[gliiics]

It's not always black and white; let's be honest, yes, Kim Dotcom was probably more about piracy than freedom of whatever simply because that's where his money was. But:

> Isn't it wiser to stop at some point, and find other stuff to do, even if all your nerves say otherwise?

Do you think this should apply to, say, Snowden, Assange, and whistleblowers in general?

[throwup238]

> 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.

[gliiics]

I agree, and in fact I did not compare them. I asked an entirely different question.

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.

[calmbonsai]

Truth. I'll go further. He was a scam artist. Back in the day, I remember using MegaCar.com as an example of all the evils of Flash. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9RIkwvFjfw

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.

[akoboldfrying]

"Comparing X to Y feels gross [therefore don't do it]" is a gross argument. This type of argument never yields insight, and only serves to draw attention away from the interesting and relevant question being asked, which in this case is:

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.

[throw10920]

> Comparing Kim Dotcom to Snowden or even Assange feels gross. He was a commercial opportunist, not a real activist or whistleblower.

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.

[lnxg33k1]

Regardless of the reason, he gave many kids who couldn't afford to pay, a way to access movies and TV shows. I haven't watched a movie or a TV show for the past 20 years because its a waste of time for kids, but when I was young and couldn't afford to pay, I would use mega

[ranger_danger]

I don't think they were actually comparing Kim to anything else besides using his "resistance to the law" approach in a general sense to ask if "Isn't it wiser to stop at some point" should also apply to whistleblowers.

[ClassyJacket]

Literally the whole point of comparing things are that they are different. If you could only compare things that were exactly identically equal, the concept of comparing wouldn't make sense.

[rustcleaner]

>Comparing Kim Dotcom to Snowden or even Assange feels gross.

Victims are victims. We just overlook victims of the state because of a biological religious adherence to revenge. Righteous violence and all that jazz.

[evilfred]

Snowden is a Russian operative, he isn't a real activist either

[pokstad]

That’s a subjective opinion. You shouldn’t have a legal system built on opinions.

[PhasmaFelis]

I think there's a significant difference between someone who does the right thing despite personal risk (because it's that important), and someone who does the profitable thing despite personal risk (because they can't imagine the rules actually applying to them).

[lenerdenator]

Whistleblowing is not the same as hosting pirated material.

[NamTaf]

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.

[TheKarateKid]

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.

[scotty79]

> > Isn't it wiser to stop at some point, and find other stuff to do, even if all your nerves say otherwise?

> Do you think this should apply to, say, Snowden, Assange, and whistleblowers in general?

Or maybe even more generally to people like Jobs, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Buffet? Because maybe at some point enough should be enough?

[toolz]

I find this mentality is always directed at rich people, but never applied consistently in anyone's life, so I have a hard time taking this opinion seriously. Hopefully, you can convince me otherwise, but I've never heard anyone suggest the best sports teams should stop competing when they've won enough, or that the best inventors should stop, or the best artists, and so on. Money isn't zero sum. We're constantly creating insanely large quantities of money. If the people at the top are accumulating that money from individual consumers making their own free choices, then would you suggest that the people at the end of the line be given things for free? Or maybe they should be disallowed from making the purchases? Or maybe you're suggesting the rich keep selling but they're forced to give the profits away? and who would they give it away too? The federal government controls more money than any entire private business, so obviously it controls orders of magnitude more than any individual. Should these wealthy individuals be forced to give their money to the largest money holders in the world? What value system would that make sense in?

[jrflowers]

Snowden quit working for the NSA and left the country, and Assange does not appear to be operating Wikileaks anymore. I would imagine that they would both agree that there comes a point where it makes sense to factor consequences into your choices and quit what you are doing.

[evilfred]

Snowden fled for Russia whom he protected in his selective leaking. Now he spouts off their official propaganda.

[brailsafe]

>> Isn't it wiser to stop at some point, and find other stuff to do, even if all your nerves say otherwise?

> Do you think this should apply to, say, Snowden, Assange, and whistleblowers in general?

I don't think it's a relevant comparison, but I do think that particular suggestion should apply to them. Imo a fundamental component of "succeeding" in Western culture is in how quickly you learn which parts of which systems act on perverse incentives or actively against the good of the people, and subsequently being able read the room when there's an opportunity to play hero; sticking your neck out might earn you a smily face sticker next to your obituary, but more likely it'll end up screwing you, and it's naive and/or arrogant to think that this time will be different and you'll singlehandedly rid the ocean of pollution (metaphorically). Realizing that you can't rid the ocean of pollution doesn't mean you should start dumping more trash into it, and it doesn't mean you shouldn't do your civic duty to reduce your personal waste, but it does mean you have to set your ego aside for your own benefit, because in practice and in all likelihood you'll make practically zero or even very negative difference, and put a real tangible target on your back, in whichever context this plays out.

Could be a safety meeting at your company in which you're just a peon and you feel like speaking up about a code violation, could be that you're a young Mr Beast employee that wants to vouch for their co-worker who's making less but doing more, or it could be that you want to make your company's website more accessible, in any case, unless you very clearly have the latitude to do so and control over the outcome, don't, because you'll screw yourself or someone else.

Drive as well as you can in your lane, whatever that means to you, and if you don't like it, signal and change lanes, then do it again.

This also means not overexerting oneself on things that require real tangible sacrifice but have only tenuous, nebulous, or only marginally more financially beneficial outcomes. Don't sacrifice too much time alone or with your partner or family or in nature for shipping yet another arbitrary AI SaaS bs product that will disappear in a week, pick the relevant battles and demand am important outcome, we don't have enough time to squander on such asinine missions. Again, that doesn't mean don't do work, or earn money, or help others, or whatever, just be careful how much of your life you trade for some 1s and 0s.