spamvictim 's BestNetTech Comments

Latest Comments (70)

• On the post: Malaysian Government Asks Interpol To Arrest An American Comedian Over Her Airline Crash Joke

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 21 Jun, 2023 @ 06:40pm

  Lèse Majesté

  Might want to fix the spelling of that key term, idiotic though its use is. Also re the cell phones, when the plane crashed it was way out over the ocean, far from any cell tower. We have a pretty good idea of where it crashed since wreckage washed up in Madagascar and east Africa and we know how the ocean currents flow.

• On the post: The Supreme Court May Not Have Read Our Brief About The First Amendment And Copyright, But You Can

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 27 May, 2023 @ 12:20pm

  More wishful thinking

  The issue in Eldred vs. Ashcroft was that the 1998 change to the copyright act extended the term of copyrights on works already created, which unless you have a time machine could not possibly comport with the progress clause. (There's also how plausible is it that an author would say with a 75 year term it wasn't worth writing the great American novel, but with a 95 year term, I'm on it.) Too bad, said the court, it's a political question, it's up to Congress to decide. As I said in another post, in the Warhol decision you don't have to like it, but the fair use factors are what they are, and you can't say the court got the law wrong. Personally, considering that this case was about the narrow use of licensing for magazine covers, as the concurrence noted, and not about art criticism as the dissent alleged, I think they got it right.

• On the post: Twitter Demands Academics Who Won’t Pay $42k/Month Delete Any Twitter Data They Currently Have

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 26 May, 2023 @ 11:45am

  Screenshots?

  Hey, I have a screenshot where @elon agreed to pay me $100,000 per tweet for my brilliant tweets. Where do I send the bill?

• On the post: The Warhol Decision: How SCOTUS Forgot The First Amendment & Turned Copyright Into A Liability Time Bomb

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 26 May, 2023 @ 11:44am

  Confusion

  The stuff about the First Amendment is just confused. Copyright is created by a specific clause in the Constitution, and resolving the tension between it and the 1st is a matter of statute. It's fine for her not to like the way SCOTUS interprets the law, but not to claim her political interpretation is right and theirs is wrong.

• On the post: The Warhol Decision: How SCOTUS Forgot The First Amendment & Turned Copyright Into A Liability Time Bomb

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 25 May, 2023 @ 02:58pm

  This misses the point

  I have read the whole decision, in which the majority says "we are not art critics", and the dissent which is 35 pages of art criticism, including three artistic pictures of nude women. This really is a narrow decision about Fair Use, which is Fair Use, not Fair Creativity, or Fair Expression. AWF can do whatever they want with the Warhol prints except license them to publications. In Goldsmith's suit, she specifically has no concerns about the 16 artworks, just the use as magazine covers.

• On the post: U.S. Cable TV Subscriptions Fall To Lowest Total Since 1992

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 22 May, 2023 @ 07:40am

  Left hand to right hand

  How many of these "cord cutters" still have the same cable, but are paying for Internet rather than or in addition to CATV? Given the feeble state of broadband competition in the US, I'd guess most of them.

• On the post: Court To Donald Trump: Journalists Encouraging Someone To Break A Confidentiality Agreement Is Protected Speech

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 20 May, 2023 @ 06:11pm

  Volokh link

  Volokh must read BestNetTech; his blog entry now has the link to the decision, too.

• On the post: Senator Brian Schatz Joins The Moral Panic With Unconstitutional Age Verification Bill

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 27 Apr, 2023 @ 12:11pm

  Parachutes

  jump out of a plane without a parachute, but just don’t die.

  As this study in the British Medical Journal shows, it's quite possible to jump from a plane safely, and parachutes don't help. If only the same were true of age verification.

• On the post: Utah Lawmakers Rushing Through Bills To Destroy The Internet… ‘For The Children’

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 03 Feb, 2023 @ 11:19am

  Not the same password?

  I take the password language to mean that they have to give parents a password that lets them read the kid's mail, not necessarily the kid's own password. But I agree that the whole thing is a fetid mix of authoritarian panic and utter incompetence.

• On the post: New Report: Twitter’s Ad Revenue Woes Are Even Worse Than Expected

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 30 Jan, 2023 @ 08:17pm

  Huh, paid the interest

  Bloomberg and the Financial Times report that Twitter made its $300M quarterly interest payment on the bonds today. There is of course considerable speculation about whether they'll make future ones. Bankers all seem to agree that if they don't, the banks will force Twitter into bankruptcy and take it away from Musk, even though they really do not want to own it.

