Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the denial,-entitlement-and-insanity dept

Insight took center stage this week, with the votes on that side notably exceeding those on the funny side. First place goes to Nom for a correction to James Clapper’s “please don’t love Snowden” speech:

“I understand that a lot of young people see Snowden as a courageous whistleblower standing up to authority”

That’s not quite right.

People don’t see him as a courageous whistleblower standing up to authority. They seem him as a courageous whistleblower standing up to corruption.

Second place goes to silverscarcat, who heard the government’s warning to parents that teenagers might become terrorists and was appropriately flabbergasted:

Now if this doesn’t fall into the WTF America category…

I don’t know what does.

Seriously, the government flat-out admits it sees the citizens as the enemy here.

So… When’s the revolution to overthrow everything?

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start with an anonymous commenter who made a key correction to our point that copyright maximalists “overvalue content”:

To be fair, they only overvalue THEIR content.

You notice that once MySpace, which was initially built around finding alternative music, got massively popular that the lgacy industries bought into it, plasting their content all over the sight and forcing any alternative content underground, And while it was far from the only reason, it’s not a total coincidence people started abadoning the site in droves not long after.

Same goes for eMusic. Once the site’s non-major label format started gaining serious traction, the labels bought their way into the site (even dropping prices and the “all-important” DRM) and plasting their content all over the front of the site and forcing much of the alternative content down where you had to go hunting for it.

It’s not about THE content, it’s about THEIR content.

Next, we’ve got another anonymous comment offering a quote that is all-too-appropriate for many stories of police abuse:

One of my new favorite sayings seems fairly appropriate here. “It isn’t so bad living in a police state…as long as you’re the police.”

Over on the funny side, we start out with the absurd court ruling ordering Google to destroy information on third-party sites it doesn’t control. Baldaur Regis won first place with a possible explanation for such lunacy:

This “visiting San Antonio Judge Richard Price”….

Was he perchance visiting from 1840?

For second place, we’ve got an anonymous comment under the banner of Rob Ford, Mayor of Toronto offering some advice to the Peoria mayor on a tear against Twitter parodies:

Hey Jim. I have some advice for you. Don’t try censor the Internet. That doesn’t work. Never has. Never will. Instead, my suggestion is to try to live up to the parody. That’s what works for me.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start with Roger Strong and some thoughts on the past and future of copyright industry entitlement:

In England a 1571 Act of Parliament to stimulate domestic wool consumption decreed that on Sundays and holidays all males over 6 years of age, except for the nobility and persons of degree, were to wear woolen caps on pain of a fine. This law instituted the flat cap as part of English wear. The Bill was repealed in 1597, but the flat cap continues to be widely used today.

Science fiction cartoons of people in the future often include antenna on peoples’ heads as a future fashion trend. This suddenly seems not only plausible, but probable. Legally required thanks to the National Association of Broadcasters.

And, last but not least, we return to the post about Google’s court-appointed Sisyphean task of scrubbing the internet, where Jessie had an idea on how the company can comply:

Google should just search for this information, print it out, then video themselves shredding the printouts.

It’d still be more effective than digital whac-a-mole, that’s for sure.

That’s all for this week, folks!