Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the anonymous-is-legion dept
When a man was arrested for swearing at a local restaurant, the idea that it was done to somehow protect the children at the next table seemed ludicrous. One anonymous commenter took first place for insightful this week by pointing out just how far that ludicrousness extends:
I'm guessing the scene of a man getting arrested at the next table was a lot more shocking to the children than the swearing.
In another equally but entirely differently stupid incident this week, cable companies attempted to claim that hidden fees and surcharges are all about trying to be transparent. That's nice and all, but as another anonymous commenter pointed out in our second place comment for insightful, it doesn't change the core question about prices:
If it's impossible to get the advertised rate without paying a bunch of surcharges, they should be investigated for fraud.
For editor's choice on the insightful side, we've got two responses to Voltage Pictures CEO Nicolas Chartier and his claims about piracy. Among these silly claims was the idea that, if everyone who pirated Hurt Locker gave him the arbitrary amount of one dollar then that would be 80% of the movie's budget and, thus, they lost 80% of the budget to piracy (which is a very strange version of the lost sale fallacy). Of course, yet another anonymous commenter pointed out that if this is true, it should have been an option:
Well maybe if you had charged only one dollar for the movie then a lot of those people wouldn't have downloaded it and instead bought it because hey its only a dollar.
Of course, the real issue is that his entire premise is flawed because Hurt Locker was simply not a failure no matter how you slice it. Jupiterkansas spells this out in clear terms:
Here's why he's an idiot:
Hurt Locker didn't make money, but it got a best picture nomination. That nomination gave them him the clout to make Zero Dark Thirty, which made more than it's budget AND the Hurt Locker budget combined.
Zero Dark Thirty won best picture, which gave him the clout to turn Dallas Buyers Club - a small $5 million movie - into another profitable Oscar contender that made over 10 times its budget.
Whatever was lost on Hurt Locker has been made back in spades. To scream he's not making money because of piracy is ridiculous.
Over on the funny side, our first place comment comes in response to the Linux developer Antoni Norman's legal threats against Techdirt for publishing his supposed "private information". It's a big week for anonymous commenters, because first place for funny goes to yet another one who realized what the problem might be:
He shouldn't have gotten advice from Kirby Delauter.
Meanwhile, we called out Steven Soderbergh this week for some apparent hypocrisy in his treatment of film re-edits. One commenter made the strange, childlike assertion that re-editing a film is no different from defacing a person's house by painting it without permission, causing many others to try to explain the difference between property and digital copies with a bunch of alternative analogies (to no avail). But PRMan succeeded in bringing the house comparison back to something like reality and an appropriate analogy:
Mike,
I saw a guy selling 3D glasses on your front porch!
People are putting them on and seeing your white house as PURPLE!
The horror!
For editor's choice on the funny side, our first comment all started with a typo. Our typo, in fact — and one that caused us to accidentally suggest that ABC was fighting to disable Dish ad-skipping on CBS. Commenters noted that this makes no sense, and we corrected the mistake — but Michael actually realized that hey, it could have been a pretty smart tactic, too:
Well, if ad-skipping was disabled on CBS content, ABC content would obviously be worth more to consumers.
Finally, we've got the quasi-anonymous Any Mouse closing things out with a beautiful response to the USTR's attempts to call listening "transparency":
If listening were transparency then the NSA would be the most transparent Agency on Earth.
That's all for this week, folks!
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
Voltage Pictures Is Losing Money
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Cars Getting Better, Guns Getting Worse
Gee, I wonder why that would be ... something with having too many guns around, perhaps?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
And thus another Quixotic crusade to discover what is Mike's favorite pseudo-color is on.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Cars Getting Better, Guns Getting Worse
[ link to this | view in thread ]
People make bodily functions swear words.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: People make bodily functions swear words.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: People make bodily functions swear words.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
I have kids & grandchildren and I still don't understand the problem. It's not like you can ever shield your kids from swear words in this world. Much better to teach them why such words are inappropriate and shouldn't be used. They're going to hear them all from their classmates anyways.
As a private business, the restaurant should have ejected the trash on their own. That's completely within their rights as a private business.
It's also completely within their rights NOT to do anything about it too.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: People make bodily functions swear words.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The Interview made more money from online sales at $5 a pop than what they would have made if it were released in all theaters...Not to mention, all the money they would have lost if they released it in theaters.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Netflix's low price tag certainly helped its meteoric rise, but it still would have caught on at three times the price or really any price lower than a premium cable package, because it brought a level of comprehensive availability that was basically unprecedented (but for piracy). Still, what are its biggest problems? All related to availability. International users use VPNs to get the richer American content well, causing strife between Netflix and stupidly georestrictive rightsholders; people are constantly encountering things that, to their great disappointment, are not available — and worse, shows and movies keep disappearing as various contracts end. As more content moves to on-demand streaming — such as HBO's forthcoming standalone service — content fragmentation will increase and people will be expected to buy multiple subscriptions just to get all the shows they like, driving a bunch of people back to piracy.
