I think you're all missing the point, anyway. How does this harm Square Enix? I don't see THEM making gigantic swords. This can only result in MORE MONEY for them, because it will either appease fans, or get newcomers interested. I'm sure the site sells plenty of swords, and a sword that massive would only bring attention to Square Enix.
The site wasn't passing this off as their own unique conception and there was no trademark confusion here. I don't see how it's Trademark infringement if you're not actually causing consumers to get confused about Trademarks.
The more I read Techdirt, the more I realize that copyright and trademark laws are not made to protect artists or inventors - they're made so that major corporations can monopolize on content made by such artists/inventors. It's frightening how much power we're giving to these companies... I think it's time for people to wake up.
For those of you no longer buying a Kindle, you should send Amazon a few hateful e-mails.
Someone should pretend to be blind and send Amazon a complaint. Isn't there some sort of over-arching visually impaired rights group that would be interested in how greed resulted in restricted rights for visually impaired people using this device.
What the authors guild doesn't realize is that this means anyone who is smart and doesn't have the option to play the text-to-speech on an ebook, will simply downloaded the copyrighted version online.
What this results in is the simply LOSS OF SALES and customer disatisfaction.
"'People Don't Read Privacy Policies... But Want Them To Be Clearer' clearly nonsense since if people didn't read tehm they wouldn't care, but they do care as has been demonstrated often - recently by the latest facebook climb down."
Hardly anyone read that. A very small amount of people did, took a misleading excerpt and blew it out of proportion all over the blogosphere (do people even use that term anymore...). Basically, most people read a tiny portion of the changes and started freaking out, because they thought Facebook was going to start selling user-content.
"'In fact, regulators in both the UK and the US seem to be admitting no one reads privacy policies....' also nonsense - ehat they actually said was that 71% did not read or understand privacy policies, not understanding is clearly not the same as not reading, and lets face it even the genius Masnicks don't understand them."
They're interrelated. You don't read them because they're overly long and difficult to understand. You have to muddle through a bunch of ambiguous garbage to understand any of the basic concepts. I make an effort to skim through them and get what I can, but that's more than I can say for most people I know. I mean, I think it's safe to say most people don't even read instruction manuals unless they're absolutely stuck, and those usually are much easier to read (and often come with pretty pictures!)
"'...uselessness of privacy policies has a lot more to do with the fact that people don't care..." typical of the Masnicks - big business should be free to do what ever it wants without interference because nobody cares anyway."
That's not what Mike was saying; you're taking it out of context. It's ironic how you insult his ability to grasp things when you can't even grasp the simple things he's saying. What he's saying is privacy policies are rendered useless when no one cares to navigate through them, or don't trust that the company is going to hold true to the policy anyway.
The problem with using the term "stealing" and "thieves" for people who infringe on coyprights is that these "thieves" are not necessarily, and often not at all, taking anything away from a company. If, for example, one downloads/uploads a video game that is no longer sold anywhere, that person is committing the crime you're so against, yet no one has lost anything. Not profits, not property. How, exactly, is that stealing? How is that anything but infringing on a copyright?
If someone downloads a song, then buys the the album 2 weeks later, what would you call that? Stealing for 2 weeks? Temporary stealing? No one has lost anything, yet again. How about if someone streamed multiple seasons of a show online to catch up, and ended up recommending that show to other people, and resulted in bringing many more fans to the show every week. What sort of foolish person would compare that to stealing? Is it possible to steal when you're only benefitting the victim?
The last sentence of your post finally begins to stumble upon one of the main issues: it's a problem with the intellectual property system. It's also a problem with the idealogies of bigger corporations and their reluctance to adapt to technology.
On the post: If You Duplicate That Virtual Sword In The Real World... Is It Copyright Infringement?
The site wasn't passing this off as their own unique conception and there was no trademark confusion here. I don't see how it's Trademark infringement if you're not actually causing consumers to get confused about Trademarks.
The more I read Techdirt, the more I realize that copyright and trademark laws are not made to protect artists or inventors - they're made so that major corporations can monopolize on content made by such artists/inventors. It's frightening how much power we're giving to these companies... I think it's time for people to wake up.
On the post: Amazon Gives In To Ridiculous Authors Guild Claim: Allows Authors To Block Text-To-Speech
For those of you no longer buying a Kindle, you should send Amazon a few hateful e-mails.
Someone should pretend to be blind and send Amazon a complaint. Isn't there some sort of over-arching visually impaired rights group that would be interested in how greed resulted in restricted rights for visually impaired people using this device.
What the authors guild doesn't realize is that this means anyone who is smart and doesn't have the option to play the text-to-speech on an ebook, will simply downloaded the copyrighted version online.
What this results in is the simply LOSS OF SALES and customer disatisfaction.
How incredibly fucking stupid!
On the post: People Don't Read Privacy Policies... But Want Them To Be Clearer
Re:
Hardly anyone read that. A very small amount of people did, took a misleading excerpt and blew it out of proportion all over the blogosphere (do people even use that term anymore...). Basically, most people read a tiny portion of the changes and started freaking out, because they thought Facebook was going to start selling user-content.
"'In fact, regulators in both the UK and the US seem to be admitting no one reads privacy policies....' also nonsense - ehat they actually said was that 71% did not read or understand privacy policies, not understanding is clearly not the same as not reading, and lets face it even the genius Masnicks don't understand them."
They're interrelated. You don't read them because they're overly long and difficult to understand. You have to muddle through a bunch of ambiguous garbage to understand any of the basic concepts. I make an effort to skim through them and get what I can, but that's more than I can say for most people I know. I mean, I think it's safe to say most people don't even read instruction manuals unless they're absolutely stuck, and those usually are much easier to read (and often come with pretty pictures!)
"'...uselessness of privacy policies has a lot more to do with the fact that people don't care..." typical of the Masnicks - big business should be free to do what ever it wants without interference because nobody cares anyway."
That's not what Mike was saying; you're taking it out of context. It's ironic how you insult his ability to grasp things when you can't even grasp the simple things he's saying. What he's saying is privacy policies are rendered useless when no one cares to navigate through them, or don't trust that the company is going to hold true to the policy anyway.
On the post: Indie Label That Gets It: Sell Things People Want, Not Just What They Hear
Nice, gyffes...
The problem with using the term "stealing" and "thieves" for people who infringe on coyprights is that these "thieves" are not necessarily, and often not at all, taking anything away from a company. If, for example, one downloads/uploads a video game that is no longer sold anywhere, that person is committing the crime you're so against, yet no one has lost anything. Not profits, not property. How, exactly, is that stealing? How is that anything but infringing on a copyright?
If someone downloads a song, then buys the the album 2 weeks later, what would you call that? Stealing for 2 weeks? Temporary stealing? No one has lost anything, yet again. How about if someone streamed multiple seasons of a show online to catch up, and ended up recommending that show to other people, and resulted in bringing many more fans to the show every week. What sort of foolish person would compare that to stealing? Is it possible to steal when you're only benefitting the victim?
The last sentence of your post finally begins to stumble upon one of the main issues: it's a problem with the intellectual property system. It's also a problem with the idealogies of bigger corporations and their reluctance to adapt to technology.
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