Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the victories,-both-repeat-and-pyrrhic dept
This week, it turned out that the Righthaven saga was not quite over. The denouement led Arsik Vek to win most insightful comment of the week—and second funniest comment of the week—by summing up the story:
So, to make sure I'm getting this right....
1) Stephens Media decides to get them some of that awesome copyright trolling money.
2) Stephens Media spawns Righthaven.
3) Stephens Media takes their box o' copyright, dumps out all the contents, then sells Righthaven the empty cardboard box.
4) Righthaven brandishes the empty cardboard box in a threatening fashion demanding money.
5) Court says that's fscking retarded, demands Righthaven pay back legal fees.
6) Righthaven puts the empty box over their head and pretends they can't hear.
7) Court takes Righthaven away and starts auctioning it off. Realizes it has no assets except an empty cardboard box.
8) Randazza takes the empty cardboard box and sells it back to Stephens Media for $80k.
In the end, Stephens Media donates eighty thousand dollars and it's reputation to Randazza for no appreciable gain. Well done.
Well done indeed. In second place, we've got Josef Anvil, who was inspired by Super Meat Boy developer Tommy Refenes's comments about piracy and DRM, and proposed a novel idea:
"Team Meat shows no loss in our year end totals due to piracy and neither should any other developer."
Since lawmakers have swallowed the "loss" argument from the content industry and want to pass more enforcement, then they should walk the walk.
They should begin allowing companies to write off their piracy losses on their taxes every year. One year of that and we would see if governments actually believed in those "losses".
For editor's choice on the insightful side, we've got two different responses to the MPAA's recent antics. First up is Ophelia Millais, responding to the MPAA's leaked talking points, specifically the notion that open discussion is welcome, and indeed ongoing:
I was unaware there was ongoing discussion of this nature. As far as I can tell, the MPAA makes no effort to avail itself to anyone who wants to debate its positions, in any way, ever. Perhaps there was a typo, and they meant to say ungoing discussion.
Next, we've got PaulT with a response to the MPAA's comments about the cloud and the fact that pirates "seem to have gotten into this space first":
Yes, because you morons have spent the last 20 years trying to first stop legitimate services from appearing, then restricting both the customer base and usefulness of the services you eventually were convinced to offer. Surprise! Ignoring an emerging market lets someone get there first.
That comment serves as a segue into our funniest comment of the week, on the same post. It's actually a repeat winner, courtesy of an anonymous commenter. The last time, when it was an editor's choice, I substituted it for an illustrated version, and I see no reason not to repeat that here:
We've already had our second funniest comment, so now straight on to the editor's choice. For the first, we return to the post about the Super Meat Boy developer, where DannyB employed some deadpan sarcasm to sum up the industry's bizarre attitude toward piracy:
It may be a Pyrrhic victory, but piracy must be stopped at any cost. Even if it means destroying the business, destroying jobs and destroying shareholder value.
Copying of bits must be stopped. It's the right thing to do. It's a matter of principle. It must be done even if we must circumvent judicial process, corrupt the legislative system, subvert international counterfeiting treaties, destroy freedom of speech, monitor all communications, impose outrageously draconian punishments for very small crimes and destroy all respect for law and copyrights. In the end it will be worth it.
As in war, the best way to destroy the enemy is to use a five hundred megaton bomb. Best of all, you don't need to worry about a delivery system. Just set it off within your own territory and you can be assured that the enemy far away will be destroyed. Mission accomplished. Congratulations!
I urge you to help stop piracy at any cost.
And, finally, we head to the latest explosion in the disastrous chain reaction that is EA's launch of Sim City 5, where an anonymous commenter posed what, at this point, seems like a pretty reasonable prediction:
Should try and get an interview with EA's executives.
Interviewer: Question #1, have you at any time in your life, played a video game?
Exec: Well no, i can't say that i have.
That's all for this week—see you tomorrow!
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BEST WIT of the week: "virtual (but totally autonomous) sock-puppet".
In yet another homage to me, there's now a little robot copying my screen name and tag lines, even after improved for better visuals so that now direct from the screen isn't adequate. I'm training this robot to duplicate me exactly: so far it's only capable of lame one-liners. -- Heh, heh: even that's enough to fool Techdirt fanboys. -- To measure its progress I've added text from an algorithm to my tag lines, simple enough to be figured out with a bit of study. It's already attempted to imitate that text too, but though GMT time stamp was obvious, even that seems beyond its ability: it just put in some random numbers*. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130322/02545222415/microsoft-releases-details-law-enforcement-req uests.shtml#c95
Still, good experiment in nettish intelligence, eh? (It's studying this very text to learn how to improve its imitation of me!)
