Tim R 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (70)

• On the post: Company Owning 'Evel Knievel' Rights Sues Disney Over 'Toy Story 4' Amalgam Parody Character

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 23 Sep, 2020 @ 10:04pm

  I can only invoke the name of another who was inspired by the great motorcycle stuntmen of the 70s: the legendary Super Dave Osborne. That was a giant among men.

• On the post: Court Rejects Clearview's First Amendment, Section 230 Immunity Arguments

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 22 Sep, 2020 @ 03:02pm

  I'm a little perplexed that this hasn't yet turned into a copyright issue. The fair use factors, in my opinion, don't really favor Clearview.

  1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes

  Clearly commercial. If all they were doing was fingerprinting the pictures, that might be transformative, but I highly doubt they're throwing out the original images.

  2) the nature of the copyrighted work

  Might be a tough analysis there.

  3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole

  Don't think there's really an argument for de minimis here, and substantiality weighs against them, since they're using the significant portions of the images, ie the people.

  4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work

  Two prongs here, from different vectors. Value from the person because of potential privacy issues, and value from the host. "If your not the customer, you're the product". I know copyright infringement isn't theft, but this is probably closer to the idea of shoplifting than anything the entertainment industry has thrown down.

  The average person isn't going to want to file copyright applications for their vacation pictures, but if their scraping is liberal enough, I'm sure they're also snagging pictures from models and photographers, or example, that somebody does have a financial interest in.

• On the post: Alan Dershowitz Files SLAPP Suit Against CNN; Says Not Airing More Of What He Said Is Defamation

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 18 Sep, 2020 @ 01:50pm

  Dershowitz's lawyer (yes, he found an actual Florida man lawyer to file this lawsuit) talks about how only playing part of his long silly answer would lead people to believe that Dersh had "lost his mind"...

  Funny, filing this lawsuit lead me to believe he had lost his mind.

  Oh, and as a Floridian, I apologize for our state, for cranking out tripe like this. It's kinda what we do down here. I think it's the humidity, honestly.

• On the post: Get Your Otherwise Objectionable Gear Before The Senate Takes It Away!

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 13 Sep, 2020 @ 12:17pm

  Here's something that's somewhat marginally related, but I thought still interesting on the front of Section 230, and the illusion that the FCC has anything to do with it.

  I'm currently studying for my amateur radio license, and one of the sample questions on the test is this:

  Question: "Who is accountable should a repeater inadvertently retransmit communications that violate the FCC rules"
  Layman Translation: "Who is accountable should a piece of automated equipment that simply relays information relay something that breaks the rules."

  Correct Answer: "The control operator of the originating station"
  Layman Translation: "The person who said it"

  Even in examinations that verify that a person understands Part 97 (Amateur Radio Service) of Title 47 (Telecommunications) (1) of the US Code of Federal Regulations, the FCC understands liability correctly. If they were to say any differently about Section 230, it might sound a little, I don't know, disingenuous...

  (1) Section 97.205(g): The control operator of a repeater that retransmits inadvertently communications that violate the rules in this part is not accountable for the violative communications.

• On the post: Fake 'Russian Hack' Of Public Michigan Voter Rolls Gets Absurdly Overhyped On The Interwebs

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 02 Sep, 2020 @ 09:04am

  If voters suspect misinformation, they should report it to misinformation@michigan.gov.

  What wonderous times we live in, that having a dedicated email address just to deal with misinformation is a thing.

• On the post: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Insanely Stupid Lawsuit Against Facebook

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 27 Aug, 2020 @ 06:32pm

  I have to admit that reading this exquisite blockbuster of a pleading was a multi-act comedy in my head. Especially when it came to the claims:

  The first claim is that there are 1st and 5th Amendment violations... by the private company defendants...

  Sigh.

  The second claim is... Lanham Act violations...

  Where's my cocktail?

  Kennedy then cites the President's nonsense Executive Order on social media...

  Swell, Junior, why don't you just throw effing RICO into the mix, too???

  Next up, Kennedy argues (you guessed it) RICO violations...

  God dammit.

• On the post: Judge Denies Copyright Troll Malibu Media's Request For A Default Judgment

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 14 Aug, 2020 @ 10:14am

  This is actually fairly devastating to Malibu. Their entire business model is predicated on them having to do the absolutely minimum of work to collect a judgement. For them to actually be required to do due diligence digs pretty deep into their bottom line. It's not what they signed up for.

• On the post: FBI Used Information From An Online Forum Hacking To Track Down One Of The Hackers Behind The Massive Twitter Attack

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 03 Aug, 2020 @ 09:47am

  But what about encryption? I thought encryption was supposed to make crimes unsolvable? Will we see officials holding up a 17-year-old's phone on national TV that they can't get into and whining because they can't pile on extra charges?

• On the post: DOJ Says Cruel And Unusual Punishment Is Alive And Well In Alabama Prisons

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 31 Jul, 2020 @ 06:37am

  I really love it when a blog post grabs you with the very first sentence?

  The DOJ has a Civil Rights Division??? Where have they been since 2016??? Oh, that's right, doing a study of Alabama prisons.

  Man, they must really be understaffed...

• On the post: Why Is The US Trying To Punish Hackers For Accessing Vaccine Research We Should Be Sharing With The World?

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 21 Jul, 2020 @ 11:13am

  I will gladly admit that I'm probably one of the last people that would go off on some kind of anti-capitalism screed, but man, it sure feels like I'm about to...

