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> What mechanism prevents Bob and Steve from entering into such an agreement? To me, that would be a violation of freedom, to limit the kinds of agreements people can enter into.

I don't know of any country in the world that allows anything and everything to be put in a contract and for good reason. Why do you think that it is so?

> Even by your own definition of "control", wouldn't I not have control over something if I can't concoct whatever rules for that thing that I like?

When you sell it? Absolutely not. Why do you think that you should have control over something when you sell it?

To be clear, we limit freedom in a great many ways. There's nothing wrong with that, in principle, but it is a limitation of freedom.

By reading the rest of this comment, you agree to give me all your money forever. (edited to emphasize "rest of" which OP apparently missed)

Assuming you're still here, what's the ethical difference between this and "by purchasing this DVD you agree to blah blah"? In neither case did anyone agree to anything.

I didn't have a choice in reading your "contract", but I do have a choice in purchasing a DVD.

See my edit: of course, as a benevolent Rightsholder(tm)(c)(R) I am only demanding your money if you continue reading after the "contract" you "agreed" to.

The point, of course, is that there is no agreement in either case. You agree to do something when you agree to it, not when I claim that you agreed to it. You can argue the opposite legally, and you might even win, but you can't argue it ethically; absent a crisis of conscience halfway through, someone who intended to pirate a movie and then went on to actually pirate a movie did not agree not to pirate a movie a priori.

Except there is a very clear agreement in the case where you purchase a DVD. You own the physical DVD, but you license the contents of that DVD. It's right there on the DVD box itself.

...yes, much like the very clear agreement in my comment where you agreed to give me all of your money. Why can you ignore the one, and I can't ignore the other? What, ethically speaking, is the difference between them?

The purchase is where you consent/reject the agreement. That's not the same as merely reading something.

If you purchase a Disney movie on DVD from Walmart are you making an agreement with Disney?

Absolutely not. That would be absurd.

Yes, you enter into an agreement with Disney that you will abide by copyright law. You would not have been sold the item if Disney were aware you did not agree to copyright law.

We're going in circles; why are they different? I understand that the movie studio would like them to be different, they put a sticker on the side of the DVD saying so, but I don't care about their opinion on the matter and even after four responses it's not clear why you think I ought to.

I get why you're taking this position - If I agree to not do X and then do X, you can call me unethical even if X is harmless. So, if you can show that pirates somehow agreed not to pirate, you can declare that those pirates are unethical without having to show that piracy itself is unethical. The problem with this position is that it uses semantics to contradict reality. You're asking us to imagine someone who picks up a DVD in a store and reads the sticker on the side and loudly declares, "What nonsense, I'm going to go pirate this movie right now!", and claiming that ethically he is somehow agreeing to the license, and that when he goes home and uploads it, that he is somehow breaking a promise not to pirate it despite having explicitly promised do exactly that. That's an obviously contorted position.

If piracy is bad, it's because of the ramifications of the actual act of piracy, not because a corporation fooled me into pinky-swearing not to do it. Companies try to tell us what to do all the time, you can just ignore them; boilerplate legalese has no moral or ethical valence. However, I will also say that I appreciate the time and patience you've put into this thread, you've been nothing but civil and in good faith, so thanks for that.

Piracy is immoral as it necessitates misrepresenting intention to abide by the implicit agreement that you enter into when you purchase a copy of a work. Piracy is immoral because it requires deception.

Additionally, it undermines capitalistic incentives to create intellectual works, but that's what drives creators of work to stipulate conditions when they sell copies of their work. But it's the deception, not the undermined capitalistic incentives, that make piracy immoral.

And thank you for your compliment! I'm fascinated by the idea that so many people fight so hard to find ways for piracy to be a moral act when, to me, it's infinitely easier to accept it as an immoral act and do it anyway. Do people really operate in life expecting to always do the morally correct thing? That's wild, to me.

