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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Reader Comments
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One of the best of all time:
>
> ::Lists every article they have ever published::
>
> I now own Techdirt. Sorry, Mike.
A creatively curated copywrong.
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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...
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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
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Self-referential articles making yourself the story
"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.
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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.
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Re: Self-referential articles making yourself the story
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Re: Classic sign of amateur journalists
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Re: Re: Classic sign of amateur journalists
Sounds like some kind of fish stew. What's the secret ingredient?
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Re: Self-referential articles making yourself the story
"Stupidest comments of the week"
Though that may be counter productive and encourage the idiots.
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Re: Re: Re: Classic sign of amateur journalists
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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.
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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.
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Funniest is what you don't see: the Week In Review and ZOMBIES!
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.
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Techdirt makes itself the story, then congratulates itself!
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.
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I wonder..
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..
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Re:
Who hated the process of due
Each film that he'd paid
Was DMCAed
And shoved up his ass with a screw
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Re: Self-referential articles making yourself the story
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Re: Funniest is what you don't see: the Week In Review and ZOMBIES!
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