Stealing and Theft...I wonder what part of it does she NOT understand...?

Question

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202300917

Do you ever sense as society(both men and woman), we now have an extremely warped sense of entitlement...we want everything, but with very little work. Careers are now based on the "fun-factor"(another reason our middle-class is going 86, since grad's coming out of school are finding their phoo-phoo degree's are worthless).

I guess 'Thou shall not steal' is a one-way street, in our "progressive" society. It's OK if I steal, just DON'T steal from me...does that work for you?

Answer 1

Never underestimate what a large number of idiots can do when grouped together.

She should have paid for the music.

I don't think jobs are based on the "fun-factor", though. You enter a vocation based on whether you have an aptitude for the work.

Answer 2

If you download a song from a site you may not know the status of the song. Some are given away and all sorts of reasons for them being there or in the case of SpiralFrog.com, for instance, are authorized. You can copy them free off the radio, is that also illegal. I believe in being scrupilous, even over a paper clip, but enouth is enough, I'm not a lawyer and don't want to make up laws. Only a lawyer really knows all the technicalities and perhaps not most of them, not being in the field. We took over a continent with a flag and the land with a piece of paper. Where does morality begin? My concern is that when we learn moral law, it's tempting, almost impossible, not to become judges and concern about us becoming judgmental, when it destroys ones joy and/or seeing the spirit that brings life with legalistic literalism, the guilty getting off and the innocent in jail on a technicality. The quote is, "The letter kills, but the spirit brings life." Everyone trying to be superior to every other group is causing all the hardship and pain in the world. Only love and mercy bring joy and peace. Funny that those not knowing the law, do the things of the law. Why is it you having the law do them not? I think that means the law of love, since love fulfills the law and mercy triumps exultantly over justice. Throughout history if someone heard a song they could sings it, repeat it, sell it. Now paper takes away our rights although I'm not entirely on one side of the issue, it's just hard to balance justice with law instead of compassion and understanding, certainly our shortcoming when we sit on our hands when we should act or say something and act when we shouldn't. Altogether emotionalism in inimicable to reason and emotions have no part in clear thinking as their was some fuzziness in that article about wether justice was done or not. It wasn't totally black or white on either side. It's not the medias job to inform but to stir up emotions and sell advertising. What I wonder is how the great accusser has plenty of help chomping at the bit. How did that happen?

Answer 3

"It's OK if I steal, just DON'T steal from me". As time goes by people's willingness to steal unknowingliy becomes the norm and many show no remorse or shame about their behaviour. e.g some steals stationary from work for use at home, but if the coins where flipped and that person got underpain for instance it would not be acceptable. So no i don't think stealing is right.
Am a strong believer of the saying don't do to other what you wouldn't like done to you.

Answer 4

Copyright violation, while illegal, is neither "stealing" nor "theft". This is propaganda from the media companies, along with terms like "piracy" (equating the illegal sharing of music with rape, murder, and pillage on the high seas) and "intellectual property", used to gloss over the fact that copyright was always deemed (read Thomas Jefferson) to be a compromise between competing interests, which could change as technology and society changed, rather than a "RIGHT".

That said, apparently she did break the law and people should respect the law even when they disagree with it.

However, there are also some subtle legal questions involved, such as how the concept of "copying" should be understood as it is applied to new technologies. She certainly deserves her appeal, if only to bring greater clarity to the law.

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it....He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body."
Thomas Jefferson