You're welcome, and for the record, I'm equally fascinated by your position - that a corporation can change the ethics of my actions merely by wishing it so. Like, is this limited to corporations, or can regular people wield this magic? You seem to think that money changing hands is a critical factor - why so? If a moral commandment can be attached to a purchase, why not to a gift, a meal, a story, a forum comment? That's why I keep going back to the hypothetical about "By reading this you promise to give me money" sort of license. Yes, it's absurd, but that's the point - your position leads to absurdities.

And lots of them! Could a restaurant declare, "By purchasing this sandwich, you promise not to give us a bad review on yelp"? If not, how is that different? Would that license apply if the sandwich was free? What if someone else bought it for me? If I make you a sandwich and stipulate that you must declare it to be delicious, and it isn't, is it more ethical for you to break my "license" or to lie?

I got more! What about DVD region restrictions? If I buy a movie in America and the license requires me to buy a second copy to watch in Asia, am I ethically obligated to do that too, even though that doesn't have even a fig leaf of moral justification beyond the manufacturer's profit motive? Is it unethical to skip the unskippable ads? For that matter, how does this license magically transfer itself from the rightsholder to the manufacturer, warehouse, retailer, and thence consumer? If I sell it used to my friend John, has he "agreed" to a contract with whoever originaly published the media through the magic of transitive association? What if I give it away for free, or throw it away and someone picks it out of my trash?

We're not done! Does this magic travel backwards in time? What license did I agree to when I inherited my Dad's old Beatles albums on vinyl? Bandcamp offers seven different licenses for music, is it one of those or a different one? Am I allowed to watch in in Asia, or is it region-restricted too? If not, how do you know?

We haven't even discussed immoral licenses. What if the license says, "By purchasing this you agree not to show it to any filthy stinking [ethnicity] people", can I ethically ignore that? What about those Taylor Swift albums that she doesn't own the rights to, can we pirate those? What about a trans person who wants to read Harry Potter, is it more ethical for them to purchase the books or to bootleg them? Can I download Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book"? OJ Simpson's autobiography? Henry Kissinger's?

Etc, etc. You get my point, I hope, which is that the seemingly simple "piracy is bad because it's unethical to ignore a shrinkwrap license" position is actually fraught with contradictions and argumentum ad absurdums. Whereas, the inversion - breaking the license is unethical because piracy is bad - is blissfully free of these problems. It allows exceptions, as in "OK, Henry Kissinger is fair game but you still have to pay for books not written by mass murderers" without compromising its central premise. The only downside is, it requires you to demonstrate that piracy is bad in itself, which requires a discussion of the different ways it can help and hurt different artists in different circumstances, rather than a tidy one-line proof that all pirates everywhere are bad, QED.

This is a long thread and post and sometimes with all the hypotheticals it's easy to be misunderstood, so to be sure that I am actually taking a stand (as opposed to just throwing rocks at yours) I'll close by trying to clearly summarize my position. Media piracy is certainly ethically dubious, but its ethical position is not changed by the shrinkwrap license(s) that are sometimes attached to it. If it's ethical to pirate a movie, it is still ethical to pirate the same movie with a sticker saying otherwise, and if it's unethical to pirate a movie with such a sticker, it's still unethical to pirate the same movie without that sticker. That the license claims it constitutes an "agreement" is simply false by any reasonable definition, as proven by the fact that people regularly purchase media who demonstrate their failure to agree with it by word and action. The only purpose such licenses serve is that some corporate lawyer somewhere decided it might help them win some hypothetical lawsuit; it is the ethical and legal equivalent of wearing a t-shit reading, "By reading this shirt, you agree not to rob me."

I can clear this up simply; do you believe in the concept of contracts? If so, why might your examples not be valid contracts? I think if you can figure out how to apply the concept of contracts to this situation, you will understand my position.

I think you egregiously misunderstood that comment. Of course those silly examples are silly; that's the point, they are silly in the same way and for the same reason that DVD licenses are silly. Do you believe in things that look like contracts and sound like contracts and are full of impressive-sounding legalese and were written by a team of lawyers, but are despite that a load of old tosh?

