...put "blocks" in inverted commas
So it'd be ""blocks"" or '"blocks"' then?
A curious story appeared overnight, one that made Samsung look very foolish. According to anti-copyright activist and blogger Mike Masnick, Google's YouTube had received a copyright takedown notice from Samsung requesting that game videos featuring the Samsung Note 7 as a weapon be removed. A few hours later the video was …
With the billions of dollars that are implied in this market, I doubt very much that coincidence has anything to do with it.
At this level, we are talking board meetings, highly paid specialists and very intelligent people that are also likely to be ruthless. Samsung has very much dropped the ball, and such people are not likely to miss out on the opportunity.
When there's blood in the water, the sudden appearance of a shark is hardly a coincidence.
Take your conspiracy theory and do one.
All Samsung's competitors have very good reason not to make fun of the problems with the Note 7: they know how easily something similar could happen to them and how such accidents are bad for the whole sector: just as you have halo effects, you also have the manure effect. They'll be picking up more than enough extra business by doing nothing. Plus, they almost certainly rely on Samsung for some components.
I think the implication is more that Google is not actively throwing the shit around, more like sneakily smear some more of it on Samsung when no-one is looking.
Google is too busy selling ads (including to Samsung) and abusing its market position (making certain bits of Android exclusive to its phones) to bother with that.
Google having a go at the most profitable and biggest Android manufacturer makes little sense.
The procedure is well documented, someone claims copyright, Google runs cursory checks and if passed pulls the video and sends an e-mail to the YouTube account holder, YouTube account holder replies saying this is wrong because... and if the reply looks credible Google puts the video up again.
Samsung USA started this off and the YouTube account holder argued that the complaint was invalid. Google didn't do anything different than it would have for a DMCA complaint for any other video.
I don't think so. The new GooPhone is aimed at Apple customers.
Google makes money TWICE from Samsung:
1) Any licence fee to use the "Blob".
2) Android reporting to Google.
As one of the largest (or largest?) and flag ship supporters of the official Android ecosystem, why would Google want to damage Samsung or the Android brand (by association). My conspiracy theory is that Google was taking these videos down, not Samsung via DMCA notices. Samsung isn't Apple or the Thai Government. Then Google (or the minion that had acted without higher up authorisation) realised this was counter productive. Better to join the laughter than pull a Streisand?
It definitely is aiming for Apple customers. If it didn't say it was for Pixel one could hardly be blamed for assuming it was an iPhone ad.
However, the number of people coming from iPhone to Android is relatively fixed. The Pixel is hardly a revolutionary "wow I've been wanting to jump ship from Apple for years, finally I can" phone. It is a decent high end Android phone but does not stand apart when measured against Samsung's S7 and pre-explosion Note 7 (yeah yeah faster updates, that's something that will sell Reg readers but the average consumer doesn't give a shit about and won't until there's a mass malware infection like what Windows had in the early 00s)
Basically in order to capture more of that fixed number of Apple customers leaving for Android, the Pixel has to steal the ones who would have gone to Samsung (and to a lesser extent other Android OEMs selling high end phones) instead. The explosive Note 7 fiasco helps a lot there, so it is in Google's interest to keep that in the forefront of people's minds for as long as possible. Making fun of it by showing videos of games using Note 7s as hand grenades is a pretty hilarious way to do that!
On the other hand, the videos can be classed as satire and Samsung could only get them down for copyright infringement. As they don't own the copyright on the game or the video and it can be shown that the video falls under satire / fair use, then Samsung can't really get it taken down, without going to court and getting a defamation judgement against the poster. (IANAL, but that would be my first guess)
Dispersion, not refraction. "Rayleigh scattering" to be specific, after the chap who figured it out.
There isn't really such a thing as "the sky" - the atmosphere appears blue when there's light shining through it (and for a little while afterwards). That diffuse blueywhiteness is all around you and just gradually tapers off into space. It's exactly the same blueywhiteness you see between yourself and distant objects/landscapes even though it's not usually called "sky" when there's something discernible behind it. "The sky" (if there was any such thing) would probably be better considered black - the beginning of space by some inane & arbitrary altitude/density/pressure definition. We just typically view it through a load of blueywhitish atmosphere.
No. Perhaps you should read it again or Google "Rayleigh scattering." If you're sitting at the top of a mountain there's likely to be plenty of discernibly blue atmosphere beneath you, with birds flying through it and whatnot, and with ground beyond it. You probably don't consider that to be "the sky." "The sky" is an effect - a perception: A combination of the optical turbidity of the atmosphere and the innate psychological expectations/interpretations of the observer.
A more reasonable definition of the "sky" perception is something like: "That part of a vista comprising the atmosphere observed in a direction generally upward of horizontal and beyond which nothing terrestrial is discernible from the perspective of the observer"
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I thought the takedown wasn't actioned (or was reversed) because Samsung don't have any rights to GTA5, only the likeness of an object within; which is covered by fair use for parody.
In any case, that's what other sites are saying. You know, the ones that always appear in the top three slots on a Google search. Can't see how that could be skewed reporting.
Doesn't the disappearance and return of the video, links to screenshots of emails received by YouTube the user, screenshots of the video while it was disappeared by Twitter users, and a Techdirt article count as evidence these days?
It's Samsung USA which should be called out, not Google.
"Our advice on a Mike Masnick blog post is that if it tells you the sky is blue and the grass is green, you'll still want to check for yourself."
Just because Mike. Masnick does not share your copyright maximalism stance does not mean that it's a dubious site.
