zcat 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (169)

• On the post: Recording Industry Rep Suggests Parents Should Slap Their Children To Stop Piracy

  

  zcat ( profile ), 16 Nov, 2012 @ 12:47pm

  Re:

  Ahh, the good old days...
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBeguUvuDzs

• On the post: Universal Music Issues Questionable Takedown On Megaupload Video That Featured Their Artists [Updated]

  

  zcat ( profile ), 09 Dec, 2011 @ 04:03pm

  The standard "work for hire from hell" clause which lots of employees and university graduates will already be familiar with; anything you come up with that might be covered by copyright or patent is automatically owned by your employer or university.. and it doesn't matter if you were on work time or not because subconsciously you might have been thinking about it on work time and hell they OWN you, you're lucky to even have a job in the current environment so just shut up and get back in line, prole!

• On the post: Entertainment Industry Lawyer: The Public Domain Goes Against Free Market Capitalism

  

  zcat ( profile ), 04 Jun, 2011 @ 02:15pm

  Re: LOOK at his Picture! (on his site)

  "awards" == Spam
  
  They all want you to display the award with a link back to their website, it's basically SEO spam. My website is total crap and I still keep getting offered these awards (although nowdays google just filters them straight into my spam folder)

• On the post: Appeals Court Effectively Opens The Floodgates For People To Claim Hollywood 'Stole' Their Ideas

  

  zcat ( profile ), 06 May, 2011 @ 11:20am

  Business Idea

  http://xkcd.com/827/
  
  Does this mean Randall Munroe can sue the 9th Circuit appeals court?

• On the post: Copyright Finally Getting Around To Destroying Player Piano Music… One Century Late

  

  zcat ( profile ), 26 Jul, 2010 @ 05:43pm

  Re: Re: Re: Re: So.

  How about if Laws were developed through the same open and collaborative process that's worked so well for developing Linux, Firefox and OpenOffice?
  
  http://www.usnowfilm.com/

• On the post: Tons Of Companies Sued Over Broad Patent On Controlling Workstations In A Computer Network

  

  zcat ( profile ), 23 Jun, 2010 @ 12:56am

  Re: Re: Hmmm, filed on 3rd Nov 1998

  I don't see how that makes much difference. 1996 is still AFTER 1995.

• On the post: Man Charged With Using Open WiFi To Send Death Threats To VP Biden

  

  zcat ( profile ), 21 Jun, 2010 @ 02:42pm

  I'm betting the police went next door, 'claimed' they had logs and the neighbour panicked and confessed. Do home routers even keep track of what MAC addresses connected to them? I'm pretty sure mine doesn't!

• On the post: Updated Research Showing, Yet Again, That Weaker Copyright Has Benefited Culture And Society

  

  zcat ( profile ), 21 Jun, 2010 @ 02:37pm

  Can we stop referring to "weaker copyright" and instead refer to "stronger content-user rights" ?

• On the post: Don't Blame Your Community: Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites

  

  zcat ( profile ), 08 Mar, 2010 @ 12:02pm

  I held off for a long time...

  For years I avoided running an adblocker because I didn't think it was fair on the website owners and the adds typically didn't bother me that much.
  
  But when it came to annoying floating ads that cover the page content and the sort you describe that cause the page to slide up and down I decided that was enough.
  
  Some people are just anti-advertising. They never would have bought anything from you anyway so no loss. You could even say they're saving you some wasted bandwidth by blocking your ads.
  
  But most people I think are like me; they're just fed up with annoying, flashing, distracting 'in your face' ads. The advertisers have only themselves to blame.

• On the post: RIAA Claims File Sharers Are 'Undermining Humanitarian Efforts In Haiti', But Leaves Out The Facts

  

  zcat ( profile ), 05 Mar, 2010 @ 11:53am

  It's my opinion that these albums (they put one out for just about every natural disaster and cause) undermine humanitarian efforts and are a blatant attempt by the record industry to cash in and get some free publicity from various natural disasters. And I've though this for a very long time.
  
  And finally here's the proof. Clearly the album is such a stinker that nobody really wants it, even for free on p2p networks. It's obvious that sales of this album are driven entirely by people wanting to help with Haiti relief.
  
