Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the so-they-say dept

Sun, Nov 11th 2018 12:00pm — Leigh Beadon

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That One Guy with an understandably frustrated call for better penalties when cops abuse their power such as the bogus case against a Nevada man recently dismissed by the courts:

'No offloading this to the city, YOUR wallet's on the line.'
If the case is so blatantly, obviously corrupt that the court is willing to state flat out that it's clearly vindictive, sure would be nice if any penalties levied out were levied personally, rather than just another case of 'Let's screw the taxpayers while the guilty party walks.'
Everyone involved, up to and including the judge, should be hit with a hefty financial penalty for their actions here, one directed at them personally. Anything less and the court will once again be making it clear that 'personal responsibility' and 'penalties for abuse of power' are for the little people, and don't apply to those with badges or robes.

In second place, it's an anonymous response to a commenter making the absurd claim that the Mueller investigation "hasn't gotten anywhere near Trump":

Correct. Zero indictments of anything related to Trump.
George Papadopoulos, former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser (aka coffee boy)
Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chair (aka coffee boy)
Rick Gates, a former Trump campaign aide and Manafort’s longtime junior business partner (aka coffee boy)
Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser (coffee boy)
13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies (coffee suppliers)
Richard Pinedo (got caught making coffee wrong)
Alex van der Zwaan (Rick Gates' coffee boy)
Konstantin Kilimnik, longtime business associate of Manafort and Gates (coffee boy)
12 Russian GRU officers (coffee boys)
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer (coffee boy)
Sam Patten, A GOP lobbyist who had worked in some of the same Ukrainian circles as Manafort and alongside Konstantin Kilimnik (coffee boy)
All just coffee-related workers, fetching, pouring, and delivering coffee. Persecuted because fuck coffee.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with Agammamon posing a question to DRM-peddlers:

Someone should ask the Denuvo guys "if each stolen copy is a lost sale, then how come no one made massively more money when you rolled out Denuvo? How come the sales needle barely twitched? In all the years that you've been 'protecting' that release window, how come titles with DRM aren't seeing massively more sales than titles without?"

Along similar lines, we've got PaulT responding to complaints about streaming service password sharing:

"It's people consuming something they haven't paid for."
No, it's not. Your customer has paid to have streaming to their devices. The product is paid for. You don't get to be paid multiple times for the same service because you don't like the way people use it.
If I buy a DVD and then let someone else watch my copy when I've done with it, that doesn't mean that a copy has been pirated. If I give my copy of a newspaper to the next guy in the break room, that doesn't mean a publisher is owed money If I let someone use my car while I'm at work, that doesn't mean a rental company is owed money, It's just the way life works.
If you think that it's not, it's no wonder you're seeing failing business, as you're chasing shadows.
""By the content companies going over the top without having the experience of being distributors, they’ve done that in a way without securing their content"
No, they really haven't. You need a valid login to access the content - *somebody* is paying for that access. According to the account, you will be restricted as to how you can access the content, be that which items are downloadable, how many devices or locations can be streamed from at once, etc. The content itself is secured, you just don't like the fact that someone can pay Netflix to have 3 friends access it simultaneously without collecting an extra ransom.
But, they ARE getting paid for that access.
"The reality is television can be had fairly easy without paying for it."
Welcome to... well, both the advent of free to air television before you were born and the reality of the marketplace you're operating in.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is A Non-Mouse accepting our challenge to insert your own joke about the Satanic Temple's copyright lawsuit against Netflix:

Three copyright trolls walk into a Satanic Temple. Baphomet says "Welcome home!"

In second place, it's an anonymous response to UCLA's latest attack against a critic's website:

Headline
Website critical of UCLA adds additional way in which UCLA sucks with evidence courtesy of UCLA.

For editor's choice on the funny side, first up it's ryuugami with another response to Denuvo's "every download is a lost sale" attitude:

Let's be fair, at least they said "potential" loss.
In other news, my potential loss of revenue from not buying a lottery ticket is at $10,000,000 or so. Can Denuvo help me with that?

And finally, we've got a short anecdote from Thad about people who tell celebrities to stay in their non-politics lane:

My grandma once forwarded me an e-mail ranting about how these Hollywood celebrities should shut up and stay out of politics.
It closed with a quote by President Reagan.

That's all for this week, folks!