So if contracts exist, can a contract exist where Steve offers a copy of his work to Bob, but only on the condition that Bob agree to not share that copy with anyone else?

Could such a contract exist?

Of course contracts exist, of course contingent agreements exist, please make your point.

edit to add: it sounds like Bob just signed an NDA.

Would it be immoral for Bob to agree to such a contract, but then change his mind after obtaining the copy of the work and begin sharing it with others?

I feel like I'm talking to an LLM with a very limited token history. Yes, it would, if Bob actually agreed to a real contract. Have I not made it clear why I don't think purchasing a DVD constitutes agreeing to the license attached to it? That was literally the point of my very first reply to you: the difference between agreeing to something and being told "I declare that you agree to this".

So, if we agree on these concepts for an explicit contract, do you believe in implicit agreement to contracts? This might take the form of, e.g. an expectation of refund if this DVD ends up being blank, or the belief that the DVD won't contain a virus or cut you when you grab the edge. They're not written on the side of the DVD, and they're not declared, "Because you read this, you must agree," but they still exist as a set of expectations and assumptions that come with social interactions (including product sales).

In other words, are there implicit rules that govern any given exchange beyond those that are explicitly stated before the exchange occurs? Really, rules that govern social interaction generally. Do those rules exist?

A lot to unpack here, sorry to fisk:

> do you believe in implicit agreement to contracts? This might take the form of, e.g. an expectation of refund if this DVD ends up being blank, or the belief that the DVD won't contain a virus or cut you when you grab the edge.

In a word, no. I expect the DVD to work and not have a virus because consumer products are usually subject to an implied warranty of merchantability (which is very much not an ethical agreement but a legal obligation imposed by courts). The idea of a corporation replacing a faulty product because it's the right thing to do sounds like something from a children's book with talking badgers who wear waistcoats and serve tea. The real-world DVD manufacturer would dump toxic waste in my back yard if they thought the savings would exceed the fine.

> they still exist as a set of expectations and assumptions that come with social interactions (including product sales).

Purchasing a product from a corporation is not a social interaction. Not sure what else to say beyond referring you to the definition of "social."

> In other words, are there implicit rules that govern any given exchange beyond those that are explicitly stated before the exchange occurs? Really, rules that govern social interaction generally. Do those rules exist?

There are implict rules for all sorts of situations, sure. People tend to disagree on what they are, which is why we have so many explicit rules, e.g. copyright law and the CFAA and so forth. But sure, implicit rules can exist. "Don't fart in a crowded elevator" might be one. Another might be, "If you have a point to make, explain it clearly as opposed to dragging it out with leading rhetorical questions." What implicit rule is it that you think applies to purchasing stuff?

We may be able to shortcut a lot of this...

> People tend to disagree on what they are, which is why we have so many explicit rules, e.g. copyright law and the CFAA and so forth.

If this is an explicit rule attached to every sale, then by purchasing a copyrighted work, you're consenting to that part of the agreement, yes? And if not, then how is this an explicit rule?

Keep in mind that regardless of whether or not law is an accurate reflection of morality, once it's part of the agreement, you consenting to it via purchase means you accept it, presuming as you said that it is indeed part of every sale agreement.

> If this is an explicit rule attached to every sale, then by purchasing a copyrighted work, you're consenting to that part of the agreement, yes? And if not, then how is this an explicit rule?

First, breaking a law isn't by itself unethical. You can argue otherwise if you like, but a) it opens up a whole slew of absurdities (e.g. exploiting a software bug on a slot machine for profit is unethical IFF it's on a network that crosses a state line - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Kane), and b) you'd be abandoning everything you've said up til this point.

Second, copyright law is not a rule that is "attached to every sale," whatever that means. (If it were, you could get around it by shoplifting!) You need to stop blurring the lines between legal rules and ethical rules, because it's led you to confuse the difference between agreeing to a rule and being subject to it. So, let's make that explicit. I'm subject to copyright law. Doesn't matter if I agree to it or consent to it (it's not even clear what consenting to a law means), I'm subject to it regardless.

