Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

This week, the RIAA was pushing a lot of nonsense about the "value gap" in music and the need for laws to protect its business. Nasch won first place for insightful by reading things through a more sensible lens:

The funny thing is most of it makes perfect sense if you interpret it rationally rather than in RIAA crazy-talk.

Issues like the "value gap"

The gap between what the labels take and what artists get

and obligations of intermediaries will continue to dominate the legal landscape.

Intermediaries meaning record labels - they're between artists and audiences.

Ideally, the Byzantine legal structure today would give way to a system where creators are fairly compensated and competitors are on equal footing.

Sounds great!

Those who have an interest in music could come together to figure out solutions.

You don't want a Byzantine legal structure? Go back to the original 1790 copyright law. Simple.

While litigation can be an important tool, it often takes a long time and the results are unclear.

This is harder to square. I haven't seen much evidence that litigation is ever an important tool in this business, but the second part is certainly right.

Solutions between business and industry partners can clear a path through thorny legal issues.

Could be.

The combination of partnership and technology can go a long way to ensuring a healthy music ecosystem.

Absolutely agree.

In second place, we've got a second response to the RIAA - this time from DannyB, offering a simple distillation of the real question and its real answer:

Q. How can a musical creator be fairly compensated?
A. Don't sign up with an RIAA record label!

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we'll start out with one last tidbit from that post - this time another interpretation of the RIAA's words, but one that's a little less generous and sadly much more accurate:

"... competitors are on equal footing... "

Translation... "We want our business model protected by law, so we can destroy any competition."

Over on the funny side, we start out with the story of a man's Smart TV getting hit by ransomware, where one commenter wondered if that doesn't call the whole "Smart" label into question. Roger Strong won first place for funny with a truly excellent response:

Maybe it decided it was so smart that it didn't have to listen to security briefings.

In second place, we've got a comment from our round-up of 2016's top comments, where we were randomly yelled at to shut down this "stupif" blog, prompting an anonymous response:

Protip, when insulting people make sure to spell correctly or you will look stupif.

For editor's choice on the funny side, we've got a pair of quick quips in response to Sarah Palin's recent about-face on Edward Snowden. The headline in full was "Sarah Palin Now Thinks Julian Assange Is A Really Nifty Guy", the wording of which understandably tripped up David:

Sarah Palin Now Thinks

You almost had me there.

Finally, we've got a silly and pleasing anonymous gag:

I can see Russian hackers from her house.

That's all for this week, folks!