If it were possible to make a service that said "here's literally everything, anywhere, with no restrictions, for $x/month" then it almost wouldn't matter what x was.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
im of the mind that sharing SHOULD be free flowing, irregardless of whether it can be metered, but im willing to pay someone who revolutionises the platform, a platform im waiting for and what you so eloquently described, .....untill then, an artificial restriction imposed or attempted to be imposed, stopping everyone doing what they can do right now is plainly moronic to advancements.....i dare say not for profit though
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
It also does not take into account overhead. You have to remember that supporting additional users has costs associated to it. Without knowing those costs, it is difficult to determine what price puts you in the sweet spot of maximum profit. And remember, that is what is important to a company. If the cost of getting a billion dollars in sales is two billion, it may be smarter to serve less people at higher prices.
Because I am both an Amazon prime and Netflix customer, I can tell you that I personally would me much happier to pay more than the costs of both services to have all of the content in a single service. Switching from one to the other is painful and having content disappear from the services is certainly driving me to piracy far more than trying to save a few dollars.
In fact, I would even pay for cable if the services worked nice and had the content I want.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Are we then to assume there is less traffic/cars?
Yet it seems impossible to make guns any less dangerous. Why is that, do you think?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Are we then to assume there is less traffic/cars?
Blame the user, not the tool.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
You seem to have completely missed the point of the article, which didn't make any comment on the appropriateness of swearing in public. You don't need to have kids to understand how ridiculous the police's actions were.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
Yeah, I always find that 'We must shelter the children from X' idea ridiculous. For something like swearing, they will encounter that sort of stuff in life, so you've got two options there:
1) Teach your kids that words are ultimately harmless, and have only so much power as you give them, no more, no less. In addition, teach them that some words are appropriate to be used casually, while others should be avoided as inappropriate/crass/rude most of the time.
2) Act like words have mystical powers, and the mere utterance of some of them is completely taboo. Since there's no quicker way to get a kid to do something than telling them not to do it, odds are your kids will either be swearing like a sailor in no-time, or grow up to be the kind of person that's offended an average of half a dozen times a day by the most minuscule things that don't conform to their idea of how things 'should' be.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
I was just getting prepared to compose an eloquent retort to you, complete with colorful expletives and rapier wit, and then I realized that you are simply not worth my time.
Have a nice life. :)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
I completely agree, anyone who makes a sound that offends me or a loved one, even a fart, should be arrested on the spot or at the very least beaten.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Are we then to assume there is less traffic/cars?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
Hollywood wants a premium for some stuff, which I don't think can work as part of a reasonably-priced subscription.
Basically, netflicks is priced right for the level/nature of the service they are able to provide. If they raise d their prices, they'd have to provide a level of service Hollywood won't let them provide.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
Hollywood wants a premium for some stuff, which I don't think can work as part of a reasonably-priced subscription.
Basically, netflicks is priced right for the level/nature of the service they are able to provide. If they raise d their prices, they'd have to provide a level of service Hollywood won't let them provide.
It's price AND availability.
People will nearly always prefer the option that costs less (less price, less inonvenience, less legal trouble).
Everything is available without piracy but some things that are available are expensive (or inconvenient). If piracy charged a real fee, many fewer people would use it.
Hollywood wants to be able to charge higher prices for new releases (that's not unreasonable, in my opinion, since there is a higher value for new releases).
(Personally, I'm willing to wait to pay less.)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Are we then to assume there is less traffic/cars?
Is there a zero murder rate in prison?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
Hollywood wants a premium for some stuff, which I don't think can work as part of a reasonably-priced subscription.
Basically, netflicks is priced right for the level/nature of the service they are able to provide. If they raise d their prices, they'd have to provide a level of service Hollywood won't let them provide.
It's price AND availability.
People will nearly always prefer the option that costs less (less price, less inonvenience, less legal trouble).
Everything is available without piracy but some things that are available are expensive (or inconvenient). If piracy charged a real fee, many fewer people would use it.
Hollywood wants to be able to charge higher prices for new releases (that's not unreasonable, in my opinion, since there is a higher value for new releases).
(Personally, I'm willing to wait to pay less.)
"If it were possible to make a service that said "here's literally everything, anywhere, with no restrictions, for $x/month" then it almost wouldn't matter what x was."
No,this is isn't true.
Many people would forego everything for large values of $x. They also just might not be able to afford it. And many other people are not interested in "everything" and would resent having to pay for the stuff they don't want. Some people would not want to be charged more for new things (that have more value in the marketplace) that they are willing to wait for (when their market-value is less).
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
I'm one of those people. I don't want everything -- I want the subset of everything that is of interest to me.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Are we then to assume there is less traffic/cars?
There are hundreds of activities where the people have agreed that there are some not capable of acting responsibly (either day to day or, more importantly, under pressure). But because, dare I suggest it, a minority won't broach further discussions on restricting gun ownership, then people who shouldn't be allowed near them can still get them.
If the constitution had stated that "A man's right to take control of any vehicle shall not be impeded", then you'd have people dying in passenger jets all the time.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
It is ridiculous, and a serious disservice to the kids. The last things parents should do is put their kids into a bubble. When that bubble breaks (usually when they are 18 years old and on their own) they have no reality and no real understanding of how the world works, and no compass (I am not talking morals here,) in how to work with others who have different upbringings than their own. It may be easier on the parents to shield the kids from the world they live in, but it isn't easier on the kids or the society who eventually has to pick up the pieces when the bubble explodes.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Probably because they have been very safe for a very long time.
By comparison, guns have been around for many times longer than that. Yet they are, if anything, more dangerous than ever.
Why do you think that is?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]