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> Copyright infringement is another kind of evil, which is important because the law explicitly says so; It's not just the law that makes copyright infringemen
by mpyne 12y ago
> Copyright infringement is another kind of evil, which is important because the law explicitly says so;
It's not just the law that makes copyright infringement of various sorts immoral. It is the law, not morals, which gives GPL software strong copyleft, but surely you would agree that it would also be immoral to take GPL software proprietary without the permission of that software's authors?
- belorn 12y agoYou are comparing the act of taking a work and exploiting it for profit, and sharing a movie with a friend. If try to commercial earn illicit profit by exploiting those people in society that gives software away for free and explicit allow you to run, modify and distribute. Then that is immoral. Comparing it to sharing a movie with a friend is just a shameful act of pushing an agenda. A more correct comparison with GPL would be bootlegging a CD (ie, for profit) during a charity concert that has pay-what-you-want tickets. Anti-copyright people would likely support the claim that such behavior is immoral.
- mpyne 12y ago> Anti-copyright people would likely support the claim that such behavior is immoral. Yes, that is my point. But GPL works in practice because the immoral behavior it is meant to defend against is also illegal due to copyright. The original point was that copyrights merely make things illegal, but that we shouldn't care because what is illegal would be something moral (I mean, is there an easier target to beat up on than RIAA and MPAA?). I countered that in this case there are instances where copyright makes immoral behavior illegal—it is not simply true to state that any activity illegal under the Copyright Act would be moral to engage in, if not for those pesky IP Nazis oppressing the public.