The story did have screenshot of what was presented at the time - message relating to video being unavailable due to copyright claim by Samsung.
SO given that is what was seen on YouTube then seems fairly reasonable to report it.
"This raises the possibility that Google is leveraging the enormous media influence of its video monopoly to help along its consumer hardware business"
I was using my other half's machine this weekend and forgot her homepage was Google search. Opened a web browser to be confronted with a link under the search box along the lines of "Pixel - the new phone from Google".
Exactly the same tactics as how they made Chrome the #1 browser - by (ab)using their market position in other areas. How long before a significant percentage of YouTube ads are for Pixel, I wonder...
Hmmm, Phagors or Sheep In Space?
Jeff Minter was clearly aware of the Helliconia books, since he even used the Phagors or Ancipitals in his games.
I just don't see evidence of bitter hate between Google and Samsung that some commentators try to portray. Goole have done extremely well out of Samsung and Samsung have done extremely well out of Google. Sure there have been some tensions, but overall Google would have killed for the amount of smartphone coverage that Samsung provides and Samsung, although they might not like much of the control that Google has over the OS, get a highly marketed and promoted operating system with regular free updates and a continuous development team with only a little work on their behalf.
Then there is the "Mike Masnick opinion". With two links, neither of which claim that the guy is on the Google payroll. However he has some very differing views to Mr Olowski and patrols the opposite side of the fence in the same domain.I'm sure there is no grudge there?
If you dig further the shill talk was relating to the Oracle v Google trial to flush out paid journalist, however the remit was very broad as any blogger who had an Adsense account was paid by Google and might have to be declared. Anyone who had worked with some substantial organisations like the EFF were implicated. In fact anyone who had worked with or had reports commissioned by large swathes of the tech industry were part of the shill conspiracy. And as The Register uses Double Click, Adsense and Google Analytics all stakeholders in The Register are also 'guilty' of being on the Google Payroll - including the author.
So, I might not agree with his views but let's see what Mr Masnick had to say https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120824/12563220150/apparently-im-google-shill-i-didnt-even-know-it.shtml. [Of course he would say that wouldn't he -pseudo ed]. It does feel disingenuous to try to present discredited information as fact so that in later articles the reference can become a previous reg article which then proves a further mention of this 'fact'.
Yeah, it's unpleasant to see someone wearing the hat of Truth-exposer trying to manufacture it, poorly.
If you're going to fabricate a video takedown, you'd need to make it undisprovable. Yet this is not that. Samsung know damn well whether they actually ordered the DMCA takedown or not.
You do not insinuate something when you know the other side has proof. This is not how you conspiracy theory sir.
...the Note 7 issues isn't the reason I wouldn't really be tempted into another Samsung phone (although having briefly played with a friends S7 Edge, from a hardware perspective it seems to be excellent).
No...it's their lamentable support and approach to security updates.
I actually think, personally, that Samsung behaved impeccably with their recall(s). First there seemed to be a battery issue which they recalled and tried to fix. When it became apparent that there was a deeper issue, they recalled, full stop.
None of that crazy "you're holding it wrong" kind of attitude.
So I'm not so sure how damaged the Samsung brand is or how much of it is hyped.
Comparing this to the iPhone 4 antenna problem is ludicrous. One was pretty minor (only if you were not in an area with good cell reception, didn't use a case, and your fingers covered the gap in the antenna band) and while inconvenient was not a safety concern. The other could harm or even literally kill you.
The reason Samsung had such problems is because it was a far worse situation, and while they did do a recall they made it voluntary until the US PSC forced them to make it mandatory in the US and they decided to follow suit in the rest of the world. They also botched the diagnosis, thinking it was the battery, and didn't do the recall at all in China. The replacement devices were just as explosive, as the original Chinese devices also turned out to be, because it wasn't the battery after all.
I saw an article this weekend that Samsung STILL doesn't know what caused it, and they've pulled a bunch of people off the S8 engineering team to help figure out what it is and as a result the S8 launch will likely be delayed. But that's probably a good thing, because if they don't fully understand what the problem was with the Note 7, they sure don't want to risk designing the same flaw into the S8!
"...Comparing this to the iPhone 4 antenna problem is ludicrous. One was pretty minor (only if you were not in an area with good cell reception, didn't use a case, and your fingers covered the gap in the antenna band) and while inconvenient was not a safety concern. The other could harm or even literally kill you..."
And one was totally denied, despite the designer of the antennae actually stating in internal mails that it was a bad design.
I wasn't, however, trying to compare the seriousness. I was referring to the fact that Samsung acted. Apple didn't. Well you got a free case if you were quick enough and followed the process.
<sarcasm>Sorry if I offended your religion there.</sarcasm>
This is not-at-all a Google issue. This is Samsung attempting to subvert the US Constitution. The First Amendment, which covers freedom of speech, grants all citizens the ability to satirize anything and anyone. That's the fact. The GTA 5 Samsung Galaxy Note 7 sticky bomb mod is satire. All videos using that mod are satire. The DCMA cannot take down satire. Samsung never had any grounds to have any of the videos taken down. If anything, Google should be up on the law (and this is dead basic law) enough to know that satire is 'sacred' speech. The only reason Google should be brought into this discussion is that they ever took down any satire video at YouTube, including those depicting exploding Samsung gear.
So Google: Hire any basic constitutional lawyer and don't let this happen again. Thank you.
And Samsung: Your reputation is shattered. Deal with your fate. Hiding it merely generates The Streisand Effect. <-Look it up kids.