Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the getting-right-to-it dept

Another excellent week of comments on the blog. Each week, by the way, we’re seeing more people voting, which is nice to see. Jumping right into the winners — there were three comments that all were very close at the top for most insightful, and there was a big gap after those three. So we’ll crown all three winners, and then I’ll toss in one editors choice. At the very top, just outscoring the other two, was the following comment from Cornelius, in response to the news of the new charges filed against Bradley Manning. Cornelius gave us his perspective as a former US soldier, noting that a soldier’s allegiance is to the people:

As a U.S. soldier, Bradley Manning swore to defend the U.S. constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. He actually did the U.S. public a great service by exposing the wrong doings our government does in our name overseas. How can you not give the guy a medal for exposing U.S. combat soldiers killing Iraqi civilians and their supervisors covering it up by saying they were engaged actual combat. How can anyone take that to the grave. Even if he serves a life sentence, at least he can sleep at night knowing his mind is clear. I can’t imagine taking that to the grave with me. Makes me sick just thinking about it. As a former U.S. soldier myself, I never forgot that my duty was to defend our freedom and to protect the Constitution. My allegiance was not to the Generals above me, but to the people I was representing. I love the U.S., but we can not be fearful of government transparency. It’s the best way of defending our freedom. History will judge you kindly Bradley

Next up was a long (and, admittedly somewhat off-topic), but still epic comment from the Capitalist Lion Tamer, who sought to step into the comments on one post early to head off some of the “usual” complaints in one of our posts about the WIPO treaty for the blind:

I just want to step in here before we’re knee deep in argumentative trolls and issue somewhat of a preemptive strike. Listen up:

You seem to want the government, in conjunction with your pet industries, to craft a new set of laws to deal with what is continually referred to incorrectly as “piracy.”

First off, what gives you the idea that any of this will be handled rationally, rather than just another legislative gangbang that prides itself on overreach rather than prudent oversight? What previous government action are you basing this on?

The closest comparison I can find is the so-called Drug War which, despite billions of dollars and decades of action has failed to make any sort of tangible dent in the drug trade. What it HAS managed to do is erode civil rights and privacy. It’s also given various drug enforcement teams to rewrite rules on the fly.

Is this your ideal? Some sort of internet SWAT team that will finally lay the smackdown on “freetards” or, failing that, at least shoot them right in the family pet? Is that what you want? Freeloaders doing jail time for victimless “crimes”?

The Drug War is the perfect comparison for your windmill tilting. It’s an autonomous but disorganized force taking on an enemy with no real head to kill off. There’s no CEO to topple. No President of Illicit Drugs, Inc. to take down. There’s just a bunch of cannon fodder and replaceable pawns disguised as “triumphs” and “photo ops.”

And when they do have a discernible target, they still can’t bring it down. 90% of all heroin comes from Turkey and yet, there’s still plenty of smack to go around. Is this the force of justice you want backing up your vindictive legislation? They can’t find a field full of poppies in a field full of poppies.

Consequently, like the sore losers they are, they take out their failure on their citizens, throwing the book at weekend pot dealers and street runners with a half-gram of crack in their pockets.

But still you push on, as though you were just one badly written and randomly enforced law away from finally building your wormhole to 1991. Do you really want to give THIS government the authority to paw through all your online activity just to punish the unwashed masses who are apparently virtually shoplifting from you 24/7? Do you really want to give self-interested industries the right to root around in your hard drive in hopes of finding a lawsuit hidden under all the socks and porn at the back of the partition?

Let’s try a little theoretical exercise. Your laws are in place and usa.gov.mpaa.riaa.lawyer is tracking my downloading. Three strikes is in play. They can’t actually see all the data I’m downloading but they’re just looking for patterns.

Here we go.

True story from last time I hung the “Gone Downloadin'” sign up: I head over to Beko Records and download 8 or 9 comps and eps (witch house, electronica, space rock). Then I’m off to The Hood Internet to download their last 3 mix albums. Then off to the Kleptones for a couple of albums. (I heartily recommend “A Night at the Hip Hopera” and “Uptime/Downtime.” Everything listed above is being given away absolutely FREE by these labels and artists. No harm, no foul. Right?

Not so fast. The tracking software doesn’t like my spike in usage. So it kicks my info to a g-man or whoever’s the admin. Hmmm. Let’s look deeper.

“Beko Records? Never heard of them. However, I took this job as the tool of the industry so chances are I haven’t heard of much. Better wake up the boss.”

The boss doesn’t know them either but sends out a DMCA “just in case.” Their hosting freaks out and shuts them down because they don’t want to end up in court. Stupidity 1, Indie Artists 0.

More sniffing. Holy hell, those other two are mashup artists! Infringement galore! Bonuses for everyone! DMCAs all around! Bang. Bang. Two more down.

And my connection dies, followed by a tersely worded email that I have to read at the library. No one involved has done anything illegal and yet everyone gets punished. Even if all the parties are reinstated, it will still be several months and several thousand dollars of fines or legal fees.

If you think that’s outlandish, you haven’t been paying attention. And if you think this will be handled better than this by a combination of short-sighted industry heads and their back-pocketed representatives, then you’re obviously having trouble typing without your lips moving.

