Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Some of the biggest reactions this week came in response to the story of an L.A. council member who proposed a staggeringly invasive use of license plate data to tell car owners they had visited areas "known for prostitution". Our first place winner for insightful was the second comment on that post, from an anonymous commenter who turned the tables:

Nury Martinez has been seen in areas known for bribery, corruption, fraud, and embezzlement. Perhaps someone should be sending her a letter implying that the only reason she's there is for criminal activity.

After all if she's not guilty of taking bribes from, oh let's say, various license plate reader companies to get their readers into wider use, then a letter all but accusing her of doing so shouldn't cause her any problems, or bug her in the least, right?

Meanwhile, our second place comment for insightful was the first comment on that post - and also our first-place winner on the funny side. This time it's another anonymous commenter with an alternative proposal:

There's a simple solution to this. Just move all prostitution to places where the councilwoman lives and works.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with yet another anonymous comment, this time in response to the news that a Turkish judge has set up a special panel to determine whether a doctor comparing the president to Gollum is an insult or not. As the commenter pointed out, that necessity provides an answer in and of itself:

If it takes a previously non-existent, special expert panel to determine if it is an insult, how was the doctor supposed to know?

Next, we've got a comment from this week's podcast episode about the collision between privacy and free speech in Europe. Adrian Lopez suggested some honest rebranding:

The Right to be Forgotten should be called The Right to Make Forget. That at least would be honest in its egregiousness.

Over on the funny side, we've already had our anonymous first place winner above, so we'll move straight on to second place, which comes in response to our post discussing the non-existince of WiFi allergies. Roger Strong had a different opinion, and a different kind of sensitivity:

Whenever my WiFi goes down I feel cranky and depressed. The symptoms go away once my router is working again.

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with one more nod to Roger, for responding to the latest news about Paul Hansmeier in the grand tradition of crossing wires between popular Techdirt stories:

Can anyone recommend a good "reputation management" consultant?

Finally, we've got That One Guy with his summing up of the selfie monkey situation:

The punchline to the whole joke of a case of course is that between the photographer, PETA, lawyers and a monkey, the one who's acted in the most civilized and mature fashion is the monkey.

Ook! That's all for this week, folks.

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