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Comment by deelowe | Hacker News Reader

For a dose of reality, I recommend browsing r/piracy. The mental gymnastics people go through to justify their actions is mind boggling.

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Maybe, but for the silent majority it's pretty straightforward: 1) we view information as fundamentally different from currency, goods, and services; 2) we don't want to pay for information if we don't have to and we're not going to get caught.

The gymnastics are mostly about just trying to figure out whether we're bad people or not - because everyone else's favorite game is Shame the Pirate - but once you realize you're not a bad person and that you're okay with doing something illegal then it all just sort of fades into the background.

Well you probably are a bad person though. A good person by definition tries to do good by other people.

I prefer people that try to not do bad to other people. Those that do good can be risky.

I think quietly doing good is okay, it's the people who talk about it that are risky.

> but once you realize you're not a bad person and that you're okay with doing something illegal then it all just sort of fades into the background.

Doing illegal things makes you a bad person.

This isn't some fight against tyranny, it's theft (or illegal copying, more specifically).

Good != legal.

Bad != illegal.

A legal system that reflects everyone's moral system 100% of the time has not been invented yet (and is likely impossible).

Hey mate! Helping homeless is illegal in my city, as well as collecting wild berries, tenting in forest. Just because law is not realistic and doesn't protect anyone and was made only for profits from tickets doesn't make it a good law and me a bad person. I have a 100GB seedbox where I seed old books that are unavailable on paper in my country and scientific zip. How bad am I?

The only reason I added that last line is to highlight certain scenarios where laws aren't correct.

Illegally copying content is not one of those scenarios.

Yes, we all understand the linguistic gymnastics are a way of rationalizing an action you know is wrong.

On the contrary, I think the people who know whether an action is right or wrong don't spend a lot of time arguing either way, they just go ahead and do what they think is right. It's the people who don't know whether an action is right or wrong that get all worked up trying to handle their conflicted feelings about it.

This isn't about whats legal though. Its about you taking advantage of someone else's hard work. Its theft in the moral sense, and its that what makes you a bad person.

That said, its still a grey area moralistically.

I do not see a small indie developer and a large corporation in the same light as the corporation is taking advantage of the hard work of its employees to make a profit.

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