Now, you can certainly argue that there are ethical laws that we are all subject to as well. But, you are not arguing that! (correct me if I'm wrong, of course) You are arguing that there is an ethical law against piracy that pirates have agreed to, without wanting to, and I'm telling you, that's not a thing that can happen. You can't agree to something against your will.

So, you gotta make a choice to make this whole line of reasoning coherent. This ethical agreement not to pirate stuff, is this something that pirates can refuse? If so, I think they very clearly are refusing it, and if not, you cannot meaningfully claim that they agreed to it.

So, you believe that there is not a set of expectations that anchor human interaction, including the exchange of goods, that we implicitly opt into as a mechanism to preserve self-interest?

Are you familiar with Thomas Hobbes?

Assuming you are referring to the social contract, I refer you again to the definition of "social"; corporations are not part of it, any more than a scorpion is, or a calculator. Could you answer some of these questions so I can understand your position better?

> What implicit rule is it that you think applies to purchasing stuff?

> This ethical agreement not to pirate stuff, is this something that pirates can refuse?

Who owns corporations? Who makes deals on behalf of corporations? Who makes the works that are pirated?

People. People. People. Corporations are made up of people, owned by people, and creators of works are people. And those people have rights, just like you.

And no, you can't really opt out of the social contract other than by opting out of society. This is a feature, however, not a bug, and participation in society without adherence to the social contract is called "Free riding."

Intellectual property pirates fall into the category of "free riders" or people who benefit from the social contract but do not adhere to it.

First, I will cede the idea of corporations being bound by the social contract. It's not so much that I think it's wrong as nonsensical, like claiming a submarine can swim. I guess you can think of corporations as participating in the social contract, in the sense that they are subject to laws and in return they create social value, but it's not as if they could decide not to do those things. Corporations can't even exist outside of a society! But I also don't think it proves what you think it does, so sure, let's say that submarines are excellent swimmers and corporations are totally part of the social contract. I can't wait for Apple to remember that they're supposed to pay US taxes!

Second: do you claim it is inherently immoral to break laws or not? I've assumed the answer is no despite your dodging the question, but I don't see where you're trying to go with all this discussion of the social contract, if not there. There's more I'd say, but I hate typing out "if you think X then I would respond Y, but if you think Z then I would reply with W" stuff, I'd much prefer a straight answer to this.

Corporations don't take actions, they don't make decisions, they don't breathe, think, or live. Every single thing a corporation "does" gets decided by one or more people, and its those people who are responsible for whatever the consequences of their decisions are, good or bad. There is no concept of a "corporation" other than as a group of individual people collectively taking action. You clearly have some form of disgust with corporations, but as a moral entity, they're just people.

Really, by accepting the idea that corporations are more than just a group of people, you're acquiescing to their conceit. Their trick of making themselves something "special" or more complex than just "people making choices" is part of the problem, IMO.

And no, breaking laws is not, itself, immoral. But laws represent agreements between parties, or conditions upon which an interaction is predicated. There's an implicit presumption that a transaction will comport with the laws it's governed by unless stated otherwise. I don't have a problem stating otherwise, but relying on that presumption because it's to your advantage with no intention of following through on your end is immoral.

> You clearly have some form of disgust with corporations...

Nope. Recall that I said, "corporations are not part of [the social contract], any more than a scorpion is, or a calculator." Do you suppose I'm disgusted by calculators?

For the record, what corporations share with scorpions and calculators is that they lack agency, but I don't think it matters here anyway. Your whole position is that piracy is immoral because the people who pirate stuff promised (at some point, in some sense) not to, and I don't think your position or my response to it really hinges on whether that promise was made to a corporation or a person.

> And no, breaking laws is not, itself, immoral.

