Right to counter-sue for false DMCA

The DMCA allows people to sue for copyright infringement.

The problem is it is clearly being abused.  We definitely have copyright infringement, but it is not that hard to find cases where:

1. Secondary media people suing the original artists for infringing their rights (some knowingly, some out of just plain stupidity)
2. People using the DMCA to stop political speech
3. Copyright owners mistakenly requesting their own postings be removed

Even the best people tend to make mistakes about 3% of the time.  (Microsoft's numbers for example)


So what do we do about the bad actors  - the scum that aren't doing it by mistake, but are doing it on purpose.

Well, the courts do let you sue:  (OPG vs Diebold)   But that route is expensive and by no means assured.

It also may not work at all against poor people or those that have money to spare.

I suggest a simple law - all DMCA notices must be filed with the new Consumer Protection agency.  They and only they can then forward it on to the offender.  The forwarding would normally be automatic.

If they find you have abused the system in the past, (more than 5% of your filings have been rejected), then you pay a fee to file the DMCA take down notice, refundable if the complaint is not overturned within three months.



The fee could start out at $100 for 5% bad DMCA, then double for every 5%  (i.e. at 10%, you pay $200, at 15% you pay $400, at 20% you pay $800).

For people that have placed less than 20 complaints, pretend that their total complaints are 20  (so 1 bad complaint and no other complaints count as 5% not 100%)

More important than the money, it creates a list of bad actors.  People that can not be trusted.  Make this list explicitedly admissable in court cases.

Patent reform

Recently there was an incredibly bad NYT article talking about the dearth of true invention.

It said every recent invention, with the exception of the iPhone was just incremental enhancement, not real innovation.

Which made me laugh on two counts.

First, the iPhone is the epitome of incremental enhancement, not in any way a true innovation.  It took an existing concept - the smart phone pioneered by Blackberry, and made it slightly more accessible.  It added existing ideas such as touch screen and private stores to buy apps, and was not in any way innovative.  It was stylish and well marketed, and easy to use, not a real invention.

Then it denigrated a ton of TRUE innovations, calling them incremental enhancements.


Part of the probelm was he didn't understand how many of the real invetions were created.

He thought one guy had a Eureka moment and created something out of nothing.  Not true.  Almost all inventions - even those we give full credit to one guy - are incremental.  (examples)

He had no idea that Marconi and Tesla were both working on the radio, both made startling discoveries.   Yes, Tesla came up with the innovative ideas, and Marconi turned them into reality.  They incremented off each other, just like the things he denigrated.  The same thing happened with cars.  Honestly, the same thing happened with wheels (rocks rolling down hill, logs rolling down hill, logs under an object, slim down midpoints of the logs to save weight, bind the midpoint to the cart,  axels + wheel)


So what makes for a real invention as opposed to just incremental enhancement.   Two distint things:

First, one of the increments is shockingly strange and trasnformative  as opposed to simply being obvious.  It might be complex, it might be counter-intuitive, but it is something that needs to be explained as opposed to being a 'duh' moment.

Second the result is transofrmative.  It does something NEW hat has no existing competition.

TV is not radio.  It does not compete with Radio.   It is NEW.

Streaming TV on the internet is just TV via a different source.  It directly competes with real TV.  It is not new.

Downloadable TV is however new.  It does not compete with regular TV or even DVDs because the speed of delivery is new.  You don't need to live near a video store to go and buy new video.

So lets talk about patent reform.

People that invent deserve patents.  People that increment don't.  They are just doing 'duh' work.  Yes, it might be hard 'duh' work - and it should not be stealable.  But they shouldn't be able to patent it.  Copyright yes, patent no.

(Copyrights prevent someone from directly copying your software.  Patents prevent someone from independently building something that does the same thing.)

One of the interesting things about this concept of invention is that it reduces the need for experts.  We don't care that your method of doing X is better or not.  That's just innovation.

We care about the experience of the purchaser.   Can he get something that he could not get before?  Note that a significant quality increase, price reduction or time reduction does count as something new.   We can probably use 10% quality, price or time change as a rough guide (as in 9% counts in some cases - determined by patent bureau). 

