Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the anonymous-cowards-are-funny dept

Coming in first by a wide, wide margin (which has been the pattern the last few weeks) is Chosen Reject, on our story about how innovation provides a better solution to piracy than regulation. One of the first comments made a snide comment about how the same thing could be said for murder. CR responded with a really insightful rant, and the community agreed, voting for it a tremendous number of times.

I’ll leave aside your asinine analogy as others have already pointed that out and just say that you forgot the other part concerning innovating. So let’s run with your analogy: Who cares if murder is wrong if stopping it is impossible and innovating provides better solutions?

For example, what if, rather than just increasing penalties for murder and hiring more law enforcers, we hired more counselors and arbitrators to provide counseling and arbitration free of charge to angry people. Let’s say we try this and find that it reduces the murder rate more than increasing penalties and detectives does. Would you still say stand up on your soapbox and shout that penalties need to be stiffer and more detectives need to be hired?

What if having job location services, education opportunities, and access to medical and mental health care were to reduce violent crime (including murders) more than banning guns would? Would you still petition for stricter gun control laws?

This can be applied anywhere. What if lowering the tax rate and simplifying the tax code were to reduce tax fraud and raise revenues? Would you be asking for more IRS workers to conduct more tax audits? What if building sidewalks overpasses or underground streets in school zones reduced car accidents? Would you still be advocating 15mph speed zones? What if legalizing drugs and providing addiction recovery help and other self help systems for drug addicts reduced the amount of drug users and/or drug related crime? Would you still be crying for longer jail terms?

What if Hollywood provided a service that was better than the Pirate Bay and that reduced infringement and brought in revenue? Would you still be asking for increased fines for infringement? Oh wait, you are. Never mind, I guess you don’t care about results, you only care about what you think is “right”.

Coming in second was a handy tip from an Anonymous user responding to the fact that we only discovered accidentally the fact that an important Techdirt link was taken out of the Google via a bogus DMCA notice. It turns out that there is a way to get alerted to such notices, but you have to be proactive in setting it up. So, for anyone who runs a website, you might want to think about doing this too:

Add your site to Google Webmaster Tools and go to “All Messages” on the left and you can see Google’s DMCA notices as they come in (not sure about the historical ones). You should also go to “Preferences” and have them forward notices to an email account so you don’t have to log into Webmaster Tools all the time to see them. IIRC they added this ability last year but not too many people know about it.

We’ve now done this, so hopefully won’t be taken by surprise on any new bogus DMCA takedowns being sent to Google.

For editor’s choice, we’ll kick off with this nice long comment from DannyB, that I’d summarize as what life would be like if your municipal water supplier acted like AT&T:

I have an interesting situation. My water utility sells me metered water for washing dishes, watering the lawn, showering, and other limited purposes.

The utility offers a Tasting plan for an additional monthly charge. Under this plan, I am allowed to use the water also for cooking and drinking. (Even though my water use is metered, and each gallon of water for cooking and drinking is delivered by the same pipes!)

Dear customer: our records indicate that you have been using water for cooking and/or drinking. Please upgrade your water rate plan to our convenient Tasting plan that allows for this usage. If you continue to use water for cooking and drinking, you will be signed up for the Tasting plan automatically.

I think the Tasting plan is just a fee that they made up. It isn’t a service they provide. They just want more money from me. I’ve got a workaround of using a container to obtain water from another room for the purposes of cooking and drinking.

Some people shout: Theft of service! But what service? They’re already delivering water to me, and metering it, and I’m paying for it, and its delivered by the same pipes!

Some people shout: but you signed an agreement and using the water for cooking and drinking is a breach of that agreement!

Ask a lawyer about the term “unconscionable contract”.

Nobody in their right mind would agree to this if they had any actual choice in the matter. Just because they have the power and can force you into paying this ridiculous fee or doing without doesn’t make it right.

I say that this Tasting “service” is no service at all, it’s just a fee for delivering nothing at all extra to me. It’s a case of the utility wanting something for nothing. Yet people seem to think it is somehow wrong to use the water I’m paying for for drinking or cooking unless I sign up for the more expensive Tasting plan.

In order to add legitimacy to their Tasting plan, the water company says that the Tasting plan is actually delivering something: it includes an additional 2 Gigabytes of water per month, giving you 4 total Gigabytes of water.

