Not an Electronic Rodent’s Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (1,470)

• On the post: This Is My Pencil. This Is My Pencil Pretending To Be A Gun. One Is For Writing. One Is For Mandatory Suspensions.

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 9 May 2013 @ 11:20am

  
  

  Re:

  If any 7-year-old kids are truly worried about shootings to the extent they can't handle their classmates goofing around with pencils,

  And if such wilting violets do exist, should the correct response be:
  
  1/ "Oh, poor dears! Let us move heaven, earth and civil liberties to attempt the impossible task of protecting the precious things from all the evils of the world!"
  
  2/ "Toughen up and get used to it kids, the real world can be a scary place and an imaginary gun is not going to figure in the top 1000 of scary things you see in your life."
  
  Answers on a postcard please...?

• On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 6 May 2013 @ 2:43pm

  
  

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active

  Here's an example.

  Except in terms of government that's a fictional example. It's an example of how a government *might* work. Unless you have a plan as to how to enact such a government, and ideally how to get around the issue of such a setup being co-opted by minority opinions in much the same way as the various levels of current governmental structure, then it seem rather irrelevant to discussion.
  And no, I am not "against government". I am not an anarchist. However, it is fair to say I am unimpressed with the current governmental structure pretty much top to bottom and don't see it improving any time soon.

• On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 6 May 2013 @ 12:14pm

  
  

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active

  It is possible to break down government into small units which reflect the wishes of the people within those small units and to operate based on a consensus within the group.

  It's possible to break down the human body to discrete organs fulfilling specific functions but one doesn't try and describe the functioning of a person in terms of those sub-units.
  
  The differences you describe are mostly semantic rather than real and any such "small units" still typically have little to do with majority opinion or even empirical evidence over pet theories or the financial urgings of special interests so I'm not sure what it achieves anyway.

• On the post: USTR Nominee Froman Called 'One Of The Most Egregious Examples Of The Way The Revolving Door Works Between Gov't And Business'

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 6 May 2013 @ 12:07pm

  
  

  Re: Re: Re:

  When too few people are in contention for an election, it is far too easy for external forces to steal the election on specific areas!

  Indeed, that's another way of saying "The interests of entities with millions to spend are not the same as the majority" and that's rather unlikely to change any time soon don't you think?

• On the post: Broad Coalition Of Public And Private Interests Call For Objective Data & Research Concerning Copyright Reform

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 6 May 2013 @ 12:01pm

  
  

  Re: Re: So far...

  The entire point of the project was to look for *empirical* evidence to answer each of those questions.

  It is to be feverently hoped that empirical has something to do with the eventual report but past evidence suggests cynicism at least leads to lack of dissapointment... and it'll be a pleasant suprise if it actually stays objective enough to be swept under the rug instead.
  Remember the Sir Humphrey Rule:

  "Never commission a report unless you know in advance what it will conlude"

• On the post: USTR Nominee Froman Called 'One Of The Most Egregious Examples Of The Way The Revolving Door Works Between Gov't And Business'

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 6 May 2013 @ 10:58am

  
  

  Re:

  i wonder how far the people will be pushed before they actually start to say something about the way the government is screwing them over and also helping industry to do the same?

  "Saying something" only counts when it affects the outcome - when your "democratic voice" (i.e. vote) only gets to pick one of 2 or 3 people who will do exactly the same, it's not terribly effective.

• On the post: Broad Coalition Of Public And Private Interests Call For Objective Data & Research Concerning Copyright Reform

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 6 May 2013 @ 10:50am

  
  

  So far...

  Yeah, that all sounds great but there's a long way to go and plenty of opportunity for the **AA et al to bri... uh... "contribute" to the study. Thus, I suspect some of the eventual answers will look like this:
  

  •how the expenses involved in creative expression and distribution differ across sectors and the role of copyright in generating revenues to offset those expenses;

  "Copyright is the only possible way of generating revenue! We need MORE copyright!"

