Hacker News Reader

Comment by UncleMeat | Hacker News Reader

If "eliminate all IP law" is your preference then that's fine but it isn't a reason to commit crimes while we have these laws.

View on HN

IP law can be a thing while maximizing transparency by not including trade secrets as a concept.

Civil disobedience.

Civil disobedience involves flagrantly and publicly and obviously violating the law so you can be arrested to draw attention to whatever issue you have with the law. If you’re breaking the law and trying to get away with it, that’s just criminality and isn’t honorable or respectable.

Civil disobedience is the breaking of laws your conscience tells you are unjust -- and accepting all possible consequences that come along with such an act.

Doesn't mean you have to make it trivial for the consequences to find you by literally walking yourself into jail.

You are mistaken and gp is correct: civil disobedience is usually thought of as done in public. "My conscience tells me it's fine to steal from this rich bastard because property is theft" is not civil disobedience.

Without the intention of personally profiting from breaking these laws. Which is what these people are doing.

If they released this information publicly then you might have a point.

> Without the intention of personally profiting from breaking these laws.

> If they released this information publicly then you might have a point.

Good point. Conceded.

We have the laws, but I don't have to feel outraged when regular people undercut the oligarchs and those people's interests align with my own.

It’s other oligarchs using regular people to undercut their competitors while offloading most of the risk to those regular people, though.

That's true, but I still benefit from the games being played. It also weakens the oligarchs slightly by reducing their margins. It's also worth remembering that the laws were written by the oligarchs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com