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Comment by whathappenedto | Hacker News Reader

They're just trying to justify illegal software. Like when people defended P2P file sharing as "but you can use it to download linux" or recently bitcoin as "but it's also great for transferring money internationally."

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> They're just trying to justify illegal software.

Please define "illegal software" in this context.

illegal software illegal tool illegal math illegal opinion illegal thought

About 70% of what I am earning and spending these days is in Bitcoin.

Just to clarify, you are not a drug lord, right?

No, I am a consultant software engineer (finance, simulations). Also a researcher, but I am not getting paid in bitcoins from my university... yet. There is a (relatively) small, but growing international Bitcoin services economy, without much of red tape and prohibitive regulations concerning hiring people globally.

Out of minor interest, any tips on finding jobs for bitcoin (or other cryptocurrencies)?

If you work for e.g. Coinbase, you can opt in to be compensated in Bitcoin. If you are in the business of writing software for crypto exchanges (like myself), this is also kind of a default option.

I'm not sure if comparing bitcoin to BitTorrent protocol is actually a valid comparison.

It's like comparing BitApples to BitOranges.

It's great for transferring [large] sums of money internationally.

It's not great for doing anything illegal, and criminals get caught faster because they're using Bitcoin [1].

[1] https://mashable.com/article/dark-web-child-pornography-ring...

For the record, War Thunder is using P2P to distribute software updates and has been doing that for years.

And most major Linux distributions do have torrents for their installation images.

Also more recently distributed technologies have been kinda morfing together with P2P, with PeerTube, IPFS, Fediverse and all the various cryptocurrencies.

You have a point, to some extent.

The way Popcorn Time is advertised makes it pretty clear:

    >No restrictions. Watch any movie or TV show as many times as you want.
    >Awesome catalogue. If the movie or TV show is out there, Popcorn Time will find the best version possible and start streaming it right away.

It's pretty clearly about piracy. That being said, it can obviously also be used to watch non-pirated movies, and the way things are going with Youtube at the moment (censoring various videos on non-copyright grounds) could actually make PT a great alternative.

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