Ben S 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Germany Finally Dumps Law That Says It's A Crime To Insult Foreign Leaders

    Ben S ( profile ), 27 Jan, 2017 @ 10:28am

    Re: ahhh... well hey...

    There were rumblings about this law getting repealed back when Erdogan decided to use this law to go after German citizens. I have a friend who lives in Germany, we chat via Skype, and he was actually skeptical as to whether this would happen. The law may have been repealed a bit sooner than they were aiming for, since it was supposed to be in time to stop a specific lawsuit that was reported here, and that lawsuit was scheduled for later this year. I forget who it was that was being sued by Erdogan, but with the law repealed, that lawsuit is pretty much toast. I'm sure Merkel will absolutely reap the benefits of repealing the law, but this was started before Trump becoming President was even starting to look likely.

  • On the post: Microsoft Sort Of Addresses Windows 10 Privacy Complaints With New Privacy Dashboard

    Ben S ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2017 @ 12:56pm

    Re: Even better

    You forget that windows is hard coded to bypass the hosts file for its internal tracking services. Those entries in the hosts file won't do much of anything at all to stop tracking. I had a cousin show me a program he had installed to block the tracking, but I forget what it was called, and never did look into it to see if it actually does the job.

    Note: I don't have Win 10, so I can't really test the software myself.

  • On the post: Team Prenda Finally Goes To Jail: Hansmeier & Steele Indicted & Arrested

    Ben S ( profile ), 16 Dec, 2016 @ 05:11pm

    A couple minor typos

    "...we've been saga of Prenda Law..." and the name "Anderw Luger"

  • On the post: Digital Homicide Drops Its Lawsuit Against Steam Users, Says It's Shutting Down Completely

    Ben S ( profile ), 07 Oct, 2016 @ 09:42am

    Re: Solid?

    According to Romine himself, he was too poor to afford a lawyer. I haven't checked his website in the last couple weeks, but last time I was there he was asking for a pro-bono lawyer to represent him in suing Valve directly.

  • On the post: Phoenix Police Issues Totally Bogus Cease & Desist To Trump Campaign Claiming Copyright Infringement

    Ben S ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2016 @ 09:16am

    Spelling error

    Masnick, I thought you should know that you have misspelled Phoenix a lot, you keep spelling it Phoneix in your post. Once in the title, and three times in the second paragraph.

  • On the post: Digital Homicide Sues Steam Reviewers, Steam Drops It Like It's Hot

    Ben S ( profile ), 22 Sep, 2016 @ 09:37am

    Re:

    It's not Steam they're suing, they're suing users who use Steam. They simply subpoena'd Valve for the real identities of Steam users. A nice little point by point on the merits of the lawsuit, but you've got the wrong defendant which makes a real difference.

  • On the post: Town Loses Gigabit Connections After FCC Municipal Broadband Court Loss

    Ben S ( profile ), 19 Sep, 2016 @ 11:58am

    Re:

    That is a great little plan actually. Gives an ISP that can provide real competition a foot in the door.

  • On the post: Netflix Urges FCC To Crack Down On Broadband Usage Caps

    Ben S ( profile ), 13 Sep, 2016 @ 09:33am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Federal Regulation...

    That's not really true. There is a very high cost involved in just setting up an ISP, higher than most other types of business, and tends to result in a natural monopoly that. It's just too high of a barrier for most who might have been interested.

    A better solution would be to set up a government controlled fiber network, then allow any company to connect to the network to act as an ISP. Lower the barrier for entry and let new ISP's form. It would be a costly endeavor, but nothing stops the US Govt from being one of these ISP's, or even charging a small rent to ISP's using their network, allowing them to recoup their costs, and even providing a new revenue stream in lieu of taxes. It'll never happen, because every ISP would have a temper tantrum, but it would do the job nicely.

  • On the post: Nintendo DMCAs Fan-Game 'No Mario's Sky', Devs Rename It 'DMCA Sky'

    Ben S ( profile ), 09 Sep, 2016 @ 11:39am

    Re: Re: Re:

    As some one who has beaten it with 100% completion, I will say it's a great game. A lot of people have suggested Nintendo sent the DMCA, then later a C&D to the dev's personal email, due to being embarrassed by the work this guy did. While I doubt that, I can see why people would think that. It's an extremely well designed game with out even really any noticeable bugs since the 1.1 patch.

  • On the post: [Updated] Wikileaks Leak Of Turkish Emails Reveals Private Details; Raises Ethical Questions; Or Not…

    Ben S ( profile ), 26 Jul, 2016 @ 05:45pm

    Re: Re:

    I'm also curious who he thinks this is supporting.

