Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the responses-and-rebukes dept

It’s been a short week, and a bit of a slow one, but we still had some excellent comments. First up, Gabriel J. Michael, the author of a guest post on US businesses and intellectual property, arrived to answer questions about his use of a Creative Commons license, taking first place for insightful:

Hi. I’m the author. Since you’re picking on the CC BY-SA licensing, let me explain why it’s there.

This post was not originally written for TechDirt. I originally wrote it on my personal blog. It’s since been posted to Slashdot, BoingBoing, here, and been reblogged elsewhere.

I include the CC BY-SA to make sure that people know they are free to copy and reuse the content elsewhere. I often include graphics in my posts that may be useful in peoples’ PowerPoints, etc., and embedding a note about the CC BY-SA licensing makes it more likely that people won’t lose the licensing information and feel they need to ask for permission.

As you will have presumably read in the post, the conclusion is not that we should eliminate IP laws. Rather, I wrote the post to highlight important empirical data on IP that had received almost no attention.

In second place we’ve got Fin, answering a question about where the line is drawn on whistleblowing actions like Ed Snowden’s:

The line is clear. The government is effectively there to mediate the will of the people.

The minute they spy or try to undermine that the terrorists have won.

Bringing that to light can never be treason. Having to resort to desperate measures just shows how desperate the situation is.

The only people you need to look at to find the traitors are sitting up in DC

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got a couple related comments. First up is an anonymous commenter responding to suggestions from former government officials that Ed Snowden should be hanged:

Question: What sort of man thinks that exposing government corruption should be a capital crime?
Answer: A man who was complicit in that very corruption.

And next we’ve got That Anonymous Coward suggesting it’s time to close the book on a favorite justification for fearmongering:

Have we finally gotten to the point where when someone spouts because 9/11 we can tell them to shut the hell up?

9/11 was a horrible thing, and every single freaking thing done in its name has been much more horrible. The fact people keep accepting it as an excuse for unacceptable things is very sad.

On the funny side, first place goes to TheResidentSkeptic, who heard the idea of solving piracy by giving everyone a basic income for doing nothing, and predicted how certain groups might react:

And in following news…
Swedish collection societies have applied for a $2,900 “you must be a pirate tax” on this income as it is obviously targeted to file sharers who are stealing the artists work.

In second place, we’ve got an anonymous commenter who noticed an error in the pre-Christmas firing letter a Chicago sandwich shop sent to all its employees:

5. Return any keys and Company property to Will Ravert at 600 West Chicago Avenue on Monday, December 23, 2014 during normal business hours.

Okay, those who got terminated get to keep company property for an entire year after being fired! How riveting!

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start with a comment from Jeremy Lyman, who read our assertion that “if something is so insane as to get your ire up, there’s a half-decent chance that it’s too insane to be real” and wished it were universally true:

Oh thank god. I was starting to thing that all this NSA shredding the constitution and staunch refusal of the government to even acknowledge it, labeling public defenders as traitors was actually real. Now that’s good satire!

And finally we return to the guest post about US businesses not caring about intellectual property, where an anonymous commenter from everyone’s famous IP industry showed up with a fervent defense:

Hey, I’ll have you know that as one of the card carrying members of the MOST IMPORTANT IP INDUSTRY of all… Grocery Stores Dunh Dunh Dunh (think Belt from the Croods)… (seriously, read your masters reports if you don’t believe me), that lowly grocery store clerk is the one who’s paying your masters salaries so they can fund your trolling.

If it were not for Grocery Stores and Grocery Store Clerks upholding the mantel of Copyright Shenanigans, who else would we have to look to for guidance?

/ramble/s

That’s all for this week, folks! Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays — we’ll be back to business as usual tomorrow (with another quick break for New Year’s Day).