Most Insightful, Funniest Comments Of The Week On Techdirt

Techdirt

from the keep-it-going dept

No domination in the funny/insightful voting this week, though the winner in both categories did score well on both scales, but the most insightful did not top the funniest list, and the funniest did not top the most insightful list. Leading off, the comment voted most insightful (and which got a bunch of funny votes) was Marcus Carab’s quip in response to music industry old-timer Alan McGee claiming that if he ran EMI he’d “get legislation changed and make a profit by stopping piracy.” Marcus responded:

I was about to make a joke about the fact that he thinks running a company means you get to change legislation, but then I had a rather depressing “oh wait” moment…

Indeed. Coming in second place was a comment by RD on the discussion about a Florida judge barring activists from handing out a pamphlet about jury duty. The discussion in the comments quickly turned to jury nullification, with someone daring other commenters to prove that the founding fathers did, in fact, support jury nullification. RD provided the goods. As an aside, RD also ended that comment with a pretty nasty, acronymical insult directed at the person who made the initial challenge, which sent the comment thread off on an unfortunate tangent. Hopefully we can avoid that in the future.

Jurors should acquit, even against the judge’s instruction…if exercising their judgement with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction the charge of the court is wrong.
— Alexander Hamilton, 1804

It is not only the juror’s right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgement and conscience, though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court.
–John Adams, 1771

I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.
— Thomas Jefferson, 1789

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their choice, if the laws are so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they… undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow
— James Madison

And, just because we can, I’m going to include two more that were also ranked really high. The first was a comment from an Anonymous Coward, in response to the news that prostitution seems to have moved from Craigslist to Facebook:

Well, first, AGs will whine with no legal basis until Facebook creates a special adult section. Then the AGs will whine with no legal basis until Facebook charges a premium to get access to the adult section. Then the AGs will whine with no legal basis because Facebook is making money off of prostitution!

The adult section will be shut down, the prostitutes will move somewhere else (maybe Twitter is next?), the AGs will get reelected because the electorate is ignorant, and we’ll repeat the whole process over

And finally a comment from Ima Fish concerning the decision by Activision to kill off Guitar Hero, in part due to increasing demands from the recording industry for more in licensing fees:

God, Guitar Hero and Rock Band we totally awesome in exposing kids to new (and old) music. Take Eye of the Tiger, for example. Every school kid in north America knows that song. Because they’re fans of the Rocky movies? Nope, because it’s included in both games.

Metallica, AC/DC, and plenty of others are finding an entirely new generation of fans. Well, were finding an entirely new generation of fans.

I’ve said it before, if radio was invented now, it would have been sued and priced out of existence. And the whole era of selling tons of overpriced music etched on vinyl and plastic never would have existed.

All four comments had pretty similar ratings. Moving on to the funny side of the equation, the winning comment (which also got plenty of insightful votes) came from an Anonymous Coward, speaking out (sarcastically, I assume) concerning the news that rockstar DJ David Guetta thought the best way to beat piracy is to give your music away for free:

For crying out loud Masnick,
every single scenario you suggest works just fine for talented people, that the public want to support. But not one single scenario you put forward where free can be used to promote sales will work for talentless hacks that the public cannot stand.

When and only when you can present a strategy of “free” that will benefit the pointless and the useless will you have a model that can successfully replace the traditional role of labels and studio

Indeed. If only we had a way for talentless hacks the public can’t stand to make money from their music. Coming in second place, we had cseiter with a play on words in our post about whether or not tools ever die off. We meant technology, but cseiter took it in a different direction:

They don’t make honest politicians anymore, and they are technically tools.

Honorable mention goes to Dark Helmet who came in both third & fourth. Third place was his comment on the post questioning whether turning YouTube videos into MP3s was any different than recording off the radio:

this situation will be said to be completely different because the internet is involved, and the RIAA is pretty sure that every time you record a YouTube stream as a digital recording, sixteen month-old puppies are personally drowned by Julian Assange….

And, I’m including his fourth place comment, because it was my personal favorite of the week, and if (as has been accused), I rigged the vote, this one would have won. On the post questioning whether or not it was copyright infringement to pass a DMCA notice to ChillingEffects.org, Dark Helmet first offered his own services in crafting DMCA notices in poetic form to make sure they could be covered by copyright. He offered a brilliant sample:

I, (Company/Individual Name), certify here,
Under penalties of perjury severe,
That I am an authorized agent to act,
On behalf of owners, its fact,
Of certain intellectual property rights,
For which the work to produce took many days and many nights,

I have it on good faith, that items in your space,
Are simply not authorized by law,
For use or for waste, by the owners of said space,
And it’s making our client quite raw,

It infringes, you see, on our client’s copyright,
So I must demand that you recognize his plight,
Act expeditiously to remove or disable,
Access to the material as soon as you are able,

My contact information is listed below,
Along with the alleged materials,
But I must impress upon you in this notice,
That I am totally, totally cereals,

Once you have done so please get in touch,
Or we’ll beat you to death with a crutch,
For now I’m off to get some soup,
Love: Dark Helmet’s Legal Notice Writing Group.

And, with that, I leave you to prepare for the new week…