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Comment by cozeulodorieso | Hacker News Reader

It's not cognitive dissonance; it's a relevant distinction in the law.

Adults aren't responsible for the actions of other adults (generally, and with respect to piracy). So while an IP address can identify a group of adults, it can't ever identify which one was committing piracy.

But corporations are typically responsible for the actions of their employees, that is, they are vicariously liable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability. Under at least some circumstances, if a studio's employees are committing piracy, the studio is also liable for that piracy. As long as the IP address corresponds to that corporation, it's "close enough" to signal legal liability (under some circumstances).

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My comment has nothing to do with the law.

Legal distinctions may have no bearing on your ethical judgments, but they may for other people -- and an explanation of other people's ethical judgments is what you asked about.

Edit: I don't wanna get in an internet fight, dude.

If pedantry in the law has influenced your ethics that much, it's hard to call those "ethics".

Entity theory isn't pedantry. Knowing the difference between accusing a company and accusing an individual is quite important.

For a start, the company can be unequivocally identified, because they bought a block of IP addresses. The individual cannot, because the specific IP cannot identify an individual.

This isn't cognitive dissonance, and the massive distinction here is that a company is being held to account, not an employee.

I can try to explain it in a different way. Individuals are not and should not be expected to have ironclad control over their connections and monitor all users. If you see traffic from a residential IP you have no idea who initiated it. With a corporate network, on the other hand, 90% chance it was an employee doing it, which makes the corporation responsible. It doesn't matter how many layers of management were involved, and there's even a good chance that the pirate is a manager. I won't blame them if it turns out they got hacked, but I will call them incompetent. Corporations have dedicated IT departments to make sure that only authorized users get on the network.

tl;dr No cognitive dissonance: Corporations vet network users, 99% of homes don't.

Even you admit that it's not a 100% chance, which is my point -- we're using an IP address to identify the studio as the responsible party here, which we frown upon for home users.

You talk about the stuff that all defense attorneys do in the residential cases, then say for some reason a corporation should be better equipped to handle it. Which, maybe there's some relevancy to that, but still the root point is: we're using an IP address to identify a responsible party, which isn't a 100% science.

This also isn't a trial, it's a published article.

If you show me a residential environment that has a dedicated IT staff that only allows qualified people on the network, then you can assume one of the qualified people is responsible for the traffic. You still have to figure out which one because 'an IP address is not a person'.

I'm applying the same standards to either situation. The way a corporate network is configured (excluding cases of incompetence) gives you pretty solid evidence that AN employee was in violation. You still have no idea which employee, which is why an individual suit like in the residential cases would be highly unfounded. Same standard when it comes to that rule. The only difference is that you can go after a corporation as a cohesive group, whereas you cannot go after a household as a cohesive group.

Right, an IP isn't identifying. But these people want us to think it is when it's convenient for them so we MUST treat them like they treat others. Huge fine, life/company running big, and punishments involving never touching anything that uses electricity ever again.

Like torture, I wouldn't wish it on my enemies. But I do wish it on those who user it on others.

Besides, unlike everyone they've attacked they can make it stop whenever they want simply by admitting an IP address is not user identifying.

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