Quote:
Originally Posted by WalkingDistance
Does fanfiction butcher the author's work? maybe. That's debatable.
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I didn't say it butchered the author's work; I said it butchered the author's rights.
Fanfic can be
better than the original (when I read fanfic based on corny old TV shows, I see this a lot) and it still violates copyright and trademarks. There are various arguments otherwise, based on various fair use exemptions, but the only ones tested in court have come to naught. It's hard to argue that you have some kind of right to piggyback on someone else's creation. As a general rule, the most you can hope for is the owner of that creation accepts that you are one of their most fervent, evangelizing fans (which is generally very, very true, to the detriment of my DVD rack and my concordance shelf) and allows you and your work to violate those rights because they know you and the people you reach are good for their bottom line.
Quote:
I guess we have different views  . Personally, I believe in moral relativism because what's to say that values today are the same in a thousand years? People used to believe that slavery was good. People used to believe the world was flat or that the sun revolved around us. People also used to believe in Zeus or Thor. I feel that the only reason why people think things are "Right" or "Wrong" are partly because of the current cultural climate.
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So slavery used to be good, and it isn't now? The world used to be flat, and went all round somewhere along the line, and the sun stopped that mad zooming and installed itself snugly in the center of the solar system?
There actually
are cases in which slavery was a superior option to what preceded it (simply killing war captives instead of putting them to work). So nothing is quite as simple as it looks. But if we're talking about kidnapping people from their homes for the purpose of selling them for forced labor in foreign lands, I refuse to believe that was
ever right. Evil can be defined as causing a net harm to the world, and the enormous amount of harm that was caused so far outweighs any good that one could argue came of it that I see no other alternative than to consider it utterly and completely wrong. No amount of relativism can convince me otherwise.
The thing that makes us human is our continuing examination and refinement of that which separates us from beasts. My cat is content to remain just as he is; I want to know what I can do better than the generations that preceded me and to lay a foundation for those who will follow. I think that's why I reject moral relativism so strongly: its basic premise is that there is no "good" to aspire to, nor any "bad" to reject, no "better" or "worse", but only the feelings and whims of the moment. That's also why I reject those who would say that their/my culture and society are already the best they can be ... if so, then I have nowhere to go but down, and I will not go gently into that night.