Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

We've got a double-winner this week with one comment taking first place for insightful and second place for funny. Even more unusually, it's from fairly deep into a thread, and most of its meaning relies on that context - but nevertheless, Thad racked up the votes with a response to someone who claimed to have strong evidence of conservative censorship on social media:

Citing a reference is an improvement over not citing a reference, but what exactly are you citing? You've vaguely handwaved toward a Joe Rogan video (which you haven't linked) and said that there is content somewhere in it that supports your claim. You haven't said what that content is, where it appears in the video, or how it supports your claim.

It's like Mark Twain said:

In second place on the insightful side, we've got a response from Natalie Hill to one commenter's assertion (which he's hardly the only one making) about the state of music:

John, when pro-label rats like you start talking about how "music is dying" because of piracy and streaming rates, I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.

"In the last 5 years the number of working musicians has dropped to less than 50%. Over half the major studios have closed, to be torn down for condos." Well, there's hundreds of thousands of artists on BandCamp, YouTube, and SoundCloud who self-release their work.

Not only that, you used to only see strong music scenes in places traditionally known for music. However, since technology has made it possible to record and release music from anywhere, you can now see thriving indie music scenes in non-traditional music towns like Detroit, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis, where I live. In the Circle City, at the start of the decade, we only had 4 local music venues, no festivals, 1 label, 1 local record store, and the small scene we did have was very centered around punk rock (not that punk is bad). However, we now have 17 venues, 6 festivals, 3 labels, 7 record stores, and a ton of artists of all genres. So clearly music is not "dying" because of piracy.

Sure, most of us are so-called "hobbyists" (I despise that word, as it often implies the musician is unserious), but that was the case with 99.9999% of all musicians who have ever lived, just because there are so many talented musicians in the world, yet the average person only needs so much new music. The only differences now are that recording is much simpler and a day job is no longer mutually exclusive with playing/writing music.

And if you're one of those people who thinks all "hobbyist" music is "low-quality", Eric Pedigo, The Trees, Ross Hollow, and tons of others I could mention prove that claim to be nothing more than an extremely dehumanizing overgeneralization towards us "hobbyists" and our great art.

However, the only reason we can distribute our work is because of such websites accepting submissions from anyone. Websites like YouTube and Bandcamp receive way too many submissions to monitor for infringement, so the only way they could possibly comply with Article 13 would be if they stopped accepting everyone's submissions completely, and limited their platforms to large companies.

If you understand that more music is being released than ever before, and it is NOT all "low-quality", but want laws like Article 13 anyway "because those poor people are losing their jobs!", you sound no different than a Trump-supporting coal miner or auto plant worker. There are a lot of jobs you can learn to do instead.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with one more response on the subject of social media censorship, this time from an anonymous commenter:

Ignoring your baseless non-point for a moment, if all of the big, successful tech giants have a left-leaning tendency the takeaway is that right-leaning industry is less successful. Given that the conservative party is supposed to be the pro-business party this seems at odds with reality. Sooner or later you're going to have to admit that you're a dinosaur and have failed to adapt to an ever-changing world.

Back to your post: The speakers removed from those platforms were removed for hate speech, not simply because they were alt-right. There are plenty of other right-wing speakers still on those platforms espousing the same ideals but in a much more mature and measured way. There are plenty more who probably should be kicked off but have not yet, for whatever reasons.

If you can't be mature in your communications you can be sure you will be heard by fewer people. Go far enough and nobody will be willing to transmit your rants. That's all this boils down to.

Next, we've got Gwiz with a quick response to the assertion that Section 230 exists "to make sure that tech companies don't have to follow the rules other companies have to follow":

No. The point was to place liability on the person doing the actual speaking, not on the tool being used.

Do you also think that pencil manufacturers are liable for everything written with their pencils?

Over on the funny side, not only did Thad take second place with the same comment that won first place for insightful... he also took first place for funny with a followup comment to that one. Got that? Here it is:

The reference for my Mark Twain quote is Huckleberry Finn.

I'm not going to tell you what the quote is. Read the book.

For editor's choice on the funny side, we've got a pair of responses to the recording industry's announcement of massive recent growth. First, it's Bobvious with an interpretation of the data:

As we can clearly see, the US uptick is entirely proportional to Vinyl/LP sales. The MAFIAA should never have stopped selling them in the first place. Now see how they have massively improved the profits. As for the Paid Subscription contribution, that is just masking the Columbia Record Club profits, and their LP of the Month promotion. Also, this has come at the expense of Cylindrical Distribution [wax cylinders]/ Direct Vinyl Distribution (CD/DVD).

Watch out for the re-emergence of Direct-Reel-to-Digital-Reel-Enhanceda (D(R).D(R)E), and Binaural-Enhanced-Analog-Tape-Systems.

Finally, it's an anonymous commenter expressing general surprise:

What?? The recording industry is still around? I thought we'd killed them off with our tape recorders. And our CD burners. MP3 players. Mobile phones. Torrents.

Dang. Nothing seems to work.

That's all for this week, folks!