Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the asking-basic-questions dept
It was a short week, but still plenty of great comments, so let's get straight to it. Topping the charts on the insightful side is an anonymous commenter who raised a simple question about the FISA secret court process:
adjudication requires opposing parties to be present and provide evidence and arguments to the adjudicator. How can the "process of adjudication" be ex-parte?
Meanwhile, second place goes to another anonymous commenter with another simple observation, this time about the Ed Snowden situation:
role reversal...
It used to be that political dissidents would actually SEEK asylum in the US, now they are looking for asylum to get AWAY from the US.
How the times have changed...
Let's keep that pattern going in the editor's choice with one more simple, anonymous point. This time it's about Senator Durbin's disturbing overtures about defining who counts as a journalist:
First step in canceling freedom of the press
Government licenses for journalists. And if your press doesn't meet government standards, they yank your license.
Don't worry citizen, even if you need a government license to operate a press, you'll still be able to speak freely.
And, last up on the insightful side, we've got Lawrence D'Oliveiro, explaining the stupidity of the W3C's belief that DRM in HTML5 is necessary to make content providers keep using the web:
It's The Connectivity, Stupid!
What drives the Internet is not content, but connectivity. There were other online networks before the Internet--anybody remember Compuserve, Prodigy, the original AOL? Their selling point was their exclusive content, which you couldn't get on the Internet. Yet they were all swept aside, simply because the Internet offered better connectivity between people.
The Internet doesn't need content providers. It is content providers that need the Internet.
(I think "internet" should be subbed for "web" in most of that comment, but the broader point remains true.)
On the funny side, it's a tight race. First place is Jessie, wondering what the humorless Attorney General who complained about a satirical "prescription" mug would target next:
The AG's set their sights on their next target:
"An apple a day keeps the Dr away."
This phrase makes light of the millions of uninsured in america.
And in second place, trailing by just one vote, we've got a response to the description by another commenter of Ed Snowden as "the 'I'd let him bang my wife' type of hero that America needs:
Rest assured, I am Ed Snowden.
Would you happen to have a number where I can reach your wife and does she have a valid passport?
For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out back on the post about DRM in HTML5, where one commenter was stubbornly continuing to insist that "you can't compete with free." Michael offered an appropriate reply:
Back to that one.
I'm going to kick back and drink my bottled water while I watch CBS through my cable provider and wait for someone to come up with an example of paid products competing with free ones by being better or more convenient.
And finally, we've got Akari Mizunashi, who had a suggestion for the Washington Post after the editorial board called for and end to leaks and tried to trivialize The Guardian:
Perhaps the Washington Post should subscribe to the Guardian in order to stay relevant.
Hope everyone had a great holiday, and you didn't miss us too much! We'll be back to business as usual tomorrow.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
And they fail at it so very much.
The rest of the twitterverse was watching something unfold and be discussed... CNN was busily talking about the calories in a muffin.
The plane crash at SFO, twitter had better information sooner than any of the big players who were still waiting for the teletypes to bring them the story. A majority of the details were already online by the time the "first reports" were making the airwaves with information that was already outdated.
The internet is where you can find discussion about what Snowden revealed rather than trying to focus on if he is a secret communist out to destroy the country or if Greenwald raped and murdered a girl in 1934.
No wonder they tap it, they fear what it could lead to.
The President expressed concern about the democratically elected leader of Egypt being removed from power... I don't think it was concern than Democracy would die in Egypt, I think it was fear that we might get ideas.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The internet allows news and ideas to be spread rapidly without having to pass through a gate keeper, and people to self organize to solve problems in an ad hoc fashion. Both of these thing reduce the power of politicians as organizers of society.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Decades of a very centralized, self-serving media have resulted in 95+ year copy protection lengths and retroactive extensions preventing anything from entering the public domain. Orphan works maybe forever lost to history to never see the future again. Oppressive laws preventing open communication have resulted in a very broken patent system, government established taxi-cab monopolies, a hotel industry that uses the government to keep competitors out, and the passage of many many very bad, self-serving, laws in return for political campaign contributions and revolving door favors. The public has been asleep and uninformed due to these communication monopolies dominating for so many years.
