Dark Helmet 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Full Circle: Katie Perry Gets Her Trademark Back In Australia, Court Says No Risk Of Confusion

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 18 Mar, 2026 @ 05:50am

    "First, let’s look at “who started it?” It began with the threat of legal action. The singer “started it” by issuing a cease and desist to the fashion designer. You seem to overlook that step merely because the singer didn’t follow up with any court action. The singer choosing not to follow-up left the designer in legal limbo." I didn't leave it out; I brought it up specifically when describing how the larger story started. I'll also say that the designer appeared to "live in limbo" just fine for 6 whole years without any problems. A detail I DID leave out, but which is available in previous posts and source material, is that the designer attempted to register her trademark and Katy Perry opposed it initially, but eventually backed down and allowed the mark to go through unchallenged. IOW, all the designer had to do was leave well enough alone and this tale of woe would have ended there. Instead she sued. So, yes, she's the impetus of the real meat of this story.

  • On the post: Trump Administration Using Gross Video Game Footage To Cheerlead Its War Efforts

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 06 Mar, 2026 @ 11:57am

    Don't be so sure

    That doesn't appear to be entirely accurate. Iran claimed the ship was unarmed. But part of the parade involved the ships, including the Iranian ship, firing live rounds of the surface guns and the anti-aircraft guns. Unless they were truly firing blanks, which is not what the Indian government indicated, they were armed.

  • On the post: Trump Administration Using Gross Video Game Footage To Cheerlead Its War Efforts

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 06 Mar, 2026 @ 07:06am

    Blech, yup

    Indeed a typo and this will be fixed. My apologies for the error.

  • On the post: OPM Musical Artist Gets Copyright Notice For Performing His Own Song

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 04 Mar, 2026 @ 11:13am

    "Do you also believe he should be able sell his house and move back in ten years later?" Wrong question. He's not trying to move back into the house. He's trying to show pictures of his house long after he sold it (playing the song he created on the internet). The main thrust of the post is that it's fairly silly that an artist can't perform the song they created on a stream.

  • On the post: OPM Musical Artist Gets Copyright Notice For Performing His Own Song

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 04 Mar, 2026 @ 11:11am

    It does that, but it also points out that this is probably the result of Warner owning his back catalogue: I am guessing that Warner also acquired the rights to his older music, at least for streaming distribution and the like. Warner is not only extremely protectionist on copyright matters, but also employs copyright bots that automatically look for infringing content on the internet, particularly on YouTube and social media sites. So, I would guess that Lim’s reel performing “his” song got flagged by whatever automated setup Warner Music has going.

  • On the post: OPM Musical Artist Gets Copyright Notice For Performing His Own Song

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 04 Mar, 2026 @ 05:39am

    Right....

    I believe I made this point explicitly in the penultimate paragraph....

  • On the post: Trump Administration Makes The Conscious Choice To Make America Less Prepared For The Next Pandemic

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2026 @ 10:48am

    "You realize that Trump brought you the vaccine you guys tried to force everyone to take, right?" Damn, you're right. I probably should have mentioned that somewhere near the beginning of the post. Maybe in the second sentence of paragraph 2 or thereabouts....

  • On the post: Newly Public Emails Sure Make It Look Like RFK Jr. Lied To Congress About His Trip To Samoa In 2019

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2026 @ 10:54am

    Totally

    You're totally right. The problem here is definitely that I have been giving RFK Jr. way too much leeway....

  • On the post: DOJ Arrests Journalists Don Lemon & Georgia Fort For Acts Of Journalism, Even After Courts Rejected Arrest Warrants

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 30 Jan, 2026 @ 08:58pm

    "It comes down to a question of how to define a “journalist”" If you play this game, you've already lost.

  • On the post: White House Push AI-Altered Images Of Arrested ICE Protesters To Manufacture Cruelty

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 24 Jan, 2026 @ 03:39am

    So we agree?

    There was no attack. There was no violence "They forced their way in, refused to leave, and scared the hell out of little kids, yelling all kinda vile shit." Yes, exactly, we're saying the same thing. Glad we agree there was not a violation of the law in this case.

  • On the post: New Year, But The Same Measles Crises Rages On

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 15 Jan, 2026 @ 01:18pm

    You seem fun.

