Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the cops-and-'robbers' dept

This week, we saw yet another example of police trying to get away with flagrant abuse as the deputy who left an unresisting suspect with broken bones and torn ligaments sought immunity, claiming he didn't use excessive force. That One Guy won most insightful comment of the week by pointing out how insane and disturbing this is on every level:

If this is how they treat someone who /isn't/ putting up a fight...

Broken leg, bruised bloody and battered face, permanent muscle damage, and how does the cop in question and his precinct respond?

By claiming that he didn't use excessive force.

Just think about what they are claiming here. They're honestly arguing that broken bones and permanent bodily harm is seen by at the very least one precinct as acceptable, for the 'heinous' crime of unintentionally spitting a cigarette in the general direction of an officer.

Yet again the police show why you would have to be an utter fool to trust them, or even want them anywhere near you.

Meanwhile, Universal Music was employing its own brand of excessive force with a series of anti-piracy ads depicting the severed extremities of artists supposedly destroyed by piracy. With a double-win, we've got That One Guy again, this time comparing the campaign to other famously ineffective attempts to brainwash kids:

D.A.R.E. to download a car

Funny thing about 'educational' campaigns like this: Kids are actually pretty good at spotting lies and ridiculous hyperbole, and they don't respond well to either.

Telling kids that trying drugs(or downloading music) just once is enough to ruin your life(or the career of a musician) works great as a scare tactic... right up until they see someone who has tried drugs and seems to be just fine, or see a musician who is absolutely swimming in money, despite the constant claims about how piracy is 'destroying music'.

At that point, most of them are going to realize that they've been lied to, and it won't matter if some of what you told them was in fact true, your credibility is now destroyed, and at best they'll probably ignore anything you have to say from that point onward, whether drug or piracy related.

Remember, just because it works on politicians doesn't mean it will work on children, as the latter group is much smarter and and much more able to spot when they're being lied to.

The RIAA was waging its own war against piracy, futilely targeting BitTorrent while exposing a total misunderstanding of how the technology works. From there we get our first editor's choice from insightful — an anonymous comment that scored high on the funny side of things as well:

Dear Mr Shipbuilder

We have noticed that you make schooners. Schooners are sometimes used by pirates. Please add this technology to your schooners that will render them unusable by pirates (and most other users).

Next, we head to the insane suggestion from NSA supporters that Apple's encryption could be material support of terrorism based on the fact that they could reasonably foresee the risk of encryption aiding terrorist groups. Chris Brand expertly turned this idea around:

"Reasonable and foreseeable risk"

So we know that identity theft and the like happen all the time. By this argument, if my iPhone gets hacked and I suffer a loss, I can go after Apple for *not* encrypting the data, because they made it easier for the hackers.

For first place on the funny side, we return to Universal's gruesome campaign where Michael found a deeper level of irony:

Artists that cut off their ear never amount to anything.

For second place, we cycle back round to the story of police violence, where a commenter adopting the moniker Deputy Burgess offered a parody of the sort of defense you so often hear from officers and police apologists:

go fuck yourselves

hey people, you don't know the stress of my job. For all I know his cigarette might have contained explosives ricin or child porn, or all three. Think of the danger the public could have been in if he had succeeded. His own actions led to my prompt response in protecting the community and had I not succeeded, the result could have been 9/11 times a thousand. So fuck y'all and Bubba lets go out tonight and keep America free.

For editor's choice, we start by returning one last time to the Universal campaign, where a joke about pirating eyes and fingers led to a discussion about the fact that people absolutely will do that if medical 3D printing is accessible but the necessary blueprints are locked down by copyright. Just Another Anonymous Troll followed this line of thinking to its inevitable and ironic conclusion:

...and it's still copyrighted, so you're a pirate and the RIAA will kick down your door and rip your 3-D printed eye out of your skull, ironically forcing you to wear an eyepatch.

Last but not least, though I never expected a top comment to come from one of our Daily Deals posts, the recent offer of an HDTV antenna led to this Aereo callback that's surely worthy of note:

The cable is only 10 ft long. That is great! I don't want to be involved in any law suits for using an antenna with too long of a cable.

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