Great, we agree on something! The problem is, this contradicts your position up to this point. "Piracy is immoral because it involves breaking laws" cannot co-exist with "Some laws can be ethically broken." The former is what you've been claiming all along, and the latter is what you just conceded, and they can't both be true. And NB, you can't get around this with something like, "Well sure there are some exceptions, but it's still usually immoral to break laws" because the position you're arguing against is that piracy is one of those exceptions. You can't use a rule to disprove an exception to that rule.

Bottom line, I don't think this line of thinking is going to go anywhere. I can't help noticing that you seem fine with the idea of judging actions by consequences when it comes to corporate employees:

> "...those people who are responsible for whatever the consequences of their decisions are, good or bad."

All I'm arguing is that the same is true of pirates. Whatever you say in response must, at some point, deal with the fact that some people think pirating music is morally equivalent to stealing a bike and some people think it isn't. That, and not some abstract matter like how one interprets Hobbes or whether corporations have feelings or whatever, is the core of the dispute and also the thing you're trying to skirt around. Well, it was an admirable effort and I thank you for making it because I enjoy debates like this, but I don't think it's working. No shame in that! Trying to demonstrate that piracy is bad without arguing that piracy is bad was always a bit of a tall order.

Piracy is immoral because you agreed to the laws, not because they are moral. The expectation of compliance is part of the social contract (you would understand this if you read what I wrote about me describing how disagreement with laws is acceptable). This is compatible with the idea that laws are not inherently moral, though it's a common mistake to make to confuse morality with legality. That's not what is happening here.

The reason this conversation won't progress is that you're more or less ignoring all of ethics and philosophical thought as it's been laid out in the past 500 years, instead substituting your own opinion, as if that were even approaching equality. Of course we won't get anywhere if you can't address the obvious relationship piracy has with the concept of "Free riders", for example.

(you've heavily edited the comment I was replying to, I shall now edit the response)

> The expectation of compliance is part of the social contract.

Ethics requires that we act ethically regardless of what the law says, period. You can't something something Hobbes your way out of that.

> The reason this conversation won't progress is that you're more or less ignoring all of ethics and philosophical thought as it's been laid out in the past 500 years, instead substituting your own opinion, as if that were even approaching equality.

Huh? I'd be perfectly happy if CDs and DVDs were sold according to 500-year-old philosophical ethics. The "you might own the disc but you're only allowed to do what I say with it" stuff is comparatively very recent.

> Of course we won't get anywhere if you can't address the obvious relationship piracy has with the concept of "Free riders", for example.

Why am I supposed to address this? Was I asked to at some point? You've spent a solid week arguing that piracy is unethical specifically because the people who do it have somehow agreed not to. Are you now pivoting to the position that it's unethical for reasons pertaining to the consequences of piracy? If so (and far be it from me to accuse you of not reading my comments, which would be very rude) can I remind you that I clearly and explicitly agreed with that?

> ...I'll close by trying to clearly summarize my position. Media piracy is certainly ethically dubious, but its ethical position is not changed by the shrinkwrap license(s) that are sometimes attached to it. If it's ethical to pirate a movie, it is still ethical to pirate the same movie with a sticker saying otherwise, and if it's unethical to pirate a movie with such a sticker, it's still unethical to pirate the same movie without that sticker.

You're misunderstanding. I have never claimed that you must act unethically, I claimed that your lack of stipulation in the sale amounts to agreement to the terms. The time to object was at the point of the transaction, not afterward, and certainly not without new information. I am not saying the law itself is or isn't moral, I'm saying your agreement to the law, knowing you have zero intention of following it as you disagree with it is immoral.

The correct course of action, the moral course, would be to decline the transaction on moral grounds. If you don't like copyright law, you shouldn't buy products that require its adherence, and you shouldn't pirate products that require someone else to deceive in order to obtain.

