has far greater repercussions than simply a financial crisis; it historically leads to systemic meltdown, riots, shortages of food and other basic supplies, and the breakdown of social order very quickly.
Conclusion: We are on the verge of reaching the point at which there is an irreconcilable conflict between the existence of pharmaceutical patents and the national security of the USA. It will be interesting to watch politicians who are strongly in favor of both concepts try to deal with this simple truth.
On the post: Photographer (And Founder Of Copyright Enforcement Service) Angry That Online Service Won't Simply Hand Over User Info When He Demands It
What safe harbors?
CDA 230 is a safe harbor. It tells the bad guys "no, you can't do that, period."
The DMCA Takedown system does not do that. It tells the bad guys "you can use the threat of lawsuits as leverage to get extrajudicial remedies for things you really should have to use the legal system for," and it leads directly to exactly the sort of stuff this sleazebag is complaining about:
Yes, you do have to do that, but not for long, not if the DMCA continues to provide a foundation to build further bad laws on. As long as the "safe harbors" exist, the ratchet will continue to turn further, and it likely won't be long before guys like this will be able to get exactly what he wants here without having to actually go through the oh-so-inconvenient process of Due Process.
Despite multiple requests when I've brought up this topic on Techdirt, no one has yet pointed out a single case where the so-called "safe harbors" actually kept anyone safe when the bad guys wanted them gone. So why don't we face reality here? It's not good, it doesn't protect people, it doesn't protect websites, and all it does it make things worse. It has to go.
The entire DMCA needs to be repealed as the first step if we're going to make any real progress on rolling back copyright abuse, and the DMCA Takedown system is one of the prime reasons why, not one of the few points that makes it worth keeping.
On the post: Adobe's Half-Assed Response To Spying On All Your eBooks
I've been looking for an alternative for seven years now, and the alternative is: let's call a spade a spade. Give DRM a legal status to match reality: it's a hacking tool, nothing but malware, and creating and distributing it should be subject to the exact same legal restrictions as viruses, trojans, etc.
On the post: Twitter Sues The US Government For The Right To Disclose Surveillance Requests
Re:
On the post: Apple Facing Trial Over Whether Its Use Of DRM Violated Antitrust Laws
Re: Amazon's DRM?
On the post: Apple Facing Trial Over Whether Its Use Of DRM Violated Antitrust Laws
Why does this have to be so complicated?
As such, the use and distribution of DRM should be illegal. Period. Then we wouldn't have to worry about arcane details of antitrust law. Does Apple put DRM on its products? Yes. Then it's in violation of the law.
See how simple that is?
On the post: The Silver Lining On The Grooveshark Ruling: At Least It Didn't Screw Up The DMCA Safe Harbors
What safe harbors?
This article even calls out one of the best examples of this phenomenon... as support for the DMCA takedown system: YouTube. The DMCA did nothing to keep Viacom from trying to sue YouTube out of existence, and if a company with Google's resources hadn't bought them out, there's no way YouTube would have survived.
Similarly, it did nothing to protect Aereo, MegaUpload, or any number of other cases that Techdirt has covered over the years, but Techdirt always seems to have this particular blind spot that the DMCA takedown system provides a "safe harbor" that benefits and protects legitimate websites.
As Mark Twain famously put it, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." And in this case, the existence of "safe harbors" just ain't so. Maybe in theory they're supposed to be there, but where are the examples of it actually protecting companies that the bad guys want gone?
All the DMCA takedown system does is gets (frequently illegitimate) censorship for copyright owners, without them having to go to the trouble of actually establishing in a court of law that the alleged infringer did something wrong. The entire system is an abomination and needs to be thrown out in its entirety.
On the post: San Diego District Attorney Issues Warning About Dangerous Spyware She Purchased & Distributed; But Still Stands By It
Re: Re: Re:
Well so is a power saw, but only if you don't know how to use it safely. The same could be said of automobiles, of ladders, matches, or antibiotics. Just about any useful tool has the potential to be dangerous if used badly, but it's highly irresponsible to go around insinuating that the whole class of tool is a bad thing when one particular model is found to have a safety defect.
On the post: Roca Labs Lawsuit Gets Even More Bizarre: Now With An 'Unauthorized' Guest Appearance By 'TV Celebrity' Alfonso Ribeiro
On the post: San Diego District Attorney Issues Warning About Dangerous Spyware She Purchased & Distributed; But Still Stands By It
Re:
Yeah, it really should, but often it's not, especially when one of the parents is actively being part of the problem.
When my (underage) brother was being *ahem* "groomed" by his father's boyfriend (long story) with the full knowledge of his father, our family suspected something was going on, but it wasn't until I found and installed software similar to this that we were able to get evidence on the guy and get some court-ordered protection in time to avert some serious tragedies.
Even if this particular program is poorly designed, it's a horrible overreaction to say they're all no good. A properly-configured, properly-deployed keylogger really can help protect children, and the focus should be on making sure the software is up to standards, not on blanket condemnations of useful tools. I'm very disappointed in Techdirt's hasty generalizations on this topic.
On the post: Next EU Commissioner Responsible For Internet Says Celebrities Storing Nude Pictures Online Are 'Stupid'
If Car A and Car B got in a wreck, and the driver of Car B was unquestionably at fault in the collision, and the driver of Car A ended up dead or severely injured because they were not wearing their seat belt, and it appears that they almost certainly would have been safe if they'd been wearing a seat belt, would you call it "victim-blaming" to point out this fact?
If not, what is the difference?
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