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Just because US law defines IP as an incentive not an inherent right doesn't mean that culturally it's only a incentive. You have poorly defined what "ethical"
by aplusbi 16y ago
Just because US law defines IP as an incentive not an inherent right doesn't mean that culturally it's only a incentive.
You have poorly defined what "ethical" means. So far the only clarification you have made is that legal and ethical are too different things. Some people disagree and define "ethical" as "law-abiding" which means that copyright infringement is unethical.
To be clear, I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that there is a degree of relativism to your statement. Just because you don't think that copyright infringement is unethical doesn't mean that people who do are wrong.
I'm not really a proponent of moral-relativism but ultimately I have to accepted that ethics are a human construct and as such disagreement will arise over its precise definition. For example, I think eating meat is unethical but most people don't. Does that make me wrong?
- sp332 16y agoI'm just using "ethical" to contrast things that would be wrong no matter what the law says. Breaking the law is unethical - that's why we don't need a "Rule 1: Don't break the rules." Stealing would be unethical even if there were no law. But copying something without the author's permission isn't unethical except when the law says so.
- aplusbi 16y agoAh, I see what you mean but I disagree with your premise - I think that IP is an ethical gray area and that copyright infringement can be unethical absent the law/economics. I think it would be unethical for a programmer in a country that doesn't recognize the GPL to use GPL'd code in a proprietary product, for example, because they would be going against the expressed [reasonable] wishes of the content creator.
- chc 16y agoCulturally, filesharing is everywhere (as was sharing of videos, CDs and books before it), so approaching the question from that angle is not going to be useful to a stance favoring very strong copyrights.
- aplusbi 16y agoI am not trying to take a stance for strong copyright. My stance is that there are (or can be) non-artificial ethical reasons to not commit copyright infringement.