Hephaestus’s Techdirt Profile

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  • Nov 23rd, 2009 @ 7:29am

    Re: Re: But google doesnt make advertising money off the news ..... (as Hephaestus)

    Actually google doesnt advertise on its news page."Google and the others don't actually make much, if any, money in aggregating all of that content. At best, it's a loss leader for most such sites."


    "In the end, Google ends up with people writing about the news, and Bing has the actual news. I know where I will go for news (and it ain't google)."

    You missed my point entrirely. Because of the way the search engines and the blogs work, any information that is exclusively on Bing wont be exclusive to Bing for very long. Like me many people get daily news from links through blogs, sent through social networks, texting, IM, and emails. That is becoming more important. The news finds me I dont find the news anymore. The Bing exclusive news deal wont change that.

    since you seem to be a troll, there is a bridge in london you might be interested in crawling under ...

  • Nov 23rd, 2009 @ 6:49am

    But google doesnt make advertising money off the news ..... (as Hephaestus)

    Google doesnt make money off the news, they seem to do the news more as a public service. I dont see how this is a smart move for microsoft for that reason. This doesnt have an ROI (return on investment) for miscrosoft short term or long term. Here is what is going to happen ....

    1) Only Microsoft crawls the news websites
    2) bloggers get a hold of the articles through bing and write about he news
    3) google indexes the blogs and finds the articles anyway

    So at most this will delay google getting the news by 20 or 30 minutes ....

  • Nov 21st, 2009 @ 11:50pm

    A little off topic ...but it is history ... (as Hephaestus)

    To bring things into context ....

    In the mid 1800's the phonograph was invented. Before that artists only made money when they actually performed. Progress occured and performances could be sold on cylinders and disks. That was the beginning of the recording industry. Most artist of that time wanted to just be heard by a larger audience and sold their souls to do so. This is where the creative accounting record labels use began. Inflated recording studio fees, distribution fees, accounting fees, and advertising fees all added up to a form of indentured servitude for the artist.

    100 plus years later the recording industry still scams artists into sell their souls to get a record deal.

  • Nov 21st, 2009 @ 1:33am

    let me get this straight ... (as Hephaestus)

    She is for Criminal copying, but against infringement... god what a great role model for the children

  • Nov 21st, 2009 @ 1:22am

    Maybe google is about to get schooled .... (as Hephaestus)

    ... in why you dont make deals with big media. You tend to get screwed. It doesnt matter if you are an artist, a start up, or a large corporation. Their bad mojo, karma, luck tend to affect everyone down wind of them.

    The solution for this one is, google should embed the ads in the big media videos when set top boxes are detected the same way hulu does. With an overlay during the first 2-5 seconds stating .... "due to lisc agreements with (insert big nasty media company name here) this 1 hour video contains 2, 30 second ads"

  • Nov 20th, 2009 @ 9:07pm

    Has anyone actually read this thing ..... (as Hephaestus)

    Dear Chairmen and Ranking Members:

    The United States is currently engaged in discussions with many of its major trading partners to negotiate a new secret agreement: the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) -- to enhance and strengthen our global government granted monopoly on music, images and film. When concluded, the agreement will hopefully complement the work you have championed in the Congress to build in the U.S. an intellectual property rights system necessary to maintain our monopoly and jobs that will allow us to fund your re-election campains through out the 21st century. ACTA has the potential to: preserve the jobs of high paying attorneys, and create new legal positions; monopolize our countrys leading position in the creation, publishing and distribution of software, videogames, films, music, books, television programs, journals, visual materials and other works protected by copyright; and strengthen the ability of U.S. businesses to crush competition, prevent the distribution of intellectual property, quash competition and innovation worldwide.

    We strongly support the Administration's efforts to negotiate a sound and comprehensive ACTA that codifies best practices for copyright enforcement, imprisonment for copyright infringements, and we urge you to do so as well. The need for this new agreement is clear. The enforcement standards in the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), drawn up nearly 20 years ago, forms an essential foundation for copyright enforcement. But over the past two decades, our inovation has stood still and technology has not, and copyright infringement has expanded on an unprecedented scale, depriving copyright owners and those they employ of the return they deserve they and are entitled to on the crucial investment in legal expertise, lobbying, and copyfraud. Online infringment is a critical challenge for each of the diverse copyright-based sectors represented by the signatories to this letter. In this regard, it is essential that ACTA include an Internet chapter that, among other things, provides legal incentives for cross-industry cooperation to quash all competition.