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

40 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it

Ronald Turnip, 11 Nov 2018 @ 1:53pm

Covfefe!!!!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it

Anonymous Coward, 11 Nov 2018 @ 2:23pm

at least out_of_the_blue has lost interest in td
be gratful for sm
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Ben (profile), 11 Nov 2018 @ 3:01pm

Re: at least out_of_the_blue has lost interest in td
I wish the people who keep bringing them up would do the same.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 11 Nov 2018 @ 6:05pm

Re: at least out_of_the_blue has lost interest in td
Ha, I wish. Not even close. Which is a shame because we could have gone a week without that schmuck.

At least his blue ass was completely owned as usual.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 11 Nov 2018 @ 7:02pm

Re: Covfefe!!!!
Why was that flagged?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 11 Nov 2018 @ 7:07pm

NRA Tells Doctors To “Stay In Their Lane”
Quoth the NRA:

"Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control. Most upsetting, however, the medical community seems to have consulted NO ONE but themselves."

Fuck the gun nuts.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 11 Nov 2018 @ 7:48pm

Re: NRA Tells Doctors To “Stay In Their Lane”
And the knife nuts.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
nerd bert (profile), 11 Nov 2018 @ 8:46pm

Politician or Actor? Both!

My grandma once forwarded me an e-mail ranting about how these Hollywood celebrities should shut up and stay out of politics.

It closed with a quote by President Reagan

Ironic, but was the quote from when Reagan was a politician or while he was an actor?

And when you think of Reagan, do you think of him as an actor, serviceman, politician, president, anti-communist crusader, or union activist? He was all those things at one point in his life. Even when he was an actor he was involved in politics to at least some degree because his involvement as union president during the McCarthy era.

And I believe my point was more the incredulity of believing that actors' (or in the case of the jibe, musicians') beliefs should have more respect because they come from actors rather than the guys at the local bar. That someone should be instantly change their vote to Breeden because Taylor Swift endorsed him seems pretty ludicrous. Inevitable, but ludicrous.

I find it interesting that Swift broke her political silence to endorse Breeden, but the original article implied that a combination of a good net neutrality position and Swift's endorsement should have pushed him over the line, and that I found laughable. Really, we had an author who was both fan-obsessed and internet-techie obsessed and who seemingly had little connection with what the issues were for most folks. Hint: the state of internet governance and the state of current pop music aren't driving forces for most folks, so Breeden's endorsements and/or good positions on those issues probably gained him twenty or so votes.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Toom1275 (profile), 11 Nov 2018 @ 9:52pm

Re: NRA Tells Doctors To “Stay In Their Lane”
You should never go full Blue.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Bergman (profile), 11 Nov 2018 @ 11:33pm

Re: Re: Covfefe!!!!
Because of who said it, not what was said. Claims by posters like OotB about their posts being hidden without being read aren't completely inaccurate.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Bergman (profile), 11 Nov 2018 @ 11:34pm

Re: NRA Tells Doctors To “Stay In Their Lane”
Fuck the anti-human rights nuts (aka the anti-gun movement).
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Nov 2018 @ 5:10am

Re: Politician or Actor? Both!

Ironic, but was the quote from when Reagan was a politician or while he was an actor?

When did he stop being an actor?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Nov 2018 @ 6:55am

Re: Re: Politician or Actor? Both!
At very least when he was put in his casket.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Thad (profile), 12 Nov 2018 @ 9:09am

Re: Politician or Actor? Both!

Ironic, but was the quote from when Reagan was a politician or while he was an actor?

Well, funny story: he was a Hollywood celebrity, and then he got into politics.

And when you think of Reagan, do you think of him as an actor, serviceman, politician, president, anti-communist crusader, or union activist? He was all those things at one point in his life. Even when he was an actor he was involved in politics to at least some degree because his involvement as union president during the McCarthy era.

He sure was.

And I suspect that most of the people saying "celebrities should keep their mouths shut" didn't feel that way when the celebrity in question was Reagan. Or John Voight, Ted Nugent, Roseanne Barr, Kid Rock, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Donald Trump. My point is that there's a double-standard here.

In my experience, when people say "Celebrities should shut up about politics," what they mean is "unless they agree with me."

And I believe my point was more the incredulity of believing that actors' (or in the case of the jibe, musicians') beliefs should have more respect because they come from actors rather than the guys at the local bar. That someone should be instantly change their vote to Breeden because Taylor Swift endorsed him seems pretty ludicrous. Inevitable, but ludicrous.