What would this do to our current world?

Well, 90% of software (and design) patents would vanish - but their copyrights would remain.  Apple would still sue to protect their copyrighted rounded corners instead of their patent'ed rounded corners.

 Would any software qualify?  Probably not.  That is not surprising. Software is written.  Like all other forms of writing, you should COPYRIGHT them, not patent it.

Claiming your software is patented is like claiming that no one else can write a love story because you wrote the first one.  

Republican Hero

I have talked quite a bit about traitorous Republicans trying to convert this country to an oligarchy (via electoral vote by gerrymandered district plans).

So it is only fair that when a Republican stands up for what is right, I should point out his behavior.

Specifically Republican Representative Bill Howell (Speaker of the Virginia State House) has rejected the state redistricting plan put forth by the Virginia State Senate.  He killed it's chance of being passed into law.


For background, last month, on Martin Luther King Day (Monday, January 21, 2013), Democratic Senator Henry Marsh choose to attend President Obama's inauguration.  Senator Marsh is a black man, but he is also one of 21 Democrat State Senators in Virginia.

During his absence, the Virginia State Senators decide to play dirty and rushed through a re-districing plan that gerrymandered the state even further.  It did so by filling up a single district with Democrats, thereby turning a previously Democrat district into a Republican one.

As per my earlier anti-Virginia post (source), Virginia has 11 districts and a majority of Democrats in the state.  But they only have 3 Democrat districts versus 8 republican districts.  How did they do this?  By stuffing one district with 80% Democrat.  The new plan would have made it only 2 Democrat Districts, both over 80% and  nine Republican Districts.

To add insult to injury, most of Virginia's Democrats are black and remember this was done on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. 

Can you say "Ghetto?"

But enough was enough for the truly Honorable Speaker Bill Howell.

He stood up to to the state senate and said no.

I personally want to thank the Honorable Speaker Bill Howell for having the courage and ethics so rarely seen (clearly absent in the Virginia State Senate).

Honorable Speaker Howell, it is because of men like you that this country is as great as it is.

Thank you for putting country and state above party.


May I also suggest that you run for federal office? 

Post Office Closings

Recently, due in part to lack of congressional (i.e. House/GOP - the Senate/Democrats passed a bill that the House ignored) the US Post Office decided to end Saturday delivery.

Now, I don't have a problem with deciding to move from six days a week delivery to five.  It makes a lot of sense.

I do object to ending SATURDAY delivery.

If you need something right away, you next day it - or better yet, you messenger it.

The regular (First Class) mail is no longer used for extremely time sensitive materials.  It is still fairly fast, and we can expect stuff to get done in 2-3 days of work(source).

Assume for example that it takes 3 days - as in Monday mailed, arrive on Thursday.  Mailed on Tuesday arrives on Friday.  But mailed on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday (3/5 days), then there is an extra two day gap, and 3 days becomes 5 days.   If you drop it in the mailbox on Sunday, it gets there 4 days later.  If you drop it in the mailbox on Saturday it gets there 5 days later.


Net Net:  Two days a week it is 3 days, one day it is 4 days, and four days a week it is 5 days.  Average travel time is 4.28 days

Now assume that instead of ending Saturday delivery, they instead choose to end Wednesday (or Thursday) delivery.

If you drop it on any day except for Saturday, it gets there in 4 days.  If you drop it on Saturday it takes 5 days.

Net Net:  Average time is now only 4.14 days. Yes, it is only a slight gain, but you also gain consistency.


Now this does make scheduling postal employee's time more complicated.  In effect, you can't simply give them a normal work week.  But they don't get that right now.   We are not creating more complex postal work schedules, we are simply not simplifying it as much as we could.

The question is, do we want to help the postal employees service or do we want to help their customers.

The US Post Office choose to help the employees instead of their customers.

There is another issue -  Next day delivery.

UPS and Fed Ex offer next day delivery service 6 days a week (Saturday delivery is included free for FedEx, may cost additional for UPS)

So the Post Office will be providing one less day.  Clearly for Next Day service, giving up Saturday delivery is preferable to giving up Wednesday. But honestly, either way, the post off is turning itself into a second-tier player in the Next Day delivery business. 

