For your information, half of my father's family died in Auschwitz. Luckily, my grandparents came here before war started and they saved their lives. So that's why I have very present what that quote means. But I also live in Argentina, where 36 years ago a Dictatorial Government killed people passing laws, just to arrest and disappear the ones who opposed to them. And what was the reaction of the rest of out society? Just say to their children: "Don't get involved in that." "Just leave well enough alone."

So no, I don't compare piracy with holocausts. That would be mad. But I have present that passing laws that allow the government to monitor everything you do online, may gradually and eventually lead to a dark future. And I dont want to get there seeing this moment as where it all started, and having done nothing about it.

If you'd read the indictment you'd know this has nothing to do with the government monitoring the Internet.

Sadly you were too busy comparing the enforcement of long existing laws to creeping genocide to read the actual case.

Kim Dotcom has, according to his claims, a clean slate.

For your information my criminal record has been cleared under Germany’s clean slate legislation. Officially I can say I am without convictions.

https://torrentfreak.com/from-rogue-to-vogue-megaupload-and-...

Neither German nor US government have the right do define or power to define language beyond its use in government affairs. In the English language shared by millions of people, Kim is in fact a convicted criminal.

It seems unproductive to society to treat "criminality" as a write-once binary switch, which once flipped can never be erased. There are far too many confounding factors. Someone is benefiting from the desire to brand human beings for life for something in their past, as well as the immediate assumption that accused is as good as guilty, but it isn't society.

In fact, I know someone who used to like Megaupload to an extent, but even before a trial, thanks to this cultural tendency and inflammatory news coverage, said, "It turns out they were guilty of racketeering and money laundering, so they were some pretty bad guys." Despite being a reasonably well-informed person, he too fell victim to the urge to equate accusation with guilt.

At this point it doesn't matter what Kim Dotcom did a decade ago in Germany, or whether Megaupload is guilty of all the things they're accused of and more. The damage to the public's perception of legitimate file sharing has been done, and what I think was the most important thing to come out of Mega, the MegaBox music service, is most likely dead.

Using the term "criminal" to describe somebody has already paid their debt to society for the crimes they were convicted of last decade is, to put it lightly, not polite.

There were indeed some awful things that happened back then, but if we act as though nothing else can possibly compare to them then we won't have learnt anything from them. It could be that things continue to get worse, and eventually are as bad, but by the time we get there it's too late - which seems like exactly what Niemoller's quote is trying to point out.

I don't think he was comparing it to mass genocide. He simply said "Oh that reminds me of this other text read".

I thought exactly the same thing. The text is structurally very similar, possibly on purpose, or it may just be an obvious structure.