It is not enough to simply defend the openness of the Internet. We must take back what rightfully belongs to the public, that which was wrongfully stolen from us. Abolish government established broadcasting monopolies for private or commercial use and abolish government established cableco monopolies.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Not to mention the FDA is one of the most corrupt organizations out there, tasked with restricting our health freedoms for corporate profits.
Our laws are so corrupt that, now that the public is more informed about them, we don't even know where to start. I'll tell you where we need to start. We need to start by abolishing the selfish media cartels and the laws responsible for maintaining them. They are the reason the public has been brainwashed, misinformed, and uninformed for so long resulting in such a crooked system. We should no longer tolerate this.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
'our' (sic) kongresskritters are *SUPPOSED* to look out for us and reflect our will, they do not...
'our' (sic) media is *SUPPOSED* to be our proxies, and look out for us, comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, but that system is korporate owned, lock, stock, and (gun)barrel...
stupid sheeple still have enough cheezy doodles and sugar water, so they don't pay attention to the lapdog media or the korporate-owned kongresskritters...
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Search warrants
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Search warrants
A search warrant is limited in scope, not lets get data on everyone on the country in case they might at some point have had contact with someone we dislike. Let us only have to be 51% sure they might not be American to scoop it and do whatever.
Oh and a search warrant requires there to have been a crime, not running a wild hunch that at some point this will come in handy.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Search warrants
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Search warrants
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Search warrants
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Search warrants
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Search warrants
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Search warrants
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Search warrants
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
fist you answered your own question,
"How can the "process of adjudication", because of ex parte.
"requires opposing parties".
Sure, one Party is NSA, the other party is US Government and the Constitution.
The two parties are "the Constitution" and the NSA.
But it's NOT a ex parte ruling, all parties "the Court (constitution), and NSA, both parties are 'notified', so no group is 'absent' from the Adjudication.
The ruling is for the NSA to acquire information (or not), it is NOT for the parties being investigated, they not 'a party' to this ruling, they may be the subject, they are not the party.
The Adjudication is between the NSA and the Court (representing the Constitution).
Learn your own law, it's also "Ex parte" NOT Ex-parte
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The fact that your entire post is essentially 'learn your laws before commenting on them' just makes that brilliant claim all the funnier...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Who else but a complete jackass would stand alongside a known criminal?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
"Mr. Constitution, sir, Mr. Piece of Paper, you are hereby notified to be present at the local court house next Tuesday"...is that what you're saying?
I also love how you go on about "it's Ex parte, not ex-parte"...as if you have the standing to go on about spelling and grammar, having made plenty of mistakes in your own comment.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Simple, It's been demed "reasonable".
So if the Court determines these searches to be 'reasonable', then it complies with the wording of the constitution.
You can try to argue these searches to be unreasonable, but there are many examples the Court (and NSA) (and Port Authority), would be indicators that these searches are DONE FOR A REASON, therefore reasonable..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Simple, It's been demed "reasonable".
Such as?
Pretty much every single example that has been trotted out has been something that was never a threat to begin with, something that could have been handled perfectly fine through already existing channels without constitutional violations, or were flat out 'least untruthful' examples, so I'm curious as to what examples you mean.
Also, the 'if a court determines...' bit only matters is the court is actually doing the job they are supposed to be doing, rather than just stamping 'accepted/approved' on every piece of paper that gets put in front of them, as the FISA court has been shown to do.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Simple, It's been demed "reasonable".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Simple, It's been demed "reasonable".
But... no, I can't let the first part go. If "secretly spying on all communications all the time" is reasonable, then the clause has no meaning whatsoever. Their actions are NOT reasonable.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Simple, It's been demed "reasonable".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Simple, It's been demed "reasonable".
On that day don't ask for God's help.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Simple, It's been demed "reasonable".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Simple, It's been demed "reasonable".
Just because a court says something is Constitutional does not make it, in fact, Constitutional.
Since everything that is done is done for a reason, this standard would mean that there is no such thing as an unreasonable search at all.
It's a good thing that's not the actual legal standard for what makes something "reasonable".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You do know that there's more to the internet than just web sites, right?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]