BenJones's Comments

Big Government : Anchorage CBS Affiliate Caught on Voicemail Conspiring Against Alaska's GOP Senate Candidate-Updated

Tue, 2 Nov 2010 03:37:35 +0000

Well, Fortunately for the CBS station, if it's true, they've not technically done anything wrong. Thanks to a trial about 10 years ago, in Florida, the FCC's requirement that news be factually based was found to be irrelevent. The case centred on an investigative journalism piece for the Fox affiliate over Bovine growth hormones in milk, The company being investigated was a major advertiser and had words with the station, who turned the story around and changed it (lied). The reporters (a husband and wife team) went public and were fired. They sued under the whistle-blower statute, and won. Then Fox appealed, and most of the other news channels and networks supported fox, and it was overturned on appeal. The court's said the FCC's requirement was not an enforceable rule, and didn't qualify for whistle-blower protection. News reporting in the US nowadays doesn't have to have a single factual basis. It only has to be careful of libel. Everything else is fair game. (case is Akron V Fox, look it up). Don't you just love it.

TorrentFreak : Why the IFPI/Eircom Anti-Piracy Deal Sucks

Sun, 1 Feb 2009 13:53:15 +0000

can't speak for everyone else, but you've mentioned two hurdles there. Not everyone will have 40Gb available not everyone has 100KB/s upload Personally, with all the PDFs and other documents i get every day I'm lucky if I keep 5-10Gb free, and 100KB/s upload is twice what my ISP offers at most. Such restrictions won't endear these sorts of networks to most people.

TorrentFreak : DRM Jams the Gears of War: Crysis and GTA IV Next?

Sun, 1 Feb 2009 13:41:06 +0000

You know, no matter how many times you post it's 'not DRM', the fact will still remain that it was.

TorrentFreak : DRM Jams the Gears of War: Crysis and GTA IV Next?

Sun, 1 Feb 2009 13:38:49 +0000

I will say this once mire, since it was clearly ignored earlier. It IS DRM. It is an attempt to MANAGE the RIGHTS of someone using a DIGITAL file. DRM does not just mean 'copy protection', strange as it might seem. The easiest and most common example of non copy-protection is on DVDs - Region Coding. It's certainly not the first time someone's attempted to play down DRM as not being DRM, and it won't be the last.

TorrentFreak : DRM Jams the Gears of War: Crysis and GTA IV Next?

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 14:18:09 +0000

What does the certificate do? It manages the rights for the users to use a digital file. That's Digital Rights Management, or DRM. Other games in the past have used methods to check for cheating, but they only kick in in instances where it's an issue - playing online for instance (the delta force games of 10 years ago is an example I remember well) When a certificate even prevents you from opening the level editor, that's a bad DRM issue, and it IS DRM. DRM isn't something that restricts for the purpose of restricting, it's using technological methods to control what someone can do with what they've purchased. Also, if it's easy to patch, why, after 2 days, had they still not managed to work out how?

TorrentFreak : US Pirate Party Docks in California

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:12:42 +0000

I don't know Shantih (aka Roze) but a website notoriously run badly isn't it. Perhaps news reports, or TV segments (like this one on the US G4 - formerly techTV - flagship show from 2007 http://g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/blog/post/679293/... BTW, what have I told you about sockpuppeting?

TorrentFreak : DRM Jams the Gears of War: Crysis and GTA IV Next?

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:58:45 +0000

If it were for multiplayer, it wouldn't be blocking off the editor as well, which by all accounts it does.

TorrentFreak : US Pirate Party Docks in California

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 04:09:23 +0000

There was a wikipedia page, it was later delated and folded into the single main page. The German pirate party (piratenpartei) doesn't have a page either, and they've run in several elections. Wikipedia is not the sum of all knowledge, just the sum of the knowledge of the people that have time to waste on it, is my opinion. BTW, over the last 3 years, we've exposed mediadefender's shady practices, initiated FCC hearings into comcast, given the only reliable coverage of the oink case, exposed buckcherry's publicity stunt, Encouraged Toyota to u-turn and fire a lawyer and many more and we've barely got more than a stub. Wikipedia is usefull for many things, but a measure of notability is it not.

