Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the six-strikes-aka-two-outs-or-0.3-matchbooks dept

This week, Comcast users were no doubt relieved to learn that their ISP would not terminate their accounts for racking up six strikes (read: accusations) under the new "voluntary" regime that's sweeping the nation, instead opting to block every website. To question the wisdom of six strikes is to whine about the enforcement of copyright, or so our regular critics insist... Michael Becker, however, took most insightful comment of the week with a more accurate interpretation:

This isn't enforcing copyright. This is guilt by accusation with no due process.

"Nay!" say the entertainment/ISP industry 'shippers—a breed of fandom I was not previously aware of. "Your complaints, like those of New Jersey's Carl Bermanson, only stem from disrespect for copyright, and this, its newest incarnation!" And in this it is harder to fault them, because disrespect is one of many apt terms for the common opinion around here of today's arcane, obsolete and overreaching copyright laws. Gwiz took second place on the insightful side by articulating this fact:

If it's respect for copyright that you are wanting, why aren't you advocating changes to copyright to restore the public's respect for it?

Seriously, you can only whack a dog so many times with a rolled-up newspaper before it turns and bites you. Even our four-legged friends have a basic concept of respect that far exceeds what some of the copyright maximalists around here can muster.

But the almighty copyright had a better idea: shutting down The Real Calvin & Hobbes. One really does wonder where all this disrespect for copyright is coming from! Just look at Josh in CharlotteNC showing zero respect (and winning our first editor's choice) by learning a very appropriate lesson from this pointless stifling of creativity:

So again, we have a promising artist creating new content that tried to do the "right" thing and ask for permission. What did it get him? Shut down. Silenced. Censored. By copyright.

The lesson?
Don't ask for permission to create art. Don't apologize for creating something new and beautiful. Just do it.

Art can be great business, and money has played a massive role in determining what art gets made at what scale at many points in history. But when you take a broad view you see that, overall, the progress of art and creativity has less to do with wealth and productivity than perhaps any other field of human endeavour. It's swayed by these powerful forces, but it doesn't rely on them for fuel. Masters of commerce and marketing can ape creativity to make a quick buck, but the real path to success that matters is sincerity. Amanda Palmer gets that, and so does our second editor's choice winner, Zac Shaw:

The feeling Palmer describes makes many in the music industry uncomfortable because it accentuates the bankrupt morality of a business model based on exploitation.

As someone who's slept on a few of the same floors she did while on tour, I can tell you there's a reason Amanda Palmer is THE modern-day hero for musicians. Social bonding has always been the purpose of music. It's always been why we play. To say music is entertainment is like saying food is deliciousness. The nourishment music gives comes from shared experience -- literally SHARING MUSIC -- and yet for the last 100 years we've minimized that decade by decade until most came to think of music as purely an entertainment product.

The purpose of music is not to make people rich. The purpose is social bonding. If you accomplish social bonding -- the purpose of music -- it's human nature to reciprocate, to acknowledge value.

This is what all the folks at Trichordist and other musicians nostalgic for pre-Napster days have sadly forgotten in their holy war to force fans to pay for access to the music they originally created hoping for wide exposure, wide social bonding. They'll hide behind "it's about the music, man" but it's not about the music for them. They're obsessed with all the money they're losing. They're looking for someone to blame -- the fan, the industry, other musicians -- but they have no one to blame but themselves. They are losing money because they no longer are making connections. They are actually being negative and trying to put people off. I know I change the channel immediately when a Cracker song comes on. Wait, I always did that.

Let's go back to Comcast now for our funniest comment of the week, courtesy of an anonymous commenter:

Comcast is upset that they lost the worst company of 2012 to EA so they're trying harder this year.

Much like these comments, that's a highly competitive category. But perhaps not as competitive as Dumbest Thing Said By A Lawmaker, which doesn't even have rankings anymore, just a really long list of unsorted winners to which we can add this doozie from Georgia's Earnest Smith: "No one has a right to make fun of anyone. It's not a First Amendment right." Smith was upset about the scurrilous Photoshopping of his head onto a porn star's body, and an anonymous commenter took second place by wondering if Smith was the only one upset by this:

To be fair, I'm sure porn stars don't like their faces covered up by a Congressman's face either.