  •
  •under what circumstances sources of monetary and/or non-monetary motivation outside of that provided by copyright are effective in motivating creative activity;

  They aren't! See answer above

  
  •the motivations of various types of users and potential users of creative works, including both infringers and lawful users; the effects of enhanced enforcement remedies on promoting creativity, technological innovation, and freedom of expression;

  infringers are dirty thieves, DRM is great and content should be against the law without and artists love to struggle so the more enforcement roadblocks we put in their way the more creativity we have.

  
  •the extent of problems involving orphan works (whose owners cannot be identified), user-generated content, and collaborative and iterative works;

  There is no problem if we just assume the megacorp with the "best" claim to whatever it is owns it

  
  •what are successful arrangements for managing transaction costs;

  Assume every use ever attracts a large flat fee then its simple

  
  •changes in transaction costs with new technological and business developments.

  None, megacorps should be able to legally require whatever fee they think they can get away with no matter what the circumstances

  •how much is spent by governments and private parties on copyright enforcement;

  Not enough by government too much by private parties

  •the results of enforcement efforts in terms of compensation, prevention, education, and deterrence;

  Fantastic, brilliant, couldn't be better... would be 100% effective if only we had MORE!

  •how the effectiveness of enforcement efforts is changing with the expansion of digital networks;

  Yay! Megaupload died! Must be great

  
  •the relative vulnerability of different business models to infringement;

  The only viable model is the current one

  and
  •the costs and benefits of fair use exceptions and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbors.

  Costs tons with no benefit, we should remove them all and charge for EVERYTHING
  
  And on and on and on... *sigh*

• On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 29 Apr 2013 @ 10:30am

  
  

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active

  The article lumped product warnings in with national security warnings.

  Because the government as a whole take much the same tack with national security warnings as is taken with package warnings - "more is better".
  
  Of course the intent may be different - I suspect packaging warnings are more often motivated by some do-gooding sense, whearas security seems more about scaring the population enough to accept egregious abbridgements of civil liberties. Perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps both are more about the legal/political ramifications of having been seen to have "done nothing" even when nothing is the best course.
  
  Either way, though, both end up with the same effect in the mind - low level noise that gets ignored and ultimately has the exact opposite effect of the one stated. The real warning about the caustic effects of a cleaner get lost in the dozens upon dozens of irrelevant ones, the warning of an imminent terrorist attack gets a "yeah? So what?" response because of the "It's all so dangerous out there and we have to protect you" notices issued every single day.

• On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 28 Apr 2013 @ 12:13pm

  
  

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active

  But that's how it works. If one group cares enough to push for legislation and others don't care enough to bother, the activists get their way.

  Not disputing that, just pointing out that it's almost always a minority opinion that causes these things, which ensures that a great proportion of such warnings will be pointless to the majority of the population, many will be counter-productive to the intended effect and a good number, maybe even most, are likely to be wrong.
  

  pointing out that we're talking about an info delivery system, which could be refined,

  Except we've had an "info delivery system" capable of this kind of refinement for years now and exactly ZERO attempt to refine anything along these lines, just more and more and more "warnings" that 99% of the population don't care about.
  
  The problem is not the technology, it's groups of people thinking they know better than anyone else what everyone needs to know and seeing it as their duty to "do something about it". Whoever initiates this, the instument by which the mandated "warning" is delivered is usually governmental at some level and people do not make the distiction - it's a "government issued warning" and gets lumped in the brain with all the other pointless "warnings" and nannying that comes from such sources.

• On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 28 Apr 2013 @ 9:43am

  
  

  Re: Re: Nuts - Anaphylactic Shock

  ANYTHING WITH NUTS in it,, yes, that includes NUTS, HAS to have that warning.

  So if you have a nut allergy the label saying "salted peanuts" isn't enough of a clue? Aren't you in some way responsible for your own condition to at least some basic level? And if not, what about all the other things that can cause a similar reaction to nuts... up to and including death... shellfish, milk, eggs, latex and others? Yeah, they are usually there on the ingredients list somewhere but I've not noticed a rash of big "WARNING: MAY CONTAIN TRACE EGGS" labels...

