This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is discordian_eris with a reaction to the latest instance of egregious police misbehavior:
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them” – Maya Angelou
Law enforcement at all levels have shown us who they are. Unreliable, unprofessional, undisciplined, and corrupt to the depths of their souls. Unfortunately this is America, so there really isn’t a viable solution.
The cops are too cowardly to clean up their act. Legislators are too cowardly to pass reforms of almost any kind. And the judiciary, all the way up to the Supreme Court is too cowardly to do their fucking jobs and actually enforce the constitution. District attorneys can have video and audio of cops murdering people in cold blood and refuse to bring charges.
Every single time the list of the most corrupt countries comes out, I am astonished that the US is considered one of the least corrupt. Until, of course, I remember that the list is compiled by Americans.
In second place, we’ve got a response from That One Guy to the San Diego Comic Con’s latest legal attack on the Salt Lake City Comic Con:
“This was a very expensive case; the reason this case was so expensive was because of defendants and their counsel and the way they litigated this case,” Bjurstrom said.
Translation: ‘Our legal thuggery cost us a lot of money because our target had the utter gall to fight back and the ruling only gave us a tiny fraction of it back. We want more, make them give it too us.’
‘Actions have consequences’ does not an ‘exceptional’ case make.
But San Diego Comic-Con’s request went a step further than simply asking Battaglia to enjoin the Salt Lake convention operators from infringing its trademarks: it asked the judge to bar the Salt Lake convention from using the words “comic convention” or phonetic equivalents to “Comic Con” or “comic convention.”
So essentially they tried to claim ownership over the very concept of comic conventions by saying that no-one should be able to use the purely descriptive term of it.
Yeah, at this point I would love to see the USPTO come to it’s senses, realize just how bad this trademark is and yank it entirely. It wouldn’t help the Salt Lake Comic-con, but it would at least prevent the thugs in the SDCC from going after more targets.
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from Thad about the revelation that the FCC lied about a DDOS attack to distract from John Oliver:
This was blisteringly obvious from the get-go, but it’s nice to get confirmation.
So what are the legal ramifications of this? The FCC lied about a DDoS attack to downplay the size of the public response, kept records proving that it lied, and then fought FOIA requests for said records.
There are numerous court challenges to the Title II repeal. These emails look an awful lot like the sort of thing that will appear with the word “Exhibit” on them.
Next, we’ve got a response from stderric to the school that turned a student over to the cops for jokingly listing the school for sale on Craigslist:
Kylan Scheele got a great educational bonus thanks to his prank, and it’s probably the most important lesson Truman High School ever taught him: this world is full of idiots, and the biggest and most humorless of them all tend to be attracted to positions of authority.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous commenter, with a theoretical future timeline of the Salt Lake City Comic Con’s woes at the hands of trademark bullies:
2019: Salt Lake City Graphic Novel Gathering has been sued by Wizards of the Coast for infringing on their Magic: The Gathering trademark.
2020: Salt Lake City Superheroes Social has been sued by Joe’s Super Hero Sandwiches for infringing on their trademark.
2021: Salt Lake City Place for People to Meet to Dress Funny and Pay $45 for Celebrity Signatures has filed for bankruptcy, citing the excessive costs of rebranding every year.
In second place, we’ve got a comment from Berenerd about FlightSimLabs installing stuff on users’ machines and threatening Reddit:
FSLabs new motto: CRASH AND BURN!!!!!
For editor’s choice on the funny side, we’ve got an anonymous reply to that comment adding a little extra color:
(Beeping in background) Terrain. Pull up. Terrain. Pull up. Terrain. Pull up.
Finally, we’ve got another anonymous comment about the humorless school-for-sale, in response to someone who questioned the low, low price tag:
There’s a hefty discount because the buyer will be stuck with the current administrators, who are clearly a net liability. No asset would behave in the asinine way described here.
That’s… not quite all for this week folks. Unfortunately, we also have a bit of sad news to share.
A Note From Mike:
We recently received a note from a friend and neighbor of one of our most prolific commenters, Roger Strong, informing us of the unfortunate news that he had passed away towards the end of May. One of the things that I’ve always talked about concerning Techdirt is that what keeps me going and what keeps it interesting is the community that has formed around the site. But it’s an odd sort of community. Most of the participants have no interaction with one another outside of the site, and many members of the community have no clue who others really are.
I am quite certain that, over the years, other vocal members of the community have passed away, but this is the first time that we’ve been directly informed of such a passing — and Roger’s very kind neighbors told us a bit about what a kind, compassionate and helpful individual Roger was, which was something that I think was clear if you read his comments. He was always a very passionate member of the community, always full of insight and useful perspectives. His friends informed us that being a part of the Techdirt community was an important part of his life, and just reading his comments helped give them another chance to experience Roger’s passion and ideas. We will certainly miss Roger’s presence and thoughtful comments.
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Author: Leigh Beadon