Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the the-votes-are-in dept

Our first place winner on the insightful side this week is Gary with a comment about Georgia’s ongoing attempt to lock up its laws with copyright:

Anyone that is actually and intentionally blocked from seeing the Georgia laws should get a free pass when it comes to breaking those laws, eh?

“Your honor, I actively petitioned the state beforehand to see if I was complying with the state law and was rebuffed.”

In second place, it’s Mason Wheeler with a linguistic take on EU regulation:

This is why we shouldn’t use the passive voice

The “right to be forgotten”.

Forgotten by whom? By people other than yourself.

Put into the proper active voice, this is the “right to compel others to forget about you.” Which sounds ridiculously dystopian, like something out of a Philip K. Dick story.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from PaulT about the copyright lessons to be learned from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s dancing video:

This is an interesting illustration of how indefinable the losses to culture could be due to overreaching copyright. Nobody would have considered that the video when originally posted might have a life of its own, let alone one that reached into the first day of the 2019 congress, but here we are.

But, the questions nags at me – what more did we lose because record labels are capable of understanding human behaviour over and above the immediate profits they think they see in front of them? I suspect that culture is poorer, because other videos got killed before they had a chance to go viral, young artists put off from pursing their work or deprive from important inspirations.

The art and politics are both relatively minor in direct relation to this video, but it’s worth thinking – if Newhouse’s video was taken down earlier, we may not be reading this thread. What else, perhaps of far greater input – has been robbed? Sadly, we will never know.

Next, we head to our post about Google deeming one of our other posts “dangerous and derogatory” because of some user comments, which is the source of all our remaining winners and editor’s choices this week. First up, it’s Scote pointing out one frustrating piece of fallout from Google scanning user comments:

This is why BoingBoing has comments on a seperate page

BoingBoing and some other sites now banish comments to a page with its own URL so the main page doesn’t get dinged by Google for the comments.

I prefer comments on the same page. Techdirt articles and comments are integral to one another, so I’d be sad to see the same happen here. I wish Google would get its s*** together instead.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous commenter who attempted to weaponize Google’s system:

Ooo! Dangerous or Derogatory comments can shut down that delicious ad revenue kickbacks you get from Google because you are a Google shill?

Well here we go! time to trip that tag!

You should run with scissors!

Operate a motor vehicle after drinking powerful cough syrup!

Don’t vaccinate!

Don’t eat your vegetables!

Close your eyes and cover your ears before crossing the street!

That comment brought out “google shill” as a joke, but in second place we’ve got Gwiz with a response to someone who likes to level the accusation seriously:

Let me get this straight. If you accept a gift or a one time sponsorship from someone, you are considered a “shill” for them until the end of time, even if you constantly call them out for doing stupid shit?

If we use your (faulty) logic, we would have to assume that YOU are a Techdirt shill, since you freely accept Techdirt’s “gift” of allowing you to publish your comments here.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we’ve got a pair of commenters who continued to riff on the pattern set by the first place winner with more dangerous and derogatory comments. First, it’s an anonymous addition:

Allow the commonors to have a voice!

Text with multiple people while you drive!

Be friends with someone who lives in Iran!

Attempt to bribe a cardboard cutout!

Am I on the right track?

And finally, it’s Thad making still more trouble:

Talk with your mouth full
Bite the hand that feeds you
Bite off more than you can chew
What can you do?
You can dare to be stupid!

That’s all for this week, folks!


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Comments on “Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt”

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11 Comments
ECA (profile) says:

Back on subject..RTBF..

Im running for office…WHO ARE YOU..
I created a law that you have to obey…I forgot, WHO ARE YOU to tell me what I can t do..
Lets for get all the politicians..PLEASE..
Can we forget the stupid people that rule over us??

Flashing lights and a funny clown car pulls you over..
Sir I need to give you a ticket..
And Who are you? Do you have the right to give a ticket If we dont know WHo you are or who you represent??

PS…they are trying to get this over here.. I would love to Think there has been no one running this country for the last 20 years..

Anonymous Coward says:

Maybe google is such a big company now the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.
Go to youtube ,its easy to find stupid ,malicious ,insulting comments on videos.
Theres zero chance of ads being blocked on youtube.
The reason i read many blogs is the comments are often as informative or funny as the main article.
I defend your right to free speech even if
some of it may be stupid or rude or considered dangerous by google.

sumgai (profile) says:

I’m sorry to have missed Scote’s comment about not wanting to see "a separate page/site for comments". In point of fact (and I speak from experience here), a single page can contain content from more than one server, and there are several ways to do that.

Sadly (but not unexpectedly), Google ignores the robots.txt file if the content is called (linked) from another resource. But… Google does obey the ‘noindex’ META tag, and the "X-Robots-Tag" resonse header.

If either of those are inserted into the page sitting on the "comments" server, then Google (and perhaps Bing as well) should not be able to see the actual content, only the call to that page. But to the user, everything would appear seamless, as it does now.

(For all I know, Mike is doing exactly that now!)

HTH

sumgai

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