• On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 28 Apr 2013 @ 9:32am

  
  

  Re: Re: Re: Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active

  But let's look at GMOs. The anti-folks GMO folks (and there are many in my community) want food products labelled if they are made with GMO products so they know what to avoid. They would prefer not to have them at all, but labeling is better than nothing.
  

  Which kinda proves my point. Firstly, I don't doubt that there are "many in [your] community", but I would also guess that, unless you're talking about a very small community, the "many" who really care are actually a small percentage of the total community.
  
  Normally in any reasonable sized group, there'll be a somewhat larger percentage that, if asked, would say "yeah that sounds about right.. GM is probably bad" and a smaller percentage who think GM is a good idea.
  
  I would wager that those 3 groups added together are less than 1/2 the percentage that really don't give a monkeys' one way or the other.
  
  Assuming the above is anywhere close, it means firstly that the labelling "law" in question is actually wanted or cared about by less than 1/3 of the affected people and for the rest it's just another thing to get in the way on a packet.
  
  And for "labelling better than nothing", if that's true it's only a tiny sliver better than nothing. For a start it's local, so inevitably some "imported" products (i.e. probably most products sold are not made within the jurisdiction of the labelling) are going to slip through the labelling, meaning that even if you care avoiding GM is next to impossible. Is there such a thing as an "acceptable" level of GM in your diet if you believe it's bad? Secondly, before much longer if not already, the way the food chain works means the only difference between GM and "non-GM" is whether it's deliberate or not.
  
  

  So labeling at least allows people to make their own decisions.

  True as far as it goes, but there are 2 threshold problems with that statement:
  The first is, as above, how many people care? Yes, if it's a bottle of drain cleaner or something definitely directly harmful, enough people care that it's probably worth labelling. For more nebulous stuff like GM, do enough people care to make it worthwhile? Maybe, maybe not. You clearly do and that's great but society as a whole? Even for something as contentious as GM foods? Not so sure. You could be right, you could be wrong and history will tell, but where's the threshold for such nebulous threats? How many people need to be concerned about it to stick labels on anything? And the point the article makes is that the more warnings you put on things the less attention people are likely to pay to the more imminent ones.
  
  This leads me to the second, related threshold problem - packaging. You can only make it so big. The more warnings you shove onto packaging, the harder it is to read any of them and that just adds to the "which one(s) do I care about?" problem.
  
  What happens if your bottle of drain cleaner as well as having the "this'll eat through enigine blocks and definitely won't do your stomach any good" label, also has a carcenogenic label, a GM label, a "may contain nuts" label, a "not safe to use while driving" label a "mandatory eye protection needed" label, and a dozen others that someone somewhere has decided we need to care about? How the hell do you even notice, never mind find and read at 2point font size, the "what to do when injested bit" after your kid swallows the stuff? Or do you make a point to read and memorize every single label of cleaning products you buy?
  
  As an example the other way, I have a fish allergy and have endless fun at buffet lunches (common because seminars, conferences and briefings and such like are part of my work) trying to spot the stuff with fish in so I don't scare the other delegates by going funny colours. It's rarely labelled. Now I don't think it should be - it's my problem to deal with and I have a tongue and common sense - but shellfish allergies can be as deadly as nut allergies. This brings me to wonder why, when every single cake or pastry in the shops has a "may contain nuts" label, not one has a "may contain shellfish". Hell, there are plenty of potentially deadly allergies, why not add them all?

• On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 27 Apr 2013 @ 4:17pm

  
  

  Re: Sometimes it's the citizens insisting government be more pro-active

  So it isn't always government imposing its will on the community. Sometimes it's the community telling the politicians that if they don't support environmentally friendly policies, they will be voted out of office.
  

  That I would think almost inevitably be true since environmentally friendly policies are usually unpopular with the people paying the politician's bills.
  However that would seem to have little to do with labelling, which is a good political way of being seen to "do something about a problem" without having to know too much about it or piss off too many people who count (i.e. not the public).
  
  It would seem to me to be incredibly rare for a label to be called for by any community and where it is, as far as I can see it's most often a knee-jerk reaction to some tragic event lobbied for by a vocal minority until some politician either thinks they can score cheap points.
  Given that voter turnout means that the people making the laws are generally elected by about 20-30% of the target population I feel faily confident in saying that political response to this kind of "community will" is not necessarily representative of most of the people in the community.