The government is woefully unequipped to deal with millions of people on a case-by-case basis, so they end up casting the net wide and hoping they at least drag in some actual criminals along with the innocent bystanders. And in their unsettling exuberance to please their benefactors, they’ll be willing to throw liberty and privacy under the bus. After all, this is the same government that panics if you try to carry more than 3 oz. of any fluid onto a plane. This is the same mindset that actually believes laws need to be written to prevent people from texting while walking.

The other aspect that gets lost in your endless shilling is that there are millions of people who wouldn’t touch your shoddy, masjor label product with a 10-foot torrent. But they’ll get swept up all the same because of their tendency to use the same tools as those “pirating” major label product. We already know that the RIAA and the MPAA don’t have the faintest idea how new technology works. This they’ve proved over the last decade. We also know our elected officials are equally clueless. Combining ignorance with tremendous power will ALWAYS end badly.

And what if I was downloading major label music? If I spent a week doing nothing but filling a 500 GB hard drive with copy after copy of Nickelback’s latest, does Chad Kroeger wake up one morning to find his wallet empty? He’s out nothing. His “support group” of managers, label execs, A&R reps and other members of this bloated faux entourage may start whining about “lost sales,” but the fact of the matter is, I’d never buy their lousy product in the first place. Their music is still for sale at hundreds of venues. I haven’t done a goddamn thing to the amount of available product and yet, people like you view this as “theft.”

If you want to entertain the last wishes of dying industries, knock yourself out. But don’t drag the rest of us into your desperate cash grabs on behalf of your benefactors, who have slipped into a severe dementia. Don’t make the world a worse place to live by sacrificing the liberty and privacy of millions just so the major label/major studio life support machine can run for a few more years.

You may now resume your ignorant trolling, most likely already in progress.

[Plus, the RIAA and the MPAA hate the blind. That rules.]

[Plus +: My apologies, Mike. You may have your blog back now.]

Phew. And coming in just behind that one was a nice response from MrWilson to the claim by ICE boss John Morton that seizing domains was perfectly fine because if someone spends hundreds of millions of dollars, they need to be protected. “It’s that simple,” he said, but MrWilson clearly disagreed:

So if I spend a million dollars to hire someone to draw me a circle and someone else copies that circle, I should be able to sue them for a million dollars because that’s what I chose to spend on the damn circle?

The amount invested in research and development or a product’s creation does not directly correlate to its value, however much it might correlate to its producer’s estimation of value or offering price.

Can I price an item at a million dollars and if someone steals can I then have a million dollars in lost property written off on my taxes?

And, finally, in the editor’s choice category, we have the comment that actually did come in fourth, but was way behind the other three. It comes from (yet again) Dark Helmet, in which he issued his manifesto which one can hope will only grow in prominence. It was in response to someone who apparently doesn’t quite understand the law or technology, who claimed that for those complaining about hinderances on freedom of information, that they should “stop acting like criminals.” Dark Helmet drew that commenter a bit of a map back to reality.

No. A million times no. I want both and I always will. I want the power to act as I please in a way that is legal and I expect not to be harrassed or hindered simply because a small group of people that also act like me happen to do things that are illegal. I expect to be able stand anywhere on the sidewalk my taxes paid for that I damn well please and if, as may happen, the police get itchy about it, I expect NOT to have my pockets searched just because I’m standing there.

I expect to be innocent until proven guilty. I demand that my government realize that they work for me, not the other way around. I insist that laws be crafted by those that represent the people should actually SERVE constituent interests rather than special interests rife with rich coffers built by past piss poor laws. I expect evidence to be utilized when building policy rather than silly faith-based propaganda. I seek the richness of knowledge and joy over the false happiness of extravagent wealth.

I expect my fellow citizens to disagree on anything they wish except that we have the right to disagree. I expect businesses and merchants to work within the framework of reality and common sense, not the false battlefield set up by politicians paid off in the legal bribes we call lobbying money. Most of all, and I mean MOST OF ALL, I expect this country and its representatives to be loyal not to a flag or the gang-like idealogy of our country, but rather to our ideals and our freedoms.

This is the Dark Helmet Manifesto….

And now it’s time to bring the funny. Here, again, we had three top comments emerge way ahead of the pack, and nothing else stood out as an editor’s choice — so here are the three winners for “funniest.” At the top of the list was a short and sweet comment from Vlad, who’s comment also scored well on the insightful scale, but not well enough to make it to the winner’s circle for insight. The specific comment was in response to a post about the practice of using “up to” to describe bandwidth speeds:

I’d like this “up to” deal to be a two-way street. If I get speeds “up to 5 Mbps” I’d like to pay for it “up to $50”. You know, depending on availability.

Coming in second was a response to a comment by one Bill Long, in which an anonymous commenter chose to go by the pseudonym, long bill. Bill Long had written a number of angry comments about how ridiculous it was that musicians should need to change their business model to survive. This anonymous comment hit back by noting the rather “get off my lawnish” aspect to the original comment.

You annoying youngsters with your new distribution channels, your new-fangled baroque music and your ridiculous business models! Do whatever you want, but don’t take away my copyrights, don’t compete with my outdated business practices, don’t complain when the internet is censored because of my obstinacy and unwillingness to get out of my comfort zone, don’t even talk about it! DAMN KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

And, finally, just behind that was a comment about Rep. Rush Holt, who successfully beat Watson, the Jeopardy-playing supercomputer. I’m sure most of you will get the reference:

Are we sure about, Rep Holt?

Has anyone asked him to describe in single words only the good things that come into his mind about his mother?

And with that, I’m off to get ready for this upcoming week of posts…