Luckily, yet another anonymous commenter was there to win first editor's choice by suggesting a swifter route to justice:

Or, instead of passing that law he can photoshop the person who made the image, to make them look like they're in jail.

Good idea. Of course, what I'm sure Smith really wants is a way to reach into the past and prevent the photo from ever having existed. Incidentally, either such a method has already been invented, or the six strikes program that kicked off this post is at best unnecessary and at worst counterproductive when it comes to the supposed goal of the industry: increasing sales. After all, sales were up before the system came into effect, and not because of anti-piracy measures. One final anonymous commenter takes our last editor's choice for illuminating that first possibility:

Wow! 6 strikes works fast! Also retroactively, apparently.

Presumably, having perfected this temporal technique, the industry now plans to shift time back to 1992 and freeze it there. See you at the record store!

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  • icon
    Spaceman Spiff (profile), 3 Mar 2013 @ 3:37pm

    What's a record store?

    "Presumably, having perfected this temporal technique, the industry now plans to shift time back to 1992 and freeze it there. See you at the record store!"

    I heard about those - oh yeah, they existed about the same time as book stores...

    Funny bon mots aside, I LOVE second-hand book stores. Of course, with some of these dodo's in "big media" trying to block reselling books, videos, and such, the used book store may also join their siblings, the brick and mortar book and record stores... :-( sigh.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2013 @ 4:16pm

    Have any of you been able to make a copy of the new "Twilight: Breaking Dawn Pt. 2" DVD? Man, the copy protection on this one is TOUGH. I shall keep trying, but I have to take the DVD back tomorrow.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Capitalist Lion Tamer (profile), 3 Mar 2013 @ 6:13pm

      Re:

      Have any of you been able to make a copy of the new "Twilight: Breaking Dawn Pt. 2" DVD?

      Haven't even tried. Having one copy in existence seemed bad enough already.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        Wally (profile), 3 Mar 2013 @ 6:31pm

        Re: Re:

        I know that my 40 some odd anniversary edition of Disney's "Sword and the Stone" is copyright in a way that prevents VLC or Handbrake from copying certain parts of the film...VLC can't even play it properly. It uses a calling system where video clips are cued up and encrypted in .VBO files when it does not detect Windows Media Player or any other paid for PC DVD playing software.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2013 @ 6:57pm

        Re: Re:

        I've been trying for several hours now. I've used several programs. I finally got it to rip using an old, old program called DVD Decrypter (had to skip a couple files). Thus far, though, none of my other programs have been able to extract the main movie so I can shrink and burn it. Hopefully I'll get this problem solved before the night's over.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2013 @ 8:15pm

          Re: Re: Re:

          Have you tried cleansing it with fire?

          link to this | view in chronology ]

          • identicon
            Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2013 @ 8:33pm

            Re: Re: Re: Re:

            I'm about freaking ready to.

            link to this | view in chronology ]

            • identicon
              TDR, 3 Mar 2013 @ 8:55pm

              Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

              Have you tried VidCoder, by chance? It's an open source program and has worked on every dvd and blu ray I've tried (at least 100 or so by now), and with good speed, too. I think it's based on Handbrake, or at least uses a similar engine, but it's proven more reliable than Handbrake itself and is, I think, more intuitive.

              link to this | view in chronology ]

              • identicon
                TDR, 3 Mar 2013 @ 8:59pm

                Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

                Oh, forgot to mention, BD-Free is a good program for decrypting dvd's and blu rays, also open source and runs in the background. VidCoder won't read the discs unless they're decrypted, but if you have BD-Free to take care of that, you're all set.

                link to this | view in chronology ]

              • identicon
                Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2013 @ 4:36pm

                Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

                No, I haven't tried that one. My favorite one is DVDFab Decrypter. But support for new discs is unavailable in the free version, lagging behind as much as 6 months.

                link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2013 @ 8:32pm

          Re: Re: Re:

          Not even Slysoft's vaunted AnyDVD works. I thought that program was supposed to be so freaking great. Don't believe the hype.

          link to this | view in chronology ]

          • icon
            Wally (profile), 3 Mar 2013 @ 8:59pm

            Re: Re: Re: Re:

            Be very wary of SlySoft. I might not no much about networks...but in my profession client confidentiality is a huge thing.