• On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 27 Apr 2013 @ 3:33pm

  
  

  Re: Re: Re:

  You would think those people with nut allergies would know their enemy.

  You'd think so, but this is one of the UK's worse imports from the US - this kind of Cover-Your-Legal-Ass-Because-People-Aren't-Responsible-For-Themselves bollocks.
  
  Not only are you suddenly liable for whatever moron didn't recognise a peanut they are allergic to when it comes without a "warning" in a packet labelled "Peanuts", but because pretty much anything in a food factory that deals with nuts may contain nut traces everything has a warning so it's useless to tell what you can actually eat.

• On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 27 Apr 2013 @ 2:29am

  
  

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Think in terms of info, then

  Imagine a system like Wikipedia where every item, person, place can be tagged with info and it can come from a variety of sources.

  The bit you're missing is the divide between "useful information I'm interested in" and "Pointless stuff that sounds scary but isn't that I'm not going to bother to read".
  
  The difference is that if in your vision of the future the "total information about a product" is available at the glance of an eye when you want to call it up then it falls into the useful and interesting category, because you have the choice to call it up and read it all or selected bits of it that you want to.
  On the other hand, what happens in this utopian future if the government madates that all that information must appear in your glasses every time you look at something "for your own good". Suddenly your Google Glasses become useless because your vision is constantly obscured by a wall of text.
  
  Bottom line - information available good, information rammed down your throat when you don't want it, counterproductive.

• On the post: If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 27 Apr 2013 @ 2:17am

  
  

  Re:

  My favorite? A provision on prescription labels informing users that the medication is to be taken orally.

  Nah.... "Warning: Filling may be hot when heated" is a classic and "This product may contain nuts" on a packet of nuts has to be the all time winner.

• On the post: UK 'Snooper's Charter' Torn Up; Now What?

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 25 Apr 2013 @ 11:29am

  
  

  Re: Re: Re:

  I find it sad that it's necessary to add a sarcasm tag to distinguish your post from those of certain other persons.

  I find it even sadder that it's barely possible to distinguish the government's usual arguments from that of the "other persons" you mention... and they don't do sarcasm.

• On the post: UK 'Snooper's Charter' Torn Up; Now What?

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 25 Apr 2013 @ 11:26am

  
  

  Re: What, they're kicking Google out?

  Why is that okay if a supposedly commercial entity does it?

  It's not, but:
  A/ At least one has a choice whether to give the commercial entity the data. In contrast the government compels information whether one wants them to have it or not.
  
  B/ In the UK there are, at least theoretically, limits as to what the commercial entity can do with the data gathered.

• On the post: ICANN's New Trademark 'Clearinghouse' Resembles Mobsters' 'Insurance' Program

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 28 Mar 2013 @ 10:11am

  
  

  Re:

  Coca-cola for example, sues Icann for trademark infringement if it sells "coke.[whatever]"

  What? Even if they sell it to a columbian drug dealer?
  Either way, despicable though ICANN's (government aided) practices are, the idea of them being responsible for protecting someone else's trademarks is about as sensible as holding an ISP or phone company responsible for data customers put over their infrastructure. Or holding an electricity supplier liable for the drug lab their supply powers...

• On the post: Dumb Policy: Store Charges $5 Just To Look At Goods, To Keep People From Looking And Then Buying Online

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 27 Mar 2013 @ 8:16am

  
  

  Re: Oh, good

  "Oh noes! Those pirates are STEALING our floorspace and air now! Those internets are KILLING real businesses! WE NEED A LAW, QUICK!"

• On the post: Canadian Librarians 'Owe Duty Of Loyalty To The Government,' Must Self-Censor Opinions Even In Private

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 21 Mar 2013 @ 11:47am

  
  

  Re:

  I'd say it's a worldwide need.Indeed... democractic governments make much of "freedom" and the US even has freedom of speech and expression as a foundation of theirs... but increasingly what they mean all is "freedom of speech as long as we like what you say" - a massively dangerous trend.

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