And if you can't figure out how to deal with the basic logical issues with your position, logical issues that people 500 years ago were able to navigate, that's more of a positional issue for you than it is any problem of mine. And why should you care? Because you seem to want to be correct here, and that's the only path forward. You cannot maintain your position justifiably without addressing the issues I've brought up with said position.

Your position re: "the sticker" is a substantial retraction of your initial argument, that piracy is not immoral. It's also incorrect. The "sticker" presents a reminder of the social contract's obligations, which only makes it further immoral that, despite the reminder, a person still willfully deceives their way into possession of a copy of a work.

> Your position re: "the sticker" is a substantial retraction of your initial argument, that piracy is not immoral.

That was my original argument, from a week ago. You can go look at it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38453647

Don't know how I could've made it any clearer. Genuinely curious whether/how you will update as a result.

Does it upset you that I update my comments during the window HN allows? I can stop if you like. I think when you say "genuinely curious" I'm not sure I believe you actually are.

And sure, we can call that your original argument. It's still wrong.

You spent a week arguing with me under the impression I believed X, and I pointed out that I had told you at the beginning I didn't believe X. I was curious whether you'd re-read the thread with this new information in mind and re-evaluate the things you'd said. I think we both know the answer to that, so here we are.

You are right though, that I thought I was a lot more curious than I was - I forgot about this until I saw you peddling the same line of goods in a new thread this morning. Best of luck :) I will close by saying thanks for being civil, I hope you experienced this conversation in the "Let's have a friendly tussle over this relatively obscure point for fun and to understand the world better" spirit in which it was intended. For future reference, you can enhance that good-natured spirit greatly by not accusing people of being upset. Also wouldn't hurt to pay a little extra attention when someone says, "Just to avoid misunderstanding I'll try to clearly summarize my position...", missing that caused a lot of unnecessary repetition.

I didn't spend a week misunderstanding you (I hope you realize you wrote a lot more than the one sentence you referred back to), I miswrote one line in one comment out of dozens that you've now latched onto. That's fine, but it doesn't hold as a meaningful disagreement to what I've said here, a fact I bet you hoped I'd miss.

My presumption here is you'd rather now talk about the argument instead of continue with the argument because you realize I'm correct, and piracy is immoral in the general case.

> a fact I bet you hoped I'd miss.

Don't do stuff like this. Communication via text between strangers over philosophical topics is hard enough without it. Assume good faith.

This argument has only ever been about one thing: you made a claim that there's an easy way to show that all piracy is unethical regardless of the details, and I said that was wrong. That's it. However, when somewhere along the way you get the idea that I'm also arguing that piracy is always ethical, it's not sneaky or underhanded of me to point out that I'm not. It's not impossible to imagine a world in which that would cast some of the things I've said in a new light; "your reason for believing X is wrong" is materially and non-trivially different from "X is wrong."

> My presumption here is you'd rather now talk about the argument instead of continue with the argument because you realize I'm correct, and piracy is immoral in the general case.

Wrong on both counts, but it looks like you found a new thread full of people who agree with me and still want to discuss it, so no great loss I'd imagine.

Ah but you gave away the game just now; either they agree with you and I was right to argue as I have, or you had one specific point, one nobody else has made in the second thread. Looks like the argument really was about what I said it was, after all!

A valid contract requires a meeting of the minds, but the average customer has no idea that a legal fiction separates the movie he wanted from the plastic disc he just bought.

It was a mistake to entertain dense contracts of adhesion with parties who were never really expected to understand them (who hires a lawyer before spending $15 on a movie?). UCC should add anything reasonable that copyright law doesn’t already cover. Infringement is a tort with statutory penalties even without any contract.

But you don't need to actually agree to the contract in order to purchase the DVD.

It's a contract that the rights holder is trying to say you've agreed to implicitly by buying the DVD, but you've never actually agreed to anything.

If I tell the checkout clerk at Walmart verbally "I refuse to abide by the terms of use for this DVD and I will make copies and distribute them as I please", that clerk has absolutely zero obligation to refuse to sell me the DVD and would probably just be like "sure man whatever"

So it's not actually a condition of sale.