            You could modify the CMOS settings if you are on an Intel CPU and turn PAVP mode to "off"...If all else fails, use a video capture card.

            link to this | view in chronology ]

            • identicon
              Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2013 @ 7:49pm

              Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

              Slysoft makes good programs. It's just that they hadn't updated AnyDVD when I first downloaded it. But the problem's been fixed now.

              link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      That One Guy (profile), 4 Mar 2013 @ 5:06am

      Re:

      Odds are it's not DRM, that's just the universe doing it's best to save you from yourself.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Wally (profile), 3 Mar 2013 @ 4:32pm

    I got an update about the "Calvin and Hobbes" debacle.

    I sent in a letter to Universal UClick and I contacted the sales representative there through the website commentary system. I got an automated response stating that the person I tried to contact no longer works for Andrews McMeel or Universal UClick.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Wally (profile), 3 Mar 2013 @ 5:42pm

    Off Topic but important....I submitted a story about the firs to on the list of theCracked.com article silvercat is talking about. If any of you insiders or writers wish to post it I do not need an e-mail notification. I would recommend fact checking some of the technical notes...it involves radio frequencies and carrier waves and a lot of information I had to absorb on the fly so some may be spotty...


    Good luck reading and/or interpreting ALS (Asperger Language Style) :-P

    Seriously though, it really blew my mind.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Wally (profile), 3 Mar 2013 @ 6:21pm

      Re:

      "Off Topic but important....I submitted a story about the firs to on the list of theCracked.com article silvercat is talking about. If any of you insiders or writers wish to post it I do not need an e-mail notification. I would recommend fact checking some of the technical notes...it involves radio frequencies and carrier waves and a lot of information I had to absorb on the fly so some may be spotty..."

      *Off Topic but important....I submitted a story about the first tto on the list of the Cracked.com article silvercat is talking about. If any of you insiders or writers wish to post it I do not need an e-mail notification. I would recommend fact checking some of the technical notes...it involves radio frequencies and carrier waves and a lot of information I had to absorb on the fly so some of it may be spotty...


      As for the typo's...I think faster than I can type or write at times.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    G Thompson (profile), 3 Mar 2013 @ 7:46pm

    Re:

    very stupid spamming. I hate it

    Fuck off

    FTFY

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Wally (profile), 3 Mar 2013 @ 8:10pm

      Re: Re:

      Not meaning to spam...just ugh...no I am sorry about that

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        Killercool (profile), 3 Mar 2013 @ 9:31pm

        Re: Re: Re:

        Just so you know, Wally, the spam comment wasn't directed at you. You can't tell without looking at the comments threaded, but G Thompsom was referring to the crappy "nice article" comment.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Vic, 4 Mar 2013 @ 9:27am

    "Your complaints, like those of New Jersey's Carl Bermanson, only stem from disrespect for copyright, and this, its newest incarnation!"

    Disrespect of copyright my ass! I do have respect for human life too! But I still insist on a fair trial for murderers...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2013 @ 4:32pm

    SUCCESS!

    Yes! I rented out that "Twilight" movie again today and tried the new version of AnyDVD. It worked! However, since AnyDVD doesn't actually rip, I also downloaded another Slysoft program, Clone DVD, since my normal ripping programs couldn't rip it.
    So I had to spend another $2.00 to rent it. $2.00 + $2.00 + $1.00 (blank disc) = $5.00. Still better than $20.00.
    And yeah, about my last post. After going through all that for about 10 straight hours I was quite out of sorts.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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