Originally posted by Pepzhez
To alex_ant,
Point 1:
You are taking my argument out of context. I think you should reread my post and you will see that I was responding to a questionable generalization someone had posted here, i.e. - that violation of the law was always wrong and ineffective.
Lawmaking and the lobbying process is not corrupt??? What world are you living in? Let me give you a little example that may be dear to your heart and interests:
I invite you to take a look at the Hollings bill which has just been submitted to the US House of Representatives. This will give the RIAA and MPAA (and other copyright holders - Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, all takers) the legal right to search your computer, launch DoS attacks, hack away at will - ALL of which is illegal under current US law. These are things that neither you or me can do, but if this bill passes, corporations will have their own special police powers, in effect an independent corporate secret police independent of the Department of Justice. Why is this? Because Hollings is bought and sold by the entertainment corporations, that's why (they've given him $187,000 - cheap, ain't it?). Now Hollings is a Representative from South Carolina. What does shilling for the entertainment corporations have to do with representing the interests of the people from his district in South Carolina (per his constitutional duties)?
Now let's see you (unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to give to elected representatives) attempt to get a bill introduced in Congress. Go ahead and try. Let's see when we hear about your bill being introduced, OK? If this process isn't corrupt, then I don't know what is.
Ah, yes, the "let them eat cake" justification, coupled with philistine Kantian absolutism, not to mention privileged, smug holier-than-thou self-righteousness.
As I stated in my original post, you seem to think it's fine for these people to slave for your benefit on barely sustenance wages, yet how dare they presume to want a small piece of it themselves. So do you really have any sympathy with that? Sorry, I don't see any evidence. These people are working their asses off just to survive. Now how much does, say, Apple Inc. have in cash reserves? Four billion? And they are paying their workers $2-6 per day? So just how HONEST are the Western corporations exploiting their workers?
(And I didn't see you or any of the other holier-than-thou anti-piracy crusaders taking up my offer of volunteering to work for Apple for $2 a day, did I?)
As for "immorality", gee, thanks for the amendment to the ten commandments! Now tell me, since when did running a cracked copy of Photoshop become an "immoral" act, tantamount to - what? - murder, rape? Get your priorities straight, why don't you?
Let me tell you a story now. Adam. I live in the US-Mexico border region and I also work in film, video and music (in adddition to teaching philosophy at the university). For the past year I have been involved in a project which brings the means of video and music production to the poor in Mexico. We volunteer our time and energy to this project; no one is making any profit on this.
Now, in order to help these people (who really have nothing; they're lucky if they can afford three meals a day) to have the means to express themselves, we of course try to give them the necessary equipment and whatever assistance and knowledge we can impart. As none of us are anything near rich, we beg and borrow what we can - someone may donate a two year old imac DV here, a B & W G3 there, a Canon Optura DV camera here, and so on and so forth. As for software, yes, I confess that I have zero guilt or moral reproach about loading my copies of Final Cut Pro 3, OS X, Logic Audio, Photoshop, Peak, my QT Pro keys, ad infinitum onto these machines.
If it makes you feel any better, Adam, yes, I did pay for all of those. Still, I suppose I am, in your eyes, committing "immoral" acts by breaking the EULA agreement for the benefit of people who "shouldn't be using" this stuff, their "crime" being that they are poor. How DARE you! Who are you to judge?!
Your attitude sucks, Adam, and your intolerance and smug sense of divine privilege is obscene. I'll make you another offer, then: I invite you to come down to Mexico and tell these people - some of whom do work in maquiladoras for $6 a day (include food, rent and clothing in that salary, then do the math and tell me how long until they "should" be able to afford a Mac and the software that runs it, OK?), some of whom are children of said factory workers - that they are "immoral pirates" for breaking the divine law. Take it all away from them, go ahead. And let them know what punishments you would have imposed upon them. Imprisonment? Capital punishment? Eternal fire and brimstone?
Until and unless you can go there and tell these people face to face, go fiddle with your Enron stock and keep your effete, shrill moral indignation to yourself.
BTW, we did indeed write to Apple, Adobe and many others, informing them about this project, asking politely for any benevolent donations if they would be so kind. We received only one response of any sort from the over 40 companies we wrote to: irony of ironies, Microsoft sent 20 copies of Office Mac and proposal forms for possible financial grants. I'm no fan of Microsoft software products but at least this company gave a small pittance (doubly odd when you consider that we pointed out that we were running Mac-based systems).
