[navait]

Maybe we should just stop throwing around analogies altogether when it comes to politics. Analogies are useful in teaching since it allows people to relate concepts they already understand. However, it's just an abstraction, and is inevitably imperfect.

In normative arguments, analogies are used to bend reality to make your position seem reasonable regardless of whether or not it actually is. It would be better to judge weev's case on it's own merits rather than try to justify a position using increasingly complex analogies.

[kybernetikos]

The problem is that there is no consensus on the correct way to regulate these kinds of interactions yet. When we try to work out what a reasonable way to regulate something new is, we usually do so by analogy to other things that we already know how to regulate. That way we can make a whole bunch of analogies with various current situations and try to work out which one is the best analogy in the relevant aspects so we can come up with a good starting point for regulation.

This doesn't always work (particularly not for truly disruptive technical or social changes), but it's a pretty good way of doing it.