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Where it says "Charles Carreon [...] first incited all of his users to harass The Oatmeal anyway"

Since in this link the Oatmeal guy asks *if* he should send a C&D. Then at the bottom it seems to suggest contact (DOSing?) the other guy: "I felt I had to say something about what they're doing. Perhaps you should too".

So, maybe funnyjunk got crowd-DOSed first?

Forget FunnyJunk, but you should definitely check out TheOatmeal. It's a very funny webcomic.

I'd give them a computer with Linux; then send them out to the mines to get the ore...

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/north_south_korea

TheOatmeal has some wisdom on this topic.

(Please forget everything you learned from the Oatmeal about Tesla and Edison. Other than that, I'm modding you up because I completely agree with you.)

Please apply some critical thinking to everything that both Forbes and The Oatmeal have to say about Edison.

All TFA says is V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai wrote a program called "EMAIL" and registered a copyright for it. There is not even a claim that it was actually tried out over a network, or a discussion of how the protocol worked or how it would scale.

Certainly this does make clear that "email" was not a totally original idea when BBN "invented" it, but neither was the light bulb original when Edison invented it. There is a certain value to making something actually work. (And yes, I know Edison was a douchebag. He still invented the light bulb, dammit!)

If it's any consolation, BBN made as much money off licensing their e-mail technology as Ayyadurai did: zero. This was back in the days when researchers shared their work. Contrast with how today's technology companies behave with respect to intellectual property and you'll see why I think Chomsky's denunciation of BBN is a bit overblown.

Ironically, the news coverage has pushed theoatmeal's page complaining up to the #2 google search result, try it:
Google search for funnyjunk
Just to add to the fun: funnyjunk

You forgot 3.5, in which the FunnyJunk admin sends an email to all FunnyJunk users and tells them that Inman is trying to shut the site down. He then encourages them to harass Inman via email and Facebook.

but axing them after issuing a legal threat alleging that assertions of copyright infringement were defamatory sure smells like destruction of evidence... And courts tend to take a very dim view of destruction of evidence...

So let's talk about FJ's strategy in this quagmire they've created. First it started out with a pretty innocuous (though informative) question post and there is no indication of an offensive attack between one party or the other. FJ's response to this is to respond by describing two completely different scenarios to everyone while destroying evidence. First, they contact all their users and alledge that The Oatmeal is suing FJ while in reality they fire a threat of slander and libel lawsuit at The Oatmeal. Meanwhile The Oatmeal is being harassed by FJ users who seem to be confused that this is about The Oatmeal doesn't believe FJ has any members and is really just a bot.

Basically the FJ admin and/or legal team is playing this like a money making entity would -- they're doing everything in their power to make users see one situation and the original content creators face another situation. And that's what happens when revenues are threatened, bad people get creative in bad ways and it usually has a very bad effect but is effective nonetheless. I hope The Oatmeal sticks to his guns on this one -- he's definitely in the right and he's definitely tackling a problem that persists on imgur, FunnyJunk and a number of other sites (yes, even YouTube).

but axing them after issuing a legal threat alleging that assertions of copyright infringement were defamatory sure smells like destruction of evidence... And courts tend to take a very dim view of destruction of evidence...

So let's talk about FJ's strategy in this quagmire they've created. First it started out with a pretty innocuous (though informative) question post and there is no indication of an offensive attack between one party or the other. FJ's response to this is to respond by describing two completely different scenarios to everyone while destroying evidence. First, they contact all their users and alledge that The Oatmeal is suing FJ while in reality they fire a threat of slander and libel lawsuit at The Oatmeal. Meanwhile The Oatmeal is being harassed by FJ users who seem to be confused that this is about The Oatmeal doesn't believe FJ has any members and is really just a bot.

Basically the FJ admin and/or legal team is playing this like a money making entity would -- they're doing everything in their power to make users see one situation and the original content creators face another situation. And that's what happens when revenues are threatened, bad people get creative in bad ways and it usually has a very bad effect but is effective nonetheless. I hope The Oatmeal sticks to his guns on this one -- he's definitely in the right and he's definitely tackling a problem that persists on imgur, FunnyJunk and a number of other sites (yes, even YouTube).

The oatmeal covers this pretty well. When people complain and are waving money at you and you don't want to take it, you have no one to blame but yourself.

http://theoatmeal.com/pl/state_web_spring/yahoo

How to watch Game of Thrones.

And of course, nobody will EVER print anything with the cloud. Printers are from hell.. http://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers

CLIPBOARD FAIL! Humiliation.

Oblig The Oatmeal comic

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

The Oatmeals respone makes it all worthwhile: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response

And it's always worth pointing out that Tesla was the greatest geek that ever lived.

Here's a great response to the forbes article, from the author of the article that the Forbes article is critiquing:

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response

Download the episodes and watch them all at once, back to back?