Well, I trust that Taylor Swift knows more about the Tennessee race than you do, because she doesn't keep referring to the Democratic candidate as "Breeden".

But I think you're missing the point here. When celebrities speak out about political issues, the goal is not to get existing voters to change their minds. It's to get people who are not politically involved to pay attention to politics.

The point isn't that Taylor Swift knows about politics because she's famous. It's that people are following her Twitter feed because she's famous. And she can use her existing popularity to call attention to issues that her fans may not have thought about before.

I find it interesting that Swift broke her political silence to endorse Breeden, but the original article implied that a combination of a good net neutrality position and Swift's endorsement should have pushed him over the line

No it didn't. Here's the passage you're referring to:

Last minute efforts by Taylor Swift apparently didn't help convince Tennessee voters that Blackburn's not their ally. Neither did Consumer groups efforts to educate Tennessee voters about Blackburn's continued tendency to screw them; an effort that at one point involved crowdfunding billboards posted in Blackburn's home district:

There's no implication there that those things should have swung the election -- only a statement that they didn't.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 12 Nov 2018 @ 10:46am

Re: Fuck the anti-human rights nuts
The right to go about your business without being harassed by the cops is a human right universally recognized in all civilized countries. But when any citizen could potentially be armed, then the cops can claim to be perfectly justified in
- shooting first and asking questions later
- shooting first and asking questions later
- claiming the threat of being shot as an excuse
- (Spotting the pattern yet?) Or how about daring you to exercise your right of “self defence”?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Nov 2018 @ 11:33am

Re: Re: Re: Politician or Actor? Both!
Or was that is greatest act?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 12 Nov 2018 @ 1:50pm

Re: Fuck the anti-human rights nuts
Or use your “right to bear arms” as a private citizen in a way that is frequently touted as a Good Thing, namely to take down someone who is being a danger to the public, only to be shot and killed by the cops for doing so.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Nov 2018 @ 3:05pm

Re: Re: Fuck the anti-human rights nuts
That's got nothing to do with guns. Laquan McDonald only had a knife and Van Dyke shot him 16 times.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
That One Guy (profile), 12 Nov 2018 @ 3:11pm

Re: Re: Covfefe!!!!
A comment comprised of nothing but the title, one that has nothing to do with anything covered by TD, and with a parody name used? I'd think it would be pretty obvious why it was flaggged, it's because it's just a spam/troll post.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Nov 2018 @ 3:13pm

Re: Re: Fuck the anti-human rights nuts
Yeah, and fuck them, too.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
That One Guy (profile), 12 Nov 2018 @ 3:16pm

Uhh, no
People flag Blue's stuff because they've learned from extensive experience that it's a waste of time to read anything they write, and an even bigger waste to try and engage them in an honest conversation, something they have made abundantly clear they have no interest in. Reputations have consequences, and that's one of the consequences from their hard earned reputation.

I'm not sure about others but I myself flagged the comment above because it's basically a drive-by-posting, containing nothing of value and being nothing more than a mindless reference to something irrelevant in almost any context. Spam by any other name.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Thad (profile), 12 Nov 2018 @ 3:27pm

Re: Re: Re: Fuck the anti-human rights nuts

That's got nothing to do with guns. Laquan McDonald only had a knife and Van Dyke shot him 16 times.

I mean, the part where he got shot 16 times had something to do with a gun.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 12 Nov 2018 @ 5:02pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Fuck the anti-human rights nuts
But it had nothing to do with the weapon that McDonald had. So being shot 16 times has nothing to do with gun control or the 2nd amendment.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Definitely not Blue Boy, 12 Nov 2018 @ 6:11pm

Re: Re: Re: Covfefe!!!!
In second place, it's an anonymous response to a commenter making the absurd claim that the Mueller investigation "hasn't gotten anywhere near Trump":

Correct. Zero indictments of anything related to Trump.