I personally think they should have given up Wednesday.  It's better for the standard 2-3 day delivery business they are famous for, and either way they have screwed themselves on Next Day service.

Immigration Rreform

As it seems likely to pass, I want to talk about Immigration Reform.

One of the main issues is 'amnesty'.  By that, people refer to giving illegal immigrants a benefit, making it easier for them to become citizens than normal people.

I think they should be neither aided nor punished in the new legal system.  

But there are lots of things we do wrong.  Lets start with the first thing:

1. 1)  We have no guest worker program.  Look, America NEEDS cheap labor.  We need farm workers, maids, gardeners, and child care.   We typically hire immigrants to do this hard 'unskilled' labor.  So it needs to be part of the law.
2. We give special preferences to certain countries.  Pure racism.  It should be stopped.
3. We don't let in enough of the very talented workers.
4. We give special preferences to family members - not just husband/wives/children, but also brothers, sisters, etc.

I think we need to fix that.

Here are some numbers.

(Source) In 2011, we got 694,193 new citizens.  They tend to move to California, Florida, New York, Texas and New Jersey (in order)  The top five countries are Mexico, India, Philippines, China, and Colombia (in that order).   By far most are from Mexico, and by far most go to California.

To become a citizen, you must have Legal Permanent Resident status (LPR), be 18, lived here for at least 5 years (3 if married to a US citizen), speak, read, write English, pass a simple Government and History test, and have good moral character.

There are certain exceptions for legal (not biological) children of US citizens and people that served in our military.

Now let's talk a bit more about the various quota methods.

There is no quota on numbers to become citizen.  There are quotas on Legal Permanent Resident Status (Visas).

Immediate relatives (Spouse/widow/widower/children under 21 and parents of an adult citizen).   This includes step and adopted relationships.  There are NO quotas for this category.  An unlimited number of people can get in by marring.

Note children means under 21. Unmarried children means adult children.  Married children are adult children that are married

F1  Unmarried children (and their children, i.e. grandchildren)
F2  Spouses, Children and unmarried children of green card holders. 
F3 Married children (and their spouses and children)
F4  Brothers and sisters, their spouses and children.

First off all, this seems ridiculously complicated to me.  Partly because we seem to be running it as a charity, instead of a country.  Millions of people want to get into the US we should not give it out to the saddest story.    I have no idea why F2 and F4 exist.   People that are not citizens should not be granting benefits to other.  Brothers and Sisters should not get special treatment.


Next are the Employment based quotas.

Here you have:

E1  Extraordinary people  (Athletes, CEOs and other celebrity types)
E2  Professionals  (Doctors, lawyers, Scientists, etc.)
E3  Skilled workers
E4  Special (Clergy, employees of the US government, members of certain international organizations such as Red Cross, etc.)  also their family
E5  Investors  - you can buy in with a $500,000 investment.

That's about it.

OK,   lets talk about how it should work.  We should be offering 4 different types of Visas.

1. Work Card.   Anyone that is not pregnant and not a criminal.   States can put a 'foreign worker' extra tax of up to 25% on those that have it.   They last for a period of 6 months, renewable for another 6 months  - as long as you have not gotten pregnant (pregnancy test required for women - paid for by the US from fees charged to both male and female people that apply).  After 1 year, you must leave for at least 3 months, then you can return and try again.  If you get pregnant while on this, you will never be given another Work Card.  NO QUOTAS.
2. Legal Resident Card.   Usually only granted to spouses, children and parents of existing citizens or people with Professional Card or the Green Card.   Also may be granted to 'hardship cases' (i.e. you are seeking asylum, etc.)   You can only work upto 20 hours a week using this card.   If you are found working more than 20 hours a week using this card, you will never be given any other card (unless you yourself report it within the first month of it happening).  No special taxes.  NO QUOTAS
3. Professional Card.  You can't be taxed different with this.   To get it, you must qualify as what used to be the old E1,E2, E4, or E5.  Note this includes soldiers and other employees of the US government.   NO QUOTAS.
4. Green Card - old E3, F1 and F3.   Quota on how many can get this.   

