[downer96]

Time to wade through all the forum slide and astro turf of another two minute hate.

  Blah blah blah, he's fat. 
  Blah blah blah, music thief. 
  Blah blah blah, copyright law.

Okay. Yeah, we get it. That's great. We get it. The fat man has a website, and it's very bad. He's a fat, ugly, stinky man. Boo hoo! Make him go away!

I'm still not clear on what it is about his website, and all the implicit data transfer it's responsible for, that's so radically different from any other website that hosts massive amounts of any data I want, shared with the world.

Flickr, for example, let's me share Terabytes of data, if I should choose to do so. Why isn't flickr villified like some genocidal dictator?

[AnthonyMouse]

> Flickr, for example, let's me share Terabytes of data, if I should choose to do so. Why isn't flickr villified like some genocidal dictator?

Mostly because movie studios have more lobbyists and PR flacks than still photographers.

Also, Hollywood does vilify the various other websites. YouTube is an evil pirate website which Viacom has had to sue to vindicate its rights, didn't you know? And a couple of YouTube founders watched a Hollywood movie someone uploaded to YouTube that one time, so therefore Google should have to shut down YouTube and pay a billion dollars.

[Malstrond]

What is your counter-argument to the fact that he turned "on us" in the past when he gave all information on users of the House of Coolness BBS to the authorities, the lawyer Günter Freiherr von Gravenreuth, and just about anyone who would pay?

How can "we" be sure he won't just cave in again?

[downer96]

I fail to see the difference between your complaint and the reality of all large tech companies, as we now know them to be. Secret agreements for wire taps and traffic analysis. National security letters and eavesdropping. Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft. All of them.

I say again: Why is this guy more evil than anyone else? Why is he worse than, say, Steve Ballmer? Why is he smeared, but other corporate parasites, not so much?

[Malician]

He's not a nice man. He's been a mobster and a fraudster and if you're trusting him, well, you probably don't have very good sense.

The point being made is not that we should trust him, but that there's nothing inherently illegal about his new site.

[MBlume]

To me, Kim Dotcom's activities are reminiscent of one of those villain crossover movies -- Alien vs. Predator or whatever. I don't bear Dotcom much good will, but if he damages the copyright maximalists while they're taking him down, I'm happy to see that.