> Do you think this should apply to, say, Snowden, Assange, and whistleblowers in general?
Comparing Kim Dotcom to Snowden or even Assange feels gross. He was a commercial opportunist, not a real activist or whistleblower.
Comparing Kim Dotcom to Snowden or even Assange feels gross. He was a commercial opportunist, not a real activist or whistleblower.
You can re-read the first line of my comment if you think I'm putting those two things on the same level, and you will see that I agree with:
> He was a commercial opportunist, not a real activist or whistleblower.
It is like posting “You have interesting thoughts about Kim Dotcom. What is better, paragliding or parasailing?”
Am I the only one that didn't read either that way? I think a lot of biases are hanging out in this conversation.
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.
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.
> 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".
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".
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."
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.
I don't think I can make this any simpler.
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.
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.
Numbers don't lie.
Victims are victims. We just overlook victims of the state because of a biological religious adherence to revenge. Righteous violence and all that jazz.
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.