This week, it turned out that the Righthaven saga was not quite over. The denouement led Arsik Vek to win most insightful comment of the week—and second funniest comment of the week—by summing up the story:

So, to make sure I’m getting this right….

1) Stephens Media decides to get them some of that awesome copyright trolling money.
2) Stephens Media spawns Righthaven.
3) Stephens Media takes their box o’ copyright, dumps out all the contents, then sells Righthaven the empty cardboard box.
4) Righthaven brandishes the empty cardboard box in a threatening fashion demanding money.
5) Court says that’s fscking retarded, demands Righthaven pay back legal fees.
6) Righthaven puts the empty box over their head and pretends they can’t hear.
7) Court takes Righthaven away and starts auctioning it off. Realizes it has no assets except an empty cardboard box.
8) Randazza takes the empty cardboard box and sells it back to Stephens Media for $80k.

In the end, Stephens Media donates eighty thousand dollars and it’s reputation to Randazza for no appreciable gain. Well done.

Well done indeed. In second place, we’ve got Josef Anvil, who was inspired by Super Meat Boy developer Tommy Refenes’s comments about piracy and DRM, and proposed a novel idea:

“Team Meat shows no loss in our year end totals due to piracy and neither should any other developer.”

Since lawmakers have swallowed the “loss” argument from the content industry and want to pass more enforcement, then they should walk the walk.

They should begin allowing companies to write off their piracy losses on their taxes every year. One year of that and we would see if governments actually believed in those “losses”.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got two different responses to the MPAA’s recent antics. First up is Ophelia Millais, responding to the MPAA’s leaked talking points, specifically the notion that open discussion is welcome, and indeed ongoing:

I was unaware there was ongoing discussion of this nature. As far as I can tell, the MPAA makes no effort to avail itself to anyone who wants to debate its positions, in any way, ever. Perhaps there was a typo, and they meant to say ungoing discussion.

Next, we’ve got PaulT with a response to the MPAA’s comments about the cloud and the fact that pirates “seem to have gotten into this space first”:

Yes, because you morons have spent the last 20 years trying to first stop legitimate services from appearing, then restricting both the customer base and usefulness of the services you eventually were convinced to offer. Surprise! Ignoring an emerging market lets someone get there first.

That comment serves as a segue into our funniest comment of the week, on the same post. It’s actually a repeat winner, courtesy of an anonymous commenter. The last time, when it was an editor’s choice, I substituted it for an illustrated version, and I see no reason not to repeat that here:

We’ve already had our second funniest comment, so now straight on to the editor’s choice. For the first, we return to the post about the Super Meat Boy developer, where DannyB employed some deadpan sarcasm to sum up the industry’s bizarre attitude toward piracy:

It may be a Pyrrhic victory, but piracy must be stopped at any cost. Even if it means destroying the business, destroying jobs and destroying shareholder value.

Copying of bits must be stopped. It’s the right thing to do. It’s a matter of principle. It must be done even if we must circumvent judicial process, corrupt the legislative system, subvert international counterfeiting treaties, destroy freedom of speech, monitor all communications, impose outrageously draconian punishments for very small crimes and destroy all respect for law and copyrights. In the end it will be worth it.

As in war, the best way to destroy the enemy is to use a five hundred megaton bomb. Best of all, you don’t need to worry about a delivery system. Just set it off within your own territory and you can be assured that the enemy far away will be destroyed. Mission accomplished. Congratulations!

I urge you to help stop piracy at any cost.

And, finally, we head to the latest explosion in the disastrous chain reaction that is EA’s launch of Sim City 5, where an anonymous commenter posed what, at this point, seems like a pretty reasonable prediction:

Should try and get an interview with EA’s executives.

Interviewer: Question #1, have you at any time in your life, played a video game?

Exec: Well no, i can’t say that i have.

That’s all for this week—see you tomorrow!

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