Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the say-something dept

This week, our top comment on the insightful side comes in response to the disturbing discovery that cops have been instructing paramedics to inject people they arrest with ketamine. Stephen T. Stone won first place, though in fact his comment was reiterating one line from a longer comment by I.T. Guy in response to someone explaining that ketamine is commonly used for people in mental health crises:

Being agitated because you are dealing with dickhead cops is in no way “a mental health crisis”.

In second place, we’ve got an anonymous comment pointing out the perennial problem with the copyright industry’s support from thousands of artists:

That would be the thousands contracted to labels, but what about the millions who publish on the Internet and do not want a contract with the labels, or to send more money there way.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from Derek Kerton about Europe’s copyright battle:

I couldn’t get past this:

“The primary focus of this legislation is concerned with whether or not the internet functions as a fair and efficient marketplace”

Is that really what the people of Europe want from their Internet? A “fair and efficient marketplace”. People want the Internet to give them communications, information, access to infinite sites and information, and also to entertain them. No citizens would mention “Fair and efficient marketplace” on their wishlist, only profiteers and businesses would.

There’s nothing wrong with businesses wanting a “fair and efficient marketplace” of the Internet, but it’s not right for their needs to over-rule and dominate what the citizenry actually wants.

Next, we’ve got a response from Thad to the idea that, in US politics, progressives are the real authoritarians:

That’s why so many progressives voted for the billionaire who lives in a tower with his name on it and gets angry when Congress and the courts don’t do what he wants, or when the press criticizes him.

Over on the funny side, our first place comment is another win for Stephen T. Stone, who brought up a recurring joke on our post looking back at the death of Google Reader:

Good ol? Alphabet Masnick, shillin? for Google by [checks notes] lambasting Google over its decision to shut down Google Reader.

On that same post, one commenter insisted that they hate the idea of an RSS reader having social integrations because they don’t care what others are reading or want anyone to know what they are reading. An anonymous commenter won second place for funny by spotting the problem with that assertion:

And yet here you are, giving us your opinion about what you just read.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from Kaelis about Verizon’s ongoing failed attempts to woo millennials:

Verizon’s media acquisition strategy has been less “Go90” and more “Go 90s.”

And finally, we’ve got an anonymous suggestion for Kim Dotcom:

Perhaps Kim Dotcom needs to legally declare himself

a macaque monkey, then he can get PETA to fight for ever on his behalf……

once they’ve established the copyright of all the files, of course.

That’s all for this week, folks!


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Comments on “Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt”

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16 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Stone wants a check for supporting the shill charge?

Good ol’ Alphabet Masnick, shillin’ for Google by [checks notes] lambasting Google over its decision to shut down Google Reader

And it’s voted up as FUNNY?

Whew. Weirdest site on teh internets.

By the way, as pointed out: complaining about a service shut down five years before is orders of magnitude below pointing out Google’s invasive surveillance and giving NSA "direct access" according to Snowden. That isn’t the "s" in substantive complaint.

And YET it’s cheered on front page as if actually does immunize Masnick against the obvious charge… Weird.

Uriel-238 (profile) says:

This is a quintessential point.

Is that really what the people of Europe want from their Internet? A fair and efficient marketplace.

This notion right here, that state legislators or officials commonly conflate public interests and commercial interests (or business interests) seems to be ubiquitous when discussing commons like the internet and the public domain.

One solution for this that has been discussed is a robust, organized defense of public resources that promote care and custodianship of those resources, but also assure that non-commercial interests in those resources are preserved.

Without it, we’ve see the erosion of both public domain intellectual property and protective measures such as net neutrality, and the constant challenges to these reflect a society that more values money than the people within it.

Anonymous Coward says:

Adjustment

Being agitated because you are dealing with dickhead cops is in no way “a mental health crisis”

Actually:

Becoming “agitated” is a perfectly sane response to being the focus of drug wielding, gun & taser toting, authoritarian cops who may be suffering a “mental health crisis”

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