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Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

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from the godaddy-edition dept

Sun, Jan 1st 2012 12:00pm — Mike Masnick
First off, Happy New Year to everyone... hope everyone had a good time last night. Anyway, it's Sunday, so it's time for our "funniest/most insightful" of the week. Of course, since it's also the New Year and we have off tomorrow, I'll be back tomorrow for a similar post, doing the funniest/most insightful comments of all of 2011. But, while you nurse your hangovers, we'll just focus on the past week.

And... it was a week of GoDaddy, that's for sure. The top two comments on the "insightful" list were both about GoDaddy. First up, we had an Anonymous Poster try to set one of our regular critics straight after he falsely claimed that people boycotting GoDaddy was a violation of GoDaddy's "free speech" rights. This is, of course, ridiculous:
GoDaddy has every right to say it supports SOPA. The company should have expected a backlash for doing so, though.

Free speech isn't short for "consequence-free speech", after all.
Of course, this was one of about 50 people who all made the same argument to this particular person, who continued to insist that this was obviously an infringement of GoDaddy's free speech rights. When you simply refuse to understand basic concepts -- such as what "free speech rights" are about -- it explains why most people consider you a troll.

Coming in second was a comment from TechnoMage, questioning the numbers that suggested that GoDaddy got more new domains than it lost on Thursday's boycott day (even though the boycott itself was clearly a huge success in getting GoDaddy to reverse its position):
Part of me feels that it is odd that a bunch of domains moved to GoDaddy because of marketing in a such a short burst like that. Sure marketing for a domain service is worth-while in the long run... but most people don't register domains that often. So....

I'd be curious if all of the new domains are:
1) Legit
2) at full normal price
2.5) not given some really silly 99% off discount
2.6) aren't owned by GoDaddy shell companies for the purpose of hiding that they lost domains (because I probably would have done this if it is legal (IANAL, is it?)
3) how many of these domains were owned by compaies/persons paid to go through GoDaddy?

I don't expect to get any of those answers, but if I cared enough, or was responsible for this line of thought... those would be the questions I'd be looking into.
For editor's choice, we've got SD's analysis of the details of the US Copyright Office's desire to move to a digitized system of DMCA agents, with a specific focus on alternate names:
By my count there are currently 13,434 online service providers in the Copyright Office's index.

Base Fee
1998-2002 $20
2002-2006 $30
2006-2008 $80
2008-Present $105

Alternate Name Stats
8,311 have submitted at least one alternate name
3,443 have one alternate name
1,840 have two alternate names
918 have three alternate names
10,956 alternate name fees payed (current rate is $30 for every 10)
46,805 alternate names in total

Top Alternate Names Holders
1. Diageo North America Inc. (3,061)
2. CBS Radio Inc. (1,268)
3. Meredith Corporation (1,089)
4. Clear Channel Communications Inc. (921)
5. Viacom International Inc. (793)

A small sample I made of the PDF files in the index ranged from 70KB-170KB. Roughly estimated the index probably takes up between 1.5-2GB (not including their backups). For a 13,434 entry database with 46,805 aliases, a digital conversion would reduce the index's footprint to a few hundred megabytes(not including backups or the proposed revision database). A small database like that would make it easier for rightsholders to download a full list of current contacts.

One huge downside is that they'll be displaying email addresses in plaintext for the first time. This will increase the number of rightsholders using completely automated systems(web spiders attached to a DMCA notice mailer that hits on certain keywords) and of course spam in general. While I don't care much about the spam issue (99% of spam could probably be weeded out if emails not including the required electronic signatures were disregarded) an increase in bogus notices would have a net effect of slowing down processing times and increase the amount of non-infringing content taken down. There should be penalties for sending bogus notices before they go forward with this plan.
These are the kind of comments I love. They provide more detail and data where it was lacking before. Very useful. And for the second editor's choice, we've got Ninja's comment on the story of Cee Lo Green making a ton of money even as he wasn't selling that many albums. One of our usual critics started complaining about how awful it was that Green had to make his money from other sources and Ninja broke out the sarcasm:
Yes, it's wrong! Artists should only make money from selling plastic discs! How dare they try to make money with live performances or by attending shows to get closer to their public! How outrageous it is to make money from ads, I mean, look at all those soccer players that only rely on what their clubs pay!!
But come on, it's New Year's, no one's in the mood for serious "insightful" posts... they want the funny. And we've got that for you too. Coming in first is hothmonster with his reaction to Universal Music taking down a video that 50cent made himself for the latest mixtape he's releasing (himself):
Fucking 50 cent is a dirty pirate. How dare he steal that video, doesn't he know how hard he worked on it? How 50 can sleep at night knowing that he is taking money right out of 50s pockets I will never know.
In second place, we have an Anonymous Coward responding to our story this week of a songwriter taking a bunch of tweets that were highlighted by a comedy writer and turning them into a song. This AC got right to the point: but what about the IP?
Look at all that stolen intellectual property. Everybody needs to sue everybody.
For editor's choice, we've got Machin Shin's response to one of our regular critics. That critic brought up the following analogy for discussions on file sharing:
Me: "The house is one fire"

Masnick: "yeah, but look at ugly front gate. We need to get someone to fix the gate"
Machin pointed out that the analogy might be a bit different back here, in reality:
You: "The ship is on fire so we need to sink the ship!"

Us: "How about we just use a fire extinguisher on the fire instead of sinking the entire ship?"

You: "Don't you care that the ship is on fire!! We need to sink it so we can put the fire out and prevent any more fires!"

Us: "Then we will no longer have the ship anyways. Lets use an extinguisher."

You: "NOOO!! WE MUST SINK SHIP!!!!! NO OTHER WAY WILL WORK!!"
For what it's worth, I kind of liked my own entrant into this thread.

Finally, we have Marc Randazza commenting on the story of one of Righthaven's appeals being dismissed, after the company failed to do the most basic of things to abide by a court order. Marc points out one extra amusing factoid that I'd missed in writing up the article (and am kicking myself for not using in the headline):
Sorta funny that this happened in Righthaven v. FACEPUNCH.
And, on that note, I'll let you get back to your New Year's Day festivities.... Remember, we're "off" tomorrow, but will have the funniest and most insightful comments of all of 2011 to keep you company... Until then...
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