Quote:
Originally Posted by cmdahler
A civil offense is a criminal act. You may want to hang a label on it that sounds nicer, but a criminal is someone who violates the law. When you exceed the speed limit, you are technically a criminal at that point.
|
The speed limit is not civil law; it's part of criminal law.
The difference:
The STATE prosecutes criminal law. If you break it, you are assumed to have harmed society-in-general, and the court cases are in the form of [government entity] vs [defendantname].
INDIVIDUALS prosecute civil law. If you break civil law, you have only harmed someone if they care about it, and the court cases are in the form of [plaintiffname] vs [defendantname].
Violation of civil law is considered to be not a problem unless the damaged party cares to bring it up. For example, if I contractually hire you to paint my roof on Saturday, and you don't show up on Saturday because it was raining, I could sue you. Or I could say, meh, Sunday is fine for me too, and not sue you. If I pick Option 1, you may owe me for the cost of getting a replacement painter *and* the stress of not having my house painted in time for my Sunday brunch with my boss, *and* the cost of filing the case--but in neither case are you a "criminal" for breaking the contract.
Quote:
|
Violating copyright law is a crime.
|
Only in some, very limited, situations. (The RIAA would *love* for copyright infringement to be a crime; they could stop spending money on lawyers & demand that the government prosecute those cases.)
Quote:
|
You may try to rationalize it by saying your situation is different, yadda, yadda: just the meaningless noise of someone trying to justify themselves.
|
There's a difference between "people should use accurate terminology to discuss this topic" and "this civil violation is acceptable behavior." Admittedly, both are being argued by some people--but not all. Plenty of people despise copyright infringement, but don't try to confuse the issue by calling it "theft."
Plenty of people hate graffiti, and some people think it's "urban art." Calling it "theft" or "rape of buildings" would be ridiculous, and wouldn't help stop it.
Call it by what it is, legally, and argue what's wrong with that; don't waste time trying to convince people it's some entirely different act that we all agree is wrong to begin with.
And drop the "morals" debates. I'm supposed to believe that three months ago, it was immoral to share Raymond Chandler ebooks in Canada, but now it's become moral? What morality is tied to the calendar like that?