Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the you-said-it dept
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is a quick response from Joe Cool to California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez's comment that "in a perfect world" all workers would be unionized:
In a perfect world, unions wouldn't be needed.
In second place, it's That One Guy responding to the indie game developer who used torrents as a way to boost sales:
Imagine that...
Offering people a free and easy way to check out a game they might otherwise not have bothered with or even known about was enough to convince a non-zero number of them to pay for it. It's almost as though being able to try something before paying is a good way to increase sales, I wonder if any other industries have ever tried that...
For editor's choice on the insightful side, we've got a couple more comments from our post about that developer's experiment. First, it's tom a sparks pointing out the oft-forgotten precedent that was so common in a bygone era:
Isn't this what shareware did back in the day?
Next, it's PaulT responding to one angry commenter who insisted this would have no effect on the "1%" of people who are true pirates and "steal in every area of their lives":
I wonder. If the rate of piracy is so low, why are you so obsessed with destroying the value of products for paying customers and the rights of everybody else, on the off-chance that you might stop some piracy. At those low figures, surely it's better to do what everyone here suggests - accept that a small amount of loss is inevitable and build your business to factor that in?
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Tim R with a comment about the company selling surveillance baby seats (among other things) and specifically its offer of an "All-In-One kit":
Does that mean it includes the baby?
In second place, it's Scary Devil Monastery responding to a very angry, authoritarian commenter insisting that undocumented immigrants — and perhaps all criminals in general — do not deserve any due process:
That's harsh. I mean sure, the native tribes would like their country back, but deporting everyone descended from immigrants might just be a bit over the top.
But i think we all realized just what sort of troll you were when you started out on how "criminals" didn't deserve "due process". Because the last guy to openly advocate the "one judge, one bullet" approach in public was Joseph vissarionovich Stalin.
For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with an anonymous comment about another surveillance product — the surveillance tombstone:
Don't be a sicko. If this person under the tombstone camera owed the government money, and if there is even one iota of a chance this person comes back to life, the government will be in a very good position to track this undead deadbeat down.
Finally, we've got a comment from Anonymous Anonymous Coward aiming to put copyright in historical perspective:
The History of Music
300 BC to 1976, music develops.
1976 Sony Bono puts his foot in his mouth.
2014 Courts begin interpreting that all the music has been made and any 'new' music is infringing.
2019 RIAA...Noooooooo!
All dates approximate as they are more of a range than absolute.
(Though as one commenter pointed out, the start date there should be a lot earlier.)
That's all for this week, folks!
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In a perfect world
Perhaps also in a perfect world, we wouldn't need an Assembly.
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all the music has been made and any 'new' music is infringing
God save our gracious Queen,
Sweet land of liberty,
no longer be mute,
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Re: all the music has been made and any 'new' music is infringin
This Queen?
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Re: Re: all the music has been made and any 'new' music is infri
National Day of Ay-oh coming up...
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"In a perfect world, unions wouldn't be needed."
No wonder Wal-Mart, Amazon and their ilk engage in union-busting.
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"In a pefet world, unicorns wouldn't be needed."
Covfefe all over again.
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Re:
Ok, I'll bite. This is shouting "flag me as spam" but I cannot find the spam. Did technical measures remove it already?
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Re: Re:
Occasionally the spam-bots will slip up and forget the link.
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They pretend to be only human?
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
It's the "post a few times so you look real" gambit.
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Are the not game demo,s to download,
to try free and see if you like the game, i would not buy any new game without reading a review and maybe watching a video on twitch or youtube.
still i think its cool if a dev wants to put a game on a torrent website,
just to get through the noise and get attention,among the 1000,s of game s on steam.
theres loads of free games on the epic store , on free to play games on steam,
i think piracy is not a major problem, its getting attention for your game
and letting people know it exists, at least for non AAA game,s,so they can even think about buying it.
