Laws, morals, hypocriticism (was Re: (careering OT) copyright)

[Zsolt Felföldi]

No: HPFGUIDX 9647

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Dai Evans" <dwe199 at s...> wrote:

Hi !

> --- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Aberforth's Goat" 
> <Aberforths_Goat at Y...> wrote:
>  
> > Whether using such an illegal copy is in every case *immoral,* is 
a 
> related
> > but somewhat different question--and I think people need to 
answer 
> it on
> > their own. I'm not entirely sure what *I* think, but I'm 
absolutely 
> sure
> > that it's the kind of question that's difficult to discuss 
without 
> scalping
> > each other.
> 
> On a question of copyright morals, I wonder how many people on the 
> list can honestly say that 100% (or even 25%) of the software on 
> their computers is 100% legal. Particularly with students in halls 
of 
> residence, etc. it has been my experience that software gets 
swapped 
> and shared on a huge scale (i will give no details as they may tend 
> to incriminate me). Perhaps people should think about that before 
> they condemn fiction copyright infringers. Of course people may 
think 
> that they have more of a right to rip-off huge companies than 
authors 
> (even if they did gross Ł20m last year).

I think that we can NOT say the final truth about this topic, because 
it is considered really different in different countries and 
cultures. In my country, everyone admits that sometimes he/she does 
things that are illegal, and we all know that probably there isn't a 
human being older than 10 years who hasn't ever committed anything 
against the law. The most popular people in our media all admit this, 
and they all have funny stories about smuggling and stealing minor 
things as a child. I would never trust in people who claim that they 
never did anything unlawful. If you handle this topic as a taboo, it 
still remains true, and maybe the most important of the few good 
heritages of our 40 years of socialism is that we can live without 
taboos and hypocriticism. Except most of our politicians, who, by the 
way, steal millions shamelessly, and they would never consider 
retiring or even admitting their failure. This all is my own humble 
opinion, and i would never judge anyone from a few letters.

One more thing: I have a friend who is half Russian (born in 
Leningrad), and he told me that Russians really don't care about 
copyright laws, even the government is shutting its eyes. Btw he told 
me that notorious URL (the e-text search engine). Of course i won't 
repeat it, all i want to say is that it was Russian and it wasn't 
long at all, not some hidden pirate site, so it is probably sponsored 
(or at least tolerated) by the government. (I didn't tell too much 
about the URL, Mr. Moderator, did i ? :) Btw on the server of our 
biggest dormitory, there are downloadable e-copies of most of the 
books we need, mostly written by our teachers. They all know it, but 
they don't care...

OK, enough preaching for today :)

bye

  Fefe

(*counting until ten before posting it* :)