Others will not be able to afford Cable, may have to wait to view the current episode, or have no digital availability in "your region" etc.

Make these shows available worldwide, at the same time digitally and otherwise and piracy will drop.

Or at any rate, those that pirate will not have been customers able or willing to purchase in the first place.

I'd love to know what countries pirate game of thrones the most, whether it is the United States, or countries outside the US.

What the MPAA and the Networks have yet to explain is why:

A) I pay as much or More for my cable television living outside the US?

B) The US Channels including HBO, Showtime (simply not available), Starz, Discovery, National Geographic and educational channels show premium recent shows and the channels I get outside the United States show older series and movies?

C) Why I speak English yet I am lumped in Latin America where many shows are in Spanish with no subtitles, and foreign language films are unwatchable because there are no subtitles.

D) My Cable companies publicised that they tried to negotiate with US firms to allow them to show the US Feeds and were told that they simply were not available outside the US, fullstop. Pay a million, pay 40 million...they aren't available, take this content which we package for you because we have already shown it to our own people.

E) Why does Netflix Latin America lack over 25,000 movies and series titles that are available on Netflix USA, but I pay the same subscription fee?

F) Why is the content on Hulu not available worldwide?

G) Why can I pay 800USD for an iPhone, 250USD for a Kindle Fire, and 800USD for an iPad but I can't purchase the latest apps or add my credit card to the iTunes store because I do not live in the United States?

H) Why can I purchase a Kindle Touch but cannot purchase over 30,000 books because I am not a US citizen? Why when the Kindle was first available was I paying a dollar more for every book purchase from Amazon?

I) Why are unabridged DVD and BluRay collections in some cases available only in the United States? Why is Amazon prevented from shipping them outside the US?

I'd love a follow up question to the so called "authorities" as to why Foreigners are made to pay more for substandard services and products (in my view, showing old movies at current prices is a scam) and this is not considered a violation of Trade agreements. Under WTO agreements you cannot sell a higher quality product to your own citizens and create an inferior product for export (and especially not at the same price).

Answer those questions, and then we can start talking about why non-US citizens (i.e. the other 6.7 BILLION people in the world) may pirate content when they may be able to afford the products.

Secondly, take a look at this Oatmeal comic which brings the point home as well: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

Sorry, no sympathy for an industry that made record breaking profits last year while crying about how much money it was losing, and doing its best in my view to racketeer profits from overseas markets through an opaque system of IP licensing and distribution.

And now a response addressing the article (again, from the oatmeal): http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response

Great idea, except it doesn't work that way. Season 2 won't be available on those services here until HBO releases the DVDs, just as Season 1 wasn't. It's exactly like the Oatmeal comic on the topic: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

A somewhat partisan view http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla yet if I can believe it's all true, then there are some things there that I didn't know before.

Actually, it's more like ...this oatmeal remix... down our end of the planet... :(

The Oatmeal has already demonstrated the problem perfectly.

GOOG knows you're hidden desires.

They know that I am the hidden desire? I always wanted to be someone's hidden desire. So yaay.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe

First, I rarely bittorent anything, but I recently tried to find an audiobook for my son that is old and no longer being sold anywhere. My experience was somewhat similar to the oatmeal trying to watch game of thrones online: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones. Audible? No. Amazon? No. Barnes & Noble? No.

The only places I could find the audiobook were used and costs 40.00 or more for cassette tapes...which I would then have had to convert to MP3s myself. Long story short, thanks to bittorent, my son is now halfway through the book and loves it.

If someone would have bothered to actually sell the audiobook, I would have forked over money for it.

This is a prime example of why copyright law should be relaxed on abandoned copyrighted material. They like to bitch about piracy, but they sure don't go out of their way to offer the public what they really want.

Objective-C literally looks like vomit.

The last time I looked at Objective-C code, I didn't see any partially-digested bits of dinner in it, so I don't think that's true.

What you get with a pirate DVD vs. the official release. Now tell me, which one would you rather have? The Oatmeal had similar things to say about trying to buy HBO's Game of Thrones . They simply can't understand how customers or potential customers think. The **AA are idiots.

That one is a somewhat bad example. The Matrix is one of the films which is clever enough to modify the logo and mesh it into the movie- I don't mind watching a few second clip the animators put together. It's almost like a mini-demo; how much "cool" can you pack into a 5 second logo lead-in? But the rest of the point does still stand.

What you get with a pirate DVD vs. the official release. Now tell me, which one would you rather have? The Oatmeal had similar things to say about trying to buy HBO's Game of Thrones . They simply can't understand how customers or potential customers think. The **AA are idiots.

This handy flow chart explains why. The **AA guys are desperately trying to put themselves out of business. See also The Oatmeal about why HBO is trying to do the same thing to people wanting to buy Game of Thrones .

