Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the the-north-and-the-east dept

This week, Techdirt received its first "right to be forgotten" request. Silverscarcat was inspired to consider how successful takedowns of this nature could serve as a political weapon, winning most insightful comment of the week:

If I was a EU politician...

I'd use this "right to be forgotten" ruling as political fuel.

"We can't find anything about so-and-so online, therefore they must have done something horrible and are using the law to make it go away! How do we know they won't do something horrible when they're in office?!"

In second place on the insightful side, we've got an anonymous response to the police using terrorism as a justification for obtaining new equipment, pointing out that this is what we all knew was coming yet have failed to prevent:

You know when some were saying a decade ago that the "terrorism" excuse will be used to justify just about anything? Guess what? It's happening, and it doesn't seem to slow down. If anything, it's accelerating. All local law enforcement agencies are turning more and more into the military/NSA "because terrorism".

Wake up, America, before it's too late to stop any of it, because nobody will dare to say anything for fear of having militarized police driver a tank over their house, with a "no-knock" warrant.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start with an excellent comment from Ima Fish, describing his own transition away from being a newspaper reader (it sure sounded familiar to me, and may do to plenty of you as well):

I used to love newspapers. I mean I loved them. I'd get to school or work and spend the first half an hour of my day reading. It was awesome. I'd save some for lunch, so I'd have something to read then.

It was annoying at times. Signing up for a subscription was always a suspicious process, sort of like signing up for a gym membership. Why was it so shady and complicated?

If you bought from a local machine, sometimes it'd be empty or wouldn't work. So you'd have to scurry around trying to find a paper.

Sometimes there would be missing sections to the paper, which always pissed me off.

Oh, and let's not forget the ads. Killing a tree to give me a ton of weekend ads I'll never look at just seemed so pointless. Even back when I was in love.

But none of those mattered, because I was in love. Until the internet came out. Back in the 90s I realized I was reading in the paper the exact same stories I read the night before online. AP story after AP story.

But I was in love, so it didn't matter. I still had local news, editorials, and the comics.

But the local news and editorials departments shrank, to save money. And in all honesty, I only read two or three comics. So I started getting newspapers less and less. And eventually I had to face the fact, I no longer loved newspapers.

But even worse, I didn't even have any fond memories of newspapers. You don't have fond memories of more difficult archaic ways. "Oh, I miss the days before microwave ovens when I'd spend 40 minutes warming up a frozen dinner." No, I don't.

When something better comes along, I don't look back fondly, I look back and think, "How did I put up with that crap?" So yes, newspapers were crap. They were the best we had at the time. They didn't have the immediacy of radio or TV, but they had depth and substance. But that advantage died with the net. And good riddance. You won't be missed by me.

Next, in response to a Canadian court's attempt to regulate the global internet and a commenter if Russia tried the same thing to censor LGBT material, we've got an anonymous comment musing about how ridiculous things would get if national courts could actually do this:

Take this one further - it's entirely possible that Google could be ordered to remove them, and if they comply, this would violate Canadian anti-discrimination law, so presumably Google would be liable in Canadian court for obeying a court order.

I can't possibly see this ruling withstanding an appeal.

Over on the funny side, we start out with the relieving news that simply having "dirt" in your website title does not, according to the appeals court in the lawsuit against TheDirty.com, automatically suggest you only publish illegal or actionable content. Michael wondered how far he could push this:

I wonder if I am still in trouble with my domain www.OnlyIllegalOrActionableContent.com?

Second place for funny goes to... Michael yet again! This time, it was a hurried reaction to the news that China calling out Microsoft's anti-Android patents:

Yay China for being a beacon of transparency!

wait, what?

The first editor's choice for funny goes to an anonymous commenter who was happy to hear the story of the Earl of Stair hurling chess pieces at his victorious opponents:

So rage-quitting/raging at losing a game is over 200 years old. Good to know some things never change.

And, finally, we've got another reply to Canada's attempt at judicial world domination, this time from Bergman, who knows not to trust us northerners:

I can see it now. World War Three won't be about natural resources, national borders or anything like that.

it will happen when Canada invades some small republic somewhere to enforce a court order.

(As long as it's somewhere warm, that sounds more palatable than the more likely scenario of an all-out brawl over the arctic.)

That's all for this week, folks!

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