Don't you kids wish you had your very own "virtual (but totally autonomous) sock-puppet" to amplify your effect? My innovating on Techdirt begins to leverage more. -- There's already distinct shift from you being Mike's fanboys to being my slaves, compelled to ad hom my every post. You're such contrary little ninnies that my protests against sheer ad hom actually spur you on, and such dolts as can't see how you diminish the value of the site, not least by showing that you have no substance. So IF it were my purpose to attack Mike's site rather than only put out my views, you aid me.
So I can only attempt to guide the less astute. You're ALL invited to join my clone army! I want more VBTASs! I'll take in you zero-level trolls who must hide from your mothers the vulgarisms you spew and turn you out as semi-civil commenters.** Take the first step: admit you're a vacant troll who can only copy. Then just copy me so well as you can.
Now to try and wise up my clones: A VBTAS thinks it's helping Mike. HA! Didn't Mike hisself say recently: "Guys, you're not helping me by putting the out_of_the_blue name all over the place, it just embiggens his effect and doesn't at all help me or site rep when you ad hom me. Cut it out!"?***
Perpetual optimist Mike! The fanboy-trolls will ignore that because here only for the lulz, will bite on even THIS schtick, even when it's labeled schtick.
Anyhoo, here are your orders: Copy me, my clones! Copy me! COPY ME! BWAAHAHA!
~~~ Disclaimers:
* However, not incidentally, imitating that validation text which can have no other purpose than to make a convincing counterfeit of my persona moves such comments from legally protected free speech into definite fraud.
** Or so I hope. But I've a proven record in helping Mike Masnick and Techdirt's "comment enforcer" Timothy Geigner aka "Dark Helmet" to refrain from vulgarisms.
*** Just a question musing whether Mike has audibly exclaimed along that line out of exasperation with you kids. -- If he hasn't, that's worse! Until Mike states such in print, he's tacitly aiding fraud against me; he has the power to admonish and to remove faked comments, and has yet to respond to my complaints, that I've seen. -- If you object to me putting together words and letting you infer that Mike wrote them, then you can't excuse someone falsely speaking under my screen name, same principle. It's just plain lying. -- But if rampant lying is what Mike wishes on his site, he'll do nothing to stop it.
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Re: BEST WIT of the week: "virtual (but totally autonomous) sock-puppet".
Fondest Regards,
The Collective Subconscious of Humanity.
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Re: BEST WIT of the week: "virtual (but totally autonomous) sock-puppet".
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(Also, if it really is some kind of bot, couldn't they have at least tried to make a text generator as good as this one? Sheesh.)
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Re: BEST WIT of the week: "virtual (but totally autonomous) sock-puppet".
You clones are really something.
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Re: Re: BEST WIT of the week: "virtual (but totally autonomous) sock-puppet".
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Re: BEST WIT of the week: "virtual (but totally autonomous) sock-puppet".
how many mirrors do you have in your house?
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Re: BEST WIT of the week: "virtual (but totally autonomous) sock-puppet".
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Re: BEST WIT of the week: "virtual (but totally autonomous) sock-puppet".
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Re: Re: Re: BEST WIT of the week: "virtual (but totally autonomous) sock-puppet".
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Re: BEST WIT of the week: "virtual (but totally autonomous) sock-puppet".
You clones are really something.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: BEST WIT of the week: "virtual (but totally autonomous) sock-puppet".
It was supposed to be a note that blue doesn't call himself out on his tl;dr.
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Please do take them!
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Re: BEST WIT of the week: "virtual (but totally autonomous) sock-puppet".
It's kind of sad....
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I'm not so sure about that. Given the corporate subsidy mindset in washington, this could be used as additional camouflage for their Bizarro Robin Hood mentality. They already give away massive amounts for questionable returns and this could open the flood gates to even more abuse. Many companies are charged a levy upon their standing inventory, since this "IP" is supposed to be real property it would be wise to begin taxation of said property now and worry about the "theft" write offs later. On a side note, individual write offs for theft are limited to an annual amount and do not include the massive amounts already being siphoned off. I imagine there would no such limit for corporations.
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Re: Re: BEST WIT of the week: "virtual (but totally autonomous) sock-puppet".
Need to make a counter point? Put it in the comments, but not in direct reply to them. Refer to the comment even, but not in a direct reply. Force them to read our comments if they want to see any action.
This one in particular is really gaining obnoxious weight with his being fed all the time.
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Intellectual Property Tax or Public Domain. Take your pick.
"Now then, what would you like to value that song at? Retroactive? Yes, of course. Isn't that how it has worked when granting extensions to the term length?"
"I imagine there would no such limit for corporations."
That is where the investors role comes in. Corporations don't play with their own money.
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