This is an attitude that puzzles me. The game companies are the ones making these decisions. If anything, the blame mostly lies on them. They're the ones who implement the DRM and make the software, not the pirates. The pirates may indirectly cause them to change direction, but they still make the final decision.

Do not pretend as if no blame rests on the developers.

I suggest you consider dropping a bit of your own arrogance. Obviously a developer will always want to earn more and a customer will always want to pay less. DRM, as irritating as it is sometimes, can be born of an honest motivation: to limit game use to the person who purchased it. To say there is no excuse for the 'punishment' of 'draconian' DRM is a pretty nice bit of rhetoric but ignores entirely the fact that some DRM goes unnoticed by most (e.g., streaming a movie from netflix) and that unauthorized copying and distribution of games has a critical relation to the profitability of game development and this, in turn, has a critical relation to the desire of developers to make games. You may love your single-player, non-networked games a great deal, but if the prevailing business climate makes these games unattractive projects for developers, you won't have much to choose from.

As for your other post, I think you get a few things wrong:

I cannot fathom how anyone could perceive that as being a much more severe problem than jaywalking. They may or may not be losing potential profit, but that is all.

You don't seem to realize that game development, music, tv, and movies are considered high-risk/high reward investements. In some cases, it's not "potential profit" that is at stake but the very business itself. For every blockbuster game/movie/song/show out there, hundreds go belly up.

I cannot see how copying music is a "huge" problem even as someone who supports copyright.

I have pretty liberal attitudes toward music copying, but believe it's pretty telling that music industry revenues peaked in 1999 and plummeted for years. In fact, music industry revenues are down over 60% from where they were 13 years ago. In any other industry a 65% decline would be seen as a complete catastrophe. Maybe that's not a huge problem for you, but it certainly is for people who worked in the music industry.

Laughable. What do you suggest? Even as someone who supports the idea of reasonable copyright laws, I do not believe it is possible to stop.

Actually, it was legislation (the DMCA) that set the stage for the current legal situation vis-a-vis content sharing. In particular, the safe habor provision of that legislation is what protects companies like Google and the Pirate Bay and Megaupload from enormous civil actions by the MPAA and the RIAA -- that is why they have resorted to suing individuals instead. The DMCA says that these internet companies are not liable for the actions of their users and that has resulted in the proliferation of services that people can use to share copyrighted material freely. A reversal of this provision would immediately result in some colossal lawsuits.

I heartily agree with you that a legal alternative to downloading is the only way forward here. The suits in the motion picture business are screwing this up big time.

How to use an apostrophe

What you said is: "Somewhere PowerDVD is wringing it is hands and cackling madly in it is secret lair."
What you want to say is: "Somewhere PowerDVD is wringing its hands and cackling madly in its secret lair."
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling

So, if you have no cable at all how do you propose getting Netflix,

Good old fashioned snail mail. It's better in nearly every aspect.

The one thing it doesn't let you do is immediately watch something you want on the spur of the moment. And yeah, that can be a pain.

But the online streaming situation is a total mess. I don't want to subscribe to Hulu for one thing, Netflix for another, Amazon for another, etc. Streaming quality is still not that great, prices are high, and it saturates the connection making it crappy for everyone else in the house. While if I get a Blu-Ray in the mail, the audio/video quality is far superior, it has all the extras which I actually want, there's no online service bullshit to slog through, and everything works. Streaming is just not "there" quite yet -- the technology has a ways to go, and distribution deals and conditions make everything an absolute pain for the end user. The distributors do everything in their power to make piracy a more compelling and enjoyable experience.

ALA: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

Bearodactyl!
http://www.theoatmeal.com/comics/ptero

said it best, http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones Seriously. They are *trying* to make piracy superior to their own products.
This is no different from the camera industry resisting digital cameras, guess what? You don't make the rules. The consumers do. Lots of businessmen seem to have forgotten that they serve the market, not the other way around. The first company to release TV shows the day they air, for about $1-$5 (maybe based on SD vs HD you charge more?) with no DRM and fast downloads, and its yours, on your computer, watch it when you want.. is going to make billions.

Digital media have next to no distribution cost. You sell more and more copies for less, and you make more. Valve just realized this, have you noticed all the steam sales? It seems every day now a game is on sale for $5. Not a crappy, old, DOS game from somebody's garage sale, but fairly new and impressive AAA games are selling for $2-10. That seems absurd, when they retail for $50-60. BUT YOU MAKE MORE MONEY. Because PEOPLE ACTUALLY BUY THEM when the price is FAIR.

