>I bet you eat animals that have been tortured and killed in factory farms, and you have a bunch of a really great justifications for that. QED. As a vegetaria

>I bet you eat animals that have been tortured and killed in factory farms, and you have a bunch of a really great justifications for that. QED. As a vegetarian I feel that bringing out this argument (implying that a particular person is hypocritical -- and yes, I understand the societally-approved point), in response to a discussion on copyright patents, is below the standard of discussion I expect from HN. In general this discussion seems to include a lot of "no it isn't" / "yes it is" type bickering without much substance, and to be honest I blame the original article, which was content-free. Up above we have people arguing for the abolition of all intellectual property, and others claiming that mob rule is the basis for democracy. I don't see why the issue is such a binary one. Clearly the patent system needs reform. It's not at all clear that it needs to disappear entirely.