Boneheads – Page 10 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Righthaven LLC Adds More Papers to Troll List

According to a story in Wired, Righthaven LLC has expanded their copyright trolling operation to another newspaper chain. The WEHCO Media chain of newspapers has been added to the target list for Righthaven’s trolls.

WEHCO Media is headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas and co-owns Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC with Stephens Media. WEHCO owns the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette which is the largest newspaper in the state and the 43rd largest by circulation in the U.S.

A list of their newspaper holdings and a brief history of the company can be found on No Lawyers – Only Guns and Money.

Update on the blind NJ man who shot himself

The judge ruled on August 19th that Steven Hopler may retain the firearms currently in his possession and did not revoke his FID card, as long as the firearms are securely stored and Mr. Hopler completes a firearm safety course and undergoes an alcohol evaluation. Mr. Hopler was not granted his request to have the prosecutor’s office return the other firearms that are in that office’s possession, though he may re-open his petition after completion of the court-ordered training and evaluations.

The original NY Times article from 1994states that Mr. Hopler is “totally blind”. In addition, it states:

Mr. Hopler’s appeal to State Superior Court resulted in a ruling in his favor. But Judge Reginald Stanton, sitting in Morristown, added some stipulations: Mr. Hopler cannot load the weapons, shoot them or even leave home with them. And he must make sure that the guns are secured when they are not on display

So it would appear that Mr. Hopler may have been in violation of the original judge’s order.

The Plot Uncovered

Joe reports that some guy on a forum has figured it all out, and that the NRA has been secretly funding the Brady Campaign. Code ten to HQ, repeat, code ten to HQ. Send in “The Piano Tuners”. If I were this guy, I would highly suggest building a bunker from all the fundraising letters you’ve received. Now you know what they are for. Not that it’s going to help!

The Impact of the “Philly Blogger License”

I know everyone has seen this story already. It’s being touted as though Philadelphia is requiring a blogging license – which is not true. Philadelphia is requiring bloggers who make money off of their sites (in the cited examples, pitifully little money) to set them up as businesses. City Paper notes that they have the same requirements for freelance writers in Philadelphia. Bloggers aren’t being unfairly targeted – anyone conducting any form of financial transaction is being targeted.

Most of the commentary I’ve seen focuses on discretion in applying the law. I can sympathize with that point because it’s what we call “common sense.” And the impact will be felt here in the blogosphere. Wyatt says he’ll quit blogging if they come after him, and but all he’s got is a tip jar. I find his True Detective Stories to be a real eye-opener in the law enforcement world. (I assume most officers are brilliant like Wyatt, but it’s always good to be reminded that there are a significant number who are not. We’ll just leave it at that before I get into too much trouble.) I would consider the loss of his blog a real loss in the realm of serious public discussions, even if the True Detective Stories just want to make beat your head against your desk. (We live in the suburbs. Suck it, Philly.)

The good news is that the original story (and not the abbreviated/quoted Examiner piece that’s been linked everywhere) highlights one potential correction that’s not just a matter of relying on bureaucrats to use a little common sense when they try to open your wallet & take their “fair share.”

But bloggers aren’t the only ones upset with the city’s tax structure. In June, City Council members Bill Green and Maria QuiÃ±ones-SÃ¡nchez unveiled a proposal to reform the city’s business privilege tax in an effort to make Philly a more attractive place for small businesses. If their bill passes, bloggers will still have to get a privilege license if their sites are designed to make money, but they would no longer have to pay taxes on their first $100,000 in profit. (If bloggers don’t want to fork over $300 for a lifetime license, Green suggests they take the city’s $50-a-year plan.)

Their bill will be officially introduced in September.

The paper rightly points out that it doesn’t fix the business license requirement, and it still may mean they would have to pay more in taxes than they earn if they aren’t a large site. That’s a legit concern, but just like most things, fixes will come a step at a time.

The other good news is that this was a Drudge headline for a while, so it should drum up enough anger around the country to shame Philadelphia bureaucrats into behaving like reasonable adults for the time being. But, for any bloggers looking to escape, there are some lovely houses for sale in our suburban neighborhood.

Mall Ninjary on Parade

Many thanks to Tam and PDB for entertaining me this evening with images of this fellow:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BRb9AlEGN4[/youtube]

This is really one of those things you hope you never see. There’s enough muzzling of other things there to seriously disturb. But it gets better. Thanks to an intrepid reader of Tam’s, it turns out this guy has a record over at Bullshido (warning, not safe for anyone). That lead me to find this guy’s YouTube channel, which is perhaps the finest collection of mall ninjary I’ve seen on the Internets. How can you argue with quality training like this?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry5r4btM_OU[/youtube]

The neighbors must love it. I really hope the other guys in that video didn’t fork over good money to get muzzled in some dude’s back yard. This one had me practically blowing soda out of my nose:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCo6kOMExIQ[/youtube]

That kind of training might even be too over the top for teaching Hollywood actors how to look cool. I’m not even sure it does look that cool. Either way, based on the site over on Bullshido, what are this guy’s qualifications? It seems it comes down to this:

We discovered that a Ralph Severe of Texas was trained and employed as aÂ private security guard at one time, some of Severeâ€™s videos show himÂ conducting interviews in some sort of LE/Security uniform. We can reasonably assume that Severe may indeed have some legitimate LE training, but that his resume may be embellished to imply more expertise than he perhaps deserved.

Said another way, it could perhaps be this, “I am the Sergeant of a three-man Rapid Tactical Force at one of Americaâ€™s largest indoor retail shopping areas.”