  • On the post: Anti-Vax Film Distributors Threaten Critic And Autistic Rights Advocate With Defamation

    Ben S ( profile ), 26 Jul, 2016 @ 05:20pm

    Re: PR firm propaganda, paid for by Big Pharma $$$

    You should check the blog's history a bit. It's come out against Big Pharma companies quite often, and is unafraid to call out unethical behavior of any type of company. If this whole site were to be paid for by Big Pharma $$$, the posts wouldn't criticize those same companies so frequently.

  • On the post: Judge Calls Out Malibu Media For Its Attempt To Cut And Run When Faced With Challenge To Its Infringement Claims

    Ben S ( profile ), 27 Jun, 2016 @ 03:12pm

    Re:

    Basically, until a decision is made on the counterclaim, the case stays in court. This prevents Malibu Media from deciding to drop their claim should they find the defense is likely to win, and set an unfavorable precedent. This also prevents them from dropping the case should it look like the judge is leaning toward awarding legal fees to the defense due to claims made by Malibu Media in bad faith.

    Had the judge decided to dismiss the counterclaim, then Malibu would be free to just drop their claim, and with nothing else on the docket to be decided, the case would be over.

  • On the post: Disappointing: Twitch Brings CFAA & Trademark Claim Against Bot Operators

    Ben S ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2016 @ 11:10am

    Re:

    It's not a games publisher. Instead, there are certain incentives built into the system to up your viewer/follower count. Reach the first milestone, you can start earning money from the adverts. Reach others, and the amount you can make goes up. So people build bots to cheat the system to try to make more money. Others will pay the guys making the bots to have those bots follow and watch their streams. If you get caught using bots for this purpose, you can get banned, but these bots also, to appear more legitimate, often follow other random channels, which can put legitimate channels at risk, despite having done nothing wrong.

    I had a few interesting discussions with a twitch streamer who now lives in South Korea. He told me about the worries he was having as a result of these bots following his own channel, his conversations with Twitch staff, his fears regarding his own channel getting banned, etc. I learned about these issues from discussions with him.

  • On the post: Oculus Is Hurting VR's Development By Supporting Walled Gardens, Closed Ecosystems

    Ben S ( profile ), 25 May, 2016 @ 10:52am

    Re: Re: TL;DR

    Care to source that claim?

  • On the post: Reddit's Technology Subreddit Ponders Banning Wired & Forbes For Blocking Adblock Users

    Ben S ( profile ), 09 May, 2016 @ 03:52pm

    Re: Re:

    As a test, I disabled Javascript. The website no longer blocks me from viewing the article.

  • On the post: Guy Argues That Anti-Ad Blocker Systems Violate EU Privacy Laws

    Ben S ( profile ), 21 Apr, 2016 @ 01:37pm

    Re: Browser detection?

    Well, doing this w/o informing your customer of the fact that you're accessing data on their computer to do this, and getting consent, would be.

    "Under Article 5.3 of the ePrivacy Directive storing information or gaining of access to information already stored in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user is allowed on condition that the subscriber or user concerned has given his or her consent..."

  • On the post: Techdirt Crowdsourcing: How Will The TSA Idiotically Respond To The Laptop Terror Bomb?

    Ben S ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2016 @ 10:45am

    Relevant xkcd

    The terrorist stole the idea from xkcd.

  • On the post: NY Times Gets It Right: Officials Calling For More Surveillance Are Proven Liars; Don't Listen To Them

    Ben S ( profile ), 18 Nov, 2015 @ 11:32am

    To be fair, breaking encryption hurts them directly. It is to their benefit to protect encryption. I fully expect they'll be communicating things they want to be kept secret using encryption.

  • On the post: As Predicted: Encryption Haters Are Already Blaming Snowden (?!?) For The Paris Attacks

    Ben S ( profile ), 16 Nov, 2015 @ 12:38pm

    Re: Re: Haystacks are to blame, not encryption

    Speaking of Person of Interest, there was a quote in there that I thought was interesting.

    "Any exploit is a total exploit. The tiniest crack becomes a flood." said by Finch, when his partner wanted to build a backdoor into the machine before it went online.

  • On the post: Microsoft 'Addresses' Windows 10 Privacy Concerns By Simply Not Mentioning Most Of Them

    Ben S ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2015 @ 01:15pm

    Re: Re: Well, if you're slightly crazy...

    Found the blog post I originally read. It covers a Czech post that did a traffic analysis of Windows 10. In fact, search for sites using the phrase "traffic analysis of windows 10" will pull up a few sites that cover the whole thing. The blog I read is linked below.

    http://investmentwatchblog.com/a-traffic-analysis-of-windows-10-2/

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