Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the word-from-on-high dept
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That One Guy with a comment in a conversation about how the First Amendment applies to government sanctions of foreign countries that impact domestic companies:
Given the first amendment(along with the others) is a prohibition on what the government can do with regards to speech, telling a company 'you are not allowed to let them speak' seems like the sort of thing that would struggle in court, though that of course would require a judge with a spine to rule on the matter, and those can be a bit difficult to find these days.
In second place, it's Thad commending our description of the UNC Silent Sam statue as, unambiguously, a racist monument:
I appreciate the bluntness.
None of this "racially charged" or "which some have called racist" or putting racist in quotation marks bullshit that's so unfortunately common in media coverage of topics like these.
We need to call racism what it is. Thanks for doing so.
For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with one more nod to That One Guy, in response to those who describe Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's call for a full repeal of FOSTA as support for sex trafficking:
The 'I know you are but what am I?' offense I see
The kicker of course is that those supporting the bill and/or opposing an investigation into it are actually holding positions much more sex-trafficking friendly than AOC.
When even the gorram police are saying the bill has made it harder to find sex traffickers and their victims defending the bill is not defending the victims of sex trafficking it's defending sex traffickers by making it easier for them to avoid being caught and continue victimizing people in the process.
If the politicians slagging AOC for wanting the bill rightly scrapped actually cared about preventing or reducing sex trafficking they'd be right there with her, supporting it's removal or at the very least an investigation into whether it's actually done what it's defending claimed it was for, but as was the case for those that presented the bill and defended it when the bill was being presented odds are good they don't actually give a damn about sex trafficking, and are only in it for the cheap(in both senses of the word) PR.
Next, it's James Burkhardt explaining a key issue with one Arizona legislator's proposal to strip Section 230 immunity from politically biased platforms:
The proposal doesn't punish moderation (or censorship). It punishes "political motivation", which as I highlighted above, is nearly impossible to prove. You can prove a bias exists, proving the motivation behind that bias is another thing entirely. An economically motivated bias against Neo-Nazi memes is not a political motivation, for instance.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous comment responding to the copyright dispute over photos of a banana duct-taped to an art gallery wall:
If the copyright upon this banana taped artwork is not honored, then there will be no incentive to produce additional produce taped artwork.
In second place, it's That Anonymous Coward with a response to Chooseco's lawsuit against Netflix over Bandersnatch:
Turn to page 47 if you want to create more bad legal concepts
Turn to page 97 if you want to just get money from the deep pockets
Turn to page 32 if you weren't sure Chooseco was still in business
Turn to page 75 if you just want dragons and explosions
Close the book if you're tired of rent seeking assholes ruining building on old things to create new better things
For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with Pixelation asking the all-important question about the banana photo dispute:
I wonder...
Who would own the copyright if a monkey took the picture?
And finally, we've got justok in response to the lawsuit over civil asset forfeiture being used to steal people's cars:
I had the perfect comment, but the cops seized it.
That's all for this week, folks!
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Reader Comments
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I hardly see the point of the one about stealing cars. Isn't that what the government does whenever it "regulates" emissions? But who has the sense to see that a purchase prevented is theft, done as the abortionist?
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Choosing not to make or being prevented from making a purchase is different from having your property stolen; in the case of a car, if it were stolen you'd be missing the vehicle and the money you paid for it, while if you chose not to purchase, you'd have no car but still have your money.
I'm pretty sure emissions regulation is the opposite of theft as well, depending on your definition of it. If it's legislation limiting how many pollutants your car is allowed to produce, that fits in the same category as quality and health and safety standards.
If it's a tax on each tonne of carbon your vehicle emits, then think of it as you paying a literal fair price for your share of the common-pool good that is our planet's remaining carbon budget.
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Emission regulation is the opposite of homicide, really.
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This is basically the RIAA's "lost sale" argument, and it's as dumb as it sounds. Phrased like the above, though, it becomes indefensible and stupid. Which is why they're waiting for a political climate, i.e. one with a sufficiently dumb IQ, to laud that philosophy around.
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Too late.
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I hate how on statutory holidays the grocery store steals all my groceries from me.
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The ones who propose the formulas of rescuing the whole Earth from agw are doubtless the same as are incapable of reproducing themselves, requiring their whole ideology and population find reconstitution out of some oppressed class of women, oppressed, for by that alone would they, into reproducing themselves.
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Pretzel logic passed through a maze without exit and then infused with many disparate agenda's that have been through a blender without filter.
In other words, WTF?
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So what's your point? Don't regulate emissions because a lot of people believe in AGW?
If you feel that way, historical events show how well that worked with people dying right and left. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it only shows how little you actually know.