• On the post: Supreme Court Punts On Florida And Texas Social Media Moderation Laws, Asks US Government To Weigh In

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2023 @ 04:06pm

  Whacko is as whacko does

  The 11th Circuit (Florida) opinion is fairly reasonable but the 5th Circuit (Texas) is just nuts. It's been compared to a B- law student paper, and thumbs its nose at the 11th Circuit opinion. This sort of high profile circuit split is exactly the sort of case SCOTUS always takes. It would not be unusual for them to ask for the government's opnion after accepting it, but I agree that in this case they're stalling.

• On the post: Elon’s Commitment To Free Speech Rapidly Replaced By His Commitment To Blatant Hypocrisy: Bans The JoinMastodon Account

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 15 Dec, 2022 @ 06:09pm

  Enough already

  Since it is so totally obvious that what Elon most wants is for everyone to pay attention to him, perhaps this would be a good time to ignore him and Twitter for a while. Like you, I like Mastodon just fine.

• On the post: MoviePass Returns After Its Disastrous, Comical Implosion

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 27 Aug, 2022 @ 03:08pm

  All you can eat

  It wasn't that it was an all you can eat buffet (those do exist, after all), it was that every item on the buffet was purchased at retail from another restaurant.

• On the post: Why Is A British Baroness Drafting California Censorship Laws?

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 25 Aug, 2022 @ 12:11pm

  Where are the tech giants?

  Among the many strange things about this bill, where are Google, Facebook, and Apple? They're the obvious targets. It also would be interesting to contact a few of the listed sponsors, see if they are aware that they are listed as sponsors, and if so do they agree that it is a good idea for every web site to demand to know the age of every user.

• On the post: Elon Musk’s Response To Twitter’s Legal Filing May Impress His Fans On Twitter, But Is Not A Good Legal Argument

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 18 Jul, 2022 @ 07:08pm

  Appeal, meh

  Musk can appeal to the Delaware supreme court, but unless the chancellor makse a legal error, which seems very unlikely, it won't help.

• On the post: And We’re Off: Twitter Sues Elon Musk And Lays Out A Strong Case

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 13 Jul, 2022 @ 01:34pm

  What if Musk tries to blow off the court?

  I think it's likely that Musk will continue to screw around, the court will order specific performance, and he will thumb his nose at them as he has at the SEC. Then what? Can the Cnancery court seize his TSLA stock? Put him in jail until he complies?

• On the post: Once Again, Thomas Goolnik Gets Google To Forget Our Tag About Thomas Goolnik

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 09 Mar, 2022 @ 03:08pm

  He's not an EU person

  According to the Times story, Goolnick is British, and as you may have heard, Britain isn't in the EU any more. The GDPR doesn't protect non-EU people.

• On the post: ID.me Finally Admits It Runs Selfies Against Preexisting Databases As IRS Reconsiders Its Partnership With The Company

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 02 Feb, 2022 @ 07:18am

  Fillable but not ID'ed

  You're right, I'd forgotten about the free fillable forms which I don't think many people use. They don't need id.me either, just a simple CAPTCHA.

• On the post: ID.me Finally Admits It Runs Selfies Against Preexisting Databases As IRS Reconsiders Its Partnership With The Company

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 01 Feb, 2022 @ 07:35pm

  At least get your complaints right

  The Treasury's ID.ME verification is for a part of their web site that lets you get a transcript of previous payments and transactions.
  It is not for filing your taxes. You can't file taxes directly with the IRS, only through a tax preparer. If your income is low enough, some of them offer free filing but that is a different story. Still, no ID.ME.
  It is also not for checking your refund status. Different part of the web site, much simpler verification using info from your return.
  I did the ID.ME verification which was a pain in the rear since most of my IDs including my driver's license have my PO box, not my street address, and my passport picture is so bad I finally had to write on the scan THIS IS AN ACCURATE SCAN, THE PICTURE REALLY IS THAT BAD.
  I finally did get an agent on the line who verified that I am me, so it works, for some version of works.

• On the post: The Fed's Central Bank Digital Currency Report Falls Flat

  

  spamvictim ( profile ), 28 Jan, 2022 @ 06:53pm

  Hey, kids, don't make me stop this car

  I thought the point of the report was totally clear: for consumers, anything a CBDC can do, a normal bank account can do. Banks will be able to do instant payments with Fednow, and they can provide low-cost easy to use accounts if they can be a little less greedy. On the other hand, in a CBDC account the deposits would all go to the Fed rather than being usable by the bank, which is known as narrow banking, something the Fed has never wanted.
  So the message is, hey, banks get your act together and provide fast, cheap, flexible accounts. ''Cuz if you don't, we will, and you wouldn't like that.

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