  • On the post: ‘Anthem’ Shuts Down January 12th And, Poof!, There Goes All That Creative Culture

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 09 Jan, 2026 @ 05:55am

    The altnerative is linked directly in the article. The Stop Killing Games movement lays this out beautifully. "When an online game publisher sunsets an unsuccessful client-server game, they must publish protocol docs and open source the client and server code?" Again, yes, as the Stop Killing Games movement makes clear. The point I keep coming back to is what copyright law lays out: a limited monopoly in exchange for that same culture to eventually be released into the public domain. If gaming companies are allowed to simply disappear these games, how are they fulfilling their end of the bargain? They're not, and that's the point. I consider this a violation of copyright law, or at least its purpose, and nobody seems to want to do much about it.

  • On the post: Maximum Chaos: Latest Top FDA Regulator Peaces Out After Only 3 Weeks

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 09 Dec, 2025 @ 09:26am

    Close, but...

    You mispelled "eugenics".

  • On the post: RFK Jr., CDC Vaccine Guidance, A New Deputy CDC Director, And Measles In South Carolina

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 04 Dec, 2025 @ 06:51am

    Yup

    No notes; this is exactly correct.

  • On the post: Sony Threatens Fan Server For ‘Concord’, Which It Shut Down A Year Ago 2 Weeks After Release

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 20 Nov, 2025 @ 09:40am

    ....do you not understand that MarkScan partners with others to police IP? You can't really think that MarkScan just goes out there and issues takedowns for IP they don't own without the permission of partners like Sony.....can you?

  • On the post: Formula 1, Others Oppose Arena Football One’s Logo Trademark Application

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 18 Nov, 2025 @ 04:20am

    Holy shit, what a typo. I will fix that immediately.

  • On the post: Hey, Microsoft: Are You Guys Also Cool With DHS And Trump Using ‘Halo’ Imagery For Fascism?

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 11 Nov, 2025 @ 05:50am

    "It’s not fascism, and calling it such is a deliberate call to violence." That's not how speech works and your naked attempt to play word games is both obvious and silly. Do better.

  • On the post: No Mandatory Bibles, No Prager U Tests: Oklahoma’s New Superintendent Unwinds The Walters Era

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 23 Oct, 2025 @ 08:09pm

    Hi there, Doug

    "You were rather ambivalent about the value of unions, which is not cool." I've never been terribly interested in being "cool", whatever the hell that means. "You can go to your boss and beg for a good working environment. Of course you risk getting fired for doing so, because many bosses have thin skin. Or you can go to your union, and your union can negotiate on your behalf, where the personal risk goes down and the likelihood of success goes up… It’s pretty clear that the union is the superior option here." Funny enough, I actually have an 8 to 5. And I'm not union. And I literally do what you're saying I won't get positive results from, and yet I do. Look, unions aren't bad. They aren't good, either. They're somewhere in between and we all have to do the math and decide if they, at this very moment (not historically, not as a tally of all that they've done previously) are a net positive or negative. I, personally, am both ignorant and ambivalent for the very same reason: I've never been in a union and don't feel comfortable passing final judgement on them. "Of course it’s possible for any organization to forget about its values. But we shouldn’t assume this has already happened in Oklahoma without evidence." Literally nobody, including me, did that. Like....not even close. "That’s insulting to the teachers. After all, which is more likely, a bad boss or a bad union?" They're both made of people so....pretty close call to me, honestly? Could go either way? I mean, probably the former, in my experience, but I have no reason to think that the margin on that is huge. "Checks notes. … Now I remember: this is a story about a bad boss." Indeed. That's why I find your critique, though I think well articulated and clearly passionate, so bewildering.

  • On the post: Measles Outbreaks Abound Under RFK Jr.’s Inaction

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 23 Oct, 2025 @ 10:29am

    "Measles is no big deal" is certainly a take, I suppose....

  • On the post: The Federal Police Are Rioting: Chicago Edition

    Dark Helmet ( profile ), 16 Oct, 2025 @ 06:05am

    No

    It is a very silly thing to both point to the Constitution as a remedy for what is occurring right now AND to say you can't wait for the courts because they're bought and paid for. Either stand for the rule of law, or don't. It's not a buffet where you get to pick which parts of democracy are valid and which are not.

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