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Or consider the Amerindians who complain that they have been deprived of their culture, their thousands of languages. Look at what nice pieces of Chinese plastic in assorted shapes and sizes they can buy at Target!!!
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Hardly MY fault you can't understand.
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Their ship's on fire, they have a failed polity, their entire philosophy is invalidated by the simplest of things even cows have worked out. I shall sit and listen to the mooing of cows, but I'll lend no ear to the ones who can't even maintain their own existence, but only falsify it by consuming through immigration what others produced, laundering them as their own!
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If a person is not not understood, it is most often the failure of their ability to communicate their ideas, not the failure of those hearing your ideas to understand the medium of communication.
Your comment draws a number of conclusions without even premises from which to draw them. Worse, your conclusion bomb is a mess of confusing prepositions and obfusicating language. It is absolutely your fault that you made a statement that is only understandable to those who are already keyed into the philosophical discussion you are trying to have.
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It is absolutely the responsibility of the communicator to insure the understanding in the receiver's otherwise communication does not take place.
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On the 9th of this month, 29 were killed in a mall shooting in Thailand. Thailand has highly restrictive gun laws. MSNBC won't cover it, wall-to-wall, unlike lesser exploitable events, because they're not white. Democrats don't care, because they aren't white.
"[The shooter, named] Jakrapanth killed his commanding officer, Colonel Anantharot Krasae, then stole an assault weapon [a bit of an error here, it's likely fully automatic, unlike the guns commonly called "assault weapons" in the US press] and ammunition from the army base's arsenal.
The gunman then fled the base and went on a shooting spree, opening fire indiscriminately at the Terminal 21 shopping centre." (AJ)
In social media, he said he did it because he was tired.
Well, we see why Fox News & MSNBC don't like it. It invalidates their worldviews both. For Fox, it means that the military ain't so great. For MSNBC it means that even if you ban weapons you won't really be safe.
Most people don't even know that firearms are technology. Well, did you know that drones are technology? An israeli group recently tested a drone destroying system, which attempts to burn drones with a laser. The demonstration appeared successful, but it hasn't been audited by anyone.
So what, drones aren't guns, right? Actually, drones, the kind Best Buy etc. sells to any kid with the money, are smart 3D maneuver grenade delivery platforms.
Therefore, MSNBC is wrong. Banning guns is to pointlessly ban antique tech. And Fox News is wrong too. Keeping guns won't help much against drones (How will a gun help you agasinst drones that are fully automated anyway? And even with an operator, where is s/he? )
For those who don't know, surely all here do, tech is disposable. Like printers, made of plastic and other assorted trash. Built for the landfill. And decreasing in cost all the time. Soon enough, drones will be cheaper than a single bullet.
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I think I've found the lotophagi in this discussion.
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MSNBC won't cover it? Hmmm... sounds unlikely since every other source I can think of was covering it. Let's see...
Just off the first page of a Google search:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/thai-soldier-kills-least-10-shooting-rampage-police-say-n 1132966
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/thailand-survivor-recalls-hiding-six-hours-during-shootin g-rampage-n1133281
https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1226227720549433344
https://www.facebook.com/msn bc/posts/3409124099183818
But, yeah MSNBC won't cover it...
When you guys come up with pointless lies to post on completely unrelated threads, does it at least occur to you to check your claims before making them? Or, are you just parroting what someone's told you without verifcation?
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Collective suicide, actually.
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Devin, don't you have some frivolous lawsuits to file or something?
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Nah he’s that kid in high school who memorised a bunch of the authors cited in the back of the textbook and spouted off random quotes from them because he thought it made him sound smarter. But I’m reality it was blindingly obvious to all and sundry he didn’t have the slightest clue what any of it ment.
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"MSNBC won't cover it, wall-to-wall, unlike lesser exploitable events"
go back to school, learn to read.
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Never mind that the whole point of the tragedy was due to systematic abuse of underlings by officers in a military-driven country, and the use of military influence to do business dealings. But nah, because we got a right-wing nutjob on our hands the true story is drones becoming cheaper than bullets... for some dumbass reason?
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He didn't say they wouldn't cover it. He said they wouldn't cover it wall-to-wall.
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Then the response becomes: "show me where any other outlet covered it wall-to-wall or where MSNBC covered anything else wall-to-wall".
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Because despite his use of the word "technology" multiple times, he doesn't truly understand it, or the difference between a piece of technology with one and only one purpose and use, and another piece of technology that has at least a few dozen (maybe hundred) different and varied purposes and uses.
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OK, then, let him define "wall-to-wall", or demonstrate how they specifically covered it less than other outlets. What level of coverage is acceptable in his eyes, and why does it differ specifically with that network compared to their competitors?
More likely - he's parroting some echo-chamber conspiracy theory without spending 2 seconds to see if his rant is based on reality.
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