Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the the-votes-are-in dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is James Burkhardt responding to the idea that the EU Copyright Directive may not have blocked the Wonky Donkey viral sensation because “no one is required to enforce copyright”:

Article 13 requires proactive efforts to ensure copyright is not infringed. Article 13 requires Websites to enforce copyright, despite not knowing if content is infringing.

You lie.

In second place, we’ve got That One Guy making the fair point that our word-choice when describing the cop who lost qualified immunity for shooting a man with his hands up wasn’t nearly harsh enough:

There’s setting the bar low, and then there’s throwing it out

“Officer Minchuk screwed up.”

Using the wrong paperwork for something would be an example of someone who ‘screwed up’.

Parking in a handicaped zone because you weren’t paying attention would be an example of someone who ‘screwed up’.

Writing not one but two bogus tickets could possibly be classified as ‘screwing up’. (Though the attempt to get paid to make them go away would seem to suggest it was more an attempt to get a quick buck.)

He didn’t ‘screw up’, he attempted to extort someone for money via bogus tickets, assaulted him, attempted to destroy evidence that would contradict his claims, and then attempted to murder someone who had surrendered.

To call that a case of someone who ‘screwed up’ is to set the bar so low it might as well not exist.

He should not only be stripped of qualified immunity and fired, but charged with assault and attempted murder at the least.

“If officers are justified in shooting surrendering suspects, this leaves arrestees zero options to avoid being shot. That’s an obviously ridiculous outcome.”

More than ‘ridiculous’ it’s dangerous, to the police. Basic psychology is that desperate people are more willing to take extreme actions if they feel they need to, making even otherwise peaceful people much more likely to fight, possibly to the death.

If people come to believe that surrendering to the police has good odds of getting them killed then they are going to be much more likely to do everything they can to escape, up to and including attempting to shoot if not kill the officer(s) in question, and that’s not a good outcome for anyone sane.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with one more response from James Burkhardt, this time to a confusing argument that Facebook’s content moderation failures are somehow linked to it being not eager enough to kick people off the platform:

How does facebook’s unwillingness to kick people off the platform have anything to do with Facebook’s unwillingness to be transparent about why they removed content, potentially leading to loss of members, and the EFF proposing a solution?

Next, it’s an anonymous response to every Trump apologist insisting there is obviously no legal basis to CNN’s lawsuit:

Except, you know, the dozen legal citations provided in the article.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Killercool, who had to apply some real outside-the-box thinking to defend Denuvo:

It’s obvious!

Since the DRM was broken before release, any sales lost because of it are negative losses! Therefore, if my calculations are correct, Denuvo has saved the company eleventy billion dollars in lost sales.

Hitman 2 is now the best selling game of all time.

In second place, it’s Thad being very unsurprised about one particular defense of Trump kicking out Jim Acosta:

Who had “but Obama” on their Bingo card?

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we’ve got an anonymous response to yet another common-but-stupid take on the CNN lawsuit — that Acosta wasn’t actually asking important questions:

Damn straight! He should be asking the things the public wants to know, nay NEEDS to know…like “what’s Trump’s favorite color?”, or “how great are North Korea’s beaches really?”

Anything else is just grandstanding or partisan hacking. Let’s ask the questions middle ‘Murica is really concerned about.

And finally, we’ve got an anonymous commenter with some simple brand consultation for Denuvo:

They could change their name to Titanic.

That’s all for this week, folks!