Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the you-said-it dept

This week, after a Wisconson senator attacked net neutrality by bemoaning the supposed lack of “fast lanes” online, JoeCool won first place for insightful by summing up why that’s nonsense:

The internet is ONE BIG “FAST LANE”. What the ISPs want is to create a bunch of “slow lanes” to shove people into unless they pay a premium to get what they originally had.

In second place on the insightful side, we’ve got the first of several winning comments this week that came in response to Theresa May’s attempts to kill encryption. An anonymous commenter was struck with a reminiscence:

Panopticon

I remember spending New Years Eve 1999 watching a documentary about the rise of the CCTV surveillance state in London and being disgusted by the trend even then. The dreams of Jeremy Bentham are alive and well in England (and here in the US, as well).

This is not now, nor has it ever been, about catching terrorists. It’s about total control of the populace, the dream of every tyrant. They just can’t seem to figure out that even if they had the tech to see, hear, and read everything, they don’t have the manpower to do so and make sense of the intel, but I have no doubt they’ll keep trying.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we look at Australia’s Attorney General’s similar campaign against encryption, in which he suggested the public would be fine with it because their use of Facebook shows they don’t care about privacy. Roger Strong suggested he put his money where his mouth is:

Lead by example, George. Enact a policy that all government communications and storage encryption – including that by intelligence agencies – have back doors. With only the good guys given the passwords, of course.

Then continue the top-down approach. Mandate back doors for banks and their online banking systems. Then other large corporations.

Once the public sees how that works, they’ll respond accordingly.

Hope This Helps!

Next, we’ve got a response to the latest bogus takedown of a YouTube video by a record label, where PlagueSD suggested a bit of turnabout as fair play:

The Dandy Warhols should apply some “RIAA math” and turn around and give a “Bill” to Universal Music for any views that they would have had if the site was never taken down.

Over on the funny side, both our top comments come in response to Theresa May’s anti-encryption efforts. The first place winner is That Anonymous Coward, responding to a commenter who (for some insane reason) sees no problem with destroying encryption, but feared a conspiracy to silence their opinion on the matter:

Oh honey, get down off the cross… someone needs the wood.

In second place, we’ve got Gorshkov focusing on the other key part of the story — the fact that May’s own party is actively using WhatsApp:

Hmmmmm ……..

does this mean that the Tories are terrorists, and should be locked up?

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out looking at yet another anti-encryption crusader — James Clapper, whose latest “nerd harder” demands gave TechDescartes a marketing idea:

The Clapper

Just invent a device that allows you to turn encryption on by clapping your hands. Turning it off would be as easy as clapping again. Clap on! Clap off!

Finally, we’ve got a response from Rapnel to the idea of using geofencing to prevent ISIS from using small drones:

We should regulate the air and apply penalties to any producers of air when air is found to be responsible for materially supporting or providing a platform for anything using air in a way we don’t like. And we should geofence it too. And monitor it. And suck it up with a big air-vume. And we could distribute that air fairly to airtists so that they can produce more, air. .. but that’s too leftist, isn’t it? Or is it.. I’m torn.

That’s all for this week, folks!