[cipheredStones]

> But it's also not appropriate to lump them together and say "Big Pharma's critics are in the wrong."

And accordingly, I didn't ever say that this was a good bill or all its critics were in the wrong. A lot of people in this thread seem to be reading that into my comments, but all I did was take issue with a misrepresentation of an article that argued against a specific negative claim about the bill.

Which I think is representative - it's very hard to make a narrow point about specific arguments without people assuming that you're taking a firm stance on one side or the other of a general issue.

[AnthonyMouse]

> And accordingly, I didn't ever say that this was a good bill or all its critics were in the wrong. A lot of people in this thread seem to be reading that into my comments, but all I did was take issue with a misrepresentation of an article that argued against a specific negative claim about the bill.

You were responding to a criticism of the article. The technology is a kill switch, which critics rightly oppose, whether or not it's a law enforcement kill switch. Here's the specific false claim from the article being criticized:

> experts say that technology doesn’t amount to a “kill switch,”

The authors are laundering the false claim through the mouths of "experts" (by which they apparently mean "proponents of the bill"), but 'that technology doesn't amount to a "kill switch"' is false. The authors then go on to knock down the narrower claim that it's a law enforcement kill switch, which is the straw man.

The article you're defending is doing the thing you're criticizing, i.e. using the narrow point (not a "law enforcement" kill switch) to malign the general point (it's a kill switch). If they were actually trying to be nuanced they'd be admitting that it's a kill switch and only distinguishing what kind of kill switch it is.