Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the go-TAC-go dept

Ok, hats off to That Anonymous Coward this week. I don’t know if he figured out someway to stuff the ballot box or what, but he had three of the top four highest voted comments in the “insightful” category. So, as a tribute, we’re just going to post the top four comments. First up was his open letter to our leaders in Washington DC:

Dear Washington “Leaders”,
Rather than continuing to waste time, resources and effort trying to punish people for revealing what we all already knew, do you think you could maybe put that much zealous effort into fixing the country?

We all suspected that you were doing things that violated the spirit of the law, and were shilling for your corporate benefactors. We turned a blind eye to you trying to export “Democracy” while refusing to admit that you do the exact same things you call dictators out for doing. We understand the money is a powerful thing that you seem to be unable to resist, so you try to force the world to be the utopian copyright is king world.

Your pursuit in this farce has gone on far to long. How many bankers have you investigated for the subprime meltdown? How many more ponzi scheme have one unnoticed, even when your own staff point them out? How many more times do we have to recall food because you refuse to pass real reform? How much time is wasted trying to punish whistle blowers pointing out your wasting billions of dollars on projects from former congressmen turned lobbyist?

I guess what I am saying here is, we are tired of this crap. You wrap yourself up in righteous fervor of they betrayed the country, but in truth the betrayal of the American people and American beliefs by all of you dwarfs anything these people might have done.

If you stop doing and trying to hide questionable things, nothing leaked ever again can hurt you. That seems to be a much better goal than conducting a witch hunt harassing citizens at the border, trying to get emails, using secret methods to secretly get intel so you can get even.

The Emperor is naked, we all know this. Now stop acting like spoiled brats, give up the temper tantrum, and get back to the business of running the country instead of your damn mouths.

K Thks Bai…
TAC

Coming in second was the one non-TAC comment. This one came from AJ and was in response to the new DNS offering that promises to route around US censorship. AJ explained the impact of this in simple terms:

Once again, the media companies are spending millions of dollars lobbying our government to spend billions of dollars, only to have some kid with a laptop spend an afternoon at a coffee shop writing an app to render all that time and money wasted.

Back to TAC, in discussing the Danish court ruling that effectively made it prohibitively expensive to ever sample music:

Copyright law is killing the music industry.

A little surprised that didn’t get more votes for “funny” too… Finally, was TAC’s response to Rick Falkvinge talking about the difference between the low court and the high court in terms of dealing with those from privilege who do wrong, vs. the have-nots.

Sony got hacked.
Sony decided to not attend the Congressional Hearing into the matter.
Sony used a text file to try and shift the blame to a 3rd party not involved the the data theft.
Sony was not using anything remotely close to established security procedures.
Sony was aware for a very long time their systems were insecure, and these were posts made publicly.
Do we have new data protection laws on the books?
Do we have an overreaching law telling you you at minimum need to do x?
We we instead offered extensions of data retention by ISPs, filters, and laws to get “the bad people” as defined by corporations.

We have ISPs entering into agreements with media corporations to create a 6 strikes system to take people off the internet on the accusations of the corps, which have been shown to be false in the past. They took away any defensible positions in their system for the user and treat the allegation as pure truth.

Do any members of our representative Government have a problem with this? Nope. The ISPs all complain about how much infrastructure and suchs costs, and have been given access to every yard free of charge. If they want to become a private police force, why do we allow them to still have monopolies and why do we not make them negotiate for every freaking pole and easement?

Our “Government” exists solely to benefit corporations at this point. Lets stop pretending democrat or republican or tea party matters, they all jump when the pile of cash is dropped at their feet.

The White House officially called the protesters mobs that worried him. When exactly did we forget that the people in that mob have a right to do that? That dissension is not unpatriotic? That they are supposed to be working for us, the people stupid enough to have elected them hoping for change.

There are more of us in the low court, maybe it is time to remind those who get the high court that the law in this country is supposed to be even. We will have our pound of flesh, we will vote the incumbents out, we will stop getting distracted by “issues” meant to keep us divided against one another, and we will turn our gaze on our leaders and in a single voice demand change and get it.

And we move onto the “funny side…” and the winner is… amazingly not TAC… but AJ. Damn, you two really dominated this week. It was his attempt to “in before” the critics with a repeat of their central message lately.

You FUDpacking-FREETARD-MasNick Clones wouldn’t KNOW a good Movie if it Slammed into your freeloading BroadBrush pro-pirate Rectums!

Yeah baby… out troll that one! *dances jig* O yeah … o yeah…

Apparently that was pitch perfect, because it got a ton of votes. Coming in second was a bit of humor either about Steve Jobs’ death and/or today’s economic and social conditions:

Just a decade ago we had Steve Jobs, Bob Hope, and Johnny Cash. Now we have no jobs, no hope, and no cash.

As for editor’s choice, we’ve got matics putting forth the parallel situation if 911 emergency phone calls worked like American Express’ response to a security hole being discovered:

Imagine the police had that sort of service?

“Hello, 911? I’d like to report that I saw someone trying to break into a local bank through a wall.”

“OK sir, and are you a member of that bank?”

“Well… No, but-”

“I’m sorry, if you aren’t a member, you need to call 912, our other support line. Thanks and good luck!”

And, finally, we’ve got another Anonymous Coward responding to Senator Wyden standing up to President Obama concerning the latter’s effort to sneak ACTA into law without letting Congress revew it:

I’d like to order a couple of Wydens for my state, is Oregon going to be making any more or do you guys want the monopoly on politicians with heads outside their asses?

Scary thought: politician store. And while you ponder such things, we’ll be getting ready for the upcoming week…