The Most Popular Posts Of 2013 So Far

from the checking-in... dept

Sat, Jul 6th 2013 12:00pm — Mike Masnick

Since this week is a "short week" and many people are on vacation anyway, we decided not to ask anyone to do their "favorite posts of the week." Conveniently, this is also the first weekend after the halfway point of 2013, so I thought it might be fun to see which stories from the first half of the year generated the most traffic.

Redditor Points Out The Flaws In SimCity's Online-Only DRM, Gets Banned By EA For His Troubles: This post got a ton of attention, and resulted in EA claiming that it was all a "glitch" in the system, though not everyone believed that to be the case. EA seems to have a way of doing things that tends to just make everything worse.
Oh Look, Rep. Mike Rogers Wife Stands To Benefit Greatly From CISPA Passing...: This was a big story for a key reason: Rogers has been adamant about getting CISPA passed, but this conflict of interest had been previously undisclosed.
If Your Cable Company Were Honest, This Is What Its Commercial Would Look Like: Note: people do not like their cable companies. They hate them almost as much as they hate EA.
NSA Whistleblower Ed Snowden: From My Desk I Could Wiretap Anyone: You, A Federal Judge Or The President Of The US: You knew at least one NSA surveillance post had to be in this list. This one is still controversial. Some people insist that Snowden was exaggerating or lying, but other released documents suggest that there's support for what he's claiming.
White House Makes It Impossible For The Blind To Sign Petition Supporting Copyright Treaty For The Blind: A bit of a technological faux pas on the part of the White House. Of course, now that the treaty has been signed, we'll see if the US will actually ratify it.
FBI Admits That Obeying The Constitution Just Takes Too Much Time: As we just had the "Restore the 4th" effort, this one seems appropriate to be on the list.
PETA Goes After Assassin's Creed For Its Depiction Of Whaling; Ubisoft Responds With A Heaping Dose Of Sarcasm: Hey look, an article about a big video gaming company, where they're not the ones doing something crazy. Don't get that very often.
NSA: If Your Data Is Encrypted, You Might Be Evil, So We'll Keep It Until We're Sure: Yes, the NSA is collecting your data and assuming the worst.
Don't Let Patents Kill 3D Printing: Hopefully speaks for itself.
Cable Industry Finally Admits That Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Congestion: What did I say earlier about people hating their cable companies? Yeah, that.

There you go: a nice variety of stories that have been popular over the last six months or so. We'll be working hard to write more stuff you enjoy going forward as well.

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27 Comments

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Anonymous, 6 Jul 2013 @ 1:48pm

Got milk?

LOL! Just kidding! :)
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jul 2013 @ 1:55pm

and the Rogers family want to continue making twats of themselves by insisting that Snowden is a traitor so hopefully everyone will forget about the wife getting a kickback from her 'former' company and he can continue in his governmental role, lying his arse off just to keep the surveillance program continuing
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Karl (profile), 6 Jul 2013 @ 2:52pm

Subject
Here's something interesting. You know what subject is not covered in any of Techdirt's most popular stories?

Piracy.

More evidence of how the "pro-piracy" accusation is a big, fat lie.
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- Anonymous Coward, 6 Jul 2013 @ 3:46pm
  
  Re: Subject
  I love all those stories about plunder on the high seas, hard to believe none are in the top ten.
  
  The evil Dark Helmet and pirate Mike shiver me timbers with their tall tails about trolls and pirates reaping rewards of vast intrinsic value.
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- That Anonymous Coward (profile), 6 Jul 2013 @ 7:19pm
  
  Re: Subject
  Its all my fault, I made a copy of the stories and 'stole" them.
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- This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
  
  Anonymous Coward, 6 Jul 2013 @ 7:27pm
  
  Re: Subject
  "Here's something interesting. You know what subject is not covered in any of Techdirt's most popular stories?
  
  Piracy.
  
  More evidence of how the "pro-piracy" accusation is a big, fat lie."
  
  I'm not surprised articles about your crimes weren't among the most discussed. I wouldn't be comfortable or eager to discuss it if I were you either.
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  - AC Unknown (profile), 6 Jul 2013 @ 7:42pm
    
    Re: Re: Subject
    Got evidence?
    
    (And by evidence, I don't mean twisting the words of Mike and his fellow bloggers into your own strawman version.)
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  - That One Guy (profile), 6 Jul 2013 @ 7:48pm
    
    Re: Re: Subject
    And yet here you are, projecting the guilt over your crimes onto everyone else, vainly attempting to shift the blame away from you so you don't have to accept responsibility for your actions.
    
    Unless of course you have some proof that everyone you are accusing is in fact breaking the law...
    
    ...
    
    Yeah, didn't think so.
    
    Here, go over the following article, and then go see a shrink, your accusation without evidence 'debate tactic' is either pretty much a perfect case of psychological projection, or ad hom, neither of which are healthy.
    
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
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    - Anonymous, 7 Jul 2013 @ 5:27am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Subject
      I can't speak for anyone else here, but personally, I am pro-piracy and not afraid to admit it.
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      - That One Guy (profile), 7 Jul 2013 @ 12:04pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Subject
        Oh I know there are posters here who share your stance, but other than those very few who admit to doing so(most of which seem to go off the rational of 'if they're going to treat me like a criminal no matter what, I might as well do what I'm being accused of'), a blanket 'you disagree with me therefor you must be a criminal arguing from self-interest' statement is either ad hom or projection.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 7 Jul 2013 @ 12:04am
    
    Re: Re: Subject
    AC just hates it when due process is enforced.
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  - Karl (profile), 7 Jul 2013 @ 12:10am
    
    Re: Re: Subject
    I'm not surprised articles about your crimes weren't among the most discussed.
    