But what if I only need 2 Gigabytes of water and therefore my existing monthly 2 Gigabyte plan is plenty? The water company already charges $10 per extra Gigabyte of water I use over the limit. So if I used excess water, it’s not like they wouldn’t get paid.

Furthermore, once I sign up for the Tasting plan, they don’t make any distinction between water used for drinking/cooking and water used for other purposes. I could use 3/4 of it for tasting, and 1/4 for bathing/dishwashing. Or any other split. Or all of it purely for tasting. So then if I paid for Tasting and used only 2 Gigabytes of water, which I already had paid for, then why did I need the Tasting plan?

I seem to be very confused about stealing water for tasting. Someone please set me straight.

Next up, we have Robert Doyle’s interesting response to the “We, Web Kids” manifesto:

When did we stop building foundations for our children and instead start building ceilings?

The next generation needs to determine how high their own sky is, and if it surpasses ours, all the better.

Good stuff… but way too serious. Let’s check out the winners for funniest. Leading the way, we have an Anonymous Coward responding to the stupid (and insulting) argument of “I can’t take your Mom’s car for a ride without her permission, can I?” to which AC responded quickly:

You can totally make a copy of my mom’s car and take that for a ride. If you really wanted, you could make a copy of my mom and take her for a ride too.

Coming in second… was actually a comment on last week’s “funniest/most insightful” where another Anonymous Coward went for an over the top rendition of a comment from a critic that we talked about last week:

ONCE AGAIN, THE GREAT MIKE SATAN PROVES HIS INTELLECTUAL TECHDIRT BY FLAUNTING THE TAINT OF THE GREAT HITLER PIRACY

You should be CAREFUL Mike HUSSEIN Masnick because I’M a BIGWIG at several MAJOR SILICON VALLEY INVESTMENT FIRMS. Me and the BOYS down at the SILICON VALLEY YACHTING CLUB were just TALKING about IMPORTANT issues such as OPINION BLOGS DEVOTED TO TECHNOLOGY.

And as I was SIPPING my CAVIAR from my GOLD-PLATED WINEGLASS, curly mustache and large jet-black top-hat punctuating the MONOCLE that I wear at my LEFT-EYE. I happened to CASUALLY MENTION HOW THEY SHOULD AVOID A RAPSCALLION SUCH AS YOURSELF and not SHOWER you with GOLDS AND RICHES that our kind is constantly donating to troubled technology blogs. I believe it went something like this:

“Why kind sir, I have the most stunning news story from this blogatory site known as the technology filth”

“You are in ill-faith kind sir! the blogatation site known as techdirt is a folly run by an absolute FLIBBERTIGIBBET known as Michael Hussein Masnick. Here is a SAMPLE of his site that I have had HAND-WRITTEN by my team of internet-scouring monks which I use in place of an ELECTRONIC DEVICE. As you can SEE, there are many ANONYMOUS PEOPLE who criticize him primarily with swear words. Clearly not the behavior of a well-groomed community of an internet establishment”

AND NOW YOUR DAINTY NAME IS TAINTED ALL THROUGHOUT THE TECH-WORLD. YOU HAVE BEEN UNDONE MIKE MASNICK. YOU WILL NEVER BE SHOWERED WITH CHECKS AFTER THE HEARTY LAUGH ME AND MY KIND HAD AT YOUR EXPENSE.

That one made my day.

On to editor’s choice. First up, we’ve got an Anonymous Coward, responding to that bogus DMCA takedown against us, discussing how it would be possible for us to calculate “damages” from the takedown, and deciding that we should use a form of RIAA/MPAA math:

Easy. Ask Google how many times people searched for SOPA, then assume one in ten of those would’ve donated at least $5. This will range in the millions of dollars. That’s how it works, right?

And, finally, we have another Anonymous Coward responding to the story of Rumblefish claiming copyright on birds singing. This AC went for the layup:

No wonder the birds are angry.

That explains so much… including Rovio’s stance on piracy. Anyway, just as I was finishing this up, I realized that all four of the “funny” comments came from Anonymous Cowards. Perhaps allowing anonymous comments isn’t such a bad idea, huh?