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Comment by tomjen3 | Hacker News Reader

You mean it is written on a piece of paper and enforced by armed men?

That is not very much justification.

No. I mean it is written on a piece of paper and enforced by sometimes armed men to whom you implicitly grant authority to do, whenever you use the law to protect your own rights. That is the trade off in democracy: We have to obey laws we dont like or agree with, in order to be able to enjoy the benefits of those we do agree with

We have to obey laws we dont like or agree with, in order to be able to enjoy the benefits of those we do agree with

There is no such tradeoff - there is only the existence of the law and its enforcement. An unenforced or almost never enforced law need not exist and is treated as same.

I don't have to pretend to respect the copyright lobby to gain the benefits of not being murdered in my sleep.

I am sure the people who would murder you in your sleep can easily come up with a similar argument. For them, murdering someone is not as morally heavy as it is for you.

That's just it though - murder isn't wrong because it's illegal, it's illegal because it's wrong. As far as moral conundrums go, that one's pretty cut and dry.

True, but the problem is that while we can agree on what is illegal, we cant agree on what is wrong. So we "sign" a contract called law, in order to establish some common ground. So when I see that the contract no longer suits me( and I do believe that this is the case indeed nowadays with many laws), I consider it unethical to just breach the terms of the contract instead of negotiating a change. I still want others to respect the contract even if it doesnt suit them, don't I?

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