    If masturbating to pictures of Linus Torvalds is a crime, then let me be a criminal!
    
    ...Oh, wait, you meant me pirating stuff? I don't do that.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2013 @ 8:55am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Subject
      Quite the sick pervert, aren't you Karl?
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      - Anonymous Coward, 9 Jul 2013 @ 5:05am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Subject
        Says the guy cheering on the RIAA suing dead grandmothers.
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  - ottermaton (profile), 7 Jul 2013 @ 5:25pm
    
    Re: Re: Subject
    I'm not surprised articles about your crimes weren't among the most discussed. I wouldn't be comfortable or eager to discuss it if I were you either.
    
    Interesting observation, particularly because "most discussed" has zilch to do with the metric used to select these articles:
    
    ... which stories from the first half of the year generated the most traffic.
    
    Know what that means? It means these stories were the most read. Maybe you should try it sometime.
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    - dennis deems (profile), 8 Jul 2013 @ 6:36am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Subject
      Traffic != reading. About a hundred times a day my browser lands somewhere I didn't intend, and I immediately click away without reading anything. It seems to me that discussion should be factored into the equation as it shows that readers are engaged.
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- Anonymous Coward, 6 Jul 2013 @ 8:26pm
  
  Re: Subject
  http://boingboing.net/2013/07/05/how-long-copyright-terms-make.html
  
  https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/ papers.cfm?abstract_id=2290181
  
  I don't know about pro-piracy being bad but I just read another study showing how pro-copyright is bad.
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- Anonymous Coward, 7 Jul 2013 @ 8:03pm
  
  Re: Subject
  Here's something interesting. You know what subject is not covered in any of Techdirt's most popular stories?
  
  Piracy.
  
  More evidence of how the "pro-piracy" accusation is a big, fat lie.
  
  LOL! Wow, Karl. I know logic isn't your best suit, but this is just stupid. Mike could be the biggest proponent of piracy in the world, yet his top ten posts traffic-wise could be about topics other than piracy. Your logic, or lack thereof, is so stupid it hurts. No wonder the brain trust of Techdirtbags marked it as "insightful." This place is fucking hilarious. I swear the bulk of Mike's Army are a bunch of pirate douchebags living in their parents' basement downloading all the copyrighted stuff they can. Why does Mike cater to these idiots? What a waste. I'd burn that Ivy League diploma. Second in his class so he can write blog posts for idiots.
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  - Gwiz (profile), 9 Jul 2013 @ 9:34am
    
    Re: Re: Subject
    I swear the bulk of Mike's Army are a bunch of pirate douchebags living in their parents' basement downloading all the copyrighted stuff they can.
    
    You are wrong.
    
    Current Techdirt demographics:
    
    - 77% over age 24
    - 72% with college education
    - 42% earn over 50k/yr (indicates professionals)
    
    Source: http://www.quantcast.com/techdirt.com
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    - Karl (profile), 10 Jul 2013 @ 7:08am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Subject
      Current Techdirt demographics:
      
      That's quite interesting. Most of it is pretty much what I expected, except for one bit of trivia: there are over twice as many Techdirt readers with graduated degrees than there are readers without any college degree.
      
      I knew the Techdirt readership was smart, but I didn't know they were that smart.
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Anonymous, 6 Jul 2013 @ 4:44pm

To those of you here who think the third amendment hasn't been violated:

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=44323
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Jul 2013 @ 9:15pm

Cable companies are outrageously priced in the US. I'm doing everything I can to keep my bill under $50 a month for internet and basic cable TV. Internet can barely keep up with streaming a single 720p YouTube video...

I think everything Snowden said about wiretapping everybody from his desk, is true.

All the NSA seems to do is store separate data bases for AT&T, Google, Microsoft, and Verizon; then do metadata query searches (email address, phone number). NSA has decades worth of records on us all. They never delete anything. (65 MegaWatt Utah Datacenter)

The Orwellian world we live in is only going to get worse. At least it seems that way with how few people seem to care about privacy.

I can't wait till the drones start flying around 24/7. That's the next one I'm waiting for.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Jul 2013 @ 2:49am

When do we get to the part where we have to put photos of Barack Obama (which may or may not be bugged) in every room of our homes? Our fascist experience is feeling incomplete without this.
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- Anonymous Coward, 7 Jul 2013 @ 4:47am
  
  Re:
  Alongside the picture of the guy that started all the insanity : good old George Bush jr. ?
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  - Anonymous Coward, 7 Jul 2013 @ 11:39am
    
    Re: Re:
    The fascist experience has its roots much earlier than that, in the early neocon movement in the US, which has its roots in the Southern Strategy. Bush Jr. only comes into it because of 9/11.
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- Greevar (profile), 7 Jul 2013 @ 9:35am
  
  Re:
  More like mandatory corporate ads posted in your home and a requirement to watch a minimum number of TV ads every day. If you fail these, your citizenship will be revoked and you will be deported, waiting for another nation to adopt you.
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dennis deems (profile), 8 Jul 2013 @ 6:27am

How are you measuring popularity?
I can tell at a glance this list is wrong cause there's not a single Prenda story there.
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