Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the quite-a-week dept

Coming in first this week, as it should, was a comment from an Anonymous commenter, who got to the crux of the Dajaz1 situation noting that the due process issue is really quite insane:

Even if Dajaz IS a pirate site with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, that doesn’t matter (much). Due process is, much, much more important than whether a site is guilty or innocent in one particular case. We can’t just ignore due process for the guilty. The government, by definition, thinks anyone it’s prosecuting is guilty.

Also, I’m trying to think of one good reason why everything needed to be filed under seal to the point where the lawyer could not even get a redacted copy to prove that the court had even done the things the government said it did. Even if there was some horrible unimaginable thing in those files that could absolutely never be seen, couldn’t they have at least shown the part where the judge in fact grants the extension?

“And could the ICE have given it back merely because it was just too much bother to prosecute even the obvious? Because there are just too many? ”

Ever drive 66 MPH down the freeway right past a cop? They don’t bother to prosecute everyone. But that doesn’t mean that they get to stop you and impound your car for over a year without even having to bother with not only the speeding trial, but the forfeiture proceedings themselves. If there’s too many to prosecute, either get more lawyers and judges, or choose your targets more carefully.

Coming in second was a comment from rubberpants, concerning how businesses view government-granted monopolies:

Government-granted monopolies are the heroin of the business world.

1. As soon as a business get’s a taste, they’re hooked. They can rarely transition back to a competitive environment.

2. They’ll spend millions lobbying and influencing policy to make sure they can keep getting high.

3. When people try to give them an intervention, they lash out with anger, hostility, and complete denial.

4. They’ll systematically destroy their customer relationships, waste their future opportunities, and eventually wind up bankrupt in the gutter.

For editor’s choice, we’ve got another Anonymous commenter rather brilliantly linking the astray Mythbusters cannonball to PROTECT IP and SOPA:

There is a moral to this story. When things go wrong in the Physical world, everyone takes notice. We consider the idea of building a homemade cannon. We want to see it tried.

Then it doesn’t quite do what we expected.

It rips through our public spaces, bouncing off hills and roads.

It enters our homes, racing up our stairs.

It blasts through our bedrooms.

It takes out a van.

Now you can expect calls to stop this. It isn’t worth the risk to our property, to our homes, to our very bedrooms, to allow this all in the name of Entertainment.

You likely see where I am going now….

… but in the name of Entertainment we are willing to fire off SOPA and PROTECT IP. It has a great chance of ripping through the Internet in just the same fashion. Exposing us to risk in our public dealings, and in our private dealings. But here we believe the risk is acceptable.

Because the blast of SOPA through our bedrooms destroying our privacy and security is all digital.

Moving on to the funny, we’ve got trusty Marcus Carab reacting to the story of the first grader investigated for sexual harassment for kicking another child in the groin. Marcus explored the logical conclusions:

That’s a pretty bizarre definition of sexual assault. I thought it was supposed to mean sexually motivated. If kicking someone in the nuts because it’s a vulnerable spot is sexual assault, then how do we know kicking them in the shins isn’t also sexual assault committed by someone with a really weird fetish?

Coming in a close second (and getting a legitimate laugh out of me) was SD’s response to the wayward Mythbusters’ cannonball:

What a trajectory… This must be what happens when your ballistics education consists entirely of playing Angry Birds.

For editor’s choice, we’ve got trails responding to an incomprehensible argument involving secondary liability for “Pirate P and Host H.” Many others built on this concept, but Trails wins for the most amusing to me:

Also, what Mike has said is that if Drunkard D drives Car C on Road R and kills someone, then no one is legally responsible!

It is also true that if a Gopher G is next to an Orangutan O using a Fork F under an Umbrella U, along with Corkscrew C and Knife K to attack a Yurt Y without consent of the Orangutan O who takes the Umbrella U one should deliver a Soliloquy S on the Evils E of Larceny L of Foreign sites F.

And, finally, an Anonymous commenter responding to someone else threatening to “steal” the analogy that rubberpants used above to win an insightful award. This commenter pointed out that stealing analogies is wrong:

Ahh man, I wanted to steal this analogy, but if you’ve already taken it, it is obviously gone now, and no one else can make a copy or ever use it again unless someone sees you use it, and steals it again.

That’s right, folks, stealing analogies kills language. So stop doing it.