Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the predictive-value dept

Let’s get right to it. I have to admit, this is kind of funny. The comment voted most insightful is by Hephaestus and involves a suggestion that a bunch of tech companies team up and buy the record labels. While it was actually posted on Wednesday, I have to admit that I hadn’t actually seen it when we posted Glyn Moody’s post making nearly an identical suggestion. Now all we need is for Hephaestus to accuse Glyn of “stealing” his idea, right?

Warner Music Group (WMG) is $1.1 billion USD and they are up for sale for around $2.5 billion USD. Which in my opinion is highly overpriced for a company in a failing industry. EMI, SME, and UMG can probably be bought for around a billion USD each. That having been said.

GOOGles market cap is $184 billion USD. Apples market Cap is 306 billion USD. Amazons Market Cap is $81 Billion USD. Microsoft has a market cap of $215 Billion USD. All four of these companies face serious problems in the future from ACTA, COICA, and all the other internet crushing, laws, and treaties being pushed forward by RIAA. A simple solution would be for them to each buy a record label. Then stop all payments to RIAA.

They could make all their money back in a matter of about a year or two. Destroy the collection societies. Most importantly they will stop all the internet crushing laws and treaties that will hobble them. Which saves them money and allows them to grow faster.

Coming in second was Capitalist Lion Tamer, with his commentary on love, art and money (not necessarily in that order):

That’s the difference between those who create art out of love for art and those who create art/product for financial reasons.

There have been millions of comments (most within the last week) that have confused the desire to get paid to do what you love with the right to get paid to do what you love.

And once you start claiming that “right,” you’re no longer creating art because you’re an artist. You’re creating product because you’re a businessperson.

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with wanting to create a successful business. But successful businesses aren’t normally built on demanding that your customers pay the price that you want. They’ll pay what it’s worth to them.

Art is inherently “worthless.” That’s why you’ve got to do it because you love it, rather than do it because it’s going to feed, clothe and house you (and your family) for the next 70+ years, because in most cases, it won’t.

I work two jobs and write in my spare time because I love to write. I harbor no illusions that writing will ever take the place of my other sources of income. But that doesn’t stop me from doing it. Many others do the same thing in other fields.

But for some reason, the most vocal minority are those that somehow got it into their heads that the road to riches is paved with art. And to make it worse, they keep claiming that without a guaranteed paycheck, art will somehow die out. Art was never about the paycheck. It still isn’t. People will still pursue what they love without hope of getting paid because THEY LOVE DOING IT.

Those of you bitching about a lack of financial protection don’t love what you’re doing. Stop calling it “art” and start calling it “product” if that’s your thought process.

“I’ll never make money making music thanks to pirates.”

Great. Stop making music then. Who needs you? There are thousands and thousands of others willing to keep going despite the long odds.

“If you don’t protect my art against use by others, I have no reason to create anything.”

Fine. Don’t. We won’t miss you.

“HuffPo didn’t pay us for our blogging.”

I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear you over the thousands of writers shouting “Pick me!”

Very nice. Frankly, looking over the field, these two were probably my favorite two as well, so we’ll dispense with any “editors’ choice” winners this week and move straight over to the funny, where the competition was fierce, with a bunch of comments coming in with scores quite close at the top.

However, eking out the top spot (just barely) and winning the funny gold medal was Dark Helmet with his satirical response to Joe Biden’s ridiculous comments on intellectual property:

You know, I kind of like Jobi. I mean, I hate what he stands for, but I like his style. He’s got that Bill Clinton thing going for him, where when he talks he makes it plain that he’s completely full of shit and knows it, knows YOU know it, and really couldn’t care less. You’ve got to respect that in today’s politician.

What do you want? Another Bush or Obama? Where they say things like, “I believe God wants everyone in the world to be free, and that’s a part of my foreign policy”, and your brain comes to a skidding halt as it tries to figure out how anyone could possible say something so idiotic?

Or maybe you’re watching your President on television one day, and he says, “The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries”, and the next thing you know, it’s ten years later and you’ve just woken up from the coma you’ve been in after stabbing yourself through your left eye with a metal spoon to avoid having to think about life in America with a leader who could possibly utter that statement.

No, no, Michael. I for one prefer a Biden-esque politician, one who walks up to you, his hair slicked back and his goofy top-teeth-only smile on his oddly tanned face, a little American flag pinned to the lapel of his hundred thousand dollar suit just so you KNOW you’re dealing with a special kind of douchebag, and he looks you right in the eye and says, “Look, piracy is outright theft”, does a little two step dance while giving you the middle finger, throws six campaign buttons at your face, and then cartwheels away laughing maniacally.

I prefer that, because once he’s done spewing his nonsense we can all just have a good laugh an go back to our daily lives, comforted by the fact that no vice president since LBJ has meant shit in the greater scheme of things….

Coming in second (a very close second) was an Anonymous Coward, responding to ICE’s detainment of Jacob Appelbaum by seeking out the proper explanation:

BUT…BUT…PIRACY!

Wait – wrong story. Let’s try that again.

BUT…BUT…TERRORISM!

There we go.

And since it’s simply wrong to pick my own comment as “Editor’s Choice,” I will merely note that my own comment here came in third. For my own well being, I will not repeat it here. However, for the actual Editor’s Choice we’ve got two short ones. First up is Nom du Clavier with his simple response to the lawsuit filed over music based on pi:

A lawsuit over Pi, how irrational.

And, we’ll close it out with a second Dark Helmet comment because it ties together two separate posts. It was in response to a comment on the story about Perfect 10’s appeal in the case over whether or not Google should be liable for indexing and displaying thumbnails of Perfect 10 porn images hosted on other sites. One commenter asked if we had a link to those images, and DH called out to the previous post on the anti-porn Indonesian politician who resigned after being caught surfing porn on his iPad in Parliament:

….you’re an Indonesian politician, aren’t you?

And there we go… time to get ready for a new week.