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Comment by lenerdenator | Hacker News Reader

Whistleblowing is not the same as hosting pirated material.

Yes, that’s the point the poster is making. They are not the same despite being united by the fact that in both cases the government got involved and said “stop that, it’s wrong”. They explicitly stated their point that there’s a moral spectrum of positions which means it’s not always right to just roll over and find something else to do when the authorities get involved.

I don’t know if it’s just coincidence, but I’ve been seeing this so much lately. People reflexively responding that thing A is totally different than thing B, completely missing that the point is not to suggest similarity between A and B, but to challenge the reasoning being applied to A by noting that it would also apply to B (in most cases where applying it to B leads to a clearly wrong outcome).

It's standard trolling technique, or maybe rhetorical art to win an argument, your call.

Now you have a pointless thread five deep.

It's not a coincidence, it's become extremely common lately in online discussions. Instead of addressing the argument and, perhaps, pointing out why the two differing things should be treated differently, they just act offended and shut down the argument as if making the comparison at all is so offensive and wrong that we can't even discuss it logically.

Back in the day, piracy was seen as a symbol of free speech and censorship much like how abortion is still a symbol for women's rights today.

The premise was that these services didn't actually perform the piracy, its users did. Kim Dotcom played both sides of the field, much like how social media platforms are right now with the whole "we're not a media company" but wanting all the profits of providing services that those companies do.

I'm not saying I agree, but it provides context as to why people felt Kim Dotcom was a hero.

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