Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
Uh, No. Illegal is illegal.
It might not be enforced, but that doesn't make it any less legal in the eyes of the law. |
I'ma gonna get philosophical a bit, so you may wish to skip the following :-)
"Legal" and "illegal" are concepts based on values, but not on anything universal. In the classic copyright protection law, the society decided that money is the single most important value that has to be considered.
(Hence all the references for payment, commercial gain, etc)
Which is fine, but does not cover all aspects of the effect of a work on the society. For example, what about the thing (lets call it karma) that a good author accumulates when people read his words, even if they didn't pay for that?
What about the character improvements, raising of the education level and the competence of the people that does not pay to the authors but still use their written wisdom to own benefit?
And which is of more value - the remuneration of a single person or the benefit of the multiple people who ultimately cascade the effect to a considerable portion of the society?
Now, I know that intangible things cannot be measured as good as cents and this is the reason law tends to deal with Euros and not Love or Inspiration.
That said, the law then has the obligation to be extremely tangible and not interpretable in hugely different ways.
If it is not, well... then people with "good" and "bad" intentions will use it their own way.
If the law cannot touch them following its own written texts they have the right to do whatever they do, regardless of what others consider as "legal", "ethical", "fair", and other such conceptual intangible qualifications.