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Re:
There aren't that many demos as there used to be, and limited alpha / beta access is... limited. Some people want a game on release day and pre-order, so a demos would be a good thing i think. Reviews don't always cover everything people want to know, either. There are a lot of casual gamers out there who won't know from reviews or gameplay streams / videos whether it is for them.
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Re: online stuff
Orang Indo, our satisfaction and victory is in flagging your post. Thanks!
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This week on Under the Bridge Reporting, the Techdirt readerbase confirms that once again none of the usual trolls made it into the Insightful or Funny sections, a remarkable track record since John Smith won a spot in the funnies back in 2017 under his My_Name_Here moniker.
That's not to say the trolls have been careless in their efforts to compete for the title of biggest copyright dumbfuck. Still grieving after Shiva Ayyadurai lost his appeal, Hamilton has been smoking up random threads from DNA databases to subway maps with his typical "GUNS AND WALLS" rhetoric, racking up pretty respectable comment counts that would have made John Smith's mailing list proud if the ol' Prenda fanboy was still with us today. More on him later. ROGS has been attempting to follow up on that, having recently cashed in on the strategy of replying to himself via multiple IP addresses, even using a gambit of mimicking users who are signed in, but his inconsistent output and poor attempts to mask himself have left him trailing behind Shiva Ayyadurai's pro bono PR specialist.
But coming out of nowhere was Tero "Meshpage" Pulkinnen himself, shitting up the Disney+ thread from two weeks ago to an impressive 500+ posts with his mansion fantasies again - this time with some insight into how he thinks copyright and market competition work. Spoiler: His version doesn't. It really, truly doesn't. tp has tended to be a bit of an anomaly himself, writing broken English replies to the point where threaded view condenses comments into vertical pillars of illegibility, and despite his madcap maximalist ways he has somehow escaped the blow of the report vote. Which is not something most Zof-flavored trolls can claim, so - congratulations to Tero Pulkinnen for beating the odds in his race to become Techdirt's biggest cockwaffle.
Speaking of 500+ posts, today we celebrate another week free from blue's crappy pun pseudonyms. blue has historically been one of the loudest, if not the most effective, of Techdirt's detractors, doggedly claiming a personal oath to have the site humiliated in the name of Trump... which he managed to carry out on the 2018 Devin Nune's memo thread before petering out without so much as a whimper, a few months after his pet project passed the half-thousand mark. Goodness knows where blue is today given that he had no reason to leave. Could it be a new golden age of 2014 after blue had enough of Prenda's tactics getting them into worse trouble, and went on hiatus for a year? Somehow I doubt it, seeing that the dumbass saw fit to come back in 2015 when the news against Prenda was deteriorating.
blue honestly deserves a separate roasting report on his own, though this does allow us to segue into the aforementioned John Smith, also known as a variety of names such as The Anti-Mike, Whatever, MyNameHere, Just Sayin' - but more famously, "horse with no name" when he was posting his support for John Steele, as well as "bobmail" and "fitta" while he was fellating Paul Hansmeier on Torrentfreak before Andrew Norton had enough of his garbage. Why the segue? John Smith has not been definitively sighted in recent weeks, the same way as blue, and some like Scary Devil "Bobmailslayer" Monastery have proposed that blue and "Jhon" are one and the same. It's a theory vaguely hinted by Masnick to be more accurate than people suspect, which this reporter personally doesn't - given the different disappearing times, and sufficiently varied posting styles of the two trolls that come in different flavors of batshit-fucking-insane.
Still, John Smith's ramblings over the years have provided a good laugh, particularly during Masnick's New Year's messages where John rants and raves at the fact that the site exists, pisses off, then comes back with another crappy username. John's decision to skip out on 2019's message is surprising, but considering his increased difficulty in staying unknown, given how his rants about "shortening the length of copyright from lifetime + 70 to lifetime + 50 would incentivize murdering content creators" are easy to pick out from a mile away, the difficulty in remaining an Anonymous Coward on his own terms might have been just too hard for the Prenda fanboy to bear. Only time will tell if John Herrick Smith decides to make a comeback, but in this reporter's opinion he'll eventually get tired of crying salty tears into his Keith Lipscomb body pillow.
