Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!mcnc!raw From: raw@mcnc.org (Russell Williams) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Piracy Message-ID: <5021@alvin.mcnc.org> Date: 5 Aug 89 00:48:23 GMT References: <119399@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <4030@cps3xx.UUCP> <119606@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Reply-To: raw@mcnc.org.UUCP (Russell Williams) Organization: Microelectronics Center of NC; RTP, NC Lines: 64 In article <119606@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) writes: >In article <4030@cps3xx.UUCP> porkka@frith.UUCP (Joe Porkka) writes: > >From that point on you missed the point. A society as a whole has >morals, and those morals are written down in the laws they make. >Copying software is undeniably illegal, and by definition, society >as a whole considers it to be immoral. > Ummm, excuse me, but laws reflect morality, they are not considered the definition of morality by society. The fact that they are usually created with moral guidelines tends to blur this fact, but there are numerous laws that have no moral basis whatsoever, and exist solely for utilitarianist concerns. If you want to follow this up, though, e-mail me because the contradictions of legality and morality, though a fascinating issue, are scarcely the domain of comp.sys.amiga. :-) B >BBe _definition_, anyone breaking the law is antisocial. That's true >if you go 60MPH in a 55MPH zone, or you pirate software. > >or have your machine confiscated. No one cares. Just like the highway >patrol doesn't care that you were on a straight road, on a clear day, >with 20 mile visibility. > >To the person who walked into the science fiction convention with >all of the pirate software. Call the cops, throw them in jail. Every >person in the room with a disk can be tried and convicted of receiving >stolen property, and the people who put on the convention can just >be convicted of theft. If it is the moral responsibility of every citizen >to obey the laws it is also the moral responsibility to report to the >enforcement arm of society when they are broken. > Amen to that! I was out with my mother last night when she did thirty on a 25 MPH zone. I pointed this out to her, and all she could say was "But it's a straight road with 20 mile visibility" Well, after we got home I called the cops and turned her straight in, as befits a moral citizen. Based on my testimony, the judge gave her the strictest judgement possible, and I slept well, knowing that justice had been done. Who could have guessed that my mother was antisocial? Or, as it would seem, a large percentage of our population who have been cited with speeding tickets! Most of us are antisocial to some degree. Many people will break the law if they cannot conceive of any harm being done, while good comes to them or others. Society makes rules which can at times be bad on the micro level because they were constructed on the macro level. If you're willing to accept what the law is as the definition of morality, then maybe you'd be happy in an ant farm, but individuals have reasoning abilities which they excercise in the discretion of how the greater good can be acheived. Whether or not that includes copying is for the indivdual to decide, but my moral beliefs are determined by my thoughts and experiences, not by what the majority believes. Antisocial does not necessarily mean antigood! Russell "It's just I'm antiwork!"