Make it clear that Work Cards do not grant LPR.  Otherwise keep the same system.

Note, these changes mean that we will get a lot more extraordinarily people, and professionals.  We will have guest workers without being forced to give them citizenship.   Brothers and sisters of citizen and green card holders can apply for and get Work Cards.   Permanent Residency is a luxury item, not a charity item.

How to spot bad reporting

The easiest way I know to spot bad reporting is to look for the lack of comparisons.

Here is a perfect example.

It's a great little story about how the veteran suicide rate is 22 per day, not 18 as previously believed by The Department of Veterans Affairs.  Over a year, 22/day is 8030 veterans committing suicide a year, vs 6570.

What horrible news!  Four more veterans suicide every day! (1460 more a year)

Uhm, excuse me, but out of how many?  More importantly, how does that compare to the suicide rate of the general population?

As per the VA.gov, there are about 22.7 million veterans (as of 9/30/2010).

That means a bit less than one out of every million veterans try to commit suicide every year.  22/22.7 million works out to 9.7 out of every 100,000 veterans.   That's not that much.   Let's compare it to non-veterans...

And the rate for non-veterans is...  (source)

about 12 non-veterans out every 100,000 non-veterans.

That's right - American veterans are less likely to commit suicide than non-veterans.   Not that surprisingly - we screen our soldiers and don't let people with serious mental issues join the army (it's where we keep all the tanks, missiles, and bombs, after all).


The real truth is that our veterans are NOT crazed lunatics.  They are sane people who have undergone horrible situation for their country (and pay), but have NOT been broken.  They handle it and handle it well.

That is not to say that we should not help our veterans.  They deserve all the help they can get, particularly when often their current problems are a direct result of the sacrifices they made for their country.

Instead, my point is that when you read news articles, you have to look for important comparisons. Any good reporter should include that information.  A bad one is either too stupid to get it (and therefore not worth reading), or worse, a liar who found the information but decided to withhold it  (and therefore can not be trusted).

If they don't give the right comparison, don't listen to them.

Gerrymandering and Treasonous Republicans

Recently the treasonous republicans (not all republicans are treasonous, but there are a few) are pushing the "Electoral College by Congressional District" plan as a means of ending Democracy  (government by majority vote) in the United States of America and moving to an Oligarchy (government by the few).  We will still be a Republic (government through representatives rather than direct control), just an Oligarchic Republic instead of a Democratic Republic.  That's Republicans for you - out to get rid of anything with a 'Democra" prefix.


There is an interesting article about this in The Nation

 They are doing this because they know they can't win the popular vote, so they want to rig the game.

 The traitorous Republican controlled states are:

Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin

Note none of them are talking about doing this in the Republican strongholds of Texas or Georgia.  They are not even willing to do it for the smaller republican states like Utah (which would only have given the Democrats one electoral vote because).

They only want to do this in the larger Democrat states that through gerrymandering are Republican controlled senates.

They point to Maine and Nebraska, saying that all they want to do is the copy those two states.

That is an outright lie.

There are major differences between Maine, Nebraska and those six states they want create illegal and unconstitutional methods.  Virginia is the state that is furthest along in their unconstitutional idea, so I will use it as an example.

First and foremost, Maine and Nebraska are designed to be legal, constitutional and FAIR.  Each state gets a number of electoral votes equal to their congressional districts, plus two (for their senators). Maine has four total electoral votes and Nebraska has five.  Both states apply the two 'senatorial' electoral votes to the winner of the statewide election and give one vote to the winner of each congressional district.

BUT VIRGINIA IS NOT DOING THIS.   Instead, Virginia is giving their two 'senatorial' electoral votes to whoever wins the most congressional district, not to the winner of the popular vote.  This is in effect to add insult to injury.  This alone is illegal.  Districts don't vote, people do.  You don't give out the extra votes to the winner of the most districts, you give it to the winner of the most people.

