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I agree with you but I think instead of lies it's likely ignorance or people blinded by emotion. Ever since Aaron killed himself people have been saying the mo

I agree with you but I think instead of lies it's likely ignorance or people blinded by emotion. Ever since Aaron killed himself people have been saying the most logically unsound things about this case and others. Such as: he was a hero, he didn't commit any crimes, others who did similar things were not criminals, copyright shouldn't even exist, MIT is evil for not not caring about the breach, calling other cases bogus because the perpetrator was a young programmer, and so on. Many of the people commenting seem so out of touch with reality that it looks like trolling. It's all the emotions. Makes it hard to write a sound argument.

visarga 14y ago
> logically unsound things about this case such as ... he didn't commit any crimes Please consider the notion of civil protest. After all, this great country started by throwing the English tea overboard. To defend this view I would like to say that: 1. he was not personally profiting from the act 2. he was doing it for the betterment of society Illegal things are sometimes morally right, and legal things morally wrong. We need to raise above the laws when they don't fit reality any more.
- mpyne 14y ago
  The most religious people refuse personal profit and earnestly and honestly believe they are doing it for the "betterment of society". This is the logic that was used to colonize (er, "civilize") the "savages" of Africa and the Pacific. So no, I refuse to subscribe to the idea that because he felt that it was better for everybody that it was his job to force it on everyone else. You know what else the American colonists did to the English, right? They tarred and feathered them, burned down their houses, and many other forms of not-quite "civil" protest. And they did this in response to far worse transgressions than "those JSTOR assholes make me go to a public library to read this peer-reviewed literature I wouldn't know what to do with".
  - visarga 14y ago
    I agree with you, letting people think they can change society as they wish by civil disobedience might easily be destabilizing and a bad thing, yet, the opposite is also true. From time to time we need to protest, voting doesn't change shit.

visarga 14y ago

> logically unsound things about this case such as ... he didn't commit any crimes Please consider the notion of civil protest. After all, this great country started by throwing the English tea overboard. To defend this view I would like to say that: 1. he was not personally profiting from the act 2. he was doing it for the betterment of society Illegal things are sometimes morally right, and legal things morally wrong. We need to raise above the laws when they don't fit reality any more.

mpyne 14y ago
The most religious people refuse personal profit and earnestly and honestly believe they are doing it for the "betterment of society". This is the logic that was used to colonize (er, "civilize") the "savages" of Africa and the Pacific. So no, I refuse to subscribe to the idea that because he felt that it was better for everybody that it was his job to force it on everyone else. You know what else the American colonists did to the English, right? They tarred and feathered them, burned down their houses, and many other forms of not-quite "civil" protest. And they did this in response to far worse transgressions than "those JSTOR assholes make me go to a public library to read this peer-reviewed literature I wouldn't know what to do with".
- visarga 14y ago
  I agree with you, letting people think they can change society as they wish by civil disobedience might easily be destabilizing and a bad thing, yet, the opposite is also true. From time to time we need to protest, voting doesn't change shit.