Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the copying-encouraged dept

We've got a double-first-place winner this week, in the form of a comment from Loki that snagged the top spot on both the insightful and funny sides. It came in response to Paramount's detail-laden complaint against a Star Trek fan film:

As cults go, Copyrightism is start to make even Scientology look rational and sane.

In the second place spot for insightful, we've got the very first comment on that same post, in which Binko Barnes painted a grim picture of the state of culture under copyright:

We no longer have any common shared culture. In it's place we have corporate owned entertainment vehicles for which we must forever pay for every viewing or interaction. We cannot modify, enrich, build upon nor share these faux cultural artifacts.

The sad thing is that most people just accept this as the proper way of things. They expect to pay for every cultural interaction, they expect to have no control over their own devices or media and they expect to have no freedom to modify or build upon anything.

Corporations are only getting more powerful. So things will continue to get more restrictive and less open. We the people are now just consumer drones instead of culturally active citizens.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with one more comment from that post. This time it's David responding to the notion that Paramount is in the right because the fan film is making its creators money:

So? Copyright carves out the limited (remunerable) rights granted to the creators of a work in return for enriching arts and science.

They don't get to decide that they did not want to enrich arts and science after all.

That's not the deal. It is spelled out just what part of the change their contribution makes to the state of art they are granted the right to cash in on.

It's not everything. For copyright, it's the literal expression they have given their ideas. Not the ideas themselves.

Next, we head to our post about the White House's dawning realization that it might have made a mistake by going after Apple. Whoever took a moment to respond to the absurd refrain that the government only wanted a "conversation":

The government was not interested in a conversation. The government was interested in everyone falling into line with their point of view.

This was a conversation in the same way the people with megaphones at rallies have conversations with their audiences.

Over on the funny side, we've already had our first place winner, so we head straight to second place, which comes in response to another side of the Apple v. FBI fight: the fact that Apple could lose by winning if the next request is much worse. One commenter asked what the public would get out of all this, and another offered a brief inventory:

We the tax payers get reimbursed via a fancy new iOS patch. Features include easier password recovery, Government data-center backups, with possible chances to win a free ride to a state run housing in Cuba.

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out by returning one last time to the Star Trek War (not to be confused with the Star Wars Trek) where Mr. Big Content reminded us of the slippery slope:

A Little Fair Use Here, A Little Fair Use There ...

... pretty soon youre talking REAL infringement.

And finally, we head all the way back to last week's comments post, where David (not sure if it's the same David...) took a quote about derivation, and derived a new version for our anti-derivative legal landscape:

If I have seen further, it is by having standing to sue giants with shoulders in my line of sight.

That's all for this week, folks!

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