Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the it-was-written dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous commenter offering a simple opinion on the government's actions to prevent mass shootings:

But if refuses to tackle the deep social problems created by a few people owning most of the resources, which is a deep reason for those event, even if the criminal blames the wrong parties for the problems in society.

In second place, we've got Stephen T. Stone with a long response to the argument that it's wrong to call the detention facilities on the southern border "concentration camps":

The first Nazi concentration camps, which were technically defined as contained areas in which people whom the Nazis considered “undesirables” (e.g., refugees, persecuted minorities, political prisoners) were held and either forced to work or wait to be executed, were established in 1933. (The official beginning of the slaughter we know as the Holocaust, marked by the Wansee Conference, happened in 1942.) Conditions for camp detainees included the separation of families, the removal children from their parents, and inadequate food and shelter for many (if not all) detainees.

I wonder why, then, that the American detention centers for immigrants and refugees where families have been separated and numerous detainees have reported inadequate living conditions have drawn comparisons to the concentration camps used by the Nazis.

"There are no similarities between the detention centers and/or the act of detaining individuals who enter the country illegally and the concentration camps (death camps) of Nazi Germany."

The death camps started as concentration camps. They weren’t the beginning of the process — they were the end result.

"your 'due process' comment is misplaced because those people in ICE detention centers are awaiting a hearing by an immigration judge. The problem is that those are overworked because supply is lower than demand for them."

Which means that they’re being held indefinitely without due process. If the Trump administration refuses to staff the immigration system with lawyers and judges, that is the administration’s issue; the people in those camps shouldn’t suffer for the administration’s refusal to give a shit.

"If [your assertion that the administration is racist/white supremacist] is true, why would illegal immigrants flock there massively?"

The administration may be…well, is racist, but that doesn’t make the whole country racist. It also doesn’t mean the opportunities people seek in the United States, and the American ideals of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, are racist. People come here seeking a better life. If they seek it legally, who are we to deny the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free?

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start with a comment from That One Guy about the EU copyright industries' attempt to demonize internet companies further, and especially the complaint that they care more about profit than freedom of speech:

'Unless it's OUR profits of course...'

Not OK, that profits are more important than freedom of speech and the press.

Which of course is why they fought tooth and nail against copyright filters being required, as such filters will have a serious impact on massive amounts of free speech(including reporting) thanks to filters having a terrible track record and pesky things like 'fair use' being attacked left and right such that it's much safer for sites to take down content if it even might be infringing.

No? They did the exact opposite of that, pushing a law that would require filters on sites large and small? I guess the profits of some groups are considered to be 'more important than freedom of speech and the press'.

Next, it's a similar point from an anonymous commenter about who has really benefited speech the most:

Funny, but the Internet giants are doing much more to enable people to get the words published and found, and make money from their efforts, than the legacy industry. The legacy industry are very much in the game of deciding winners and losers, and keeping as much of the income generated by the winners to themselves as they can.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Bloof with, of course, a well-deserved jab at Bret Stephens:

He's right you know, history is littered with totalitarian regimes that began with obscure college professors saying mean things about newspaper opinion writers.

It's like the famed poem says:

'First they said mean things about the opinion columnists, and I did not speak out because I don't have the NYT to use as a platform for my personal grievances...'

In second place, it's Thad doing the duty of brushing off an obvious troll in the comments:

When I want an accurate assessment of who is or isn't contributing to white nationalism, I'm definitely interested in hearing from a guy named BTWDeportThemAll.

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with Rekrul, who was inspired by our story about DMCA agent registration with an illustration of infuriating password systems:

Please enter a password: pyramid

[Error: Password must be at least 10 characters in length]

Please enter a password: mypyramids

[Error: Password must contain at least one upper case letter]

Please enter a password: Mypyramids

[Error: Password must contain at least one number]

Please enter a password: Mypyramids2

[Error: Password must contain at least one non-letter/number character]

Please enter a password: GiveMeAF*ckingBreak!

[Password accepted!]

And finally, since this absurd story is hopefully not going to escalate further, it's only fitting that we end with one more (anonymous) response to Bret Stephens:

As the spokesbug for the International Society of Bedbugs I have been charged to say that Brett Stephens has been blacklisted as a source of food worldwide. Even we have standards and are offended.

That's all for this week, folks!

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