[hogleg]

I think this thread is getting hijacked by well-meaning but misguided people. I haven't seen a post about what is moral for several pages. Steve Jordan is the only user I've seen recently making what could be considered a moral argument, that is, is the concept one that is just, or one that is unjust? Legal questions (while not simple) can be answered decisively. A judge or some other proxy who is assumed to know makes a ruling, and that's it. The rest of us armchair lawyers have to live with it, or go Che on them.

Question of morality don't center around a decisive yes or no and legal technicalities. Moral answers could agree with the law, or not: something could be legal and immoral, illegal and moral, or any combination thereof. Except for a very few of us, we won't be involved in directly making laws. someone will do it by proxy. How you personally feel is irrelevant unless you have some type of representation and the laws reflect your opinions. However; how you morally react to the idea of copyright may determine whether you break those laws or not. People do not react legally, the react morally. Very few times does something happen only because it's legal. That is a afterthought. The majority of the time people act how their personal code of ethics tells them to act, and if it agrees with the laws, they're in luck. If people acted on laws rather than ethics, no one would ever break the law. How many people here would only pay for things because it is required by law, and how many pay because the feel like it's the right thing to do?

What is the intent of copyright? I'm stupefied that no one has mentioned the biggest reason copyrights are so draconian in the US is Disney pumping bucks into lobbiests. I'm amazed that no one has mentioned that the Church of Scientology uses copyright as a shield to control media relevant to figuring out what the really are. No one has mentioned that the Japanese didn't really steal from Disney morally or legally, but many of the features Animae can be directly to them (the "Pie eyes", among other things). No one has asked if artists should be compensated for a work of art, which is conceptually stealing ideas, not knowledge, which is a huge distinction. I've seen glimpses with the whole Harry Potter thing but not much. If your life's ambition was to write a children's book about a singing elephant, should some be able to come along after the fact and re-associate your idea with porn? There's Harry Potter porn out there, a lot of it, but J.K. Rowling seems to not mind. How long would she justifiably be content with it if someone could publish essentially a kid's book with sex scenes?

All these amazing ideas that could be argued are pushed aside for the question of whether piracy constitutes theft, legally, TECHNICALLY, and how copyright laws work in Botswana.