Posts by dan1981

AFACT wants ushers to confront pirates

Re: Effective solution

Profit is the mother of all invention so logically, such biomechanical enhancements are likely to be the result of commercial interests and would almost certainly have wireless network access for content distribution.

In concert with such devices, movies would likely be a drive-in cinema-style, where you can see it if you're there but can't hear anything unless you pay for the audio connection.

Or, perhaps the movies themselves would require encryption codes to view or hear anything. these would possibly be biometrically linked but certainly uploaded directly to whatever magic device is enabling all this.

Such devices would of course be cracked sooner or later or perhaps illegal upgrades would be available ("get yourself 'chipped'") to enable recording and dissemination of 'recorded' content. Such modification would of course void any warranties but there would still be people willing to do that.

And if you thought companies scraping your contacts from your iPhone was bad . . .

Or maybe I am too optomistic - perhaps by that point 'big content' will have even more of the government (in the US especially) bought and paid for and such a device would be made illegal as we all know that the profitability of Warner Brothers is more important that human advancement. (Though your opinion on what constitutes an advancement may differ : )

Re: Corporate greed

Not directed at you, good sir/madam, and quite firmly off-topic, but the reality is that publicly listed companies are run with the sole aim of increasing their share price. Thus, simply making profit is not enough, they must continually make MORE profit.

Like many ordinary (read: not stinking rich) people I find something very unsavoury about this culture of profit before all else. Most people, through at least their superannuation and savings accounts, if not other investments, are, however, part of that culture. Right now, every working or retired Australian is investing in numerous companies whose name, let alone business practices, they are ignorant of.

Most people avoid the thought but the fact is that some company screwing its staff or ruining the environment or laying-off local staff in favour of cheaper OS labour means that when you retire you will be able to eat well and fix the plumbing when it's shot and buy your grandchildren presents and maybe even take a trip or two like you always planned.

Some people of course have self-managed super or belong to a scheme that is ethically guided, but the vast majority of Australians just don't consider it. And that is part of the problem.

That is why you have businesses engaging in acts that will get them fined if found out. Somewhere, the sums have been done and one course of action has been identified as the most profitable. In such situations, fines are simply entered in as part of the equation - a business cost. Think false advertising or insurance agencies refusing, minimising or delaying pay-outs.

But, like me, most people just try not to think about their role in the system. I use beer to help me.

Re: Pay?

I feel truly sorry for anyone put in such a position as to have to be AFACT's lackey for free but it doesn't annoy me quite as much as us all PAYING for police (through taxes) to be their lackeys.

Instagram back-pedals in face of user outrage

Re: What are _my_ rights?

I confess that I haven't but I also know that such T&Cs can really only cover those things related the the service. There are plenty enough legal provisions to protect people from outlandish clauses and El Reg is limited by what it can realistically take without involving me. To use the example you have given, if there was a clause in there to charge me some fee then they would not be able to TAKE that from me without me knowing and thereafter, the legal protections do their job to, well, protect me.

I fully authorise El Reg to use the data I willingly give it for their own purposes.

Your reply really doesn't answer anything.

What data The Register has about me, I give it to them myself. I have full rights to anything I write and in submitting that to the Reg's comments section, I grant The Register rights to reproduce that content any way they see fit.

My point is that FB/Instagram may have my image which they then can use, but I did not give them that image and I did not ever authorise them to use it.

Just because I am comfortable providing my (inane) thoughts to the Register, does not mean that I am comfortable having Facebook use my image (likeness?) any way they see fit.

d.

Re: Why the outrage when it's a free service? When will these idot consumers learn....

I wasn't the down-voter but I can offer a few possible explanations of why.

The first is as you yourself have said: " . . . Facebook and its ilk are really opaque." In general, I believe that most people, like you, will happily use a free service if they understand how the money is being made. The problem is, as you have identified, that it's often hard to figure that out, which is of course the point.

The second, is that these companies all start out being free and open and about the users but then gradually grow to be more about profit. Yes, people realise that companies need to make money but people don't like it when the ground moves under their feet.

What happens is that people upload data to their 'social networking' service of choice under certain policies and terms of use. Sometime down the track, the policies and terms are changed, almost always toward giving more control to the provider and/or less privacy to the user. The important part is that these changes always apply to your old data as well - i.e. the data uploaded under different policies.

I realise that it would be practically impossible to segregate data based on when it was uploaded and apply different policies to each but when someone has uploaded data within a certain set of policies, they have an expectation that that data will continue to be governed by that set of policies. They may have gone through the terms word-by-word and decided it was acceptable but now that same data is governed by new, less acceptable policies.

Tin-foil hat to one side, I very much dislike when a company I like and trust with my personal information is bought-out by a company I dislike and whom I do _not_ trust with my information.

The third is that it is incongruous to say that these services exist because users are ignorant of the business practices of such providers and then talk down to people objecting to a change in those business practices. While an individual user may not understand the implications, the community as a whole very much does and that community is objecting.

The final, and perhaps simplest reason, is that people just don't like being called idiots.

It is very narrow to say that everyone complaining about this is ignorant and naive and such blanket dismissals of peoples' ideas and feelings are generally not taken well.

Re: not going to use it anymore

As a general comment (not directed to you, good sir), people who are ceasing to use Instagram over this should also stop using Facebook.

