Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the you-said-it dept

This week we've got a rare double winner, with both of our top comments on the insightful side coming from the same person on the same post — about the IFPI taking down Twitch streams for having music in the background. One commenter asked what streamers are supposed to do, leading another to supply a three-point list of options for licensed music, which PaulT extended to win first place for insightful:

4. Get your account blocked anyway because the IFPI's bots incorrectly identified what you're playing, and/or don't understand that you already paid for the licence.

But, prior to that, Paul also had a longer response which took second place:

The easier way is for them to just not play music. This is the equivalent of having a radio on in the background while you're talking to somebody, they're not going to jump through legal hoops for the people threatening to ruin their livelihood for that.

"It shouldn't be all that expensive for streamers to get a license."

I suggest you have a look around. From my understanding, you need to pay at least 2 agencies with lists of exactly what you played, and then the automated bots don't check for compliance anyway (if you're even playing music the requires a licence in the first place). One podcast I listen to regularly is always complaining that their musical intervals are being muted on YouTube even though they're fully paid up with licensing.

It's a mess, and since these things always err on the side of caution (they're rather block someone for playing music that's allowed vs not blocking someone who's infringing), you can comply fully and still get screwed. Better not to even try.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with a reaction from That Anonymous Coward to the latest instance of egregious police misbehavior. It's been said before, but it needs to keep on being said:

Few bad apples...

They tell us the cops job is hard & dangerous...
Yet more citizens end up dead than cops during encounters between the two.
We give them cameras to remove any doubt they acted responsibly... magically they break down, fail, erase things, accidentally record cops creating video evidence, record cops bad behavior... but its the techs fault not that some departments had cameras that were broken, fixed, and less than 1 day later dead again.

Perhaps it is time to stop giving cops an inch, cause they've just about finished the run to Marathon from all of the passes they've been given.

Cops say if citizens don't follow the little laws (which they always use as a pretext to get the drug dog so they can steal your car) bigger crimes follow. Perhaps no one considered when you let the little rules slide for cops they are more likely to behave like a gang, terrorizing people at will.

Next, we've got a comment from Toom1275 about the problems with Swedish copyright law, because if we're going to call infringement "theft" then turnabout is fair play:

When Copyright becomes used more often to commit theft than to defend from it, perhaps there's a bit of a problem.

As for the funny side, I normally leave out staff comments from these lists, but this week the top winner was Mike responding to a funny anonymous comment — responding to the appeals court ruling allowing copyright on collections of facts — that itself made it to third place on the leaderboard. So we're going to go out of order, and highlight that comment first as an editor's choice:

Here is a compilation of all my favorite articles from Techdirt:

::Lists every article they have ever published::

I now own Techdirt. Sorry, Mike.

Mike rocketed to first place for funny with his one-word reply:

Shit.

In second place, we've got a response from Mason Wheeler to our observation that the game we helped design to start nuanced conversations instead of Twitter hysteria just led to Twitter hysteria:

You expected the Twits to not act like twits?

And, for our final editor's choice on the funny side, we've got discordian_eris responding to China's censorship of John Oliver for the crime of comparing the president to Winnie the Pooh:

HBOs comment on this was simply "Oh bother".

That's all for this week, folks!

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  • icon
    Hugo Connery (profile), 1 Jul 2018 @ 4:05pm

    One of the best of all time:

    > Here is a compilation of all my favorite articles from Techdirt:
    >
    > ::Lists every article they have ever published::
    >
    > I now own Techdirt. Sorry, Mike.

    A creatively curated copywrong.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 1 Jul 2018 @ 5:57pm

    Kiwi Reply To Trademark Bully

    What happened when a German company tried to lean on a local business over its use of the phrase “Hello Fresh”.

    Haven’t heard how it turned out, though...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 Jul 2018 @ 8:38pm

    Police break the same laws that they are pulling people over for without a 2nd though. They will turn their high beams and spotlight into oncoming traffic blinding drivers 'for their safety'. I can sit outside any cop shop in this country and watch as every single officer breaks the law. You can even record it and turn it in, but they will refuse to watch or do anything unless you are willing to go sit in an interrogation room. The only faith I have in police is they will chicken out when needed leaving you in distress and/or killed (Let those kids get murdered while the cop hit, let people get stabbed on the subway and do nothing, refuse to respond to someone with a protective order being attacked by the person the judge wrote the order on, etc. etc. etc.) and will always be there when you don't need them, to escalate a nothing situation into something life ruining for someone. Either shoot them or arrest them for BS things.

    They are so worthless that time and time again when towns and communities get sick of their police behaving badly and fire the police their property and violent crime go way down. I realize that correlation and causation are not the same things but lower crime is correlated with having few or no police seeming to follow that if you fire police your crime rate drops. Things that make you go hmmmmmmmm

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
    identicon
    John Smith, 2 Jul 2018 @ 1:16am

    Self-referential articles making yourself the story

    Classic sign of amateur journalists, right up there with snark, slanted language, etc.

