Comment by ineptech | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ineptech | Hacker News Reader

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> 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!

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