Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the one-liners-and-misunderstandings dept

With only one exception, this week's top comments are of the short-and-punchy variety—so in that spirit, let's dive right in. On the Insightful side, first place goes to a comment on our post about how obsolete metrics are a bigger problem than piracy. Fogbugzd responded to one line in particular:

>>people are still buying plenty of music. They're just doing it on their own terms.

And that, in essence, is the nightmare scenario for everyone whose salary depends on being a gatekeeper.

In second place, we have one of the most quotable comments I've seen in a while—in fact it could serve as a pretty good motto for most of the regulatory causes we're interested in around here. On our post about the increase of DMCA takedown requests received by Google, an anonymous commenter dropped this gem:

Governments should'nt be regulating the internet, the internet should be regulating the governments

For Editor's Choice on the insightful side, we'll start with this weeks one and only longer comment. I've always really hated the nostalgic notion that our experience of art is being devalued in the digital age—it is at once pessimistic and arrogant, suggesting that your particular experience of something is not just superior, but the only valid experience, and ignoring the fact that change always brings both losses and gains. Jupiterkansas did a fantastic job of summing this up in a response to Mike Spies:

I'm getting pretty tired of people lamenting the love of things that digital robs them of - paper books, CDs, vinyl, perfumed magazines,

Who's talking about the new way it lets us experience the world?

How about having the entire history of recorded music at your fingertips ready to be listened to.

How about being able to follow your favorite band and be updated on what they're doing on a daily basis.

What about how everyone can create their own personal radio station, and listen to a more diverse selection of music than any real radio station ever played.

How about all those groups you never really listened to because you didn't enjoy hearing the whole album, but at a track at a time mixed with your other music they're great.

About how the struggle today isn't figuring out what to listen to, but figuring out what NOT to listen to.

Yes, we're drowning in abundance, but that's doesn't make music less special. In Spies' world he was forced to make choices based on money. I make choices based on time. There is more great music on my hard drive than I can ever listen to - more great movies than I can watch - and more books than anyone on earth could read. My time is far more valuable than money, so what is really worth my time?

For the second Editor's Choice, we're back to another short comment—and an incredibly simple one, too. But sometimes simple points are the most important, and this comment from an anonymous coward in response to the latest case of DMCA abuse reminds us of a simple, glaring problem that nevertheless remains unfixed:

The key is there needs to be punishment for companies who abuse DMCA.

On the Funny side, we start out on our post about the ongoing John Steele/Prenda Law debacle. Since we're now at a point where the world of intellectual property abuse actually has its own celebrities, an anonymous commenter drew a key comparison, and shocked himself:

Well, to be honest, this is making Righthaven look like paragons of virtue.

....I cannot believe that that sentence is even permitted to exist.

Now we're going to switch things up a bit. The second place comment doesn't make sense without the comment it's replying to, and since that's a good comment too, we're going to make it an editor's choice and swap them around. So, for the first editor's choice, we've got bosconet on our post about the FCC telling the FAA to fix its airplane device policy, responding to the flimsy argument about safety from flying objects in the cabin:

Using that standard, hardcover books should need to be stowed for take off and landing....oh and lap babies too, need to go under the seat or in the overheard bins for take off and landing.

And honestly the 'I fear they will become projectiles' has to be one of the weakest arguments.

And then, taking the second place slot by votes, Michael responded and again took us to IP-hall-of-fame territory:

Lap babies are relatively soft and do not have any sharp edges.

In fact, they probably infringe on the "rounded corners" patent.

That leaves us with just one comment left: the second editor's choice—and for this one, Michael takes the cake again. We always like sarcastic plays on "Masnick's Law", and the story of an Olympic swimmer taking business lessons from the music industry certainly provided a good opportunity:

Sure, this works for a former Olympic gold winning swimmer who used to be a musician / songwriter and has some ability to teach swimming, but it couldn't possibly work for anyone else.

What made Michael's contribution especially amusing was that it tricked Emily White, the swimmer's manager, who offered a heartfelt response to the comment. Emily, if you're reading this, I can assure you: Michael was joking!

Now that we've cleared that up, see you tomorrow folks!

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