[Free-sklyarov-uk] Reply to my letter to the Secretary of State re Big George's campaign

[=?iso-8859-1?q?Alistair=20Davidson?=]

 --- Jim Peters <jim at uazu.net> wrote: > I've just had
a reply to the letter I sent to the
>
> They are obviously under the mistaken idea that the
> EUCD is a good
> thing, or else they wouldn't be proudly revealing
> their plans to
> people like me and Big George.

Their reply reminded me strongly of the people I
encountered whilst leafletting who assumed that
because I mentioned copying CDs, I must be protesting
against it.

Most people (including myself, before I'd read
anything by Stallman or Gilmore or Lessig) don't stop
to compare their *actions* in the way they treat
information (especially CDs and software) to the
*morality* they espouse.

The moral judgement of society at present seems to be
something like-

1) Artists have a right to profit from their work.
2) Free sharing of information prevents this.
3) Thus, free sharing of information is wrong.

However, the anarchist position on the effect of law,
that people tend to react against it without making a
moral judgement, instead asking "what can I get away
with?"

So pretty much everyone I know makes either tapes or
burned copies of CDs for their friends etc.

But this is emphatically not an indicator of the moral
position of society. Society still judges that free
sharing of copyrighted information to be an immoral
act, and as such will find laws that seem
extraordinarily draconian to you and I to arguably be
appropriate responses to the problem.

So whoever formulated the reply most likely assumed
that you share a particular moral view- "piracy" is
wrong, and technoology that enables this is a threat
to the very fabric of society.

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