trollificus 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: AT&T Breaks Another Merger Promise In Making 'Friends' Exclusive

    trollificus ( profile ), 13 Jul, 2019 @ 06:36am

    Re: Re: Re:Golden Geese

    That's a good statement of the ethical case against the way copyright is being abused here. On the social side, I would propose that another consequence, besides piracy (which people correctly point out will only generate efforts at tighter and more comprehensive control of the Internet), could be...not consuming electronic media from such sources at all! There are such things as books, doing real things in the real world, and interacting with actual people; even if they are not as charming as Jim Halper or appealing as Pam Beasley. There are also musical instruments to be abused and singing, using the (still freely avaialble) air around you. At some point, when people have been driven to such desperate measures while still having money in their pockets, our corporate overlords may realize there's only so many golden eggs they can beat from the dead horse of IP monetization. It may be painful, but when you're paying $400-600/month for "content" and access to it already, can you blame them when they go fishing for another few hundreds/month?

  • On the post: The Flipside To Figuring Out What Content Do You Block: Cloudflare's Project Galileo Focuses On Who It Should Protect

    trollificus ( profile ), 15 Jun, 2019 @ 11:31am

    Re: Re:

    No, it was a well-deserved verdict that will stand appeal (though they might get damages reduced by an amount greater than the legal fees to appeal it). In a gross example of "punching down", ridiculous accusations and threats were supported by the university, assuming the "free speech" of the students would protect any action they took. But not in a case of defamation, which seems pretty clear here. Or maybe the jury was just a bunch of unenlightened rubes who think there's a difference between "speech" and "raging mobs of protesters, death and arson threats and interference with business operations". As a practical matter, whatever you think of the members of the jury (who should, probably, be doxxed, threatened and have their employers and relatives called), it should not be hard to empanel a jury of people willing to make a like distinction anywhere in the country.

  • On the post: eBay Bans Negative Feedback For Buyers; Everyone Be Good Now

    trollificus ( profile ), 28 May, 2019 @ 10:42am

    Re: oi vey

    I worked for eBay, started not long after this change had been made. It clearly took about a nanosecond for the worst among the buyers to figure out scam procedures to take advantage of it. Keep in mind that your seller account was severely compromised by receiving as many as TWO whole negatives. I was constantly getting calls from people who were being scammed, and tasked with communicating eBay's official policy of "Tough shit." as nicely as possible.

    In my mind, I always visualized a top management meeting in which Donahue was pontificating on some "grand principles" level and said something like "Without buyers, there's no money. Without money, there's no business. We need to be buyer-focused." Which is the kind of bland tautology you get from these 7-figure geniuses. But as the vague idea pachinkoed down through upper management, all trying to show they were doing SOMETHING for their own six-figure salaries, it became a brutal anti-seller policy.

    As long as the bad actors chose their targets wisely (avoiding our big money sellers), there was fuckall we could do for them. And of course, you'd get disabled people making their living off eBay getting in-yo-face ripped off, long-time, perfect-rating sellers ruined by scammers, etc., It got depressing.

    And this was back when the eBay working environment was still trying to push the trappings of a "innovative, fun, tech startup" that valued its' employees. Ugh. I learned: put enough zeroes behind a companies valuation and you get bog-standard corporate management, otherwise known as 'Save on the lube."

  • On the post: Enough MEPs Say They Mistakenly Voted For Articles 11 & 13 That The Vote Should Have Flipped; EU Parliament Says Too Bad

    trollificus ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2019 @ 07:30am

    Re: Re: Fake news

    "The MEP's aren't professional legislators, they are just politicians ..." So, "rulers" then?

  • On the post: Enough MEPs Say They Mistakenly Voted For Articles 11 & 13 That The Vote Should Have Flipped; EU Parliament Says Too Bad

    trollificus ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2019 @ 07:26am

    Re:

    "Sorry, but you shouldn't vote against me just because I am stupid." That's going to be their campaign slogan?

  • On the post: Enough MEPs Say They Mistakenly Voted For Articles 11 & 13 That The Vote Should Have Flipped; EU Parliament Says Too Bad

    trollificus ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2019 @ 07:20am

    Re: Re: Re:

    Also it implies that we trust not only the expertise of the "experts" but their motivations and morals.

  • On the post: UK Cops Have Decided Impolite Online Speech Is Worth A Visit From An Officer

    trollificus ( profile ), 27 Dec, 2018 @ 08:16pm

    Re: Re:

    Sooo...in your equation, hurting someones' feelings in any way equals "bullying" and eternal unemployment, censoring and social shunning is a suitable punishment for hurt feelings? And this is to be enforced retroactively?

    I guess it's too much to ask you to look at this from the outside, or from the viewpoint of a rational person?

  • On the post: UK Cops Have Decided Impolite Online Speech Is Worth A Visit From An Officer

    trollificus ( profile ), 27 Dec, 2018 @ 10:21am

    Re: Re: Re:

    BTW, the process you describe is hardly "Darwinian" evolution, brutal or not, since those who most believe in your highly 'woke' Utopia seem very determined to not breed.

  • On the post: UK Cops Have Decided Impolite Online Speech Is Worth A Visit From An Officer

    trollificus ( profile ), 27 Dec, 2018 @ 09:10am

    Re: Re: Re:

    What you present there is an oracular prediction. You seem to think it is some future reality. This must come from either an exceptional talent for divination (scatomancy?) or existence in a bubble of like-minded people who all agree it must be true.

    The results of my prognosticative endeavors? You are under 25, urban and/or at university. The people you associate with all think you're smart, and the group agree almost 100% on almost everything. That about right?

    I seriously doubt your prophetic utterances will prove to be any more valid than were mine at that age.