George Papadopoulos, former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser (aka coffee boy)

Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chair (aka coffee boy)

Rick Gates, a former Trump campaign aide and Manafort’s longtime junior business partner (aka coffee boy)

Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser (coffee boy)

13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies (coffee suppliers)

Richard Pinedo (got caught making coffee wrong)

Alex van der Zwaan (Rick Gates' coffee boy)

Konstantin Kilimnik, longtime business associate of Manafort and Gates (coffee boy)

12 Russian GRU officers (coffee boys)

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer (coffee boy)

Sam Patten, A GOP lobbyist who had worked in some of the same Ukrainian circles as Manafort and alongside Konstantin Kilimnik (coffee boy)

All just coffee-related workers, fetching, pouring, and delivering coffee. Persecuted because fuck coffee.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Uriel-238 (profile), 12 Nov 2018 @ 6:56pm

The doctors may have a point: Humanity is just stupid.
Let's say for a moment we restrict the shit out of guns.

Law enforcement will still have them. And will still suspect everyone of being a criminal and criminally being armed. And will keep shooting us.

How do we disarm Law Enforcement? We can't even get them to permanently fire their murderers.

Also, so far, Trump and the GOP controlled minority-elected legislature have done a tone of shit which is illegal, unethical, unpopular or any combination thereof.

And they're very confident that the rest of us are going to continue to lie down for it, even when we're homeless, starving and dying out. We're just never going to respond w by force period, though we'll complain as loudly as we can as we die out one by one.

Is that true?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
That One Guy (profile), 13 Nov 2018 @ 6:45am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Covfefe!!!!
Hmm, so there was a link I suppose, though I'd still consider it a drive-by comment given it's all of a name and a title, and nothing else.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 13 Nov 2018 @ 8:55am

"Let's be fair, at least they said "potential" loss.

In other news, my potential loss of revenue from not buying a lottery ticket is at $10,000,000 or so. Can Denuvo help me with that?"

why not what do they have to lose? They will keep the status Quo as long as you pay the base rate and sign this contract saying you will give them a % of any winnings.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Thad (profile), 13 Nov 2018 @ 8:57am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fuck the anti-human rights nuts
I'd say gun culture has rather a lot to do with the frequent "shoot first, ask questions later" approach. But even if it didn't, what's your point? Because a police officer once shot a person who didn't have a gun, that means we shouldn't restrict gun sales to domestic abusers and require background checks at gun shows?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it

O.H. Dear-Gott, 13 Nov 2018 @ 10:18am

CONTEXT is fabricated "Trump-Russia", kids.
Sheesh.

The "Trump-Russia collusion" is entirely fabricated allegations.

Whoever simply confirmed NOWHERE NEAR TRUMP ON THE PRETEXT for Special Prosecutor. By the way, that's rumored to be winding down, but we'll see. Didn't require anything but lies to start.

You kids are fond of saying that prosecutors can indict a ham sandwich, and that people often cave for financial / stress reasons, but of course neither of those apply when your target is Trump, whom you are certain is guilty even though all of you together can't even vaguely specify one crime. You have nothing but Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Oh, and the silly "coffee" refrain doesn't help YOUR cred. Double sheesh. Truly children in bizarro world here.

Intentionally LATE to not give the fanboys a target over the long weekend. -- Then after seeing the first two pieces soo LAME on Tuesday put off again!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 13 Nov 2018 @ 10:58am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fuck the anti-human rights nuts
My point is that the "shoot first ask questions later" or "I feared for my life" approach has less to do with the US citizen's access to guns/gun culture, and more to do with police culture. I don't believe for a second that cops shooting people for any (or no) reason will change even if the US suddenly became significantly more gun-controlled.

In other words, the claim in the comment to which I initially responded, "But when any citizen could potentially be armed, then the cops can claim to be perfectly justified in..." is flawed because this cop-on-citizen violence is not about the gun that Average Citizen may or may not have.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Uriel-238 (profile), 13 Nov 2018 @ 12:00pm

Russian meddling in the 2016 election
It is amazing to me how the fear seeps through. On the left, yes folks presume Trump totally colluded with Putin to rig the 2016 election (and yes, it's established without Russian meddling Clinton likely would have won), but that's because Trump is behaving as if he was guilty as hell.

Also we're willing to wait for the report.

On the right, the impatience for the report is highly suspicious. The attacks on Mueller sound more like efforts to suppress than actual interest in the truth. The right's been parroting Trump's paranoia that Mueller is out to get him rather than determine what happened, who was involved, and if Trumps involvement (even if incidental) rises to the level of High Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Why would you not want to know this? Because you fear it implicates your godhead in the White House? If he's innocent of collusion or obstructing justice, and you're certain of this, then you have nothing to fear from the investigation. Right?

