It's another week where one comment stood out way above the others in the voting for "most insightful." An Anonymous Coward absolutely dominated the "insightful" voting with this response to the story about the Justice Department's ridiculous arguments trying to block legitimate users from getting their content back from the servers that the government forced offline when it took down Megaupload:

This is one of my favorite brown nuggets FTA:

the government said if the court grants Goodwin's request, it would open the door for any third party to petition the courts any time a search warrant affects them adversely

In other words... "look, if you grant this, then everyone who ever has any property unlawfully confiscated by the government will come back asking for it."

Oh, the humanity. Save us from ourselves!

It's interesting to see that the comment scoring second highest was actually about the same subject, but on a different story. Velox's comment was actually on the story about a former federal judge arguing that the government is being "outrageous" in blocking users from getting their stuff, likening the situation to one where a bank was shut down, but where the government still lets users retrieve their money. One of our comments tried to claim that the banking situation is totally different, and Velox keyed off of that in response:

"...their deposits aren't a copy of something ..."

"the content of that account not generally considered to have been taken from someone else's account"

-->How ironic that you should bring up the issue of copying with respect to bank deposits! Perhaps you have forgotten how banks work, so let me remind you.

Banks take your deposit, they log an entry into their computer that says they have your money. Then they loan it out, not just to someone else, but to more than one someone else; all the while telling you that they still have your money on hand. With fractional reserve banking the original deposit gets multiplied many times over.

In the simplest terms, the bank copies a symbol of value (its account of your deposit), and then hands the copies to others (in the form of loans). No theft occurred, but both the loan recipient and the bank end up with value that they didn't have prior to the start of the process, meanwhile the depositor has the same or greater value.

Congratulations. You have provided another outstanding way to illustrate to people how the copying of symbolic (virtual) goods is *not* the same as stealing a physical object.

For editor's choice, we have a combination of two comments on our story about a freedom of information request to the CIA about its own rules for declassifying a document. The CIA came back with a letter saying that it searched for the regulations -- which were clearly named in the request (32 C.F.R. 1908) and came back empty, saying "We processed your request in accordance with the FOIA.... Our processing included a search for records as described.... We did not locate any records responsive to your request. Although our searches were thorough and diligent, and it is highly unlikely that repeating those searches would change the result...." Reader Anymouse_cowherd discovered that perhaps the CIA needs better search tools:

FWIW... I diligently typed "32 C.F.R. 1908" into Google and found a copy in .035 seconds.

I'm now officially better than the CIA and especially Michele Meeks.

And Oblate took it one step further:

Not sure if this is what he was looking for:
http://www.foia.cia.gov/32CFR.asp
That's right, the CIA has a link on their own website to download an electric copy of the document they said they don't have an electronic copy of. In their FOIA section. Maybe it's on a domestic server, and the FBI should have looked for it?

Of course you can always download CFR from the GPO. It seem ridiculous to submit an FOI for a whole section of the CFR when it's freely available, but it's even worse for the CIA to give this response. Is there a 'secret' subsection of 1908 that was specifically requested? The article doesn't indicate anything other than the entire section being requested.

And our final "insightful" editor's choice comment this week comes from Dave Xantos, responding to one of our regular critics who made the claim that "Big Search is 10 times bigger than Big Content." Dave suggested the obvious:

I think it's pretty telling that a business that's been around less than 15 years is bigger than an industry that's been around over 100 years. Makes me think that they might want to emulate Google and give customers what they want. But no. That's just crazy talk.

Moving over to the funny side of the room, we've got reader Trails responding to the story of the band The Sweet totally failing in pushing a ridiculous legal theory against a fan who was selling a legally purchased used CD on eBay. Trails decided to rewrite one of The Sweet's biggest hits, Ballroom Blitz, with lyrics more appropriate for the case:

Oh, yeah, it was like lightning
Scott's legal theories were frightening
But the ruling was soothing
And now Dieter is grooving
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

And the man at the back said
Everyone attack and it turned into a courtroom blitz
And the girl in the corner said
Boy, I wanna warn ya, it'll turn into a courtroom blitz

Coming in a close second in the voting booth was :Lobo Santo satirically taking me up on my challenge to come up with a trollicious theory on why a former federal judge had jumped into the Megaupload case (free of charge) after declaring the government's reasoning "outrageous."

You spelled it out, right there in the title!
"FORMER" Federal Judge.

...and why do you think he isn't a Federal Judge anymore?

Because he obviously doesn't understand how to slather US law onto the world.

Really, Mike, what are you trying to pull?

Here's the thing: All the money comes from the US--they print it, they distribute it. They can take back the money any time they damn well feel like. And, if you spent the US's money on anything, well that's theirs too.

I don't know where you sheeple get off complaining about this stuff! It's not that tough people, drink the kool-aid and fail to notice the edges of your cage and you can live in a happy-go-lucky world where everything is beautiful and fair and right.

[/troll] /bob

;-P

(How'd I do?)

Apparently good enough for the silver medal in the "funny" competition, :Lobo.

Moving on to editor's choice awards for funny comments, we've got Torg's response to a comment in our discussion on the fact that fair use doesn't require permission. One of our usual critics quoted my paragraph on the matter, and then explained why you should ask for permission before relying on fair use just to avoid having to fight it out in court. Torg noticed something ironic:

Did you negotiate with Techdirt to determine if you were allowed to quote that paragraph?

Ah, hypocrisy. As another person responded: Game. Set. Match.

And, finally, we've got an Anonymous Coward with a great suggestion regarding the ongoing process of watching Funnyjunk lawyer Charles Carreon self-destruct and lash out at the entire internet. Think of it as a corallary to the Streisand Effect:

The Carreon Effect: The act of doubling and then quadrupling down on an untenable position.

I may have to start using that...