Second, because of the small size of Maine and Nebraska, you can't gerrymander extra votes.   That is, you can't carve out 3 districts with 60% conservative votes, while creating one district with 90% Democrat.     The real question is not why is this wrong but why is it legal.  Mainly because both parties liked the certainty, and were willing to put up with the loss of one or two congressional districts when the other party happened to be in control of the state.

Virginia has 11 districts.  This allows for some major gerrymandering.  There are three Democrat districts in Virgina.  One of the Democrats won by over 80%, the other two by over 60%.  Of the eight Republican controlled districts, none won by more than 66% and only two won by over 60%.  The other six were all won by between 50 and 60%  The 80% democrat district (district 3)  touches districts one, two, four and seven, all of whom were won by less than 60%, is clearly gerrymandered, even if you want to argue about the other two democrat ones.

In a fair world, the Democrats should have won at least one additional congressional race in Virgina, probably three or four more.  Three more would have put them in the MAJORITY of Virgina.  Not surprisingly because Barack Obama won the statewide election in Virginia.  Virgiia has more Democrats than Republicans, the only reason the Republicans have more Virginia congressmen is gerrymandering.

Maine and Nebraska are not gerrymandered.


Third, and most important,  Maine and Nebraska have so few electoral votes that even if they were gerrymandered horrendous - it is impossible  to get the majority of their electoral votes without also getting the majority of their popular vote.

Because the two 'senatorial' electoral votes are  almost half of Nebraska's(and exactly half of Maine's) electoral vote, they can swing the majority to at least match the state's majority vote.

Not true in Virginia with it's 11 electoral districts.

Given the current congressional record history, Virginia would get 8 Republican District electoral votes, plus 3 Democrat District electoral votes.  Even if you use the Maine/Nebraska rules of two senatorial electoral votes to the popular winner (which the traitors in the GOP are not doing - they have zero ethics whatsoever), the net total would be 8 Republican Electoral votes vs 5 Democrat Electoral Votes.

Virginia's law would make that happen in every election until the GOP's old white population died out - or more likely was murdered in the armed revolution they are inciting.


Note, there has been exactly two cases in all of America's history where the guy that won the popular vote did not get the majority of the state's electoral vote.  The first was in 1860 - New Jersey decided to give the Republican Lincoln 4 electoral votes and 3 to Douglas despite the fact that Douglas beat Lincoln by more than 4,500 votes (source)  Exactly how the GOP convinced people to do this is unclear, the records are not around after 150 years.


One year later the civil war started - in main part because Lincoln was elected.   I am not saying that New Jersey's faithless act caused the war - just that it is a  very bad sign when we want to repeat it.

The second case in the 1960's when Kennedy was running against Nixon.  While Kennedy won popular vote in the state of Alabama, the state Democrats party did not like him.  So they put up 'unsworn' electors, who, while they were Democrats, then went and voted for Nixon.  Of the 11 electors - all democrats, only five voted for Kennedy.  (source)  Again, this was due to racial factors - the southerns hated the Civil Rights Act.

Note electors voting against the wishes of their constituents is in fact not at all uncommon prior to 1980. It happened ALL the time before Reagan.  After Reagan, it pretty much never happened again.  But it was a faithless act by the elector, not a state law that did this.

Oh, if you wondering why I keep saying "Unconstitutional", read the Constitution's 14th Amendment, section two:

"2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State."

The 'in any way abridged bit is what makes these 'electoral districts' schemes unconstitutional. By law, this reduces the basis of representation, i.e the congressional districts AND the electoral votes shall be reduced.

Virginia's has 13 electoral votes, at least 8 of which should go democrat.  Their scheme to reduce that to 3 is a clear reduction of 5 votes.  As such, Virginia should legally be punished by the removal of 3 congressional districts (for proposing an electoral vote scheme based on gerrymandering) and 5 electoral votes (the extra 2 electoral votes because they also wanted the senatorial votes to go to the highest electoral winner, as opposed to the popular vote winner.

Virginians should sue the state, under the 14th amendment to eliminate those 3 congressional and 5 electoral votes.