Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the that'll-be-thirty-dollars-please dept

This week, we reported on a German court declaring adblockers legal for the fifth time, and sparked a discussion about online advertising that contained our two most insightful comments of the week. It makes us happy to see first place go to That Anonymous Coward for his take on Techdirt's approach to advertising:

The big difference is TD doesn't value ad revenue over the users. Rather than waste time making demands, you politely asked while at the same time offering an easy opt out system. TD got whitelisted by a bunch of people who ad-block everywhere, because it wasn't a battle.

TD is aware of how shitty and invasive some ad offerings are, and magically the ads served up aren't giant take over blaring music crap. Its almost like you took a look at the web, saw all the crap users hate, and went out of your way to avoid doing that.

I wonder how many of these newspaper moguls have browsed their own offerings on a stock web browser. I'd love to see video of their faces when they see what they are putting their customers through to get a few cents.

Sometimes it is better to ask nicely and do your best to offer ads that aren't invasive.

The second place comment came from an anonymous commenter with an explanation of his attitudes towards ads in general:

Ad industries never cared what I wanted. They never asked permission to use my bandwidth, they just took it.

Now I don't care what the ad industry wants. I'm taking my preferences without consideration to what they wish.

They've made their bed and are unhappy with it. I don't see them trying to do serious changes so they are not getting it yet.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with another anonymous comment, this time noting one particular aspect of a Swedish court's copyright ruling against Wikipedia:

Love this part, apparently WikiPedia provides no value

"A database of this kind can be deemed to have a commercial value that is not inconsiderable,” the supreme court said in a statement. The court rules that the copyright-holders have the right to absorb this value."

This part is great. So a database, website, search mechanism, etc. provide no additional value. All of the value belongs to the copyright holder. This is the same mindset that movie studios and music labels have, that the content is 100% of the value and the platform that brings this content to the consumer provides no value. Frankly I think the net should be scrubbed of all of this stuff and let it no longer be spoken of. When nobody comes to see the artwork, listen to the music or watch the movie, the creators will be clamoring for some way to get notices.

Next, we've got Blaine responding to our thoughts on the Burr/Feinstein encryption bill and its bizarre opening about respecting the rule of law, which we thought wasn't the point at all:

Oh, but it is

"This is not about disrespecting the rule of law..."

If this law or any like it pass, I will have a tremendous amount of disrespect for the rule of law.

(I am already maxed out on my disrespect for these specific lawmakers.)

Over on the funny side, our first place winner comes in response to a story about hackers having a massive impact on the elections in certain countries, which led anonymous Dutch coward to wonder about some homegrown election problems:

OMG! Trump doesn't exist. He is just some sort of Bolivian malware!

In second place, after we highlighted a study suggesting the "kids these days" are in fact getting in much less trouble than kids in the 90s, William Fresh stood up and attested to that fact:

Very true. My buddies and I caused a lot of trouble in our block. A low point was when we picked a fight with some skinny kid who just wanted to play basketball out by the playground. It really wasn't much, but his mother was so frightened, that she moved him out to live with some relatives out west.

For editor's choice on the funny side, we've got a pair of comments responding to how broadband providers have been dealing with privacy. First, it's DannyB with some pushback on our criticism of Comcast for opposing privacy regulations:

Comcast is in good company here. And with good reason.

Imposing regulations upon Comcast to protect consumer privacy would be like regulating big chemical plants to prevent water pollution. Or the silly idea of regulating plants to prevent air polution! This would impose unwarranted burdensome requirements upon business that would diminish profits from huge to merely large.

Comcast shouldn't be regulated any more than other poor struggling ISPs. Imagine if Verizon had to actually build out the landline infrastructure they promised? Or if AT&T had to let customers use all the bandwidth they actually paid for? This could destroy the global economy!

Shouldn't TechDirt be a 'pro business' site?

This message brought to you by Big Lobbyist from Big Mega Corp which personally approved this message.

Finally, we've got Ninja with some brainstorming inspired by AT&T's $30 privacy fee:

Since they are being obnoxious, specially because they can, why not introduce more fees?

- $30 to use premium customer service (read: any customer service at all)
- $30 for not throttling the connection during peak times (along with the $30 to remove the caps of course)
- $30 not to throttle you during non-peak times (because hey, why not?)
- $30 not to receive incessant marketing calls and mail about their awesome $30 tiers
- $30 for the privilege of not incurring in hidden fees (transparency fee)
- $30 to avoid rogue technicians from cutting your cable randomly

Go on. At this point why not test the limits on how toothless the regulatory efforts are?

That's all for this week, folks!

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