    You in Congress have defined adequate and monopolistis intellectual property protection under U.S. trade law as the extent to which the country provides protection of intellectual property rights consistent with or greater than the protection afforded under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights 19 U.S.C. 2703(b)(5)(B)(ii) (emphasis added). As you have recognized, it is long past time to expand on the foundation that TRIPS provided, and to raise minimum global standards to reflect our inability to change and the lessons learned from lobbying, bribery, and extortion efforts in many countries. That, in essence, is the thrust of the ACTA negotiations: to codify best enforcement practices that add to the framework provided by TRIPS, and monopolize legitimate commerce in copyrighted works that satisfies our shareholders, provides creators with no options to continue creating and distributing original works except through us, and contributes to an overall healthy, global monopoly.

    Of course, we know the ACTA negotiations will live up to their potential and produce a world wide draconian copyright system, an agreement that delivers no real benefits to creators or consumers. But we do know it is an effort well worth supporting, as we will continue supporting your re-election campains. We urge you and your Congressional colleagues to continue supporting ACTA.


    Respectfully submitted by:
    Advertising Photographers of America
    American Association of Independent Music (A2IM)
    American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA)
    American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)
    American Society of Media Photographers, Inc. (ASMP)
    Association of American Publishers (AAP)
    Broadcast Music, Inc (BMI)
    Commercial Photographers International
    Directors Guild of America (DGA)
    Evidence Photographers International Council
    Independent Film and Television Alliance (IFTA)
    International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE)
    Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA)
    National Music Publishers Association (NMPA)
    NBC Universal
    News Corporation
    Picture Archive Council of America (PACA)
    Professional Photographers of America (PPA)
    Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
    Reed Elsevier Inc.
    Society of Sport & Event Photographers
    Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA)
    Stock Artists Alliance
    Student Photographic Society
    The Advertising Photographers of America
    The Walt Disney Company
    Time Warner, Inc.
    Universal Music Group
    Viacom Inc.
    Warner Music Group

    Chairman Patrick Leahy, Senate Judiciary Committee
    Ranking Member Jeff Sessions, Senate Judiciary Committee
    Chairman Max Baucus, Senate Finance Committee
    Ranking Member Charles E. Grassley, Senate Finance Committee
    Chairman John Conyers, House Committee of the Judiciary
    Ranking Member Lamar Smith, House Committee on the Judiciary
    Chairman Charles Rangel, House Committee on Ways and Means
    Ranking Dave Camp, House Committee on Ways and Means
    Chairman Henry Waxman, House Committee on Energy and Commerce
    Ranking Member Joe Barton, House Committee on Energy and Commerce
    cc. Ambassador Ron Kirk


    ..... Big Ole GRIN

  • Nov 20th, 2009 @ 8:03pm

    Re: Why do you keep picking on these companies ?? (as Hephaestus)

    I really have to take a shower now .... that was distasteful even with the /sarcasm tag...

  • Nov 20th, 2009 @ 8:01pm

    Why do you keep picking on these companies ?? (as Hephaestus)

    How do we know that this isnt a special interest group using the 30 companies listed above and just sending form letters? You have pointed out how lobbyist do this on many an occasion.

    How could you pick on these poor companies? They are just trying to make a living. They are all looking out for our best interests. They love and respect us. They want whats best for the american people and wouldn't try to manipulate the system.

    /sarcasm

  • Nov 20th, 2009 @ 7:39pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: I love the digital age.... nothing can be sacred. (as Hephaestus)

    Okay let me try this again ...

    Yes the Chaordic overloards are coming!!

    Bow to them for they are your salvation in this age of IP darkness.

    Worship them for they will smite the Chaos that is the UK's Digital Economy Bill.

    Pray to them for they will Pull Light from the Darkness that is ACTA.

    Sacrifice the virginity of the daughters of upper management RIAA to them for the loss of their innocence will bring about an new era of enlightenment.

    ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY LORDS OF THE CHAORDIC ORDER!!!

    ... a wee bit over the top me thinks ... Big Ole GRIN

  • Nov 20th, 2009 @ 7:22pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: I love the digital age.... nothing can be sacred. (as Hephaestus)

    Yes the Chaordic overloards are coming, bow to them!!

  • Nov 20th, 2009 @ 7:20pm

    May you live in interesting times.. (as Hephaestus)

    This is a wonderful example of ...

