Re: pirate bay, w3m, and the interface is just an interface (BEST post ever)

[Rasmus]

Hi Paul,

For the record, the post below contains some sarcasm.

Paul Rankin <paul@tilk.co> writes:

> Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl> at 00:01 on 15 Dec 2014:
>
>> 1. It's not "piracy".  It's "illegal copying of stuff".  Piracy is when
>> I have a ship, and I'm attacking other ships, take prisoners etc.
>
> Meh, I'm a linguistic descriptivist.

If not an embracer of Newspeak...

>> 2. It's not "stealing".  Stealing is taking a *physical* object away
>> from its owner so that he/she cannot use it anymore.
>
> Again, descriptivist. But even the "first profession" lacked the
> exchange of a physical object, so I don't think you can hold onto this
> idea (I'm actually surprised people still say this).

And how do you 'steal' sex without physically harming prostitute?

Perhaps the usual classification of goods would help you appreciate the
opposite point of view:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_good

As you might agree, the film lobby is trying to portray movies as private
goods, though it is non-rivalrous in the terms of the above article.

> This raises a very good point. I think there has been something of a
> cultural shift in the last few decades, or maybe even century, wherein
> people have detached somewhat from their communities and constructed a
> kind of internal morality.  This may seem a plainly obvious point to
> make, but contrast it with the kind of deontological societies of a few
> hundred years ago and I think we can say we're in a very different age.

Yes, them youngsters these days, they are /all/ wrong!  How do they not
see the integrity of the carefully-crafted established wisdom?!

> [...] Sure, the driver running the red endangered others while you're
> only endangering yourself, but that's not the point.

They are not comparable.  To understand see,

       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

> We seem to want the game to have enforced rules because the rules give
> the game its meaning, but then accept/reject the rules based on internal
> criteria.  This of course collides with a contradiction as the
> overarching rule for any of this whole humanity project to work is that
> we all follow the rules (thank you Kant) and, given the veil of
> ignorance (thank you Rawls) we all want that others do the same.

Clearly!  A couple of years ago this guy at some institution in New
England questioned the righteousness of the terms of use of some printer
drivers and started a project to "liberate" people in the domain he cared
and knew about. . .  I'm sure you will agree that such a strike is an
attack on Project Humanityᵀᴹ©?

Crush Galileo!

—Rasmus

BTW: The signature was chosen by cookie1.el.  I have not checked the
     source, but somehow the Emacs Pixes always find an appropriate one.

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