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Sometimes the path to legalization of something requires ongoing and widespread illegality before the question will even be considered.
by nitrogen 6y ago
Sometimes the path to legalization of something requires ongoing and widespread illegality before the question will even be considered.
- Silhouette 6y agoThat's not a strong argument, IMHO, since it would similarly condone any other law-breaking activity where the perpetrator disagrees with the law. It's not as if copyright wasn't controversial before or the IA's actions here have any realistic prospect of moving the needle. If you're talking about civil disobedience, that's a different matter, but one of the key things about effective civil disobedience is that large numbers of people have to break the law and accept the penalty in order to overwhelm the system and thus show that the law does not have popular support.
- account42 6y agoYou don't get to large numbers of people disregarding the law before first having a few.
- Silhouette 6y agoI suspect you're glossing over the accept the penalty part of my previous comment, which is quite important. Besides that, how many other Internet Archives do you think will follow the one we've been discussing by also flagrantly violating both the letter and the spirit of copyright law?