Requiring a cable subscription to use hulu is no different than video game companies requiring you to be always online and connected to their service. You're making the pirated version BETTER, you're actively hamstringing YOUR OWN PRODUCT. This is the stupidest thing you could possibly do in business, but out of a sense of "justice" we all have to become internet police and "get those damn pirates!". Its not good for anybody.

Rare non-xkcd, yet relevant comic: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

The best part is the fake ads on the torrent page. Thanks for this!

Rare non-xkcd, yet relevant comic: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

Yeah, it's a joke, but it's also awfully revealing about how behind-the-times Hollywood's business practices really are.

Hollywood distributes movies both digitally and on film. Not all theatres have converted - in fact only a small portion of them are fully digital. So this is a matter of Hollywood serving their customers - if they stopped film distribution, then most cinemas would close their doors.

It's nothing to do with formats, it's to do with how people consume their media these days.

Hollywood wants people to get up and go to special places on a timetable they decide. Meanwhile the people have screens in their own houses and prefer to watch when they feel like it.

Same with music: People don't want CDs that they have to sit in a special place in the house to listen to. People want the ten latest songs in a small device they can carry with them.

This is why "pirates" are prospering - they give people what they want.

Obligatory comics and GIFs

With internet access

A lot of cable companies bundle essentially free basic TV service with their home Internet service packages.

and a mobile phone

If you replace your land line with a mobile phone, what do other members of the household use while you're gone?

you really don't need TV

HBO verifies your subscription to traditional cable or satellite TV first, and professional sports games being shown on cable TV (such as ESPN Monday Night Football) are blacked out online.

Just came across this on The Oatmeal today.

Obligatory Oatmeal: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

Boing-Boing conveniently just posted a pointer to an appropriate cartoon over at The Oatmeal called How to get More Likes on Facebook.

Perhaps I fired that comment off half-cocked. I'm not going to pretend I know all about it. The short answer is "I don't know". However, I believe that in Western countries, artists may assert rights to their works in civil court. For example, if I release a song in May and you copied my song and released an exact sound-alike in August, then I could sue you for cramping my style and expect a judge or jury to settle it for us. It is legal in Western countries to record a cover of somebody else's song under compulsory license without their permission and the original songwriter and publisher will receive legally mandated royalty rates on sales of the new recording -- in that sense the two systems are the same. I do not know if there is any time limit attached. It seems to me that the intent in the Chinese law is to prevent civil action by setting a time frame after which all civil remedies are prohibited. The comments of the affected Chinese artists clearly indicate that they are unhappy about it. I personally think it sucks the wind out of the music recording business model if people are permitted to copy and "use" your music however they like after 3 months.

As for "our own RIAA-ruled vision of copyright law" as you put it, I'm not sure how I feel. Full disclosure: I have made a little money from music recording and still get royalty checks from ASCAP every now and then. I believe that if I sell someone a song that the terms of that sale should be clear to both of us and pretty flexible. Obviously, they should be able to play it anywhere they want on any device they want until hell freezes over, pass it on to their kids, etc. I want people to be able to give my song to friends or play it at parties or play it for their family. This is how songs become popular. That somebody would take my song and put it on BitTorrent so the entire world can have it for free bothers me. That some loathsome creature like Kim Dotcom can make a fortune selling advertising on the back of content that he had no hand or share in creating bothers me too. I've never sued anybody, though. I don't like the RIAA. I don't like big record companies. I welcome P2P technology and the decentralization of the music industry. I like that it's easier to make and distribute music now than it has ever been. I love that NIN and Radiohead made tons of money from voluntary contributions. I LOVE that some of these douchebag record companies have been taken down a few notches. Their arrogance and that radio pay-for-play stuff was just nauseating.

On the other hand, I often wonder about the future of music. You need enormous amounts of money to record music with the London Symphony Orchestra. Those fantastic recording studios at Abbey Road with the 90-channel Neve 4078 boards in them cost millions of dollars to build and thousands of dollars a day to rent. While you don't need the LSO or one of those Neve boards to crank out garage rock or electro clash or house music, they are kind of magic things that may soon become extinct. Dark Side of the Moon -- best selling record ever -- took something like six months or a year to record at Abbey Road and was done on the record company's dime. Aside from record companies, who is willing to pay for something like that?

I really don't want to ignite any flame wars or anything, but I do hope that people who make (good) music get compensated for it. I hope that people who enjoy music appreciate that it takes effort to create and will consider sending some compensation to the artists -- however small that compensation may be. I hope that people don't feel entitled to have all their music for free. I hope the RIAA stops acting like a bunch of dickheads. I hope I can watch Game of Thrones soon without having to get cable or subscribe to HBO or whatever -- I'm totally willing to pay for it!

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home

All that being said, I work for a virtual call center at home doing tech support for n00bs and the like and I really like it.

Case in point:
British accents VS American accents

Couldn't resist...

What it means when you say "literally."

#7