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Adam Savage Revises Claim of Lawyer-Bullying On RFID Show
Nick writes "A few weeks ago a video of a talk given by Adam Savage of the television show MythBusters spread across the internet (including a mention on Slashdot.) On the video, Savage stated that the show was unable to produce an episode about previously known RFID vulnerabilities due to a conference call to Texas Instruments that unexpectedly included several credit card companies' legal counsel. TI (via a spokesperson talking with cnet.com) stated that only one lawyer was on the call and that the majority of the people on the call were product managers from the Smart Card Alliance (SCA) invited by TI to speak. Then Savage (via a Discovery Communications statement) reaffirmed that he was not on the call himself and that the decision was not made by Discovery or their advertising sales department but rather MythBuster's production company, Beyond Productions."
SmartCard Bullying myth...
BUSTED!
That said, I'm amused that all it took was one lawyer and a bunch of product managers (no bias here, right?) to cow a production company into submission.
Savage's original claim ("Texas Instruments comes on along with chief legal counsel for American Express, Visa, Discover, and everybody else...") is preposterous on its face. You might get those guys to show up for the finalization of a merger, but not for a meeting between some TI engineers and a TV producer.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
No, no, that's probably true! Discovery didn't make the decision, they just presented the choice to the production company to either not produce the show, or take a long walk off a short pier.
Beyond Productions made the decision of which option to take entirely on their own.
The enemies of Democracy are
Why was there even a single lawyer in on such an innocent call?
That's not Picasso, that's Kandinsky!
... the lawyers put the thumbscrews on the production company and not on Discovery then? Wow, what a difference that makes. Boy, I feel the sudden urge to get an RFID implant.
Tell him to go on "Penn and Tellers' Bullshit" where they bring to light all types of issues. For anyone who loves Mythbusters, I also recommend that show.
In fact, I hope that would be their next episode (or possibly already is, since I'm only halfway through season 2)
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
"Well if you think our cards are so insecure, perhaps we should just pull our credit card processing from your web and retail stores".
Wouldn't Discovery have an excellent basis for a lawsuit here? I imagine that pulling someone's merchant account just because you don't like what they said wouldn't be allowed, but then again, IANAL.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Counsel, absolutely. Chief counsel? Of all those companies? Unlikely.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
You know that's not possible? So you tried it, eh? Please, post the details of your experiment.
Why would you try it with a sim for a plane of a different model than the one that hit the Pentagon? Flight 77 (with a former co-worker of mine and his whole family on board) was a 757.
Of course, why let facts get in the way of a good batshit conspiracy theory?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
There is this thing called a "printing press" and it was invented in 1439, and has been commonly used to print news and other sorts of pamplets.
The first newspaper in this country was started in 1704. The one I work for isn't quite 200, but I assure you, it's been dealing with irate advertisers for all 180 years of its existence. When the first medical research came out that corsets caused health problems, you bet your ass the corset makers screamed bloody murder when the news made it into the papers.
If someone gives you money, they think they have a right to tell you what to print. This is not the case in the better publications.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I just gotta say, Beyond 2000 was an awesome show! I miss it.