    "Techdirt history" or comments on Techdirt are NOT news. It's na attempt to inject onself into the news as a subtle form of classism.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      MathFox, 2 Jul 2018 @ 1:55am

      Re: Self-referential articles making yourself the story

      Why should everything that's published on Techdirt be news? One part of Techdirt is the reader community that can add its opinions to the comment section. A weekly review of the comments is part of Techdirt's way of maintaining community relations.

      A review of what was in the news <x> years ago allows an interested intelligent reader to spot trends and draw conclusions about areas where "the same mess still exists after <x> years" and other areas where there is progress.

      If you don't like either of these postings, you're free to skip them.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 2 Jul 2018 @ 3:40am

      Re: Self-referential articles making yourself the story

      Sounds like someone's jealous that his RIAA hero worship is considered neither funny nor insightful.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 2 Jul 2018 @ 4:07am

      Re: Classic sign of amateur journalists

      And remember folks, you heard that from a Pullet Surprise nominee!

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 2 Jul 2018 @ 5:05am

        Re: Re: Classic sign of amateur journalists

        Pullet Surprise

        Sounds like some kind of fish stew. What's the secret ingredient?

        link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 2 Jul 2018 @ 5:14am

      Re: Self-referential articles making yourself the story

      I think TD needs to add another category:

      "Stupidest comments of the week"

      Though that may be counter productive and encourage the idiots.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        That One Guy (profile), 2 Jul 2018 @ 5:34am

        It does in a way, you vote for that category with the red button, it's just the votes aren't tallied at the end of the week.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • icon
          Toom1275 (profile), 2 Jul 2018 @ 5:42am

          Re:

          Well we've managed to get mynamehere, I think, mentioned in the year-end review under the "Funny" category, though it was because we were laughing so much at him.

          link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Ninja (profile), 3 Jul 2018 @ 8:07am

      Re: Self-referential articles making yourself the story

      And of course John Smith should be the arbiter of what people decide to showcase on their own site that built their own community around, right?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 Jul 2018 @ 7:39am

    Funniest is what you don't see: the Week In Review and ZOMBIES!

    Hope the Review gone for good. By which I intend to goad Masnick into keeping it, which will circularly convince him it's too much effort, but then he won't want me hooting it when does lapse... One of these day, kids, you're going to click on Techdirt and it'll be frozen. Been running on Masnick's wrong notions, no matter how many court decisions against "file sharing", it's just stubbornness for 20 years now.

    Anyhoo, on the zombie front, after I think zombie-free the week prior, up to three that I noticed:

    This one keeps plugging along low key, apparently on notion that has enough comment no will check its early history:

    Advocate (to Keisar Betancourt and back!): 91 (9) SIX YEAR GAP from 2007 https://www.techdirt.com/user/advocate

    Similarly a ten-year-old account creeping up on 2 comments average per year:

    Andrew or Andrew Duane: 17 (1) 6 year gap; Jan 7th, 2008 https://www.techdirt.com/user/andrewlduane

    This one sneaked out again, has total of 49 months NOT commenting:

    Draph91 or "no" (thrice): 31 (5), 32 & 17 month gaps 1st page 11 Apr 2012 https://www.techdirt.com/user/draph91

    Three inexplicable "accounts" -- all blithely supportive of course, the zombies are remarkably uniform in views -- but still far fewer than the peak.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Ninja (profile), 3 Jul 2018 @ 8:08am

      Re: Funniest is what you don't see: the Week In Review and ZOMBIES!

      Dude, you need medical attention. This is not healthy.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 Jul 2018 @ 7:48am

    Techdirt makes itself the story, then congratulates itself!

    The fanboys then play it up.

    The weekend "Funnies" have always been the silliest part of Techdirt, not only for the feeble humor which they vote up -- only among the faithful -- but a blatant Mutual Admiration Society where validate themselves -- because no one else will.

    And as shown above, if the kids don't like your opinion even though fine under common law, they censor it! There's no up votes even possible in the rigged "voting system", nor will Masnick ever state whether an Administrator makes final decision.

    The "hiding" is unique in my knowledge and is due to Masnick wanting to say doesn't censor while censoring.

    Weirdest site on teh internets.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 2 Jul 2018 @ 8:45pm

      Re:

      There once was an out of the blue
      Who hated the process of due
      Each film that he'd paid
      Was DMCAed
      And shoved up his ass with a screw

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    ECA (profile), 2 Jul 2018 @ 11:44am

    I wonder..

    What are the requirements to Make a IP/CR of most music..??

    Do they REALLY need an Original recording, or Just a couple people signing a contract, saying WE GIVE YOU THE RIGHTS??

    If its the former...WE ARE SCREW'D..
    If its the first, I WANT to see and play the ORIGINAL..
    *how many originals have been lost, burned, sold, and they DONT have the prerequisites to have tyhe IP/CR..

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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