And rounding off tonight's report on Techdirt trolls, we have another returning favorite, Richard "Dick Bent" Bennett! He hasn't been sighted on Techdirt often, which is fair considering his duties as Ajit Pai's damage control department, but he rarely passes up a chance to scream at leftists and pirates. He's made an appearance at... Ars Technica, of all places, which is surprising given his greater loathing for the site's favorable view towards net neutrality. Bennett was seen screaming at Ars Technica posters for daring to complain about Frontier charging users rental fees for their own devices... because the company declared bankruptcy. The idea that paying executives exorbitant amounts of money instead of providing decent customer service is still a nuance lost on ol' Dickface, apparently, who hasn't seemed to have caught a break despite the death of TItle II.
That's all for tonight's report. Tune in next time for your recommended dose of copyright schadenfreude!
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Re:
Instead of Dick, we have Mugwump/Craig filling the "disongenuous corporate shilling" gap in his place over in the ISDS thread.
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Re: Re:
I've just read the thread, and I sort of hesitate to put Mugwump and Craig in the troll category. It's one thing to believe that the laws in place adequately protect individuals and governments from global corporations, as much as most of us would find that perspective to be misguided and overly optimistic. Richard Bennett, on the other hand, is the kind of person who would immediately claim that anyone who disagrees with how ISPs and Ajit Pai run their affairs is a thief and a pirate, and fuck your feelings if you need to download gigabytes of OS updates.
Kinda the same way I hesitate to classify btr1701 as a troll. Yes, he's annoyed that conservatvies and Republicans generally get the shaft here. I'm willing to accept that such a reaction is fair, because who the hell enjoys being punchline of the week?
But btr1701 has at least earned a token of respect in his time here, because he's frankly got very levelheaded views and responses on topics like Section 230 that merited him a few insightful votes, going toe-to-toe with John Smith. Granted, that's not exactly a high bar to clear, but I'd rather have a btr1701 any day over "I'd suck the cocks off Bill Barr and Mitc McConnell" Hamilton.
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Re: I can almost hear the trolls screaming from here.
Thanks for the report AC!
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Re:
I've been reading Techdirt regularly since a decade ago, and the evolution of trolls has been intriguing. The copyright shills for the most part could stay on point, admit they believed that "forever minus a day" copyright was "limited" copyright, and not bring in political garbage when it came to argumentation.
Hell, there were even times when I almost wished antidirt (aka average_joe) was back, and the craziest troll we had was darryl instead of ROGS. But then I realized: if there's one way to prove to the world that copyright advocates and Republicans are nucking futs, there's no better way to do so than have a group of useful idiots shooting their own feet for the cause.
There's also some glorious irony in antidirt's last post on the site (while signed in, anyway) is a shameless comment supporting #TeamShiva.
(Also this original post was hidden... and I have no idea why; this was a very entertaining read. I personally wondered which hellhole Bennett was hiding in, and finding that he's somehow decided to brave AT's intolerance for his brand of bullshit was a top-notch tip. Thanks, AC!)
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Re: Re:
Eh, not everyone sees the fun in banter at trolls' expense. Think of it as misgivings about cruelty to animals, except much less sympathetic. But unlike John Smith and Hamilton I don't really lose any sleep over the fact that people have to click a line of faint gray text just to read my roasts.
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Many (most?) of us don't bother. Your posts are just fine committed to the gray-link dustbin of oblivion.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Speak for yourself.
Keep it up, OP. Never forget, it is always a good day to remind everyone that copyright fans are trash-tier compost.
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Your insightful contribution is likewise duly noted. Don't let the darryl hit you on the way out bro.
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Re: Re:
"I've been reading Techdirt regularly since a decade ago, and the evolution of trolls has been intriguing. The copyright shills for the most part could stay on point, admit they believed that "forever minus a day" copyright was "limited" copyright, and not bring in political garbage when it came to argumentation."
