Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

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from the laugh-and-think dept

Sun, Sep 18th 2016 12:00pm — Leigh Beadon

This week, we noticed that despite Hollywood's constant insistence that it should be easy to use technology to block infringement, they couldn't even manage to secure their own screener copies of movies. Our first place winner for insightful was an anonymous commenter who summed it up pretty simply:

You'd be amazed at what feels easy if you're not the guy doing it.

Meanwhile, it appears Univision wasted no time in going full-corporate with its new Gawker property, by deleting six stories from the site over legal threats. Nate won second place for insightful by hatching an evil plan:

So basically I could silence all Gawker sites simply by writing a bot which threatened a lawsuit over each and every post?

That's scary.

P.S. It occurs to me that I wouldn't even need to code a bot; I think I could pull this off using only IFTTT.

Relatedly, our first editor's choice on the insightful side goes to IP Lawyer for pointing out something important about Gizmodo's bizarre attempt to declare cord-cutting over:

Gizmodo, now owned by television giant Univision.

Next, we've got a harsh-but-true anonymous response to the campaign to get the president to pardon Snowden:

If Snowden was a bankster, a torturer or a war criminal then he might have a chance. Obama hunts down whistleblowers. He doesn't pardon them.

Over on the funny side, we start out on our post about the latest DMCA takedown misfire, which this time saw Paramount shutting down a totally legitimate Ubuntu torrent as part of a bunch of takedowns for Transformers: Age of Extinction. Another anonymous commenter won first place for funny by musing on a possible explanation:

Maybe there's a lesser known Transformer by the name of "Ubuntu" that's made from open source car materials?

In second place, we've got Dheneb expanding on the notion that mandating encryption backdoors is like mandating holes in body armor:

That's OK. All you have to do is label those holes on the outside with something like "HOLE FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT USE ONLY" so that the bad guys will know not to aim there.

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with a response from Roger Strong to John McCain's shaming of Twitter at a Senate cybersecurity hearing:

Old Man Yells At Cloud (Services)

And finally, after a commenter suggested that lawyers should be outlawed, TechDescartes served up a classic rejoinder:

Yes, but then only outlaws will have lawyers.

That's all for this week, folks!

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18 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 18 Sep 2016 @ 12:38pm

no sympathy here
Meanwhile, it appears Univision wasted no time in going full-corporate with its new Gawker property, by deleting six stories from the site over legal threats. Nate won second place for insightful by hatching an evil plan:

mike there are a lot of things that are wrong with the world. a site that posted a girls rape while her dad begged them to take it down for weeks until the head editor told them to stop is not one of them.

nick gawker employees all. if you by some 1 in a million chance ever saw this: you got what you deserved.
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- Anonymous Coward, 18 Sep 2016 @ 12:50pm
  
  Re: no sympathy here
  I still haven't heard or seen proof that it was an actual rape, despite that claim being repeated. The woman in the video asked them to take it down at least initially because it was stolen and involved bad decisions. She didn't seem to have alleged rape. The best I can guess is that people have surmised that since alcohol was involved, it might technically be rape, but I've seen no actual claims that this is so from someone with legal expertise or from the woman in the video herself or a representative.
  
  If you're actually concerned with people posting inappropriate things, you might want to make sure you have proof it was rape before you post about it.
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- Anonymous Coward, 18 Sep 2016 @ 1:20pm
  
  Re: no sympathy here
  There are two approaches to dealing with material you find disturbing, ignore it or try and censor it. Freedom of speech requires that you support other expressing themselves even when you find that speech distasteful or upsetting, while censorship gives power to those who wish to manipulate society for their own selfish ends.
  The likes of Gawker does far less damage to society than enabling corporations and governments to keep hidden health hazards, and government sponsored violence and torture.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 18 Sep 2016 @ 2:13pm
    
    Re: Re: no sympathy here
    Yes I should just ignore a site whos greatest asset to journalism was holding a rape story above a victims head taunting her and giving us such great feats of journalism in action such as what horse would hulk hogan ####? And other such clickbait.
    
