Funniest/Most Insightful . Of The Week At Techdirt

from the talk-is-cheap dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with with a comment about Elon Musk citing The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy as the inspiration for his new “Grok” AI product, and our point that the titular guide was compiled by humans:

Yeah, if you want a real-life equivalent of the Hitchhiker’s Guide, it’s…Wikipedia.

In second place, it’s Stephen T. Stone with a comment about the data protection complaint against YouTube for its adblocker blocker:

Browsing the Internet without an adblocker is like skateboarding without a helmet and pads: Being able to do it doesn’t mean it’s the smart thing to do, and doing it will inevitably cause some damage.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a reply to that comment from BernardoVerda suggesting another way of looking at it:

I don’t block ads, I block trackers.
And I use EFF’s Privacy Badger browser extension, so as to block only the “problematic” (from a privacy perspective) trackers.

If that results (as it rather frequently does) in many ads being blocked as well — that’s on the website and/or advertiser, not on me.

If some website won’t let me view their site unless I allow them to infringe my privacy and track my online activity, like some creepy stalker, well, after all…
… The Internet is a very big place — I can generally find what I’m looking for somewhere else, from someone who doesn’t consider it a deal-breaker to not let them snoop on what’s none of their business.

Next, we’ve got another comment on that post, apparently from Alexander Hanff, who filed the complaint:

I am the person who filed the complaint and I do often find it both amusing and very sad when I read comments to articles about this.

Amusing because I like watch the apologists flapping their gums about mythical rights of publishers and mythical obligations on the people visiting their web sites.

Sad because it truly dismays me to see how ignorant the general public about their fundamental rights.

I am a lawyer, computer scientist and sociologist who has studied this particular law for the last 15 years and am widely regarded as one of the foremost experts in the world on this matter. I advise the Regulators, Legislators and Parliamentarians on these issues and helped to draft the law which will replace it.

So let me make this clear – in the EU people have no legal obligation to watch ads, period. It is also illegal for any publishers to store any script or other technology on your device which is not strictly necessary for the provision of the requested service – a position clarified by Regulatory Guidance going back to 2014 and further supported by binding case law in the EU’s highest court as recently as July this year. The EU Commission’s formal legal analysis also makes it clear that this is illegal without consent a position they have held since 2016 in a formal written legal evaluation.

And in fact, not is this only a breach of civil law, I have also filed a criminal complaint against YouTube in Ireland for a breach of computer trespass and misuse law – which also makes it a criminal offence to gain unauthorised access to a computer and/or utilize computing resources in an unauthorised manner.

So to the apologists, marketers and Google fan boys, you are quite simply wrong – you have no legal argument and are just polluting the debate with your personal opinions which are both unqualified and utterly irrelevant in the case of a legal complaint.

But it is important to everyone else to note that there is no point in discussing the issue with these people, because there is no discussion with people who live under some false illusion of an entitlement to trespass on our property and ignore our fundamental rights – as such it is an utter waste of energy and time and only serves to give them the attention they strive for in order to get their dopamine hits and feel like they are important.

Have a great day everyone and please, start to exercise your own rights otherwise you will lose them.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is AmySox with another comment about Grok:

What a dreadful thing to call “Grok.” RAH would be spinning in his grave…if he hadn’t been cremated and had his ashes scattered at sea.

If he wanted a Hitchhiker’s themed name, how about “Eddie,” after the shipboard computer on the Heart of Gold? Always positive and frequently wrong.

In second place, it’s an anonymous comment about the lawsuit over video game addiction, referencing one of my favorite Dan Bull songs:

I recommending listening to the Dan Bull song 40 Years of Gaming whilst reading the lawsuit.

These lyrics seem on point:

Hijack your mind, your momma can’t abide this
Night Trap might lack morals, it’s a moral crisis
What are we doing to our youth?
They’re shooting people
Glued to screens with superglue
Computers need to be banned when the laws broke
Ban Manhunt
Ban Grand Theft Aut

(It’s truly worth watching, so I’ll go ahead and embed it…)

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment about a different moral panic from a tired old mold — panicking about social media trends and challenges:

I have no idea why the media has to drum up new moral panics when Dungeons and Dragons is still out there.

Finally, it’s Nimrod with one more comment on our post about Grok:

Elon Musk has to have the record for the longest puberty by now. He can go ahead and grow up any day…

That’s all for this week, folks!