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Comment by fnordfnordfnord | Hacker News Reader

Your gross simplification of the issue to "free movies vs raping children" is a straw-man. That kind of patronizing condescension may work on morons, but there are those who have given careful consideration to the issue and decided that despite the negative aspects of free speech and the rule of law, that free speech is in fact more important than catching file-sharers of any kind, and that your ends-justifies-the-means philosophy is absolutely the wrong way for police to operate in a "free country". I'm glad you realize that you're playing wack-a-mole, while perverts film themselves raping children and then sell that. Hopefully one day you'll graduate to actually stopping child abuse at the source, but hey, feeling good about yourself in this moment is more important than actually doing good, right?

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The depressing reality is that I'm confronting the reality of the hands on abuse on a day to day basis. That's my world. If your's doesn't have that, lucky you. I don't feel good about it in the slightest. But thanks for letting me vent that :) I'm not sure why free speech IS file sharing in your argument. Maybe freedom of intellectual property? You're also making assumptions about the law I operate under. I'm not in the US or NZ. So I couldn't have any impact on the mega situation. I too am amazed by the extra-territorial nature of the proceedings. I think it's bad law. I mean, WETA is in NZ, some of their movies would have been on mega, it could have been done by New Zealand police and courts. Why not?

I am occasionally regaled by tales from investigators I have assisted with descriptions of jail sentences handed down to abusers- you would think that would be satisfying. It's not. It's just confirmation by jury and society that they were in fact evil human beings and in a couple of years they'll be back. And that's grim.

>The depressing reality is that I'm confronting the reality of the hands on abuse on a day to day basis. That's my world. If your's doesn't have that, lucky you.

Yeah, I get it, you're a dedicated do-gooder and people don't stroke your ego often enough. You're a legend in your own mind.

>I'm not sure why free speech IS file sharing in your argument.

"file sharing" or 'freeloaders watching movies without paying' is a minor consequence of free speech on the internet.

>You're also making assumptions about the law I operate under.

Your rhetoric falls within what I would classify as typical American scaremongering. TBH, if you're going to make these kinds of posts in a thread about the US DOJ's crowing about their success defending private industry's profit goals; I don't think it matters much.

> I'm not sure why free speech IS file sharing in your argument. Maybe freedom of intellectual property?

The reason you're not sure file sharing is free speech is because your thinking is still clouded by the notion that there is such a thing as "intellectual property".

Property, that pesky word with a relentlessly concrete meaning, is something in the material world that can be bought, sold, stolen, given, auctioned, and after any or all of those actions, it still exists in the same quantity it existed before. Examples: land, cars, computers.

When a person P steals property from another person Q, then it must be true P now is in possession of the property, and Q is not in possession of the property anymore.

When you say a sentence out loud, I can remember it and say it again to someone else. That does not mean I stole that sentence from you (it may mean I'm unoriginal), because you still have the ability to say it.

Now say you say a sentence so long I want to write it down so I can say it again. I write it down and save it on a file on my computer. I give this file to my friends - that is, I give copies of this file to my friends. Now we all have a file that represents that long sentence you uttered, and yet not my friends nor I have taken that sentence away from you.

A file is a long sentence written down. It is speech. It is not property like cars, land and computers. I hope this helps.

Maybe if the USA hunted child-abusers like they hunt "terrorists" then the abuse material would stop being produced.

Equating "piracy", which is nothing more than enjoying the fruits of somebody else's labor without paying them, with "free speech"? Yeah, that sounds closer to the "moron" category than the "careful consideration" category.

We all enjoy the fruits of other's labor without paying them; life would be impossible otherwise.

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