    1) load gun
    2) aim at foot
    3) pull trigger
    4) loose profit

    It works from both sides

    TONO sits back and says you can't post your own music online because you signed the contract. We also have contracts with the music industry. Making the band not want to work with TONO and others see TONO for what they are.

    The Band sits back and says hey we need to protect our music. We also need to promote ourselves lets distribute through piratebay. When told they cant the band whines and complains.

    I hope eventually bands see that they can protect themselves through non align neutral parties.

  • Nov 20th, 2009 @ 4:52pm

    Re: Re: I love the digital age.... nothing can be sacred. (as Hephaestus)

    Ultimately the nerds will win and the internet will be rendered the most useful tool humanity has ever seen. The Internet is Chaordic. The order part is an growing set of rules for transfering and storing information. The Chaos part is the fact that disruptive technologies are constantly being developed. In the end no laws, no government, no amount of shouting, no amount of begging, and no amount of threats will change the fact that every speed bump placed will cause it to evolve. That evolution has already out paced the governments ability to legislate, corporations ability to adapt, and it will continue to do so.

  • Nov 20th, 2009 @ 4:26pm

    Re: Re: (as Hephaestus)

    Dude you just made me smile ....

  • Nov 20th, 2009 @ 4:24pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Nah... (as Hephaestus)

    "We should enforce laws only as written and we should not allow our government to act arbitrarily without legal authority merely to achieve some stated purpose."

    IMA .... you are arguing civil vs common law ... this is the US guess which one we follow.

  • Nov 20th, 2009 @ 4:14pm

    Re: haha RIGHT! (as Hephaestus)

    "Until or unless the control of the muppets who run these organizations are removed"

    Thanks !!! You just gave me a really great idea. I used to build stock trade engines for a living. As an experiment all the old Out Of Lease machines were used to target a single company. The machine was shut down a week before any SEC filings were needed .....

    285 note/entry) Set up a stock trade engine to trade nothing but publicly traded big media and support corporations. For the express purpose of gaining rights to the catalogs.

    may you live in interesting times

  • Nov 20th, 2009 @ 2:02pm

    Re: Here is the Link to the bill (as Hephaestus)

    got SMS'd ... my bad :) ... "the UK's Digital Economy Bill is in pdf format"

  • Nov 20th, 2009 @ 1:57pm

    Re: (as Hephaestus)

    Ima, I agree using the history of the "Drug War" to chart the future of the "IP Wars" (tm ... not) here is what we can expect.

    1) The laws are enacted
    2) The laws do nothing to slow the spread of -XXX- (drugs, IP infringement, terrorism, etc)
    3) A bureaucracy is created to over see the war on -XXX-
    4) Harsher laws are enacted to slow the spread of -XXX-
    5) Other wise honest people begin going to jail for -XXX-
    6) Civil liberties are removed, warrantless searches, etc begin occurring to locate -XXX-

    The things we should all remember is that once and bureaucracy becomes entrenched it is almost impossible to remove and will continue to grow larger.

    As we have learned with the war on drugs and terrorism the public will fall for the "we need to violate your rights so you can be safe" line.

    When the laws don't work governments always escalate the punishments as opposed to examining the validity of the laws themselves. This comes from the entrenced bureaucracy stating to the government, "if we just had a little more power-money-people we could solve this" ... lather - rinse - repeat ...

    One solution to this nightmare of legislation would be to apply the same rules used on phone lines to the internet. After all they do the exact same thing, allow us to communicate. The internet as the worlds largest conference call, the mental image makes me smile. With the same rules applied to both phone and data it would prevent ISP's from being able to sniff your packets (sounds kind of perverse ... grin) with out a warrant. That in turn would prevent almost all of what the IP holders want out of both ACTA and the UK's digital economy bill.


    So .... Let the "IP Wars" begin!!!! ....

  • Nov 20th, 2009 @ 12:12pm

    Here is the Link to the bill (as Hephaestus)

    UK's Digital Economy Bill

  • Nov 20th, 2009 @ 10:23am

    Well (as Hephaestus)

    Actually we do know some of what is going into ACTA .... what scares me is how similar to what is currently being proposed in the UK's Digital Economy Bill .... that is being proposed by Mandelson

  • Nov 20th, 2009 @ 9:41am

    Re: Re: Re: (as Hephaestus)

    Anonymous Coward you forgot the sarcasm tag!! and confused the new guy

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