• On the post: Detroit PD Now Linked To Two Bogus Arrests Stemming From Facial Recognition False Positives

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 14 Jul, 2020 @ 06:24am

  Nothing new to see here...well, you know, besides the systemic racism.

  This has been going on as a pilot project for years, only there it was called the DMCA, where private individuals and companies have taken automated sleuthing and elevated it to an error-prone art form. Could we have imagined that the pros would have done any better?

  Truth is that we're still at least a decade or two away from any of these systems working within a 10% error rate (which still isn't close to being good enough to be relied upon for major cases), and shouldn't be using people's liberties as some kind of grand beta test. It's what you get when you confuse a tool with a process, and right now, these automated technologies are just tools that need to be baby-sat by human beings.

  You know, kinda like the people using them.

  Oh, and one other thing:

  Supposedly, this software will now only be used to identify people wanted for violent felonies.

  And how is this better? So, instead of accidentally accusing somebody of a minor crime, now we're going to ruin innocent peoples' lives for the big stuff? Go big or go home, I guess.

• On the post: Parler Speedruns The Content Moderation Learning Curve; Goes From 'We Allow Everything' To 'We're The Good Censors' In Days

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 01 Jul, 2020 @ 01:14pm

  To:
  John Matze
  CEO, Parler

  When you make sensationalized and bombastic claims, don't be surprised when people call you on that shit.

  Sincerely,
  Todd Davis
  CEO, Lifelock
  SSN #<scribble scribble scribble>

  (ed note: paraphrased, I'm sure)

• On the post: DOJ Finally Uses FOSTA, Over Two Years Later… To Shut Down A Site Used By Sex Workers

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 24 Jun, 2020 @ 11:18am

  Color me surprised, but this is just the War On Drugs, Part Whatever, with a smattering of Florida Sheriff Grady Judd's shame campaign. It's much easier and a better volume proposition for LE to arrest the end users than to put in any actual leg work and go after the people causing it all.

  I suspect next we'll have the DoJ manufacturing sex slave rings, and getting some homeless guy who lives under a bridge to run it for them so they can arrest him. How many imaginary trafficked girls is the major felony threshold?

• On the post: Senators Launch Full On Nuclear War Against Encryption: Bill Will Require Broken Encryption, Putting Everyone At Risk

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 24 Jun, 2020 @ 11:00am

  Aside from the normal clueless tech babble, this is why other countries laugh at us.Do they really think that any Syrian or Iranian jihadist buys his gear at the Apple store in downtown Dubuque? The tone deaf US-centric attitude here is mind blowing. It's basically lawmakers saying that what we say goes, and devices manufactured outside of the US, which is a considerable footprint to be sure, just don't count, or even exist.

  What's even scarier is that those lawmakers have seen the headway that countries like France have made in trying to enforce their laws on the world, and they want in on that action.

  Combine that with a president and his party, whose entire worldview consists of "us vs them", both foreign and domestic, and we'll be a political island separate from the rest of the world in no time.

  From Silicon Valley v. DC, all the way up to global superpowers, we will never have a society envisioned in overly optimistic science fiction because we'll never be able to come together as a people and work with each other.

• On the post: Hello! You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 23 Jun, 2020 @ 10:17am

  That's all nice and everything, Mike, but sadly, and probably not too dissimilar to Ken's 1st Amendment post, I'm pretty sure that the segment of your target audience with any kind of influence either won't read it, or will assume that you're some kind of partisan shill and won't believe you anyway.

  Excellent primer, though.

• On the post: Schrodinger's Classified Info: Trump Argues John Bolton's Book Is Both False & Classified

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 19 Jun, 2020 @ 09:57am

  This reminds me of past instances where the same documents have been screened by multiple independent government employees, and each one redacts them differently. In the end, you see enough of the original document to know that most of the conflicting redactions are bullshit anyway.

• On the post: DC Appeals Court Dumps Lawsuit Claiming Multiple Tech Companies Are Engaged In An Anti-Conservative Conspiracy

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 29 May, 2020 @ 08:18am

  FreedomWatch and LauraLoomer (collectively, “FreedomWatch”) brought this suit against Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Apple (the “Platforms”) alleging that they conspired to suppress conservative political views and violated the First Amendment, the Sherman Antitrust Act, and the District of Columbia Human Rights Act.

  What, no RICO?

• On the post: The Two Things To Understand About Trump's Executive Order On Social Media: (1) It's A Distraction (2) It's Legally Meaningless

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 28 May, 2020 @ 12:14pm

  My personal favorite part of all this nonsense is how he complains that social media is not evenhandedly applying their terms of service to all of its users. You know, like that time where they kicked off an abusive sycophant/narcissist for harassing people with vitriol and misinformation (Alex Jones), but haven't kicked off an abusive sycophant/narcissist for harassing people with vitriol and misinformation (Donald Trump).

  Oh, the humanity.

• On the post: Hell Hath No Fury Like A Federal Law Enforcement Agency That Keeps Finding Some Way To Break Into IPhones

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 27 May, 2020 @ 02:45pm

  By reviving the old blame-Apple routine, the two officials managed to evade a number of questions that their press conference left unanswered.

  Regardless of side-stepping or evasion, those questions will never be answered by current management, because they're sooper-sekret methods and techniques that OMG TERRORISTS.

  And such.

• On the post: How A Feud Among Wolf-Kink Erotica FanFic Authors Demonstrates What The Copyright Office Got Wrong In Its DMCA Report

  

  Tim R ( profile ), 26 May, 2020 @ 04:39pm

  That's... not how any of this works...

  That should definitely be on the next series of Techdirt shirts.

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