Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the twas-said dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Blake C. Stacey with a response to the return of the PACT Act, and especially its traffic thresholds for regulations:

As far as I know, nobody in a quarter-century of trying has invented a meaningful way to quantify website traffic, and every method for putting a supposedly precise number to it is an advertising gimmick. Why on Earth would we write a reliance upon an ad gimmick into federal law? It’s like changing the penalties for a crime based on the quantity of bad vibes that it generated.

Here’s a wild idea: Why don’t we have a National Commission on Internet Regulation before we try to write legislation?

In second place, it’s PaulT with a response to a commenter who repeatedly, vaguely complains about the sponsors of The Copia Institute:

I’ll ask again what influence you think that the MacArthur Foundation have on this site, since you repeatedly provide that freely available piece of information as proof of something.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with Rico R. and some thoughts on Netflix’s crackdown on password sharing:

Don’t forget that Netflix is also now a part of the MPAA. Maybe that could have something to do with this crackdown? After all, many other members are against password sharing. And that’s not to mention that they want everyone to never pirate and pay for every movie they want to own and every single streaming service that has something they want to watch. And pay for their Internet connection to watch said streaming sites. And their phone bill. And their electricity. And their water bill. And their rent. And groceries. And anything else they need to support a family. And probably more. And put some money in savings. And have an in case of an immediate emergency fund. And pay for gifts and other things they might want to buy. All while working a minimum wage job.

Tell me: Who has the ability to pay for all that under those circumstances? That’s why piracy exists. Not because they’re too lazy to go to the store. Not because they don’t want to support the filmmakers/artists/creators of the content they consume. And not because they just want to get content for free. It’s because if there was no piracy, they wouldn’t consume the content at all. Period. So maybe ask them if they would rather have those who share passwords move over to a torrent site instead, and see how quickly they change their views.

Next, it’s That Anonymous Coward with a question about a Florida Sheriff’s use of predictive policing:

Funny, given the statistics… shouldn’t they have been visiting off duty officers to make sure they weren’t beating their wives, hitting their kids, molesting people, brandishing weapons to win debates?

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Beefcake with a response to our story about a security failure involving Stevie Ray Vaughan and what it can teach us about security design:

Not surprising

Everyone in pop music was using the same major keys at the time.

In second place, it’s sumgai with another comment on the story about predictive policing in Florida, where another commenter made reference to “Broken Windows policing” and set up a little bit of comedic intentional misunderstanding:

Just because they’ve also had more than a decade of abusing broken software, that doesn’t mean that you should be bringing Microsoft into this discussion, eh?

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with PaulT passing along a famous quote about Ayn Rand that’s always good for a laugh:

“Ayn Rand was a rather poor author and had a really stupid personal philosophy.”

Which she was happy to throw out the moment she needed to depend on government benefits.

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old?s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”

And finally, it’s Stephen T. Stone with a response to the question of why Republicans want to kill Section 230 even though it protects a lot of their nonsense:

Or, to put it more succinctly: They?re voting for the Leopards Eating Faces Party and hoping they can escape before the maulings start.

That’s all for this week, folks!