  • On the post: Yet Another GDPR Disaster: Journalists Ordered To Hand Over Secret Sources Under 'Data Protection' Law

    trollificus ( profile ), 19 Nov, 2018 @ 08:06pm

    Re:

    Two separate stories. One that has been disappeared, one that can't even be discussed. Not complicated unless you're trying to...ohhhh...

  • On the post: Yet Another GDPR Disaster: Journalists Ordered To Hand Over Secret Sources Under 'Data Protection' Law

    trollificus ( profile ), 19 Nov, 2018 @ 07:48pm

    Re:

    Wow.

    TechDirt comments make you want to bail on the Internet?? Wow. The list of places with worse content and/or comments is...wow. Just, don't look, otherwise you'd have to answer your own question "No, it isn't."

    Sorry, it's just that being put off by the comments on TD is like being turned of YouTube comment threads because of the difficulty of the intellectual content there. It's just...wow...

  • On the post: Yet Another GDPR Disaster: Journalists Ordered To Hand Over Secret Sources Under 'Data Protection' Law

    trollificus ( profile ), 19 Nov, 2018 @ 07:39pm

    Re:

    Your conspiracy theory is as stupid as most conspiracy theories.

    Please note the absence of reality in your claims that most democracies have elected conservative governments. Germany? France? Italy, after the economic crisis in 2008? US elected Obama twice. UK had Labour, then undecided in 2010. FAR from what you claim, if you want to go country-by-country. Canada? Australia? Not conservative.

    Point of fact: the government in charge of the EU is not conservative and is passing data control and 'right to be forgotten" legislation that will benefit it greatly in assuring that the member states of the EU do NOT elect conservative governments which might act contrary to the interests of the Eurocrats in Brussels.

    IOW, it's your good guys who are doing the bad things. But "keep putting your head in the sand and ignoring the reality around you to pretend that what you want to be true actually is". It's a very popular thing to do.

  • On the post: Yet Another GDPR Disaster: Journalists Ordered To Hand Over Secret Sources Under 'Data Protection' Law

    trollificus ( profile ), 19 Nov, 2018 @ 07:19pm

    Re: Re: Re: Sorry, but this is BS

    Hah! That'll show 'em! Blows against the empire!

  • On the post: Cord Cutting Sets More Records, Yet Many Cable Giants Still Refuse To Compete On Price

    trollificus ( profile ), 19 Nov, 2018 @ 06:53pm

    Note: I'll retain internet access, but not as a primary source of social interaction, entertainment or "current opinion"...I know, I'll be woefully uninformed as to the days "twitter outrage" and embarrassingly unfamiliar with the latest exchanges of witticisms between 24-year-old "author/influencer/ally"s and 75-year-old Heritage Foundation pundits.

    I expect to survive with my understanding of how the world works largely undamaged.

  • On the post: Cord Cutting Sets More Records, Yet Many Cable Giants Still Refuse To Compete On Price

    trollificus ( profile ), 19 Nov, 2018 @ 06:37pm

    Crazy alternatives!!

    I remember cancelling Comcast and asking myself "How can it get worse?" a few years ago, and soon thereafter started reading about the inevitable progress of "IF greed, run silos.exe".

    Soon as I saw this projection being verified, I started hoarding books. (remember? Words on paper, frequently without any visual component at all?)

    Think I'm gonna sit this round out...

  • On the post: Robert Jackson Bennett Uses Magic To Make Sense Of How Technology Shapes Our Lives

    trollificus ( profile ), 11 Nov, 2018 @ 08:23am

    Re: fiction is reality?

    OR...people are choose fictional entertainments that are themselves informed by information media, computing technology and science. Nothing wrong with that.

    And they were, in any case, going to be consuming entertainment media, so...not only "no harm, no foul"; but +1 examining aspects of our current world through extrapolation.

  • On the post: Internet Memes Are Making UK Children Fat, Say Researchers Who Don't Understand Memes

    trollificus ( profile ), 25 Oct, 2018 @ 09:39am

    Re: Re: Re:

    And many other cats as well. I think, with the aid of a government grant and a nauseating project name (I'm thinking of going with "The Cat-astrophe of Uncontrolled Memes". Like it?), I can prove that this proto-meme normalized branch-hanging by cats, which shortened their lifespan by somenumber%.

  • On the post: 'Missing, Sex Trafficked' Children Neither Missing, Nor Victims Of Sex Trafficking

    trollificus ( profile ), 15 Oct, 2018 @ 09:34pm

    Re: Like a Portuguese Graveyard

    lol. I was going to post that it's good they didn't drive by a school, the headline would be "957 children found in Michigan sex trafficking operation.", but was late.

  • On the post: 'Missing, Sex Trafficked' Children Neither Missing, Nor Victims Of Sex Trafficking

    trollificus ( profile ), 15 Oct, 2018 @ 09:28pm

    Re: NOT

    Near Future Article Title:

    "DOJ Grant Funding Police Department's New Sex Trafficking Task Force"

  • On the post: Everything Wrong In One Story: Data Silos, Privacy, And Algorithmic Blocking

    trollificus ( profile ), 29 Sep, 2018 @ 07:25pm

    Re: Secure your friendships by talking to them, face to face

    Thing is, people are not using "social media" to create relationships, make friends or expand the pool of people they can communicate with. They are only seeking, in the vast number of people online, personal validation for whatever bizarre constellation of beliefs, political positions and emotional distortions they might exhibit. Nobody is so totally wrong-headed, misinformed or stupid that they cannot find online a thousand people who are 100% in agreement with them.

    A lot of people nowadays find that irresistible, especially compared to RL where people will say things like "Uh...that's wrong." and "No, I think your facts are outdated there." Sheesh! Who signs up for THAT?

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