Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the thus-spake dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is PaulT with a response to a complaint about vaccinations:

You're free to avoid doing something you dislike, as you are free to avoid wearing clothes, or paying taxes. It's just that you might get rejected by the rest of the society you wish to participate in if you don't want to abide by the rules of doing so.

Also, https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2016/09/how_vaccination_helped_win_the_revolutionary_war.html

In second place, it's James Burkhardt with a response to an... imperfect comparison of Charter's false debt collection practices to other debt collectors:

I feel like a Credit Card company offering to allow you to pay off your balance and regain access to credit (and possibly clearing your credit report of the genuine delinquency) is a very different story than an internet company trying to drum up business by committing mail fraud.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with another comment from James Burkhardt rebutting a bad comparison — this time between Section 230 reform and other kinds of liability:

Vehicle manufacturers are not liable for the use a car is put to. Nor are they required to sell cars to anyone who walks on the lot. They are only responsible for failures caused by their own actions. Section 230 replicates that level of liability.

Credit cards banks are not liable for the misuse of the credit card, only their own malfeasance. Section 230 Replicates this level of liability

Thank you for higlighting that section 230 does not provide special immunity.

Next, That One Guy with a comment about the Missouri governor's absurd response to exposing private information in HTML:

'That took care of them, now why does my foot hurt so much?'

'If you aren't made aware of the problem it doesn't exist' seems to be the motto for far too many people in positions of authority, with the corollary of 'If you shoot the current messenger giving you bad news that reduces the odds that another one will show up'.

The state was caught with it's pants down and rather than admit they screwed up they decided on the absolute worst response, to punish the people who notified them of the problem and desperately try to shift the blame to them.

Not only is this stupid in the short term as it leaves the governor and state looking all sorts of boneheaded and pathetic but it just massively screwed them over long-term as no sane white-hat, security researcher or journalist is likely make use of the 'official channels' from this point on such that the first the Missouri government is likely to know about future hacks or security breaches/holes is after they've either been exploited or made public anonymously, leaving the affected agencies to do damage control after the fact.

Probably the only silver lining of this whole mess is the response to the governor's statements as my oh my is that idiot getting roasted for his stupidity on twitter, with just so many people pointing out what an idiot he is and how the 'we got hacked!' claim is nothing more than CYOA garbage.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is yet another comment from James Burkhardt, this time responding to some tiresome complaints from a tiresome commenter:

I can't imagine why a spam filter would deem the guy posting 9 times in 6 minutes "spam".

In second place, it's an anonymous comment (quoting a classic) along similar lines:

Sir, this is an Arby's.

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with nasch responding to the suggestion that "Section 230 could use a lemon law":

You are already free to return your social media accounts for a full refund of the entire purchase price.

And finally, it's an anonymous comment responding to our astonishment at the Missouri governor calling in the Highway Patrol:

Highway Patrol is clearly appropriate in this case as the offense took place on the information superhighway!

That's all for this week, folks!