    They did not try to be careful around a minefield they jumped around it and acted suprised when it exploded.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 18 Sep 2016 @ 5:00pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: no sympathy here
      That's the thing. It doesn't matter if it's Gawker posting a sex tape or the Westboro Baptist Church protesting with anti-gay messages. The answer to bad speech is more speech. Drown them out rather than try to shut them up.
      
      Today it's Gawker. Tomorrow it's a news organization that you actually care about.
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      - Anonymous Coward, 19 Sep 2016 @ 4:35am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: no sympathy here
        Often the better answer is to ignore them totally, as speaking out against them directly acts to drive more attention to their message..
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  - Thad, 19 Sep 2016 @ 2:35pm
    
    Re: Re: no sympathy here
    There are two approaches to dealing with material you find disturbing, ignore it or try and censor it.
    
    Pretty sure there are more approaches than those two. You could criticize, you could mock and ridicule, you could organize a boycott...
    
    (And before anyone chimes in: no, boycotts aren't censorship, they're a vital part of a free-market system, and a more-speech solution to objectionable speech.)
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Sep 2016 @ 1:02pm

no sympathy here
If you're actually concerned with people posting inappropriate things, you might want to make sure you have proof it was rape before you post about it.

But Gawker reversed itself and removed the entire posting, with Daulerio later admitting to GQ magazine he had regrets because the video “wasn’t funny” and “was possibly rape.”

and that was after they taunted her and the lawyer for them scolded her about how “one’s actions can have unintended consequences.”

so i have tabloid site posting rapes becuase apparently they think its funny and posting sex tapes of old wrestlers screwing others wives and saying racial slurs and generally just being parasites for fun and profit.
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- Kal Zekdor (profile), 18 Sep 2016 @ 2:15pm
  
  Re: no sympathy here
  Well, Gawker is trash, that's not being disputed. These reactionary take-downs aren't going to help with that image in the slightest, though. In fact, it just makes it worse, making horrible posts but not having the guts to stand by what you said. If they want to not be considered trash, they need some real editorial oversight, so that they stop posting this shit in the first place.
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- Anonymous Coward, 18 Sep 2016 @ 5:03pm
  
  Re: no sympathy here
  "Possibly rape" doesn't equal "rape." And I won't defend Gawker posting it because I don't think it was newsworthy or ethical.
  
  But if you continue to use the term rape when you have no proof that it was actually (not "possibly") rape, the credibility of your criticism suffers.
  
  Also, use the reply button under the comment you want to reply to. It makes more sense.
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- Anonymous Coward, 19 Sep 2016 @ 12:05am
  
  Re: no sympathy here
  In which no one actually looks at the posts that were taken down, which were true and noteworthy. A couple being about that guy who claims to have invented email, but actually didn't.
  
  Techdirt also wrote about him. I suppose Techdirt should also be be legally harassed into deleting all the posts about Shiva Ayyadurai.
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Whatever, 19 Sep 2016 @ 1:11am

Another week of censorship! None of my comments made it, as usual, because all the flies keep insisting on shouting me down. What a bastion of freedom of speech, Masnick.
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- techflaws (profile), 19 Sep 2016 @ 2:54am
  
  jackass
  https://xkcd.com/1357/
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- Anonymous Coward, 19 Sep 2016 @ 4:51am
  
  Re:
  horse with no name just hates it when due process is enforced.
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  - Wendy Cockcroft (profile), 20 Sep 2016 @ 6:02am
    
    Re: Re:
    He sodded off a long time ago, AC.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 20 Sep 2016 @ 6:07am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      Actually no, Whatever is horse with no name under another pseudonym.
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- Anonymous Coward, 20 Sep 2016 @ 7:12pm
  
  Re:
  None of your posts made it? To what am I replying, then?
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Sep 2016 @ 1:40am

"That's OK. All you have to do is label those holes on the outside with something like "HOLE FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT USE ONLY" so that the bad guys will know not to aim there."

...and maybe put some painted paper over the holes so the bad guys will have trouble spotting them...
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