Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
This week, both our winning comments on the insightful side come in response to the Second Circuit's ruling against the Internet Archive. In first place, it's MrWilson with some thoughts on libraries:
The vast majority of authors face an issue with obscurity in the vast sea of available works that is the book market. Libraries increase the chance for new readers to find you. It's only a downside if you're a publisher who wants to maximize every chance of a sale (while not paying the author who did the majority of the work as much as they deserve).
Libraries also mean poorer readers have greater access to education. And younger writers can learn style and gain inspiration from the works of others. Libraries enable new writers who create new works.
In second place, it's That One Guy with a sarcastic reaction:
Dodged a bullet there, thanks major publishers
It's good thing libraries are a very recent development and publishers are on the ball in killing them off before they can become too big of a threat to society, I mean can you imagine the utter devastation of creativity and authorship that might have resulted if libraries had been around for say, several thousand years?
For editor's choice on the insightful side, we'll start out with one more reply to that post, this time from Shannon Vanshoon with thoughts about thee implications of this and other recent rulings:
... I'm starting to think that we seriously need a thorough political scouring of our entire court-system if we're ever going to seriously rebuild this country. I mean, how many judges are just completely out of step with... everything?
Next, one more comment from MrWilson, this time on another post in response to a question about liability for retweets:
Some courts have held that 230 protects users who retweet. The distinction seems to be that the retweeter may be liable for defamation if they add to or vouch for the content as if it's true. So just retweeting is likely fine, but adding commentary like This claim is true" would probably make you liable because you're adding your own speech to it.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner takes us back again to the post about the Internet Archive, where That Anonymous Coward embraced the court's reasoning that libraries disincentivize writers:
Its true!!!
We haven't had a new book from Christie or Doyle since their works finally fell out of copyright hundreds of years after their deaths.
Copyright, making us all really fscking stupid.
In second place, it's an anonymous comment about the nerd harder" attitude of policymakers towards tech:
Why not just pass a law requiring some arbitrary tech company to solve all our problems with magic? Stop the whole death by a thousand magic cuts" bullshit.
For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from Toom1275 about Twitter's investors losing faith in Elon Musk:
They should have invested in the tiny violins industry.
Finally, we'll go back for one more comment about the Internet Archive, once again from That One Guy, in response to the suggestion that SCOTUS justices with book deals would recuse themselves from the case:
This supreme court having enough ethics to recuse themselves... aiming for funniest of the week are we?
That's all for this week, folks!