In Bob Woodward's Fear the story suggests that Trump thinks he's innocent of wrongdoing and Dowd believes him. But then (SPOILER) it all comes to a climax when Dowd finally realizes that Trump genuinely cannot tell right from wrong. Trump would think he was innocent even if he had (say) hatcheted a man forty times.Ultimately, Dowd makes the argument to Mueller that Trump is incapable of being deposed without lying. He just can't not lie even when under oath. And Dowd realizes he just made (without saying it outright) the argument for diminished responsibility.

The scary thing about the Mueller report is not that it's going to reveal Trump is a mastermind schemer, but that he is capable of stumbling right into high treason against the United States without ever noticing.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 13 Nov 2018 @ 1:06pm

Re: Little boy blue sounds worried
Donny’s still not gonna suck you off no matter how much cofefe you carry for him.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Not every AC is blue boy, 13 Nov 2018 @ 1:12pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Covfefe!!!!
Covfefe has been adopted/co-opted by quite a few people to refer to coffee.

This one seems quite popular.

https://www.amazon.com/Covfefe-Mug-Coffee-Twitter-Ceramic/dp/B071J8GZRR

And sometimes a comment only needs to be a title, eg

Streisanded!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 13 Nov 2018 @ 2:11pm

Re: not about the gun that Average Citizen may or may not have.
So how are the police to tell?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 13 Nov 2018 @ 2:17pm

Re: The doctors may have a point: Humanity is just stupid.

Law enforcement will still have them. And will still suspect everyone of being a criminal and criminally being armed. And will keep shooting us.

Except nowhere else in the world seems to have reached such a situation, or shows signs of getting into such a situation -- it’s just the USA.

Law enforcement are supposed to be answerable to your elected leaders, are they not? So if your elected leaders directed them to be a little less gun-happy, as part of those same laws that might be brought it to try to curtail your rampant plague of guns among the general populace, don’t you think that would work?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Uriel-238 (profile), 13 Nov 2018 @ 4:47pm

elected leaders telling police to shoot less
Elected leaders like tough on crime policy which comes down to harass / imprison / shoot more poor people.

Law enforcement doesn't listen to elected officials anyway. And entire counties have been known to ignore both courts and legislature without consequence. The unions assure to minimize the punishment of officers for violence or overreach.

I'm sure after we got the police to hype down, we established a second justice department to oversee the first and we got officials to hate on poor people a bit less, ours may be a fine happy peaceful nation in which the police don't shoot people so much.

Get back to me in a few hundred years when you've been able to manage all that.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 13 Nov 2018 @ 4:58pm

Re: elected leaders telling police to shoot less

Elected leaders like tough on crime policy which comes down to harass / imprison / shoot more poor people.

Currently there is just such a discussion happening right here in New Zealand. The discussion needs to be dragged bodily out of the assumption that “being tough on crime” is consequence-free. Even ignoring the “lily-livered liberals being soft on crime” angle, just look at it from a money viewpoint: if you want to lock more people up for longer, then it’s going to cost you more as a taxpayer, both in building more prisons (that includes in your neighbourhood!) and in paying to run them.

Have such issues been raised in the debate in the US?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 13 Nov 2018 @ 5:16pm

Re: CONTEXT is fabricated "Trump-Russia", kids.
This coming from the guy whose team promised to lock up Hilary.

How's that John Steele defense fund of yours coming along bro?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Uriel-238 (profile), 13 Nov 2018 @ 8:26pm

Locking people up costs money.
Have such issues been raised in the debate in the US?

Countless times. Voters are often too far removed from the police- / prison-industrial-complex to understand or care about the abuses and cruelties of our prison system (starting with overincarceration, and a high rate of false conviction).

Some people are making money on the US penal system and it is operating to serve them.

But judges typically will not get elected without a tough on crime stance, something noted in Oliver's LWT dive into elected judges,
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 14 Nov 2018 @ 2:41pm

Re: Re: not about the gun that Average Citizen may or may not have.

So how are the police to tell?

There is no way for a police officer entering a situation to know for sure if someone is carrying a gun, even in nations where guns are less common than the US. However, if an officer's initial reaction to "there's something in their hand!" is deadly force, I think that's a problem with the thought processes of the officer, not with the citizen's access to guns.
[ link to this | view in thread ]