Righthaven Ruining Lives

Clayton Cramer notes that there are people who Righthaven have targeted, that can’t even afford a settlement:

He was startled to find that copying ONE newspaper article meant that Righthaven was expecting from the four figure to mid five figure range for a settlement. He tried to explain that at best, he might have something in the two figure area. (Like a lot of the bloggers that Righthaven is going against, this is a person who has NOTHING.) Now this poor guy has, like some others that I have talked to, decided to allow default judgment of $75,000 and go bankrupt.

This is highly unethical, even if true copyright infringement had taken place, because the amounts sought here are way out of proportion to the actual damages. Even if a suit has no merit, it takes serious money just to get it dismissed.

The Stupid

It continuously amazes me how poor executive culture can sometimes be in large companies. My industry is full of it, and unfortunately has much farther to fall before a new generation can come along and start picking up the pieces. Clayton is speaking of an HP policy that doesn’t allow laid off workers to be rehired:

The reason was that Hurd found out that some divisions were laying off workers–then rehiring them a few months later, when they discovered, “Gee, no one else but Fred knows how this works!”Â His solution, rather than asking if perhaps he was pushing too hard to get costs down–was to adopt this absurd rule.

HP is busily hiring people at the moment for positions that I could easily do, and for considerably better pay than I now get.Â But Hurd’s stupid, peevish rule means this valley is filled with qualified engineers that can’t be hired back.Â Instead, HP has to hire people from elsewhere.Â Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Unintended consequences aren’t just for stupid government bureaucrats. CorporateÂ bureaucraciesÂ are no less infested with the same diseases. There is a tendency in Corporate America to still believe we’re in an economy ofÂ interchangeableÂ labor. This thinking is a relic of the industrial age. The vast majority of a corporations value is increasingly coming from intellectual capital, i.e. it’s people. There are certainly times when layoffs are necessary, and I wouldn’t argue that empire building isn’t a pervasive problem (as it’s been even in small places I’ve worked), but policies that don’t center around hiring the best people for the job are doomed to failure.

Sea Kittens Are Back

Looks like PETA is trying to convince Hawaiian Airlines to celebrate Sea Kittens, their new name to endear fish to people so we will stop eating them. If God didn’t intend us to eat fish, he wouldn’t have made them taste good. Now it appears PETA thinks Sea Kittens need an official airline. Personally, I’m wondering how soon I can get an Â X-Plane livery for the 737. That’s a pretty good paint job the PETA intern did on that. Maybe they should start a Sea Kitten virtual airline. The problem is then they’ll be complaining that X-PlaneÂ realisticallyÂ simulates bird strikes. Blood on the windshield and all. But maybe PETA doesn’t care about the Air Bunnies that get stucked into turbofans.

Hat Tip to Bitter

Righthaven’s Business Model

They pretty much admit it. Here’s the Wired article speaking about how they are pretty much buying up newspaper content in order to sue bloggers:

Gibsonâ€™s vision is to monetize news content on the backend, by scouring the internet for infringing copies of his clientâ€™s articles, then suing and relying on the harsh penalties in theÂ Copyright Act â€” up to $150,000 for a single infringement â€” to compel quick settlements. Since Righthavenâ€™s formation in March, the company has filed at least 80 federal lawsuits against website operators and individual bloggers whoâ€™ve re-posted articles from theÂ Las Vegas Review-Journal, his first client.

Wired notes that the Recording Industry Association of America tried a similar tactic, and did not reap the rewards they had hoped. If you look at their business model, it breaks down if people stand up to them. The amounts they can reasonably claim are much smaller than what RIAA or the MPAA could claim. If 1000 people download a movie from you, that’s 20,000 dollars in damages. But what is the amount of money a paper makes off a single article in advertising? The amount for a few months can’t be more than a couple of hundred bucks for a really popular article.

Any newspaper adopting this tactic is going to lose out. If Stevens Media is really serious about cozying up to Righthaven, then fine — I already have Bitter searching through my archives to ensure that any links to their papers are removed, and I will blacklist them for the future. The Internet doesn’t work this way, guys. You have a right to protect your copyrights, and to prevent verbatim reproduction of your work, but one should do that with an strong eye toward fair-use, toward treating bloggers as reasonable people who don’t want to abuse someone’s copyright, and with an even stronger eye toward the PR implications of being bozos. In most cases, the minor amount you’re losing from advertising isn’t worth destroying good will among a community that’s capable of sending significant traffic, and thus advertising revenue, your way.

Understatement of the Year

First, the back story:

During the latest episode of the battle over a sex tape showing ex-presidential candidate John Edwards being less than presidential, Judge Carl Fox stopped with a quizzical look.

Rielle Hunter, a campaign videographer with whom Edwards had an extramarital affair and a child, claims the tape is hers and wants it back from Andrew Young, the former Edwards aide who wrote a tell-all book about the politician’s quest for the White House.

At a hearing in Orange County Superior Court on Wednesday, lawyers for Young argued that Hunter had no claim to it. They contended the video belonged to the Edwards campaign or his political action committee.

“What possible purpose would a campaign want – or desire for – a sex tape of a candidate involved in a sex act?” Fox asked rhetorically.

First of all, I love that there will forever be court records with that question in there. That should go down in the history of great political quotes. But, now for the understatement of the year:

“The campaign did not want some tapes that would upset Elizabeth Edwards,” said Wade Barber, the lawyer from Pittsboro on Hunter’s legal team.

Just because the campaign paid for them and didn’t want to use them in the Edwards for President commercials at the time doesn’t mean they don’t belong to the campaign. I mean, come on, you never know when having your lover film you in a sex act while cheating on your dying wife will be just the thing to rekindle a political career.