This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is BentFranklin with a response to the federal judge who ruled that boycotts aren’t protected speech:
So Citizens United tells us that spending money is a form of speech. So not spending money is a form of silence. Is this judge saying that we don’t have the right to not speak? More broadly, we see this all the time, where the right frequently insists that we spend our money in certain ways, which is now a form of compelling speech.
In second place, we’ve got an anonymous response to the assertion that our post about cops in schools and MS-13 fears — and its comparison to the satanic panic — was unfair:
That’s not the comparison I’m reading, Mason. What I read is the Satanic Panic being compared to the MS-13 panic.
Let’s start the discussion here with a simple question: are the school shootings actually demonstrably tied to gang activity?
And here’s a second question: Do the school shootings justify the sequence of events that led to a kid being deported because he drew his school’s mascot, and happened to not be white?
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got a pair of comments from Stephen T. Stone from our post about an independent musician’s explanation of why Article 13 is bad for creators. First, it’s a point about the fact that only the largest platforms can comply with Article 13:
There is a certain irony in this statement: For all the whining from the usual troll brigade about the major platforms (e.g., YouTube) and their corporate overlords (Google) being too powerful and requiring real competition to prevent monopolies (real or virtual), they are also the ones who come out in support of measures such as Article 13, which would give those major platforms more power and destroy their smaller competition for the sake of “strengthening copyright”. I have to wonder which one they ultimately want more: stronger copyright or a weaker Google.
Next, it’s a response to the assertion that opposing Article 13 means trying to make it impossible to fight piracy:
I have some shocking news for you, sir, and I think you may need to brace yourself for it: Piracy already is unstoppable.
Napster came and went; piracy stayed. Limewire and its ilk came and went; piracy stayed. The Pirate Bay came and went (and came again and went again and so on), as did a number of similar public and private trackers over the years; piracy stayed. If the biggest corporations in the world and the bought-off legislators who made laws favorable to said corporations could not wipe out piracy despite having the ostensible power to do so, what makes you think Article 13 can do the job?
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is another comment from that post, with TFG cooking up a counterargument:
This example doesn’t count because it’s just a small independent artist talking about how things actually work from the perspective of a small, independent artist, who the articles purport to serve, and what he’s saying would indicate that Article 13 won’t actually help him, which is clearly impossible because people said it would.
Real artists would support the article because clearly it says it helps them out and of course they are constantly hemorrhaging money from massive amounts of piracy that can only be stopped by passing an article that will put all the control back into the hands of organizations like the RIAA. They obviously know best, and would never ever lie.
In second place, it’s That Anonymous Coward with another response to the ruling that boycotts aren’t free speech:
Someone had a 20% discount on their knowledge of constitutional law.
For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start with an accusation from Gary following our post about bogus net neutrality comments:
There you go again Mike, shilling for a free and open internet free of corporate interference.
Net Neutrality hurts corporations who want to provide their services to us. Stop being so mean to them!!
And finally, it’s an anonymous response to our post about the US newspapers that are eager to push their own version of Europe’s snippet tax:
Google told me I’m not allowed to read Techdirt anymore. Sorry.
That’s all for this week, folks!
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Author: Leigh Beadon