At the US border

[JoeHill]

On Mon, 02 Oct 2006 17:42:21 -0400
Jamon Camisso got an infinite number of monkeys to type out:

> IANAL... but ethical/moral and legal are in this case mutually
> exclusive. It is illegal in *some* places to use libdvdcss2 or whatever
> package you use, but it is not unethical. Not to imply that it is
> ethical to circumvent copy protection, only that ethics don't really
> enter into it here.

...a certain Richard Stallman might disagree with you... ;)

That was the direction I was coming from, or intended to (I'm even less a lawyer
than you, to be sure, so I'm probably not framing this right). Neither our
sense of 'ethics' or 'law' have yet caught up to the technology that we
possess, so that one's sense of right and wrong never seems to quite cover all
the angles.

Some people might say that to use *any* closed or restricted software, whether
it was intended to be free or not, is unethical because, as Stallman put it:

"A non-free program is a predatory social system that keeps people in a state
of domination and division, and uses the spoils to dominate more. It may seem
like a profitable option to become one of the emperor's lieutenants, but
ultimately the ethical thing to do is to resist the system and put an end to
it."

From my point of view at least, the software which plays DVD's was never
intended to be 'free' (ie. open), and so to use it is to falter, ethically
speaking, at least as far as Stallman would define it, no? I know, Stallman
would say you shouldn't be buying the DVD in the first place or something crazy
like that :P

Personally, *I* don't believe that using a pirated copy of Photoshop is anywhere
near the same as using libdvdcss (ethically speaking), but again, would
everyone see it the same way? I don't know. I've run into people who won't load
M$ fonts on their Linux box because, technically, although freely available, the
licensing is restricted and therefore 'bad', and they consider it unethical to
use them.

-- 
JoeHill / RLU #282046
///////////////////////////
"People should not be afraid of their Government, the Government should be
afraid of the People." -- V.
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