[content_sesh]

whoa nelly. asking for a "rational argument" against distributing child porn before launching into one of the strangest combinations of ad hom and strawman arguments I've ever seen on this web site. here I'll break it down for you:

The grandparent post said (abbreviating):

  But hosting isn't a morality question, they are just storing a number, and hosting company should not have to care what interpretations of a number can exist.

The parent post responded, saying that this is a flawed line of reasoning, because it (imo purposefully) glosses over an important distinction between hosting child porn and hosting most numbers:

  but there is a real human cost here

hope this helps you come to a decision on whether hosting child porn is bad or not!

[dang]

Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN. They're tedious and nasty and we're trying for curious conversation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[fishe]

In all fairness neither you nor the post that you're trying to back up have made a clear argument yet.

[emayljames]

This one here, officers.

[dang]

Please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait to HN. You've been doing it repeatedly and we ban that sort of account.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

[content_sesh]

so because child porn and not-child-porn are both stored and transmitted as bytestreams from a hosting company's servers, you can't actually draw a distinction between them? is that where we're landing on this one?

"Playing opera on my stereo isn't a morality question, I'm just creating vibrations in the air, and I should not have to care what interpretations of those vibrations can exist when I play it at 4am with the dial cranked to 11"

can you see how playing semantic games to try to dodge responsibility for poor behavior can be irritating even in the best of circumstances?