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Comment by billpatrianakos | Hacker News Reader

That's too simplistic. Lets take the example of a gun. The gun industry makes a product that can be used for intentional harm or for protection. One company sells a 35mm handgun to the general public and another sells assault rifles to the general public. A reasonable person knows an assault rifle is not for protection (and don't get pedantic and say "well depends where you live", etc. because you know what I mean). That's like what MegaUpload is. Dropbox and Box.net are file locker services. MegaUpload was very obviously a file sharing service - one that was very much all about sharing movies, music, and software with no regard to copyright law. Dropbox and Box.net are the handguns to MegaUpload's assault rifle when you put it into my above example.

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Not to get too pedantic, but you might want to amend that to "9mm handgun" or something similar. Apache helicopter gunships shoot 30mm projectiles!

But to address your argument - a large portion of the gun lobby and gun enthusiasts aren't necessarily uncomfortable with just a handgun for defense, but they are uncomfortable with a technically ignorant government deciding what is sufficient and allowable for that purpose. Similarly, what's to say a precedent established with Megaupload cannot be used to hamstring or shut down Dropbox or similar services? Though you can understand and make the distinction between the intents of the two services, can you trust a judge to properly frame why Megaupload is bad and Dropbox is good? Or for prosecutors, lawyers, and the assembled IP industry to not leverage any legal precedent to shut down what they feel like?

As you can tell, I don't know much about guns.

You've got a point but I can honestly say I can trust a judge, prosecutor, or a 5 month old to tell the difference between MegaUpload and Dropbox. What MegaUpload was encouraging was too obvious to even argue about.

That said, you are right. My argument was geared more toward MegaUpload defenders who, for some reason, have deluded themselves into thinking they're defending an innocent service and turning Kim Dotcom into some sort of freedom fighting hero. Your stance on copyright law is irrelevant here because what MegaUpload was all about is illegal in most first world countries. If you think MegaUpload was "just a file storage service" you've got to be lying to yourself.

However, your argument is important because not all cases are so cut and dry. So yeah, in the future it is important to keep an eye on the Feds and make sure the law and due process are upheld because I'll concede that if people are lax (like I am in this case with MegaUpload) then in the future it might be a truly innocent Dropbox that's next. You never know.

Dropbox and Box are file syncing/backup services, and MegaUpload is a filesharing service. Both types have different legitimate use-cases. Youtube is also very much about sharing movies and music, but since youtube videos are publicly viewable, it's easier to monitor and take down. How is MegaUpload supposed to monitor a bunch of passworded "VacationPhotos.rar" files? Just because it might be a Hollywood movie doesn't mean they can take it down on suspicion.

There are music artists that have put their own albums on MegaUpload as a central place where anyone can come download. There are people like myself who put a collection of high res photos in an archive and hosted it on MegaUpload for any of my family or friends to download. Analogizing MegaUpload to an assault rifle is saying that there's no reason for civilians to have access to it, where there are actually many legitimate use cases for using a filesharing service for mass distribution.

> Dropbox and Box are file syncing/backup services, and MegaUpload is a filesharing service. Both types have different legitimate use-cases.

What are you talking about? Here is a dropbox public link to a photo: https://www.dropbox.com/s/q1rw9irkhyn400d/Boston%20City%20Fl...

Just as with megaupload, any person with that link is able to download that file. The paying customer is the person hosting the file, and just as with dropbox, anyone who only has a small volume of files doesn't have to pay anything.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people are using dropbox, google drive, and any number of other companies today for EXACTLY the kind of piracy that megaupload stands accused of. The main difference seems to be that those other companies are not as successful and try very hard to present a public face that emphasizes their other features, like file syncing.

Your presenting a straw man. I used MegaUpload many times over the course of playing World of Warcraft, because one of the better known players had put his configuration files and some of his videos on the site for others to download. I also used it myself as storage for several (non-important) pictures. MegaUpload is very much a file sharing service. It is also used for sharing copyrighted files. It is nothing like an assault rifle.

> A reasonable person knows an assault rifle is not for protection

Makes for pretty fun sport shooting, though.

A 35mm handgun would be hilarious:)

I heard about someone back in the 1970s who replaced the barrel of an old .38 Special revolver with a piece of pipe (about an inch-and-a-half or 40 mm) and used .38 blank cartridges to shoot golf balls about a hundred yards.

and you just _know_ some people would be ordering them 6 months before they were available.. .. never mind that to avoid damaging yourself you'd have to load it so light the bullet would be visible in flight - I am sure it would sell.

That's a great analogy.

The problem with this analogy is that it's actually the wrong way around. The problem firearms are the handguns - the US has 17k murders per year, 13k of them are with firearms, 11k of those are with handguns. Much as people like debating about rifles, it's handguns that do the work.

You politely ask people not to get pedantic then the majority of the discussion becomes pedantry. Instead of replying one by one I'll lump a lot of responses here.

1. The millimeters on my defensive gun were very off. I don't know about guns. Just imagine a typical handgun.

2. The handgun analogy is not about how much damage one causes over the other nor is it about the severity of the consequences. The point is that we can all relate to the average homeowner buying a handgun for protection and most people can understand that and trust that your neighbor isn't buying it to commit crimes. But when your neighbor buys an assault rifle and claims its for self defense you start to wonder because we all know, on average, most of the time, it's common sense, stop being fucking pedantic, that assault rifles are not for self defense and when someone claims that it should set off alarm bells just like when someone says "I only used MegaUpload to share Excel spreadsheets with my coworkers and so did everyone else I know or have ever heard of" you've got to wonder if that person is living in a bubble or just straight up delusional.

The point is that we can all relate to the average homeowner buying a handgun for protection

Can we? Where I live, buying a pistol or an assault rifle for self-defence would get you viewed the same by your neighbours. I'd actually be more concerned if I heard someone on the street brag about their pistol because it's much easier to carry about secretely than a rifle.

This reminds me of the term 'security theatre', which is why I think the analogy is a bad analogy.

It might well have obviously been a file sharing service, but by your metaphor, every hi-fi featuring tape to tape recording was at the very least a Browning Automatic Rifle.

[edit] Also, in a hell of a lot of cultures around the world possession of a handgun is not considered defensive, but lets ignore that point as it would break your metaphor, and not only did you politely ask me not to, but you also probably have a handgun. < whistles innocently while slowly sidling out of range >

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