On Wed, 9 Jun 1999, Mike Davis wrote: > > > Maybe you should be made an example. I think if someone looks long > > > enough, they can find something you are doing that is against the law, > > > and find someone else just as offended at what you are doing who would > > > prosecute. > > You are not seriously using this kind of bogus logic to say that > theft is ok are you? I am assuming you are referring to the quoted text. "Thou Shall Not Steal" applies, but that can't be said in a public school. Finding one person and shooting him as representative of the thousand other guilty people is unjust. But the original suggestion was basically to prosecute one pirate and hope the others would learn by the example. This is another silly approach, and the above paragraph was meant to illustrate it (but apparently missed). My point was that there was probably something he was doing that bothered someone else as much as the cracker sites bothered him, so if we start using draconian tactics to make examples, where do we stop? Another problem with this approach is that it is uneconomic to enforce such laws. Many of the warez people are teenagers that don't have much wealth that can be recovered, and putting them in prison simply wastes their talent at the same time imposing a large bill on the taxpayers. We can have a "war on piracy" the same way we have the "war on drugs", and it would be just as intrusive and ineffective. How do we enforce our idea of copyrights on China or Serbia? My overall point was that he wrote his congressman which at best will result in one more silly and ineffective law, and at worst will act to have ISPs censor the internet (I note your signature says something about the Constitution). Also, if you read my post further you would have noted that I did propose a solution. If Shareware piracy is that bad, then there is a way of collectively providing for enforcement of existing law, using the similar situation of shopowners in 18th century England. If people really want to deter or prosecute pirates, there is a way. So it was a very roundabout way of asking if people want to do something to stop piracy, or just pass more unenforced laws. And on the legal v.s. ethical front - the more unenforced laws, the weaker the moral authority of the law itself becomes. Laws cease being a backstop for immorality but merely become complex wording having nothing to do with right and wrong. So for that reason I don't like more laws being passed.
