Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the your-words dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous commenter responding to the claim that the Blurred Lines ruling isn't a problem because lots of songs are not similar:

I'm not sure you understand.

Similar songs are what's called a genre, because they all share basic similarities in structure, composition, and 'feel' or 'groove'. You can instantly identify a rock and roll song from a jazz song because they have different similarities. Rock and roll was born out of a few different artists all riffing off each other and other styles to create something new. If making similar songs was illegal back then, rock and roll would have died in the 50s.

If it's now illegal to create a new song that feels or sounds similar to another song, you've just made music genre's illegal and automatically outlawed somewhere around 75% of all music on the market today because it all builds off songs, styles, and artists that came before them.

As an example, consider the I–V–vi–IV chord progression. It's extremely common in a lot of songs but would likely now be illegal because it gives songs built off of it a similar feel. In fact several comedians have built routines off of this and other chord groupings.

Another famous example that comes to mind is Pachelbel's Canon. Do you have any idea of the sheer amount of songs and music that are based off of or riff off of that work? It's used in many works from artists as varied as Trans-Siberian Orchestra to Vitamin C.

TD isn't spreading FUD, it's actually pretty on point.

In second place, we've got another anonymous commenter with a thought on our post about Craigslist becoming the first victim of SESTA:

Slight correction

Mike, Craigslist was the 2nd victim. Common Sense was the first one.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we've got another comment about SESTA, this time from PaulT responding to the claim that fixing the law's problems would harm Hollywood:

Even if it actually did significantly harm Hollywood, would you rather have the major studios harmed or the victims of sex trafficking? Hell, there's a fair argument that the activities of some of the studios is leading to some of the trafficking in the first place! I'd bet that the fallout from Weinstein's activities have revealed some involvement in some way, at the very least.

For an issue that's so regularly been based on emotional rather than factual arguments, it does seem like a strange tactic to try getting people to root for the major corporations here. I'd love to think it's because they've finally realised that they're being called out on how much it would harm actual victims if passed, but I'm not confident that's actually getting said outside of sites like this.

And finally, we've got a response from Daydream to the story that dominates things on the funny side, about the YouTuber who faces hate speech charges in Scotland for training his girlfriend's dog to act like a nazi:

It seems to me that these prosecutors sending people to jail for teaching a dog politically incorrect tricks, are the real ones causing fear and stirring up hatred.

It was Gary who took first place on the funny side with his response to that same story:

Wrong Target

Why hasn't the dog been charged?

Next, we drop slightly out of our usual order to slip in our first editor's choice for funny, since ShadowNinja had a good response:

Because he was just following orders.

In second place on the funny side, it's ryuugami with another take on the prankster's situation:

On the plus side

There's no better way to annoy a girlfriend than having to spend a year in prison for doing something stupid.

Last but not least, we move away from that post for one more editor's choice, which actually racked up precisely equal votes for both insightful and funny. It's That One Guy with a bit of a script-flip on the idea of video games causing violence:

'I reject your studies and substitute my self-rightousness'

Nah, I've saved several kingdoms, planets, even a galaxy or two, that's plenty to 'sooth the last pangs of conscience' over killing digital people.

(Understanding the difference between fantasy and reality might help too, but I'm sure it's of negligible importance in comparison.)

After all, if ending a digital 'life' is supposed to be something to feel guilty over, then saving one should more than make up for it, especially given the difference in scope.

That's all for this week, folks!

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