Comment by AJ007

Is it the legal stories that are crowding out the technology, or is it the low quality content factories?

Here is a sampling of the worst of what I can see right now (sliding off the front page): over 50 points - http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/01/why-are...

over 50 points - http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/video-reveals-108-year-o...

over 10 points - http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/the-kindhearted-pe...

None of those belong on HN.

In any community, when the law threatens the existence or basic functionality of that communities interests, the law becomes the primary concern of everyone. Here, Python developers may not be interested in mobile UX design, VR hackers may not be interested in 40 year old PC hardware. However, they are all going to be concerned about legal issues that threaten their ability to operate and explore ideas -- be it laws that break and censor the internet, or laws that criminalize reverse engineering.

We have been under siege since the early 1990s. A few legal losses (in the United States) early on could have resulted in a very different internet than we have today. The level of education and understanding of the basic principles of information freedom and autonomy are poorly understand by many. If the community that builds the digital world turns its back on defending these principles, what we have will be taken away.