cozeulodorieso

Lavabit's explanation of their security, via the Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20130530023856/http://lavabit.com...

I don't think you've been paying attention. Glenn Greenwald (who writes for the Guardian) and Laura Poitras (who's independent, but has had bylines for both the Guardian and WP) interviewed him in his hotel room in Hong Kong. He definitely was in Hong Kong for a while.

Yes, journalism truly has collapsed. That's why these scandals were outed by Reddit and Twitter users, not journalists working at more-than-a-century-old newspapers.

</snark>

Disruption is great. Disruption means doing something else is doing, but much better.

AirBNB -- in this context -- isn't being disruptive to the hotel industry. They're doing the same thing, but _worse_. Where legal hotels have consumer protections (like definitely not having lead paint and definitely sufficient fire escapes), AirBNB... doesn't. Where hotels (and B&Bs, etc.) follow zoning rules to make sure they're good neighbors, AirBNB... doesn't.

Now, these rules don't work all the time. They probably can be improved. But don't act like they're merely regulatory capture. That's an aspect, but consumer protections are real. AirBNB isn't doing the same thing better, but doing a different thing worse.

Legal distinctions may have no bearing on your ethical judgments, but they may for other people -- and an explanation of other people's ethical judgments is what you asked about.

Edit: I don't wanna get in an internet fight, dude.

It's not cognitive dissonance; it's a relevant distinction in the law.

Adults aren't responsible for the actions of other adults (generally, and with respect to piracy). So while an IP address can identify a group of adults, it can't ever identify which one was committing piracy.

But corporations are typically responsible for the actions of their employees, that is, they are vicariously liable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability. Under at least some circumstances, if a studio's employees are committing piracy, the studio is also liable for that piracy. As long as the IP address corresponds to that corporation, it's "close enough" to signal legal liability (under some circumstances).