This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That One Guy, who suspected that a particular detail about the theatre that cancelled its production of To Kill A Mockingbird under copyright pressure was hardly arbitrary:
Coincidence I’m sure.
The Kavinoky Theatre in Buffalo, N.Y., which had sold around 3,000 advance tickets, will replace Mockingbird with an adaptation of George Orwell’s “1984.” “Thank you for supporting us during this difficult time,” the theater posted on Facebook. “As we say in the theatre….THE SHOW MUST GO ON!!!!!!!!”
Jackass thug runs around threatening people who are doing shows in order to cut down on the competition for his show.
Theater replaces it with a show about… an authoritarian government that uses, among it’s tactics, threats to keep people in line.
They may have been forced to fold due to the legal thuggery, but that parting shot, if it was intentional and not just a ‘strange coincidence’, was well aimed.
In second place, we’ve got Thad with a straightforward proposal for how YouTube should be handling content issues on YouTube Kids:
Which has an altogether simpler solution: either get rid of YouTube Kids, or restrict it to videos from vetted and trusted sources. Yes, that’s going to mean a lot less content…but that’s kind of the point of YouTube Kids. Taking the same scattershot, algorithmic/reactive approach to moderating content on YouTube Kids as they do on YouTube proper results in YouTube Kids having exactly the same problems as YouTube proper.
Obviously there’s no way to vet every video that’s uploaded to YouTube. But at least vetting every source that’s allowed to post to YouTube Kids is an attainable goal; it would greatly restrict the content available there, but that’s the entire point; it’s supposed to be a restricted subsection of YouTube content.
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with an anonymous reminder that a common response to our posts about bad internet regulation in Europe — “time to just block requests the EU”, and things along that line — is not as simple as it sounds:
For maybe a decade, copyright laws get harmonised via trade treaties. You should worry about this happening in Europe, because it becomes the lever to export such laws everywhere.
Next, we’ve got a comment from our post about the list of 12,000 police officers convicted of crimes that a journalist acquired, where one commenter erroneously suggested that the number of actual “bad apples” is reduced by multiple offenders, and Killercool corrected and pushed back against this attempt to downplay the harm:
Not a list of 12,000 crimes, a list of 12,000 criminals. Criminals in a position of trust and power, defended by their superiors and leaders, and considered more trustworthy by our justice system than any other member of the public. 12,000 criminals, convicted by the justice system, (likely) with a large portion of them keeping their position and power, or at worst, being allowed to get a similar position with a new precinct. 12,000 criminals who are vociferously and publicly supported by the lion’s share of allegedly non-criminal officers simply because they share a uniform.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Gary with another response to the To Kill A Mockingbird situation:
I think Mike is missing the point here – without such harsh copyright laws, and strict enforcement, why would Harper Lee ever create new works?
In second place, we’ve got a comment from Chris-Mouse (in which I’ve corrected a particularly jarring typo) about just how far an Italian court went in a recent copyright ruling:
This is not holding the infringer liable, nor a third party. This is all the way up to holding a fourth party liable for the infringement.
Two more levels and they will be able to arrest Kevin Bacon.
For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with an anonymous commenter and one last joke about the Mockingbird cancellation:
Perhaps they can get the rights to do a retelling of “A Christmas Carol” where Scrooge is a rightsholder who tries to shut down a community-theater performance of “It’s A Wonderful Life,” which adds the element of it being the protagonist’s birthday, with “Happy Birthday” sung at the end.
That should make a district court judge’s head explode.
And finally, we’ve got an anonymous response to the question “is there nothing we won’t blame Millennials for?”:
Well, it’s their own fault that we do!
That’s all for this week, folks!
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Author: Leigh Beadon