Facebook owns Instagram. If you have a Facebook account and stop using Instagram then FB aren't really going to care. The only way to send a message of disapproval is to close your Facebook account and, if you are the proselytising type, encourage others to do likewise.

At the very least, explain to your friends and family that you do not want them posting any pictures of you, of with you in them, to Facebook (or Instagram).

On an utterly unrelated note, why is the spell-check on a British website trying to correct me to using vile 'American English'?

What are _my_ rights?

I personally don't use these services. I suppose I just don't care what people ate for lunch or how well their baby slept last night. Tinfoil hat on, I also don't want my personal information shared with the world. I've got no problem with people who do, but I don't want ME being shared with the world.

The question is, as someone who doesn't use the service, and therefore hasn't agreed to their terms, what are my rights when I find images of myself being used in the way proposed? (Or indeed at all.)

Perhaps more simply, what right do I have over my own image? (Is likeness the correct technical term?)

I suspect if I ever complained to one of these companies that images of me were being used without my permission, then they would claim (correctly for all I know) that the original uploader, and not they, are liable. I wonder if I would be able to simply ask them to cease using my likeness without requiring legal action against the uploader, who is likely to be a friend.

Anyone here know how that would play out?

Re: They'll get away with it

". . . if Instagram still hasn't worked out how to monetise content, it probably never will."

Without claiming to know the internal structures that exist between Facebook and Instagram, it would seem that access to the vast funds of Facebook means that Instagram don't have to rush to monetise the content.

To the point, though, I'm pretty sure it's this:

"You own your content but we licence it so we can sub-licence it for cash - which we don't share with you"

Without passing judgment, this is the reality of Facebook.

Even without all the similar changes that FB has made in the recent past, this episode should serve to inform all FB/Instagram users of their mindset and company practice.

This is the way they think about data that their users upload, be it a photo or a status update or a 'like' - it is information that they want to make money out of. That's not inherently a bad thing and by no means unique to Facebook but if you don't like that then it really is time to start thinking about moving away from that ecosystem.

Still, my own personal opinion is that they were testing the waters. All such policies, be they privacy, usage or even laws, tend to be worded in such a way as to provide a large scope for the company (or government if it is a law) to do a great many things that might not be within the 'spirit' of it.

On the surface of it, the post by Systrom is straight-forward and takes responsibility for the confusion, rather than simply saying it was the users who were confused as is the usual response. This, again on the surface, is commendable.

However, the simple fact is that Instagram, through Facebook, have access to the very best lawyers available, especially those dealing with exactly such policies. We must assume that these policies were not written by some intern and published without oversight - they were developed over time with input and oversight from lawyers well-versed in the language of privacy and terms of use policies.

If the language of the policies really does not mean what they wanted it to mean then that is not a good look for a company handling the data and private information of millions of people.

With such legal resources at their disposal, however, it is vanishingly unlikely that the language used says anything other than exactly what they wanted it to say. From that, Systrom's claim - that the original policies were a mistake and didn't accurately reflect their goals - must be seen as a lie.

This does rest on an assumption but I think it's a fairly likely one - that Intagram, through Facebook, has access to enough legal resources that any confusing of misleading wording would have been identified and discussed. In other words, Insatagram had full chance to correct the wording well before the policies were made available. They did not do so.

Lawyer sues Microsoft rather than slot an SD card into his Surface

Re: My god

Given that all draught beers are served with a head, this should be expected and anyone taking issue with this upon receipt can be dismissed.

This is more like being served a beer that is HALF head. Even regular beer-drinkers would be justified in feeling ripped-off.

Now, if the beer was advertised as a half-pint and then served in a pint glass with half the glass comprising head then everyone would be okay.

That's the more accurate analogy.

He may be stupid, doesn't mean he doesn't have a point.

Us IT folk understand that despite it being designed and marketed as a competitor to the existing tablets, the Surface is actually a full computer in a tablet form factor; we realise it's not an 'apples to apples' comparison.

BUT, for people who aren't IT professionals, I think it is very likely that they will expect that the specs of one can be compared against the other.

Perhaps an analogy?

Remember old CRT screens? Well, they 'hide' part of the screen behind the bezel. About 1.5" usually. At first, a TV was described as the full picture tube diagonal, which meant that buying a 22" TV would mean you have 20.5" viewable area.

This is almost exactly the same concept. All CRT TVs have such a bezel and all were measured the same way. While you may be getting less than you originally thought, you can still compare two 22" TVs and know you're getting the same viewable size.

What is happening with the Microsoft tablet is like having a Bezel that is 10" wide. So, comparing two 22" TVs, one has a 20.5" viewable area and the other only 12".

Of course, as with CRTs, the larger the hard drive, the less the reserved/used space matters. With PCs regularly coming through with 1TB drives, the used space simply doesn't matter. With a 32GB tablet, however, it becomes significant.

The interesting thing, though, is that there were lawsuits fuelled by consumer-backlash which lead to TVs having to advertise the viewable size, rather than the full tube size.

Computer CRT monitors are not similarly policed but it was/is common practice to list the viewable size as well, like so: '17" (15.6" viewable)'.

How is that different from expecting a tablet to say: '32GB (16 usable)'?

The way I see it, it wouldn't be a bad thing if the regulations placed upon CRTs manufacturers to list actually usable size was applied to things like tablets and smart phones.

When it comes down to it, the consumer is asking: "How much can I fit on this device?" while the vendor is answering a separate question that the consumer doesn't really need to know: "How large is the hard drive?"