HN has really turned into anti {government, Hollywood, big music, Facebook, Google, Craigslist, anything-else-that-is-large-and makes-a-bunch-of-money} lately so this isn't surprising.
Well, government, Hollywood, Big music, Facebook, (arguably) Google, Craigslist, and any other enterprise which is large and makes a bunch of money, are clear and present dangers to the mostly free internet we have today. Which, considering my job, and considering the average startup, is the biggest threat to their existence.
Since it doesn't allow other websites to wholesale copy it's listings and data for their own use (and monetization) it is a danger to the free(loading) internet apparently.
Considering you now have to give up your copyright to them if you post anything there, I'd have to say yes. Abusing our broken system of laws makes you a danger.
That sounds like the same attitude of 2600 or /. It is hardly new in this sub-culture, and has been around for decades.
Innovative technologies are disruptive, and those behind the disruption generally look down on monopolies with antiquated products. Given the pace of change, sometimes we as the disruptive become the disrupted.
Reddit also has /r/programming, so why don't we just move all the technical discussions there too, while we're at it?
The reason HN is interesting is not that it has unique submissions--it mostly doesn't--but that it has consistently insightful commentary. It makes sense to bring up topics like this here rather than Reddit simply because of the resulting discussions.
Also, my impression is that HN has always been disproportionately libertarianish. In fact, in my experience, this is true of the tech and startup communities in general. So I don't think this is a particularly new development.
I'd argue that it doesn't have consistently insightful commentary with regards to these issues.
I love reading HN comments on tech news/debates/articles because I know there's going to be a huge depth and breadth of different commenters' experiences and anecdotes. This generally isn't true with regards to political/social stuff, where the vast majority of commenters have the same belief and experience.
That being said, I don't really mind the submissions -- because they're easily identifiable -- I just hope they aren't signals of a larger trend towards generalism. (Reddit, too, used to be predominantly tech/programming articles.)
I like to keep in mind http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html for these topics. And it does seem like there have been more and more of them--hopefully at worst it's a trend to "tech, programming, startups, and politics" rather than full generality. From that essay, the large number of comments on these threads is explained by "Politics, like religion, is a topic where there's no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. All you need is strong convictions." Though I would add that this extends to many more subjects, including bashing companies.
If submissions to nothing more than image macros ever get popular, then it's time to jump ship because HN has become way too much like Reddit.
One of the reason HN has consistently insightful commentary is that we consistently flag/downvote non-insightful articles and posts.
You can't simply introduce more social-justice type articles and expect the rest of HN to stay the same. This is why I recommend sticking with the site guidelines: if it would be covered on TV news (this would!) it doesn't belong here, unless it's evidence of some new phenomena (this isn't!)
If this bothers you, good. It should.