Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the asking-basic-questions dept

It was a short week, but still plenty of great comments, so let’s get straight to it. Topping the charts on the insightful side is an anonymous commenter who raised a simple question about the FISA secret court process:

adjudication requires opposing parties to be present and provide evidence and arguments to the adjudicator. How can the “process of adjudication” be ex-parte?

Meanwhile, second place goes to another anonymous commenter with another simple observation, this time about the Ed Snowden situation:

role reversal…

It used to be that political dissidents would actually SEEK asylum in the US, now they are looking for asylum to get AWAY from the US.

How the times have changed…

Let’s keep that pattern going in the editor’s choice with one more simple, anonymous point. This time it’s about Senator Durbin’s disturbing overtures about defining who counts as a journalist:

First step in canceling freedom of the press

Government licenses for journalists. And if your press doesn’t meet government standards, they yank your license.

Don’t worry citizen, even if you need a government license to operate a press, you’ll still be able to speak freely.

And, last up on the insightful side, we’ve got Lawrence D’Oliveiro, explaining the stupidity of the W3C’s belief that DRM in HTML5 is necessary to make content providers keep using the web:

It’s The Connectivity, Stupid!

What drives the Internet is not content, but connectivity. There were other online networks before the Internet–anybody remember Compuserve, Prodigy, the original AOL? Their selling point was their exclusive content, which you couldn’t get on the Internet. Yet they were all swept aside, simply because the Internet offered better connectivity between people.

The Internet doesn’t need content providers. It is content providers that need the Internet.

(I think “internet” should be subbed for “web” in most of that comment, but the broader point remains true.)

On the funny side, it’s a tight race. First place is Jessie, wondering what the humorless Attorney General who complained about a satirical “prescription” mug would target next:

The AG’s set their sights on their next target:

“An apple a day keeps the Dr away.”

This phrase makes light of the millions of uninsured in america.

And in second place, trailing by just one vote, we’ve got a response to the description by another commenter of Ed Snowden as “the ‘I’d let him bang my wife’ type of hero that America needs:

Rest assured, I am Ed Snowden.

Would you happen to have a number where I can reach your wife and does she have a valid passport?

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out back on the post about DRM in HTML5, where one commenter was stubbornly continuing to insist that “you can’t compete with free.” Michael offered an appropriate reply:

Back to that one.

I’m going to kick back and drink my bottled water while I watch CBS through my cable provider and wait for someone to come up with an example of paid products competing with free ones by being better or more convenient.

And finally, we’ve got Akari Mizunashi, who had a suggestion for the Washington Post after the editorial board called for and end to leaks and tried to trivialize The Guardian:

Perhaps the Washington Post should subscribe to the Guardian in order to stay relevant.

Hope everyone had a great holiday, and you didn’t miss us too much! We’ll be back to business as usual tomorrow.