Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the the-scourge-of-free-earthquakes dept

This week’s comment voted most insightful came from (yet again) an Anonymous Coward — once again demonstrating that anonymity doesn’t mean crappy comments, as we keep hearing people claim. The comment was in response to the story of some NY politicians claiming that we need a “more refined” interpretation of the 1st Amendment, in which free speech is seen as a privilege that the government can take away if they think you’re a jerk:

Are we also going to get a more refined 2nd Amendment that legalizes all guns but outlaws gunpowder? And a more refined 3rd Amendment that still disallows quartering soldiers in a time of peace, but since we’re always in half a dozen wars there never is a time of peace. The more refined 4th Amendment says they can search anything they want as long as it’s within 1000 miles of a border. The more refined 5th Amendment defines due process as a process you have to bay a due for. The more refined 6th Amendment says you get a speedy and public trial unless you’re a terrorist, which you are. The more refined 7th Amendment says don’t worry about those civil trials anymore, because we’ve made everything criminal and you’re going to prison. The more refined 8th Amendment says the death penalty is neither cruel nor unusual because we do it a lot and so far not a single person who’s been subjected to it has complained. Plus people cheered it. The more refined 9th Amendment says sure you might have other rights, but what proof do you have? The more refined 10th Amendment says, well, not the people. I mean, the States maybe, but not the people. What were we thinking?

Coming in second was a comment from MrWilson, in response to the TSA’s response to mistreating a breast cancer patient:

“We strive to treat every passenger with dignity and respect…”

“…Unfortunately, our policies and procedures prohibit that.”

The truth can be so insightful. And yes, both of those comments scored well on the funny scale too — but not enough to get into the winners circle on that side of the fence. As for editor’s choice, we’ve got Marcus Carab’s excellent breakdown of the difference between media and messages that seems to trip up people who complain about “blogs vs. journalism,” even though that’s an apples and oranges comparison:

Way to mix media and messages. Let’s break this down:

JOURNALISM is a pursuit – it includes hard news reporting, research, analysis, editorial/opinion, audience interaction, entertainment coverage, light news, human interest – lots of stuff

NEWS is, as you say, supposed to be about pure objective fact. It’s just one component of journalism.

A NEWSPAPER is a medium. It is just a way of printing stuff. The term carries associations with journalistic values, but a newspaper can in fact be anything from a drug store tabloid to a parody like the Onion to a serious news outlet.

A BLOG is similarly, just a medium. And like newspaper, it can be used for anything from hard reporting to photos of cats. Because the bar to entry is lower, there is greater variety among blogs than among newspapers.

so…

NEWS is a part of JOURNALISM which can be communicated in a NEWSPAPER or in a BLOG. But the simple fact that something is a BLOG or a NEWSPAPER tells you nothing about what kind of JOURNALISM it contains (and how much of that journalism is hard NEWS), or even if it contains any at all.

I kinda feel like that should be put on a poster and sent to anyone who complains about “bloggers vs. journalism.”

My second editor’s choice is actually two comments (which I’ll combine below) from Justin Levine highlighting part of the transcript from the Golan vs. Holder Supreme Court hearing, in which the US government tries to argue that pulling works out of the public domain does not represent a First Amendment issue and that existing exceptions in copyright law already solve any First Amendment issues:

“CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: General, there is something at least at an intuitive level appealing about Mr. Falzone’s First Amendment argument. One day I can perform Shostakovich; Congress does something, the next day I can’t. Doesn’t that present a serious First Amendment problem?

GENERAL VERRILLI: I don’t think so, Mr. Chief Justice…”

[….] “CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: What about Jimmy Hendrix, right? He has a distinctive rendition of the national anthem, and all of a — assuming the national anthem is suddenly entitled to copyright protection that it wasn’t before, he can’t do that, right?…So he is just out of luck? And that’s just one example of many, where you take existing works and you have a derivative work or something that is distinctive to you. So those people are just out of luck?

GENERAL VERRILLI: …the Copyright Clause already contains very significant accommodations of First Amendment interests. The idea/expression dichotomy, fair use; and — and that is going to provide — maybe — maybe Jimmy Hendrix could claim fair use in that situation….”

I do wonder if Verrilli (who, yes, was once the RIAA’s favorite lawyer, but now is the US Solicitor General) really is arguing that a fully derivative cover song of a copyrighted song would, in fact, be fair use. I doubt it.

Okay, onto the funny. First up, we’ve got That Anonymous Coward, with his explanation for how a download is a performance:

The magic pixies who live inside the thinking box, when you double click it they are forced to once again pick up their instruments and reproduce the drivel to appease their human captors.

The magic smoke one sometimes sees leaving a computer case is actually the souls of pixies pushed to far and to hard to reproduce to many songs in a public performance.

Before you torrent that next album, won’t you stop and think of the pixies?

/sallystuthers

And, voted second highest was Marcus Carab’s comment in response to the new US Postal Service’s ad campaign which mocks email for not being secure enough. Marcus points out that it could have been worse:

At least it’s not a sad letter carrier talking about how mail piracy is costing him his livelihood.

As for editor’s choice, we’ve got two more comments from Anonymous Cowards (yes, ban anonymity!), both of which made me laugh. First up, we’ve got a comment in response to the revelation that Monster Cable, who is lobbying Congress to pass PROTECT IP to deal with “rogue sites,” has its own list of rogue sites that includes Sears and Costco:

Yeah Masnick. Suck it up. The party’s over for you and your little rogue pirate friends like Sears and Costco. As soon as PROTECT-IP passes, all you pirate boys will be getting molested in prison like the naughty criminal bad boys you are.

Now you’ll have to excuse me. All this ranting has gotten me…”angry” and I…uh…have to go now…I have to…exercise. Yeah, “exercise.”

And finally, my favorite of the week was on the story where Japan is trying to claim that it needs to sign ACTA to help with the earthquake reconstruction — a linkage that didn’t make much sense to us. Thankfully, this AC explained it in simple terms:

FREE EARTHQUAKES ARE KILLING THE EARTHQUAKE INDUSTRY!

Such a tragedy. Something must be done…