Here's a somewhat-related quote from patio11 that I often refer back to:
> Developers have a cultural quirk where they believe that, e.g., "file sharing is not theft" / "manipulating a URL can't be a crime" / "laws about disclosing protected information invariably contain a public policy exception which comports to the temperament of the dev community" are axiomatic and thereby create an internally consistent legal system which fails to falsify those axioms but also fails to meaningfully resemble the legal system we actually operate in.
> This results in developers sincerely believe things like "Your Bitcoins are unprotected by the legal system because nobody can steal a number", which is a proposition that is absurd to the legal system as "JavaScript is not a programming language" is to a programmer.
File sharing is not theft, and there's unambiguous legal precedent to that effect. Really bad example. Stop conflating two laws that mean different things.
Nothing special about computers? Okay. "Persons, papers, and effects" no longer means emails, computer files, or anything other than physical, tangible documents that existed when that law was drafted. I really don't think that's the world you want to live in, or the argument you really want to be making.
The fact that the legal system thinks there's "nothing special about computers" is the cause of a great deal of difficulties that should not exist in a sane world. This is a world with new concepts that did not exist when a lot of our laws were written, and it doesn't make much sense to presuppose that there is or even can be a 1:1 mapping between the tangible and the not, all of the time.
You're being intentionally obtuse here since it's literally the first words of my post. You did quote someone else and pretty much endorsed it, but that quote contains a pernicious falsehood.
Clear enough. It is not theft. It is violation of the copyright law. A crucial distinction. Theft means you take away someone's legal property so they're not in possession of it any more. File-sharing does not take their copyright away and give it to the thief. Copyright-theft is a different thing. Right?
There is to me. I patently reject the notion that information is property. And a lot of others do as well, at least to some extent.
Do you really believe that up until this week, "Happy Birthday" was someones 'property' ? Do you really believe that posting the ETA for city busses is a patentable innovation ?
Just because some legal thug perverts the definition of words (such as 'property' ) in the lawbooks does not change the way I regard them. Just like back when the books said that a black man was 3/5ths of a human being. Just because it says that in a book doesn't make it correct.
Yes and as OP was pointing out, just because you regard them as powerless doesn't mean they are powerless. You can't simply make rules for yourself outside of society because you wish it so. You may, in your mind, disagree. But in reality you will be subject to the legal rules of society.
So to put it simply: they are right because they have the guns on their side. Lovely.
Also, you word it as if this is society's legal system. Society has about as much control over the legal system as peasant has over the dictates of their king. Unless you limit society only to the wealthy and well connected.
you're partially correct, but actually if people just say "fuck you" to specific laws, en masse, there actually is some safety in it, viz. the RIAA trying to sue people for pirating. Sure some unlucky folks will have to pony up their protection money, but while they get shorted, millions of us enjoy the benefit of disregarding that law. essentially if everyone disregards the law, "they can't catch all of us". I'm not intending to make a solid case for piracy specifically, but just using that as an example about the safety in numbers.
Except this makes the situation worse because now everyone is a criminal and the legal system gets to pick and choose who to punish.
"Hmmm... I don't like gay minorities, let's hit them up for all the illegal things that everyone is doing, but which are still illegal."
Maybe there is a defense if the prosecutor says the above line exactly, but in general it allows for unfair application of the law. This quickly becomes 'don't piss off a cop/judge'.
But when your own personal definition of what you think a word ought to mean and the legal definition of that word collide, whose definition do you think matters?
Choose your own definitions of words if you like, but don't be surprised or outraged if the world doesn't share them.
Has any court ruled file sharing is theft not copyright infringement? This is clearly a case of dissolving the question[1]. No one disputes what's actually going on - copyright is being violated. What's in dispute is the definition of "theft". This is only interesting from a rhetorical/political point, as the flavour of the word theft strongly implies negativity, whereas copyright infringement is debatable.
> Developers have a cultural quirk where they believe that, e.g., "file sharing is not theft" / "manipulating a URL can't be a crime" / "laws about disclosing protected information invariably contain a public policy exception which comports to the temperament of the dev community" are axiomatic and thereby create an internally consistent legal system which fails to falsify those axioms but also fails to meaningfully resemble the legal system we actually operate in.
> This results in developers sincerely believe things like "Your Bitcoins are unprotected by the legal system because nobody can steal a number", which is a proposition that is absurd to the legal system as "JavaScript is not a programming language" is to a programmer.
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7367312)
In other words, no. There is—and should be—nothing special about computers.