Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the the-not-so-fun-police dept

This week, in response to our post about Playboy suing BoingBoing for linking to a collection of centerfold pictures, one commenter suggested they should have known they crossed a "proverbial line in the sand" that would draw legal attention, leading an anonymous responder to win first place on the insightful side by pointing out why that, in and of itself, is the problem:

You’ve just described the “chilling effect” you get a silver star. To go for the gold, describe in one paragraph why this is a bad thing.

In second place, we've got a short, sweet and perfect response from Rich Kulawiec to the latest example of a company bricking devices because it doesn't want to support them anymore:

One more time, for the slow learners

If your device depends on someone's cloud service, then it's not YOUR device.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we've got a pair of responses to bad cops. First, it's freedomfan responding to the deputy who shot a family's terrier and complained about the cost of the bullet:

Two things. First, someone sincerely claiming that he feared for his safety when "attacked" by a twelve-pound rat terrier isn't suited for police work. Full stop. Policing is a job where officers need to respond with restraint to serious threats. Responding with deadly force to a minuscule (in every since) threat like this shows a disqualifying inability to assess threats.

[Some would doubt that the tiny-dog-killing cop was sincere. Perhaps so. There are certainly people with an irrational fear of dogs. But, it's also true that cops are trained to put certain words in a police report when they have discharged a weapon. Either way (irrationally fearful of commonplace things or lying in a police report), they should be fired.]

Second, what attitude did this cop have when he did this? For certain, his attitude was not, "I work for these people and this is their pet." In other words, the "Serve" part of Protect and Serve was missing from his attitude.

This I'm-in-charge attitude is too commonplace at all levels of government, from law enforcement to politicians. They forget our fundamental civics: In America, we elect our servants, not our rulers. The same is true for non-elected public servants; we are paying these people to serve us, not to be our bosses. They think that the badge signifies that they are in charge in any situation and that everyone else is supposed to obey them, making with the yessirs and nosirs. Except in cases where a serious threat exists (which was not the case here), those servants have it reversed. Until people wake up and demand that their servants act the part, the dog-killings, the beatings, the forced cavity searches, the head stompings, etc. will continue.

Next, it's Anonymous Anonymous Coward with a response to the cop who lost immunity after shooting and headstomping an injured suspect:

Cop: I am allowed to do anything I wan't in order to get home for dinner.

District Court: OK

Appeals Court: No your not, and to boot this appeal has to be paid for by the public, maybe or maybe not sorry for that last.

Where in the hell was the District Courts head at? Where in the hell was the cop's head at? Why is this type of behavior continued to be allowed?

The answers come from where the supervisors and managers and therefore the trainers of the cops involved heads are at, as well as the District Court's thinking, as well as the rest of the organizations that comprise 'officialdom' of the police estate.

Their purpose is not to kill and/or stomp the heads of anyone they suspect, but to bring them to the halls of justice where by the US Constitution they are considered innocent until proven guilty. Full stop. Innocent until PROVEN guilty by a court (and usually with a jury of the defendants peers), and a court that does not take the police at their word but requires evidence, that at least in theory, requires more than the officers word.

Over on the funny side, our first place comment comes in response to the accusations against David Boies regarding a spy operation against Weinstein's accusers, which included an investigator under the alias "Diana Filip", with the story prompting Boies to claim "that is not who I am." Roger Strong wasn't really buying it:

Uh huh. And I'm sure that "Diana Filip" will claim "I'm a different person now."

In second place on the funny side, we have a comment from McGyver regarding the DOJ finally dropping its case against the protestor who laughed during Jeff Sessions' confirmation hearing:

If laughter is the best medicine, then someone has to control it and overcharge for it... You can't just be laughing out loud for free...?

In this case look at the harm it did to poor Jeff Sessions...

He'll never be the same... I bet he wakes up at night in a cold sweat thinking of that laughter.

What we need is for the Republicans to set up a task force to understand this laugher crisis and how it is unsettling our wise and benevolent leaders...

They should first ask Hollywood or Disney to write the laws on this so we care be sure it's fair and doesn't disrupt their profit margins...

Then they should go after all unlicensed comics and and funny people that instigate wonton merriment and destructive humor.

We'll then need a well funded Bureau of Laughter, Humor and Levity to be immediately set up to control this problem. Think of the children.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with an anonymous response to Taylor Swift's legal threats against a blogger:

Trying to silence a critic is one thing...

But demanding that she invents a time machine to retract her statements? That's going a bit too far, methinks.

And finally, we return to the story about the DOJ dropping its "laughter" case, where Capt ICE Enforcer was surprised by a key realization:

My child was right.

Wow, I guess there is a thing called the Fun Police...

That's all for this week, folks!

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