What is the point of asking that question if you strictly intended no comparison between the subject of the post you’re replying to and the people you mentioned?
It is like posting “You have interesting thoughts about Kim Dotcom. What is better, paragliding or parasailing?”
It's not. They were attacking an argument made in the original comment. That argument had no reason to only apply to Kim dotcom. It applies to everyone. The poster attacked the logic behind that argument using a few different people as examples.
On the internet, questions like your first comment are statistically likely to be smug gotchas. It'd be nice if it was different, but it's not. So if that's not your intention, it's worthwhile to say so in the first place rather than assume people will understand.
Just to say up front, I think you are the only one that gets it here and am not criticizing you, but the answer in question could also be read that way (of course with the excuse that "the other guy did it first!").
Am I the only one that didn't read either that way? I think a lot of biases are hanging out in this conversation.
Truth. I'll go further. He was a scam artist. Back in the day, I remember using MegaCar.com as an example of all the evils of Flash. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9RIkwvFjfw
Also Data Protect was a fraud masquerading as an information security company. I was living in Germany then and it was a joke in the infosec space.
"Comparing X to Y feels gross [therefore don't do it]" is a gross argument. This type of argument never yields insight, and only serves to draw attention away from the interesting and relevant question being asked, which in this case is:
The top-level poster appears to be proposing a general rule for how people should behave. But how suitable is it really?
The way to explore that is to test it out by trying other inputs, as the GP did here.
To be fair, the person you are replying to didn't use the argument you are describing. They stated it felt gross and then went into detail of the actual argument:
> He was a commercial opportunist, not a real activist or whistleblower.
That is noticeably different than stating, "it feels gross so don't do it".
What you're calling their "actual argument" is also a bad argument. The original proposed rule (which amounts to "Don't do stuff if someone powerful can likely punish you for it") doesn't distinguish between commercial opportunists and real activists or whistleblowers, so their "actual argument" is spurious.
It also seems designed to shut down criticism of the original proposed rule -- or at least that's the only interpretation I can ascribe to it. This is bad because that original proposed rule is bad (in my opinion) and deserves criticism. Ihe best kind of criticism of any rule is "Let's try this other input, and see if you still agree with the conclusion".
Haha, of course the original comment doesn't distinguish... that was the whole reason for pointing it out. It was done specifically to separate the two sets of actors for comparison.
It "being designed to shut down criticism" is a wildly subjective take at best and at worst way more spurious than anything they or I am suggesting. I think your bias is showing and you are doing everything in your power to avoid addressing the point that "he was a commercial opportunist, not a real activist or whistleblower."
> the point that "he was a commercial opportunist, not a real activist or whistleblower."
This "point" isn't connected in any way to the original proposed rule, which is what is under examination here. So when the GP sought to test that rule by applying it to a different type of person, this "point" does not amount to an objection -- it's simply irrelevant.
It's simple enough, it's just nonsensical. You don't get to declare rules for discussion of a topic. When someone proposes something, it is valuable to explore how it fits in different scenarios. I don't think I can make that any simpler for you, and frankly, I don't know why I'd need to explain that to an adult acting in good faith.
So would you like to address the topic or would you rather continue playing pretend with imaginary rule sets for conversation?
Ironically, it's you who is attempting (and failing) to shut down criticism instead of addressing it.
> Comparing Kim Dotcom to Snowden or even Assange feels gross. He was a commercial opportunist, not a real activist or whistleblower.
Publicly available information supports the fact that Snowden was also an opportunist - the vast majority of the material he leaked was unrelated to domestic surveillance, which was his stated purpose for leaking.
Regardless of the reason, he gave many kids who couldn't afford to pay, a way to access movies and TV shows. I haven't watched a movie or a TV show for the past 20 years because its a waste of time for kids, but when I was young and couldn't afford to pay, I would use mega
I don't think they were actually comparing Kim to anything else besides using his "resistance to the law" approach in a general sense to ask if "Isn't it wiser to stop at some point" should also apply to whistleblowers.
Literally the whole point of comparing things are that they are different. If you could only compare things that were exactly identically equal, the concept of comparing wouldn't make sense.
>Comparing Kim Dotcom to Snowden or even Assange feels gross.
Victims are victims. We just overlook victims of the state because of a biological religious adherence to revenge. Righteous violence and all that jazz.
The written justification that judges give for their rulings is literally called a "judicial opinion."
Human understanding of humans and human social structures (which one needs to make just rulings) isn't objective. To claim otherwise is not just subjective, but incoherent. It's an infinite regress. Many people throughout history possessing ideas that we now consider to be stupid were convinced of their objectivity.
FWIW, I think this vendetta against Kim Dotcom is way out of line, and wouldn't have happened if he were more important.
Sure but the legal system is only one branch of government. Many of the rights we enjoy today were earned by what the legal system would classify as criminals.
Comparing Kim Dotcom to Snowden or even Assange feels gross. He was a commercial opportunist, not a real activist or whistleblower.