Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the talk-it-up dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is John Snape with an unorthodox suggestion about the police:

Liability Insurance

Surgeons have liability insurance, so if they mess up they can compensate their patients. If they mess up too much, they are no longer surgeons, since their premiums will skyrocket.

It’s time for all law enforcement officers to get the same. Instead of government entities paying out settlements, the insurance for the officers will pay out. When their behavior is too egregious, they will no longer be able to afford insurance and they’ll no longer be a police officer. And if they’re shunted off to a different department a few counties over, their premiums will follow.

Good police officers will keep their low premiums and keep their jobs.

(Clever, though in the long run putting police behaviour in the hands of private insurance companies is probably a dangerous strategy…)

In second place, we’ve got an anonymous comment on our post about copyright holders moving up the stack:

Malware and putting everyone at risk is the bread and butter of copyright enforcement. Rootkits in your CDs, campaigning against encryption, demanding all removal of privacy and anonymity. How else are they going to demand their pound of flesh from low-hanging fruit?

The world could go to hell tomorrow and copyright enforcers will still worry that someone, somewhere might have access to a few numbers they think might have been illegitimate. Seriously, if a report was put out that hands contribute to copyright infringement, their people would be roaming the streets wielding axes while looking for wrists to sever.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got a pair of comments that emerged in the debate on that post. First it’s That One Guy with a response to the idea that only illegal sites get hurt by copyright maximalism:

Must be nice in that world of yours

Of course, because as everyone knows mistakes just simply don’t happen when it comes to what is and is not infringing, and people certainly would never abuse the law for their own ends.

Next, we’ve got an anonymous correction of the incredibly silly and backwards assertion that copyrights on scientific research fund libraries:

For your infomation, the academic publishers charge libraries excessive amounts for bundles of journals. Indeed they have become so expensive that many university libraries can no longer afford to pay for all the journals in the fields that are taught at the university.

Also, the people posting to Sci Hub, and using it for obtaining papers are the authors and editors of the journals, who are not paid by the publishers, and for some publications have to find page fees to get published.

In this case, the freeloaders are the academic journals, who do very little of the work of publishing a journal, but who make all the profits that there are in scientific journals.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous comment on the subject of paywalls:

7 reasons this clickbait is behind a paywall.

Pay our membership fee to find out why number 4 will SHOCK YOU!

In second place, we’ve got Roger Strong addressing the trademark battle over the word “cocky” with a callback to another legal-threat-sending author:

If only our trademarks were made of glass how much more careful we would be when we threaten.

• some other cock, paraphrased

Speaking of Roger Strong, he was all over the funny leaderboard this week, so for editor’s choice on the insightful side we’ve got a pair of additional quips from him. First, it’s a call back to some David Fincher-directed 90s advertising in response to our list of AT&T’s many transgressions:

Oddly, none of these were predicted in AT&T’s You Will commercials.

Finally, it’s a quote that was particularly apt and useful in some of this week’s comment threads:

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen your specific kind of crazy, but I definitely admire your total commitment to it.”
– Capt. Jack Sparrow

That’s all for this week, folks!