Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the come-for-the-insight,-stay-for-the-funny dept

Short week due to Labor Day, but felt like a long week, so let’s get to it. Winning the most insightful comment of the week was MrWilson, responding to one of the more ridiculous comments we’ve seen in a while, where one of our regular critics seemed rather confused and ignorant of how the law works, and MrWilson set him straight:

1. Let’s apply the same logic to other situations:

“Your honor, my client didn’t kill the victim because the victim’s soul is immortal and is living on in another plane of existence.”

2. The speech being restrained is not the infringement of copyrighted streams of sporting events. The speech being restrained is all of the speech being made on the website, including Puerto 80’s discussion forums and webmaster’s content. Since Puerto 80 isn’t infringing any content, restraining their speech without evidence that they are actually infringing is illegal. Which is the entire point that Puerto 80 is making that you keep ignoring.

3. You’ve got it backwards. If the US government wants the website unavailable to the US, it needs to pass such a law making it so. It’s not Puerto 80’s responsibility that the internet doesn’t have international boundaries

It makes me happy when you guys vote up comments that respond to clueless comments. Not that it helped with this guy (who doesn’t want to be helped — he revels in being willfully ignorant). His response to MrWilson? “what an ignorant piece of drivel.” Of course, since the folks here found it the most insightful post of the week, perhaps — just perhaps — this particular commenter might want to open his mind a bit and recognize that perhaps he’s misjudging who’s the ignorant party.

Coming in a rather close second was a comment from the eejit, in response to the news that the RIAA was issuing takedowns on music being purposely given away for free from a Universal Music website by Universal Music’s most successful songwriter. The eejit noted that this makes a strong statement:

See this? This right here?

THIS right here is why PRO IP and ACTA and all the other stupid fucking acronym laws need to die in a fire. HARD. It’s not about the fucking artists. It’s all about the middlemen’s pockets.

Ok. Two quick editor’s choice awards. First up, we have Derek Kerton with the perfect analogy to the story of the US government blaming Google (to the tune of $500 million) for some illegal pharmacies placing ads on its platform:

There are crimes committed, like illegal drug sales on street corners in many towns. We should hold the government accountable for those crimes. They should fine themselves $500M because other people are doing “no-nos” on their infrastructure, and they should be forced to stop it from happening.

When they succeed at stopping all crimes on all streets, that will prove to Google that it is possible to do such a thing, and Google can follow the shining example.

I suggest the gov’t call it “THE WAR ON DRUGS”, and that we always write it in all-caps to illustrate the magnanimity of it. It should be over in a few weeks, and then won’t Google look so silly!!

And then we have an Anonymous Cowards explaining the true impact of copyright expansionism:

The more copyright is extended, perverted, abused, and forced upon populations who are never permitted any say in the matter, the more people who would never give copyright a second thought will be affected negatively somehow.

Since copyright only exists by consent of the public, don’t be surprised when the public decides that copyright no longer serves them and they declare it null and void.

But, of course, you’re all really here for the funny. The winner this week had the most votes ever… and beat out second place by a factor of three! Yes, believe it or not, this comment from Chronno S. Trigger had more than three times the number of votes of the second place comment. It was a simple comment in response to the story of Ubisoft screwing up the printing of its one-time use codes, such that the game only came with 19-digit codes when it required 25-digit codes. Chronno had an idea what really happened:

We sure it was a printing error and not Game Stop taking out the extra 6 characters?

That’s what’s known as a callback.

Coming in a respectable second was John Doe’s thoughts on the news that the RIAA is issuing takedown notices for Twitter messages that link to music released directly on a Universal Music website by the musician behind it, who was actively encouraging people to share the work freely. Doe knew what must be coming next:

So Universal Music is a rogue site? I guess ICE will be confiscating Universal’s website any time now.

For editor’s choice, we’ll start with a pair of related comments that both made me laugh. In response to the story of some researchers claiming that Facebook leads to drinking and drug use after they appeared to not understand the difference between correlation and causation, Chris O’Donnell took things a step further in explaining his parenting secrets:

Neither of my teenagers will open a Facebook account, because, as they put it, if I’m on Facebook it can’t be cool. Neither of my teenagers is drinking or doing drugs either.

So obviously, hanging on out FB as a parent keeps your kids away from drugs and alcohol.

And people told me this parenting thing would be difficult.

To which Dark Helmet replied:

In the spirit of fucking up correlation and causation, I can only assume that you drink and do drugs heavily.

Yay! This is fun!

Finally, we’ll end on a funny comment from Beta, which involves another callback. His comment was on the story of the Double Rainbow dude issuing bogus DMCA notices and insisting that he’ll “change the law” if it turns out filing bogus DMCA notices is illegal. Beta wondered if there might be a connection to another story we’ve covered recently:

See what happens when people can no longer get affordable medication from Canada?

A shame indeed. That’s that for this week… Play nice.