Piracy is wrong

[jamesd at echeque.com]

    --
 On 5 Jul 2002 at 3:10, Nomen Nescio wrote:
> Suppose you know someone who has been working for years on a
> novel. But he lacks confidence in his work and he's never shown
> it to anyone. Finally you persuade him to let you look at a copy
> of his manuscript, but he makes you promise not to show any of
> it to anyone else.
>
> Hopefully it is clear in this situation that no one is doing
> anything "evil".  Even though he is giving you the document with
> conditions beyond those specified in the current regime of
> copyright, he is not taking advantage of you.  Even though you
> hold the bits to his manuscript and he has put limitations on
> what you can do with them, he is not coercing you. You
> voluntarily accepted those conditions as part of the agreement
> under which you received the document.
>
> It should also be clear that it would be ethically wrong for you
> to take the manuscript and show it to other people.  Even if you
> take an excerpt, as allowed under "fair use" exemptions to
> copyright protection, and include it in a document for
> commentary or review purposes, that would be a violation of your
> promise.  This example demonstrates that when two people reach a
> mutual agreement about how they will handle some information,
> they are ethically bound by it even beyond the regulations of
> copyright law.

Let us make a more realistic supposition:

Let us suppose instead he organized an entertainment where a
lightly clad singer sang and danced, and showed that video on
television interspersed with advertisments, and I then captured
that video on my hard disk, deleted the ads, and put it on the
internet.

In that case, where is my promise?  Doubtless I must have made it
in the same moment of forgetfulness as I signed the social
contract. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
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