Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is zeiche with a response to the claim that we have an axe to grind" against In-N-Out because we covered their trademark tourism in Japan:

techdirt grinds axes against companies that try to protect trademarks in countries that they don't do business in. that isn't the purpose of trademarks and techdirt has been pretty consistent about that, regardless what company is being shitty. in-and-out shouldn't take it personally.

In second place, it's an anonymous comment about Twitter's fight with the lawyers who stopped Musk from escaping his purchase of the company:

As a firm that handles mergers and acquisitions, I imagine they've encountered more than one merger where the new owners were uninterested in honoring the debts of the old owners.

So where success is a metric for which you get paid, best to do the get paid" part before the current management is locked out.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from Thad about the latest film Disney has deleted from its platforms:

We knew as far back as the Napster days that pirates were a scapegoat to draw attention away from who it is who really doesn't want to fairly compensate creators.

But I don't know that there's ever been a clearer example than this trend of studios pulling their own content off their streaming sites. There are paying customers who want to watch these shows and movies - maybe not as many as the studios would like, but I definitely watched Willow and Marvel's 616 - and the studios are making a deliberate choice to withdraw the legal viewing option for those paying customers.

It's not the pirates who are lazy parasites who don't want to pay artists for their work. The calls are coming from inside the house. They always were.

Next, it's BernardoVerda with thoughts on the misguided attempts to combat AI with copyright claims:

We're seeing the same fallacious nonsense, in the visual arts world, with people screaming that AI art is stealing" or infringing" their art, just because the AI is trained by looking at art.

Oddly enough, this whole violating our copyrights" argument essentially ignores that's how human writers and artists learn their craft/trade, too.

(I'm sympathetic to how these technological developments are affecting artists and writers - especially those who make or wish to make a living from their work - but I don't think they've thought this through, and wouldn't like the world that this sort of copyright maximalism would inevitably lead to.)

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is David, riffing on a joke from last week's winning comments post:

What's with the long face, Twitter?" I am being Elon-gated."

In second place, it's TMC200 with a comment about the alarmist chief of the DEA:

So let me see if I got this right. The person leading the fight against ruthless criminals in Mexico that, I imagine, constantly select the fittest leaders through routine internecine conflict, is just the stupidest motherfucker anyone could find?

For editor's choice on the funny side, we've got a one-two punch from anonymous commenters about the ongoing situation at Reddit. First, a story from the battleground:

Another interesting take is from the r/dndmemes sub who are apparently also removing the NSFW tag after repeated threats from Reddit. The problem for Reddit is that unlike other subs who posted porn in protest, the NSFW content is entirely on-topic related memes with entirely on-topic comment sections. But because Reddit insisted they remove the tag from the sub, the poor folks in r/all are about to learn what it looks like when two goblins love each other very very much.

Next, a response to the story:

That's okay. The sidebar will feature ads for potions for those goblins who just need a little help.

That's all for this week, folks!