It's supposedly a condition of viewing/usage of the content on the DVD, but I never agreed to it and the content is in my possession so...

The Walmart store associate absolutely has a duty not to sell you that DVD; while we can argue over the nature of the implicit contract you consent to when you buy something, it's almost certainly an explicit clause in Walmart's contract with, say, Paramount that they take all effort to limit piracy of content they sell to customers.

> it's almost certainly an explicit clause in Walmart's contract with, say, Paramount that they take all effort to limit piracy of content they sell to customers

I've actually worked at retail stores that sold CDs, DVDs and Videogames. At no point during any kind of training was I told to take any action to limit piracy of content that we sold to customers.

If this was part of Retailers contract, then it would certainly be part of sales associate training.

Since it's not, I'm going to have to firmly assert that it is Definitely Not "almost certainly an explicit clause" like you claim.

Why would a store associate be aware of the language of the contract between your corporation and the supplier?

Besides, even if it weren't in the contract, the product is covered by copyright law. No person who owns content that can trivially be made worthless absent copyright law would ever allow a copy of their work to be made. That's the agreement you enter into when you purchase a copy of the work.

My logic is simple

If such a contract exists then the retailer has to uphold the contract

The associates at the point of sale are the people who are in the best position to uphold the contract

To uphold the contract they would need to receive training. They wouldn't have to know the exact language of the contract, but there would be a procedure in place that the retailer could use to demonstrate that they are upholding the contract to the best of their ability.

Since such training doesn't exist, then it's likely no such contract exists either.

> Since such training doesn't exist

So where you worked, prospective customers were allowed to copy media before purchase?

>What mechanism prevents Bob and Steve from entering into such an agreement? To me, that would be a violation of freedom, to limit the kinds of agreements people can enter into.

Nothing prevents anyone from entering into such an agreement, but it can't be called a "sale". Like I said, perhaps it's a lease of some kind, but selling something and putting special conditions on the transfer are mutually exclusive. If you sell me something then I own it, can I do whatever I want with it (destroy it, gift it, sell it, etc.); if can't do whatever I want with it then I don't own it, and you haven't sold it to me.

>what would you call the deliberate violation of the agreement

At this point we're probably talking about contract law, not ownership rights, so "violation" seems perfectly adequate.

>To me, knowingly possessing something that does not belong to you seems like a fair definition of theft.

Just as example, when someone misses a payment on a purchase and it's repossessed, they're not said to have "stolen" the item, they're said to have "defaulted" on the debt. Your usage of the word "theft" is one I've never seen before.

>If you don't believe people are free to enter into contingent ownership agreements

You can enter into all sorts of agreements that entitle you to limited prerogatives over something. Those agreements go by different names, and so does the relationship between you and the thing that the agreement is about while the agreement is current. "Contingent ownership" is a term that refers to nothing that exists, as ownership involves total decision power over something, and a sale is a particular agreement that involves the transfer of that power in its entirety.

>Even by your own definition of "control", wouldn't I not have control over something if I can't concoct whatever rules for that thing that I like?

Yes, again, you can enter into agreements with other people over something you own and impose whatever terms you like without transferring ownership of the thing. It's not a sale until you relinquish all rights over the thing. Hell, you can even do a sort of timed sale where you reserve the right to claw back the thing for a limited time; in such a case one could not say the sale is complete before that time elapses, and before then the person doesn't have complete ownership.

If I defined "contingent ownership" as a "perpetual license for use that only expires if either party violates the terms of the contract," would all of this make much more sense? Then, Bob never owns Steve's secret and is only permitted to use it in certain circumstances, none of which include Bob making Steve's secret available to you. In fact, Steve explicitly disallows Bob from doing that in the contract, and Bob agrees to this.

If Bob violates his agreement, breaks his word, and you know he did that but accept Steve's secret anyway, is that immoral, to you?

