[Ben Thornton]

Originally Posted by TGS

If I understand correctly there might be three sorts of material from that get downloaded from the Darknet in descending order of naughtiness*:

I think that it's more nuanced than this one (availability) dimension. For example, it matters to many people whether they have already paid for a paper copy. Another question is how old the material is and whether the author is still living. Lots of things contribute to how people feel about whether it's OK to copy something.

This seems to amount to the the argument that if someone exercises their rights in a way that I don't like there might be a rational moral position which would give some moral warrant to me negating their rights.

I don't think that's right. My point was that if you view copyright as a mechanism for society to grant certain benefits on a temporary basis, so as to encourage the creation of new material etc., it makes no sense to support copyright being used to keep that material from people.

You might be right on this - but if you are I don't see how we separate 1 and 2 from 3 - some rights-holder who wants me to pay £130 for a copy of an academic book may well be exercising their rights in a way that I don't like, and if we accept the argument that the exercise of rights in ways we don't like justifies the negation of those rights, then I would be justified in downloading it from the Darknet. If the book could have been had for £10 I would have happily paid it, but it's ridiculous to charge me £130. There's no way I can afford £130 so I'm going to have it away from some file hosting site if I can find it.

If something is priced so crazily high that very few can afford it, people may well take the same view (i.e. that material is being withheld rather than encouraged, so that the copyright holder is in breach of the "social contract" if you will). Of course, people have different views of what is crazy.

You might argue that the exercising of rights which results in a book costing £130 has, in itself, a different moral status from the exercise of rights that results in a book not being available, and that, therefore, how we respond to those exercising of rights can justifiably be different. But you would have to argue this, I don't think it's self-evident.

One might argue that - for some content, £130 might be reasonable.

In any case, my main point was a reaction to your put-down of those making their darknet confessions. I wasn't stating my position, but saying that one could reasonably take such a position. Personally, I'm not sure what the best balance is between rights for copyright-holders and rights for the pubic, but it seems significantly over-balanced towards coprorate copyright-holders at the moment.