Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the better-late-than-never dept

Sorry for the late post, everyone! A glitch crept into our admin system and I was unable to access the leaderboards for most of the day. But now, without further delay, our top comments of the week...

First place on the insightful side is a simple, no-nonsense response from Mononymous Tim to a fired cop's complaints about public release of his body camera footage turning people against him:

It's called accountability. Deal with it!!

In second place, we've got a proposal from That One Guy for a way to fix the civil asset forfeiture system:

How to fix the problem in five minutes:

'Any seized property and/or money without proper, verifiable documentation tracking who it was taken from, when it was seized, and the legal justification for the seizure shall be considered to have been acquired illegally.

The property/funds shall be immediately transferred to a neutral third party, which shall hold on to it for a period of six months, during which members of the public may present evidence to demonstrate that they were the previous owners of a given pieces of property. Any property left unclaimed after this period has expired shall be liquidated, and the resulting funds shall be transferred in their entirety to the public defender's office, to be used to pay the legal fees of those that would otherwise be unable to do so.'

Wouldn't be perfect(those that couldn't provide proper documentation would still be screwed, but I'm really not sure how to get around that offhand), but it would remove the NYPD's main motivation for stealing anything they can get their hands on, and provide a good motivation not to do so at the same time.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with a response from takitus to the sneaky choice by copyright trolls to start calling settlement offers "fines":

I’d imagine most people think of a “fine” as something they’re required (by a government or other authority) to pay as a form of punishment, whereas a settlement suggests a negotiated, voluntary agreement between parties. By replacing the latter term with the former, these letters suggest that the recipient has already been tried and found guilty.

I’m sure this choice of language was completely accidental...

Next, we've got a story from ShadowNinja suggesting that the main reason ISPs don't want to have to provide more accurate broadband maps is that they are just really bad at it:

Story time, I think part of why the ISP's don't like this is because they're so incompetent that their own internal maps are wrong.

Years ago the business I worked at wanted to upgrade to get Verizon FIOS. But we were told repeatedly that it wasn't available in our area. This was despite the fact that:

• Our next door neighbor, a dental office, already had FIOS.
• We could clearly see the FIOS boxes outside of our window on the cable lines.

After some arguing with them over the phone we finally got them to send a technician out, to verify that their maps were wrong and we could get FIOS.

But the best part? A few years later we got a knock on our door from a Verizon salesman, asking us if we wanted to upgrade to the FIOS we already had!

So yes, despite them having several years to fix their maps, and being told by us that FIOS was available in the area, and despite the fact that we were paying for it, Verizon was incompetent enough to send a salesman to our door offering to sell it to us.

Over on the funny side, both our winners came in response to the Canadian couple that is suing their neighbour for building a similarly designed house to their own. The first place winner is an anonymous commenter who was quickest to the comments with a healthy dose of eye-rolling sarcasm:

They copied other things too

Both homes have walls, roofs and floors clearly copying the first. They also have lawns, use outside air and have water and electrical incorporated right into the home itself.

Madness.

Next thing you know, they will be installing a driveway, walkway and wait... They already copied those too. Those bastards are going to pay now.

Some people really need to just be barred from every using the court to demonstrate their insanity. Maybe they should be wearing a helmet and bite guard to prevent the online assaults that they deserve for bringing a lawsuit like this in the first place.

And the second place winner was a different anonymous commenter with an entirely different kind of joke:

It's an infringing day in the neighbourhood, an infringing day in the neighbourhood, and won't you be my plaintiff...

For editor's choice on the funny side, we've got two more responses to the effort by ISPs to silence calls for more accurate broadband maps. Orbitalinsertion proposed a shortcut solution:

Maybe the FCC should just ask the NSA. Those ISPs have already handed over everything to them.

But I think this anonymous commenter had the most efficient suggestion:

A truly accurate map would just be the United States, shaded in all one color, with the key reading "Not Good Enough."

That's all for this week, folks!

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