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The law is nothing but a piece of paper. I'm glad it exists, as it provides a framework that protects me from harm and allows me to life my live, but I feel no
by kmm 15y ago
The law is nothing but a piece of paper. I'm glad it exists, as it provides a framework that protects me from harm and allows me to life my live, but I feel no moral obligation at all to follow it.
This style of argumentation is starting to tire me. Obviously, this author thinks piracy is morally wrong. Other people have no such moral qualms about piracy. Both points of view are fine!
But implicitly or explicitly using morality as an argument for or against piracy is a bad style of argumentation and is almost an ad hominem. If I were to say that I am for piracy and someone told me that this was morally wrong, I would pay no attention to this person. But if he were to say that he personally feels piracy is morally wrong AND if he were to give me an argument as to why he feels that way, I would listen to this argument and at least think about it.
- mattgreenrocks 15y agoExcept moral relativism is not any more defensible. Suppose the creator of a work asks you to pay for it, but a pirate chooses not to. Why shouldn't we call the pirate an asshole? They've disrespected the terms of use set by the author, as well as the author themselves. It's that simple.
- Karunamon 15y agoI'm perfectly okay with the "Pirates are assholes" stance. I am an asshole. I admit this. What I'm not okay with is when industry groups distort facts by trying to get one crime confused as a completely separate crime. Make no mistake.. both are crimes, but the attempt is to bring the loaded meanings of one term to a completely different word. It's factually incorrect, and it needs to stop. It's that simple.
- mattgreenrocks 15y ago+1 to you, and this is correct. The industry doesn't get called out by Congress when it claims billions of dollars of lost revenue by people who wouldn't have paid either way. Of course, I've come to believe that intellectual honesty is a cognitive luxury for most people; especially politicians.
- kmm 15y agoRead again, I didn't say you couldn't call the pirate an asshole. But in this article, and in many others, this is presented as an argument and not as the insult/opinion it is. Besides, more often than not these terms are not set by the author of the work, but by for example a music label. Most artists of popular contemporary music don't hold the copyright to their own work any more.