I think I have the answer as to what happened. The pro-copyright trolls used to package their garbage in more polite types ov conversation...and then suddenly they degraded into hysterical 4chan refugees.
At approximately the same time that "astroturfing" was starting to catch a great deal of flak, and data came out suggesting that the impact of it was limited.
I'm guessing the copyright cult redirected the money stream from shady marketing departments focused on "online interation" to outright lobbying. Leaving us with whatever the copyright cult have for a 50-cent army, and the odd deluded True Believer shitposting because the open internet done fucked up his latest "brilliant" fraud and his sense of outraged entitlement demands he blame pirates, google, and section 230 over it. Bobmail/Blue/Jhon and his "mailing list scheme" springs to mind.
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Re:
I needed that laugh, i really did. :)
That said, my own 2 cents...
"John Smith has not been definitively sighted in recent weeks, the same way as blue, and some like Scary Devil "Bobmailslayer" Monastery have proposed that blue and "Jhon" are one and the same."
More like "tilts-at-windmills" really. Honestly, Bobmail/blue/Jhon keeps demonstrating the resilience inherent in being dense along with the immunity to logic demonstrated by the clinically insane.
That said I'm pretty sure Blue/Jhon/Bobmail are the same person - the bullshit has a very distinct cadenza of sorts. And every time, both back on Torrentfreak and here, once bobmail/blue/jhon feels butthurt enough he stops posting wordwalls for a while and Hamilton emerges, frothing at the bit.
Either they're tag-teaming or what we used to call "hamilton" is still just the same old Baghdad bob, in full hysteria and not bothering to even try putting words in proper order any more.
"...given the different disappearing times, and sufficiently varied posting styles of the two trolls that come in different flavors of batshit-fucking-insane."
Considering that we've got "both" of those trolls, along with Hamilton, coming over to TD straight from Torrentfreak only to carry on the same pattern we observed back there, I'd still not rule out they're one and the same.
After all, Bobmail did get his paws caught in the till numerous times trying to back himself up with a one-man army of sock puppets, and the general gist of those sock puppets we see each day here on TD whenever he deigns to make an appearance to weigh on personal privacy, section 230, google or - his favorite - copyright as well as blind adherence to law because police are never wrong.
The only fanatic pro-copyright troll I'm still in doubt over is "Nejtillpirater" who i still can't be truly sure was the poster known as "bobmail".
Thank you for a most hilarious report highlighting much of the trolling we've seen around here. Keep 'em coming. :)
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Re: Re:
John Smith and bobmail/fitta are the same person. There was a time when fitta started asking random users on Torrentfreak if they "hated it when due process was enforced", referencing a jab at horse with no name on 2013 articles about Prenda Law. It takes some dumbassery to take a shibboleth on one website to then use on another when hiding one's pseudonymous origins, but that frankly explains a lot of the thought processes going on in John Smith's head.
I'm still not convinced Smith and blue are the same person, mostly due to the different ways they handle "being censored" - John pisses and moans while blue spams shit from 50 different VPN generated addresses.
There is a little credence to John and Hamilton being the same, though, if you look at the Techdirt conclusion thread to the Shiva debacle. After Masnick casually flips Hamilton off by saying he has no idea who Hamilton is, John posts a series of insults on his opinion of Masnick's standing in the world, as well as a double post saying, "You're lying. You're also screwed.". Now why would John claim this? More of his bravado? Anger at the dismissal of probably-Shiva? Or was he always more invested in the outcome of the trial than his MyNameHere persona was willing to let on? Or a combination of all of the above, with some mental defect on the side?
Only Jhon Herrick Smith knows the truth, but seeing that he's dumb enough to have showed his face around here again, coupled with Bennett embarrasing himself on Ars Technica by speaking with his mouth full of Pai, we can expect another report from under the bridge this week...
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