Re: The Seven Types Of Pirate

From: "Christopher R. Maden" 
>On 10/14/2010 07:24 PM, joseph harris wrote:
>> Breaking laws is not the sustainable  way to bring about change, nor
>> a thing to encourage.
>
>Huh.  Really?  I am trying to think of a time when civil disobedience
>(i.e., breaking laws to bring about change) has worked...

One day people will actually answer the points I make; this, Chris, is obviously not that day. I make it clear repeatedly that I am quite aware of the 'feelings' of a small group that resists the legal position. I say normally that those feelings are not a valid reason for ignoring the laws that most people obey.

You are yourself aware that invoking the Civil Rights Movement - I assume you mean the one honourably led by Martin Luther King - is grandiose in this context. It was a response in a totally different and ,uch more serious level of life to inujustice that had been recognised in Britain, and legislated against in Acts from 1804 to 1835. In the US this was legislated against in 1864, but effective recognition, as US citizens of African-Americans, had not been reasonably effected 100 years later. 

That Civil Rights Movement was about opposing those who thought their 'feelings' of supremacy were above that law. Read up on it. Funny that, the very thing you invoke turns out to be the same point - about obeying the law.

>
>I realize that invoking the civil rights movement is a grandiose
>analogy.  However, the very point at issue here — and the one that
>continually seems to be your bugaboo, Joseph — is that the law *can be
>wrong*.

Read above. That was not about the law being wrong, but about it being ignored, mainly in the US southern states.

>
>Further, you seem to continually be unable to grasp that a person might
>argue a point not his own, as Barry was attempting to do.

I recognised exactly the points Barry was making; I have been arguing with the proponents of them for a decade. . His next to last post made it clear that he allied himself with them (as I have worked out) - though in my opinion he was wrong to do so, since his personal case is a very strong one and has nothing to do with piracy issues.

>
>I generally avoid these discussions, like many other people on the list,
>and I won’t follow up on this thread at all; I’ll make my point and get out.

That is your choice.

>
>Many people *feel* that copying ebooks (and digital music) is OK.  

And in my opinion they are not just wrong, but use spurious arguments to support their ignoring the law.

This
>does not mean that it is OK.  But they *feel* it is.  Telling them it is
>illegal will not change their *feeling*.  Calling it stealing — when it
>patently does not deprive another of their property (not potential
>income, but property) — only exacerbates their *feeling*.  I am
>emphasizing the word *feeling* here precisely because it is emotional,
>illogical.  Arguing points of fact with this emotion will not work.

I 'feel' they are stealing by intent; I 'feel' they know they are not entitled to and that no argument justifies it. I 'feel' that they are the inheritors of a bad attitude. But of course, in those arguments, they are allowed to do what *they* 'feel' because you class it as logical; but if I point out how *I* 'feel',you say that it is emotional. Which, Chris, is inconsistent - a point I made before.

>
>For the digital content industries (meaning producers of music, books,
>and software) to survive at profit, they must acknowledge and work with
>the reality on the ground.  

I am talking about books. There are different argument relating to the music industry. There are quite different histories to the two areas. And the decline in the music industry probably has many elements. Without analysis that decline is difficult to determine. Without analysis it is difficult to know which genres and niches may be coming up or going down; which fashions are in or out; whether  it is a more ephemeral buy that books, and so more quickly subject to suffering in economic decline. The one thing which appears to affect the big business end of music is the strong move to indie production by bands, new and old.

Attempts to change people’s feelings can
>succeed if they are based in reality — i.e., acknowledging what people
>feel and why, and working from that starting point.  

Correct. And my observations and discussions and reading leads me to the conclusions I state.

Attempts to change
>the situation by telling people what they should feel, or that they
>should act at odds with those feelings, are doomed.  

At no point have I suggested that I am telling people how to feel. I do say that their feelings do not make stealing right.

<snip>

>
>I will now yield the floor to the gentleman from Great Britain, who will
>doubtless impugn my morals.
>
>~Chris

Funny how I am able to defend the law without insult to others, while it seems derisive ad hominem comments are a feature of those trying to justify breaking it.

Joseph

Joseph Harris is Smile Poet
Mailing list [email protected]
http://smilepoet.com     [email protected]


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