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Brian Dunning lawsuit

The Central Scrutinizer said:
"Given the financial nature of my crimes, I have come to the conclusion that it is no longer ethical for me to ask others to contribute money to Skeptoid. Therefore, I will only spend my own money to produce content, which, to be honest, is pretty much free anyhow."
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So you want to have him on welfare? If he can make a modest living on Skeptoid, great. I wish I could put a small donate link on my webpages as well but I have promised artists in the part that I am make no money and I also produce RPG based content and do not want to get in hot water with that company.
 
arthwollipot said:
What... Huh? Are you serious?

Since I was convicted for shooting someone, I have come to the conclusion that it is no longer ethical for me to use anything that contains lead. Therefore, I will be writing in pen from now on, and will no longer use plumbing.
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What... Huh? Are you serious?
 
Desert Fox said:
So you want to have him on welfare?
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So he has to either beg for money or go on welfare? Really? There can't possibly be any middle ground? He couldn't, for example, record his little podcast while simultaneously working as an truck driver? A taxi driver? Painter?
 
The Central Scrutinizer said:
So he has to either beg for money or go on welfare? Really? There can't possibly be any middle ground? He couldn't, for example, record his little podcast while simultaneously working as an truck driver? A taxi driver? Painter?
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I don't see how making money from a podcast and making money driving a truck are dissimilar here. I don't think podcasting is closer to the financial nature of the crime than other jobs are.

Or is it just about the personal request for money in the podcast? Would it be different if instead of donations the podcast earned money only on a per-download basis and the "help me out" plea were missing?
 
d4m10n said:
So you'd say Dunning was definitely lying when he wrote "Every penny eBay ever paid was a commission off their profit from a sale made after someone viewed one of our ads."
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It might hang on the definition of 'viewed', since supposedly some of them were only one pixel in size.
 
The Central Scrutinizer said:
So he has to either beg for money or go on welfare? Really? There can't possibly be any middle ground? He couldn't, for example, record his little podcast while simultaneously working as an truck driver? A taxi driver? Painter?
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He actually researches subjects. . . .That actually takes quite a bit of time.
 
DuvalHMFIC said:
I'm certainly a much bigger skeptic than I am a fan of the Joe Rogan podcast, but good lord, Dunning set the movement back at least 10 years with his awful appearance on there. Rogan is a kook and a woo, and yet Dunning is the one who came off looking terrible after going on his podcast.
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Yeah that was just bad.

I was listening to a Joe Rogan podcast from last week and he was talking about how he has many guests who disagree with him, but it's cool, there's nothing wrong with disagreeing with people, you can still have an interesting conversation. Then he said "I disagree with people all the time, I've only had one guest in 700 podcasts where that was unpleasant" (I'm paraphrasing from memory here, so that's not entirely accurate, but it was the gist of what he said), "that Brian Dunning guy."
 
Desert Fox said:
He actually researches subjects. . . .That actually takes quite a bit of time.
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Not as much as you think. Especially considering he has people doing some of that for him. I'd bet for most of his 12 minute podcasts, I could do all the research needed in 2-3 hours. This isn't 1955, you don't have to trudge to a library and pour through many books to find what you're looking for.

He follows a simple formula: he basically finds all the popular literature on a subject, which takes no more than 30 minutes (it's popular, after all!). He then selects a couple of sources and tries to vet them, tracing their history and origins. This is the most time consuming part, but still, in most cases can be done in a couple of hours. Especially for someone fairly tech savvy such as Dunning.

Then, of course, he gets to completely phone it in every 5th episode or so and "answer" critical emails on-air. This takes no research at all usually. It mostly consists of him either repeating his stance, or occasionally making an apology for getting something wrong.

Again-if he can make a living doing 5-10 hours of work a week, more power to him. I just find it odd that people would still want to donate to him. I'd much rather give my money to SGU or skepticality or something like that. People with clean records whom are good for the skeptical community.
 
devnull said:
How does the stuffing work?

I mean, how could he change cookies that arent from his domain?
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The eBay folks would write a cookie whenever a pixel from their site was loaded on client machines. According to Dunning, they worked directly with him to keep this system in place, despite complaints from their subcontractor in charge of affiliate marketing.
 
devnull said:
How does the stuffing work?

I mean, how could he change cookies that arent from his domain?
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He didn't. He just got one of his onto the PC (by allegedly devious means). If it was more recent than any other ebay affiliate's, then he got the credit for any subsequent purchase.

See ebay's filing, paragraphs 20 and 21.
 
DuvalHMFIC said:
Not as much as you think. Especially considering he has people doing some of that for him. I'd bet for most of his 12 minute podcasts, I could do all the research needed in 2-3 hours. This isn't 1955, you don't have to trudge to a library and pour through many books to find what you're looking for.
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I do a lot of stuff with military history. . . . .Often I have to trudge to a library to check I do not own, buy an expensive out of print book, or ask somebody for help who has the books.

A lot of the in depth stuff is not on the web.
 
Desert Fox said:
I do a lot of stuff with military history. . . . .Often I have to trudge to a library to check I do not own, buy an expensive out of print book, or ask somebody for help who has the books.

A lot of the in depth stuff is not on the web.
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Have you tried Wikipedia?






(Married to a librarian, so this joke gets used a lot around our house. Sorry)
 
BowlOfRed said:
I don't see how making money from a podcast and making money driving a truck are dissimilar here. I don't think podcasting is closer to the financial nature of the crime than other jobs are.

Or is it just about the personal request for money in the podcast? Would it be different if instead of donations the podcast earned money only on a per-download basis and the "help me out" plea were missing?
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Yes. Even better, why not sell ads?
 
d4m10n said:
The eBay folks would write a cookie whenever a pixel from their site was loaded on client machines. According to Dunning, they worked directly with him to keep this system in place, despite complaints from their subcontractor in charge of affiliate marketing.
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That's where the story goes off the rails. :)
 
d4m10n said:
According to Dunning, they worked directly with him to keep this system in place, despite complaints from their subcontractor in charge of affiliate marketing.
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The Central Scrutinizer said:
That's where the story goes off the rails.
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briandunning said:
eBay clashed with Commission Junction constantly. When we put the pixels in our ads allowing eBay to write cookies, it triggered Commission Junction's security warnings, because they would scan all the affiliates' ads looking for this. K gave me standing orders to immediately report to her any warnings we got from Commission Junction. I did this on a number of occasions, and the warnings were erased from our record within the hour. eBay also sent us reports from independent security consultants, and advised us on ways to change the ads, or technical aspects of the pixel, to avoid triggering these alerts.
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Maybe I'm being too credulous, but his story sounds plausible enough to me.
 
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