  So how much profit from the album actually goes to Haiti and how much gets swallowed up in the music industry's grossly inflated 'costs'?

• On the post: Judge Orders Satirical Site To Remove Joke Story About Fictional Giraffe Attack

  

  zcat ( profile ), 04 Mar, 2010 @ 03:56pm

  Re: Just put

  That's apparently called the 'Temherte Slaqî'
  
  And there's also the reverse question mark '⸮' for a rhetorical question (¿ is for asking questions in Spanish!)

• On the post: Olympics Using Bogus Copyright Claims To Take Down All Videos Of Fatal Luge Crash

  

  zcat ( profile ), 12 Feb, 2010 @ 07:13pm

  Re:

  And this guy...
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EFvGuIXIJc

• On the post: Warner Music Shoots Self In Head; Says No More Free Streaming

  

  zcat ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2010 @ 01:36pm

  Re: Can't wait ..

  Yes, I've been waiting for TAM's comment on it too...

• On the post: Warner Music Shoots Self In Head; Says No More Free Streaming

  

  zcat ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2010 @ 01:35pm

  Re: Re: It's time for a classic...

  Also WMG have been very active in getting all their music taken off youtube and similar services, which is really annoying a lot of the artists signed with WMG labels because Youtube is basically radio for the internet age.

• On the post: Warner Music Shoots Self In Head; Says No More Free Streaming

  

  zcat ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2010 @ 01:32pm

  Re: It's time for a classic...

  Isn't that basically what they did when radio came along? And what the movie industry did when TV came along? And also what killed MTV? And also pretty similar to the current situation of news industry vs. google?
  
  Completely facepalm.

• On the post: Warner Music Shoots Self In Head; Says No More Free Streaming

  

  zcat ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2010 @ 01:24pm

  Re: It's time for a classic...

  But that's basically what they did. Freaked out and

• On the post: Seriously: Where Is The Link Between Copyright Infringement And Terrorism/Organized Crime

  

  zcat ( profile ), 30 Jan, 2010 @ 01:02am

  Irrefutable link.
  
  Piracy has a promotional effect; more generally piracy leads to greater legitimate sales. Many studies support this, even some paid for by the recording industry themselves (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090604/0117405122.shtml)
  
  This obviously benefits the recording industry.
  
  And you only need look at a typical recording contract (http://www.negativland.com/albini.html) to see that the recording industry ARE organised crime.

• On the post: Fair Use And Films: Does Running Everything By The Lawyers Really Improve Your Film?

  

  zcat ( profile ), 12 Jan, 2010 @ 01:46pm

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Lawsuit

  My understanding is that it is completely standard procedure in all software development, both FOSS and proprietary software. Software developers are always advised to _never_ look at patents.

• On the post: School Wants To Claim Copyright Over Any Lesson Plans Created By Teachers

  

  zcat ( profile ), 11 Jan, 2010 @ 03:00pm

  Re:

  I would agree with the schools having the same policy as the government, that all work paid for by taxpayer dollars is automatically in the public domain. This wouldn't stop the teachers from doing exactly what they're doing.
  
  I partially agree with anti-mike on this though; I don't think that teachers should be making extra profit from their taxpayer-funded development of teaching materials. If they sell it at all it should only be under a permissive license such as CC-BY-SA or CC-0 which effectively means that they can really only expect to recover the cost of physically making and distributing copies.
  
  But I don't think that taxpayer-funded schools should be charging each other (or anyone else) to share that material either.

• On the post: Vanessa Hudgens Claims She Owns Copyright On Nude Photos Of Herself

  

  zcat ( profile ), 09 Jan, 2010 @ 01:18am

  Re: Re: Misc. points

  It depends on a combination of how prominently the people feature in the photo, and how much of a public figure they already are, and how commercial the use if it is. Putting photos of some random person on your website, possibly a problem. Putting photo of some random person on a billboard, very likely a problem. Putting photos of a celeb on your website, not a problem. Putting same celeb on an advertising billboard, very likely a problem. Putting photos of a crowd or a sports team on your website, no problem. Putting the same photos in an advertising billboard, possibly a problem... (in each case asssuming you own copyright and do not get model releases)
  
  In this case the subject is a celeb and I think therefore less protected because they're already not a 'private person', which is why they're doing the copyright thing instead.

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