TorrentFreak : US Pirate Party Docks in California

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 03:58:58 +0000

Talking to them (I've known the former US party chairman, now international coordinator for many years) If you want to see about starting a state party in other states, just contact them, and see about working on it together.

TorrentFreak : Government Refuses to Revoke Draconian File-Sharing Law

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:32:24 +0000

No, the ratonal that they're 'safer' is that they're hidden communities, that investigators can't get onto. Utter hogwash, as if you can get onto it, so can they, and they can probably do it easier, with their greater resources. Also, the nature of private sites just makes it easier to gather evidence, so they're easier targets that way. Safer? nope. For all you know, the tracker might be run by a media group. Honeypot systems have been done before, with scene FTPs you know.

TorrentFreak : Government Refuses to Revoke Draconian File-Sharing Law

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:34:38 +0000

"Or you can join some private trackers - which isn't completely risk-free but does reduce risk to an extent." yes... remind me again. what has every person so far that's gone to court (and lost) over p2p involving bittorrent, has in common? Oh yeah, they were on private trackers. Oink, elitetorrents, MovieX. Isohunt, mininova, piratebay - all at least 4 years old, and still no convictions. So, why do you say these private sites are 'risk reduced' when the evidence says otherwise? I asked if they were safe almost 2 years ago (http://torrentfreak.com/are-private-bittorrent-tr...and you know, still no-one has been able to show any reason that they were. It also doesn't help that a large number, if not a majority, are run by people with little actual knowledge, relying on rumours according to the reports I've had.

TorrentFreak : No '3 Strikes' Disconnection for UK Pirates

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 06:10:04 +0000

Just to point out, the people doing those jobs don't expect to be paid for their work the next pay period, let alone 50 years or more later. If I want to have any income in any particular year, I expect to have to work during that year. I don't expect to be paid for today, for the work I did in 2000 and 2001 (which was for a TV company). If I owned the copyright of that work though, I suddenly should? Think about your answer carefully. btw, as I said to roze, I've changed the name on all your comments to match each other, under your usual nick of 'freetard' - it makes it easier to track who says what.

TorrentFreak : No '3 Strikes' Disconnection for UK Pirates

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 05:42:33 +0000

Psst, Roze - you know we can tell when you use blank accounts to agree with yourself. It flags it up for us. Spamming the comments will just get you banned. I'll edit in your name to all your comments, just so we know who they're from.

TorrentFreak : Music Piracy Not That Bad, Industry Says

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 03:06:59 +0000

typo fixed

TorrentFreak : Music Piracy Not That Bad, Industry Says

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 02:58:38 +0000

"There is only one ingredient necessary for a movement, and that is anger." There's a second one, effort. It's one thing to talk about someone else starting something, and another to put the effort into starting it yourself.

TorrentFreak : RIAA Scared of Court Case Webcast

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:36:05 +0000

"The opposing counsel denied and counter-offered a settlement of $10,500 to be paid over 1 year. Joel declined." from Joel's new site, which is also linked in the article above when talking about the first settlement offer.

TorrentFreak : UK Censors Responses to Piracy Consultation

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 22:19:11 +0000

The documentation makes the association of 'legal download' with the purchase of a song from an online store, not of just any track that wouldn't constitute infringement.

TorrentFreak : Meet DtecNet - RIAA's New Anti-Piracy Partners

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 04:43:09 +0000

Criminal activities are something we can't condone here. That includes vandalism.

TorrentFreak : DRM Troubles Lead to FTC Discussion

Fri, 9 Jan 2009 22:45:18 +0000

"More like, illegally and secretly installed a rootkit on the end users computer and then re-installed the rootkit when it was discovered under the pretense of removing the original rootkit." I was trying to be nice about about the rootkit fiasco. :-)

TorrentFreak : Netgear Unveils its TV-Torrent Player

Thu, 8 Jan 2009 15:20:01 +0000

We changed the comment system from the standard Wordpress system, to this IntenseDebate system. It's removed a lot of the less worthwhile comments, and those by trolls. The management tools are a lot better with this system, to deal with the worthless or abusive comments we've had earlier. Oh, and the threading means that people won't be posting a reply a page later, which others won't see, and post their own reply to etc.