Philosophical Quandry: Piracy

[Will]

Hmmm... seems the test is only saying what you've been exposed to, and trying to somehow turn it into "You are an irredeemable X", X = whatever 'virus'...

So, apparently I suffer from:
Junkfood
Sci-fi
Religion
Southampton
Free BSD
Politics
Brand Names
Hippyism
Computer Games
Environmentalism

... and also possibly:
TotL
Linux
USA
8-Bit
British
UNIX
Discordia
X11
Conspiracy Theory
Macintosh

Ummm... ok... down the list. No, Yes, No, No, No, Yes, No, No, Yes, Yes, and No, No, I just live here, Yes, No, I'm starting to love it, Yes, what?, No, No.

There's a lot of 'No's there...

[DarkHorse]

Okay, I've spent all morning catching up on this thread after coming back from vacation, and I feel the irresistable urge to throw in a couple cents.

[quote]Originally posted by geoschmo:

~snip~ Moraltiy is absolute. Morality has to be absolute by definition in order to be morality. Otherwise it is merely opinion and it is useless.

Morality is not absolute, it is an informal convention formulated by a given society to reinforce what it generally deems to be beneficial behavior on the part of its citizens. Laws are typically the formalized quantifications of these moral ideas.
Right and wrong, legal and illegal, moral and immoral are all conventions of convenience designed to encourage socially beneficial behavior, and discourage antisocial behavior. If there were only one person left on earth, all ideas of right and wrong etc would become meaningless, because they are societal constructs that exist only to modify the behavior of individuals toward others.

As a man of science I am sure you understand the need to have absolute points of referance in order to make any sort of measurments. Without them all your measurments are useless.
Geoschmo

This isn't necessarily true. In a universe where everything is relative, there are no absolute points of reference, by definition. An object's weight, for example, is dependent on gravity. That same object's mass is dependent on its velocity; accelerate something close to the speed of light and it's mass approaches infinite. All mathematical and scientific measurments are relative. That doesn't mean they aren't convenient and useful, of course, but they are relative.

But anyway, back to the original question.

The question of software piracy is a legal, not moral, question. Legally, it is clear that if you copy software and distribute it, whether or not it is for profit, you are violating the Fair Use provisions of the relavent law. (EULAs are irrelevant, it is the law that counts. Congress enacts laws, not software companies.)

The moral question is whether or not to break laws, and which laws you may choose to break.

[Erax]

On the contrary, DarkHorse, I feel piracy is a moral question much more than a legal question, because legally it is largely unenforceable. We can do it (and get away with it), but the question is, should we do it ?

To bring back a somewhat relevant quote from Jurassic Park, "You spent all this money and effort to see if you could do it and never asked yourself if you should."

[Suicide Junkie]

I feel piracy is a moral question much more than a legal question, because legally it is largely unenforceable

Software/data copying piracy anyways. Piracy of physical items is much more easily prevented, and you hardly see any swashbucklers these days.

[Fyron]

you hardly see any swashbucklers these days.

A shame, really.

[TerranC]

[quote]Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

Piracy of physical items is much more easily prevented, and you hardly see any swashbucklers these days.

In well-protected waters, that is, such as waters near Europe, North America, Austrailia, and NE Asia. Piracy is still alive and kicking in SE asia, where people are poor, but have easy access to boats, guns, and small, hidden, deserted islands for pirates to hide away.

[Baron Munchausen]

[quote]Originally posted by TerranC:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

Piracy of physical items is much more easily prevented, and you hardly see any swashbucklers these days.

In well-protected waters, that is, such as waters near Europe, North America, Austrailia, and NE Asia. Piracy is still alive and kicking in SE asia, where people are poor, but have easy access to boats, guns, and small, hidden, deserted islands for pirates to hide away.

---

And even there you're only speaking in relative terms. No one really knows how many battles there have been between various drug cartels or immigrant smugglers over ships as well as other tools of the trade (planes, etc.) and their cargos as they ply their various businesses. Only 'law abiding' people report when their ship has been taken by violence. You're not gonna get much help from the navies of the world if you report that your 10,000 tons of cocaine was snatched by a rival cartel. So a true picture of the amount of 'piracy' in the world is difficult to form.

[ July 14, 2003, 02:25: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[dogscoff]

You're not gonna get much help from the navies of the world if you report that your 10,000 tons of cocaine was snatched by a rival cartel.

Is that so..?

*dogscoff scratches his chin thoughtfully for a few moments, then digs an eye-patch and cutlass out of his sea-chest.

[Erax]

Another quote from a famous industrial spy : "Stealing information is different from stealing physical goods. If I steal your shoes, I can wear them and you can't. But if you have some information and I make a copy of it, you still have yours, you can still use it."

I don't necessarily agree or disagree with this statement, but I find it interesting.

[geoschmo]

Obviously the problem with that statement is that if your business depends on the sale of that information, and people make copies of it without paying then you end up not being able to afford to buy new shoes.

Geoschmo