As I said previously, bits are not exactly the same as physical goods. You own a string of bits as long as you keep it secret (i.e. within your control). Regardless of what any law says, once Steve told Bob his secret, he lost ownership of it. If someone steals your car, there are, conceivably, things the law can do to get it back to you, because a physical item can only exist in one place at any given time. If Bob finds out Steve's secret, there's nothing any law can do to make Bob forget Steve's secret.

Any law or contract that attempts to treat strings of bits as equivalent to physical items is fundamentally flawed.

> Regardless of what any law says, once Steve told Bob his secret, he lost ownership of it.

This, therefore, means you don't believe in the enforceability of contracts, or that someone is free to make agreements as they see fit. That's kind of a problem in a capitalistic society, as contracts run, well, everything more complex than a simple transfer of ownership, which IP rights are not.

Besides, we're not really talking about the legality of any of this, we're focusing on the morality. In this case, the morality of asserting you won't do something, and then doing that anyway.

To apply our hypo, if Bob told Steve he wouldn't do something in order to satisfy Steve's conditions of transfer of ownership to Bob, but then Bob does what he claimed he would not, is that immoral?

I think you are focussing on the legality, and then equating morality with legality.

I would say that video piracy (if by that we mean watching what we want) is ethical, but is sometime not legal.

Can you point specifically where I've mentioned legality at all, because I have deliberately tried avoiding it.

>This, therefore, means you don't believe in the enforceability of contracts

It means don't believe in the absolute enforceability of contracts. If a contract contains clauses that require the physically impossible to happen, such a contract cannot possibly be enforced in its totality.

>To apply our hypo, if Bob told Steve he wouldn't do something in order to satisfy Steve's conditions of transfer of ownership to Bob, but then Bob does what he claimed he would not, is that immoral?

Your question is too abstract to answer. If Bob promised Steve he wouldn't release the slaves, I'd say it's outright immoral to keep that promise. If Bob promise Steve he would make another payment in 30 days, it's probably at least unethical to not keep that promise, absent any additional circumstances. If Bob promise Steve he wouldn't do something with Bob's own property, I'd say Bob is within his right to do whatever he wishes, regardless of anything else.

Even so, the moral act would be to refuse to agree to the contract, not duplicitously agree to the contract with zero intent on doing what you claimed.

And no, watching Avengers: Endgame is not on the same moral level as freeing slaves. I will not cede that ground.

>Even so, the moral act would be to refuse to agree to the contract, not duplicitously agree to the contract with zero intent on doing what you claimed.

The moral (if you insist) act would be to not offer a nonsensical contract. If I want to do something and I have to agree to a nonsensical contract to do it then I'll agree to it and then do whatever I want. If the other party doesn't like then next time they can offer a reasonable contract, and if they don't I'll just do it again. Sorry, but you don't get my firstborn just because you put it in an EULA that I had to agree to when I installed your software.

>And no, watching Avengers: Endgame is not on the same moral level as freeing slaves. I will not cede that ground.

Interesting. However, the one who made a distinction between acceptable and unacceptable clauses in a contract was me. The way you posed your question in your last comment implied that you think that, if you've already entered into an agreement not to do it, pirating a movie and freeing slaves are ethically equivalent. It would seem that respecting your word to you trumps everything else, no matter what. If that's really what you think, then fine, I can respect that. However, if it's possible that you could enter into an agreement that would require you to act in a way that you find unacceptable and you would rather breach the agreement than act in that way, you will need to concede that what you find unethical is not breaching the agreement per se, but the specific manner in which the agreement is breached.

In other words, in such a case we have a simple difference of opinion. You think slavery is bad and pirating is bad (perhaps to different degrees, but still, they're bad), and I think slavery is bad and pirating is not bad. That there's an agreement or whatever else is just a distraction.

I'm confused; are you saying that

(1) since there are some moral justifications to break a contract,

(c) therefore all justifications for breaking contracts are moral

I don't think you believe that, and I don't think you believe I believe that, either.