and on a wholly different note

[nyarhotep]

¿could someone explain to my Capitalistic, Luddite ass the morality behind file-sharing copywritten material? the three answers i've heard are: Corporations are evil and kick puppies, therefore i'm justified in ripping them off; copywriting "information" is ludicrous on its face, my actions aren't illegal they're progressive; i don't give a crap,

Comments

[aedynn]

My psuedo-justification runs thusly: I am poor and would not be able to justify the expense of said media, therefore I won't be buying it regardless of it's availability in less-than-legal form. However, I have come across several new artists/movies/etc. that I can preview and then decide it *is* worth money to support said artist/movie/etc.. then sharing this media will spread my discovery, in fact boasting sales for my new-found fav. Yes, it's full of holes and probably only works in my brain.. but it's what I think.

[akirad]

I'm not poor at all and I could easily afford to buy CD/DVDs but to me the commercial arena is like an economic Darwinian jungle. They have something I want and they force me to "suffer" a financial penalty to get it. If I can get it without suffering that penalty (and without having to go to jail or whatever else) then I'll do it. It's like an evolutionary response.

The moral argument doesn't sway me at all. Corporations are not moral organisations. They are machines without a conscience. If they could legally make you suffer to increase their profits they would. And in mass redundencies, unsafe ingredients, known design faults, pollution, price fixing, profiteering and a million other ways they do. So I have no qualms at all about taking my small advantages while I can.

[nyarhotep]

methinks, the hole in your logic is divorcing corporations from the individuals which make up that corp. in the end, a corp is just a group of people working together to make a profit (feed their family). it's easy to dehumanize Corps into raving CEOs and Mindless Bureaucratic Automata, but that's forgetting that those stereotypes are bound to real people in a real world

[akirad]

"now, i understand what you're saying about Darwinian Economics, but ¿are you really comfortable with the fact that you're preyin off the minimum wage disc-press operator working in Podunk Bumsville

[aedynn]

what is truly immoral is the insanity that is executive compensation... Millions upon millions of dollars.. even if you suck at your job.. while low-wage workers can't feed their families.. that is immoral.

[nyarhotep]

no, that's an extension of capitalism. the system produces extrema of resource distribution. to say it's immoral is to say it countermands civil courtesies or legal restraints - and a company which makes money, and rewards CEOs for doing so, isn't necessarily doing either. methinks, attaching moral distinctions to monetary status leads to all kinds of trouble

now, if you want to say Capitalism itself is immoral, that's another conversation. though, i'm not sure i could agree with that either. it seems to me, Capitalism is a tool, not an outcome or action

[aedynn]

When someone gets obscenely rich because they are talented at screwing over poor people, I call that immoral, simple as that.

[nyarhotep]

¿how would you define screwing people? the owner of Denny's is obscenely rich, so are the Board of the RedCross, and the chairman of Greenpeace. ¿is having money immoral?

i grant you, there are less than savory people who've made money. but i don't think that just because a person is rich they've been illicit in their activities. making money off a niche isn't, necessarily, immoral

[aedynn]

making millions of dollars by cutting wages, cutting benefits, laying off people, and hiking prices is what I call immoral. It is possible to run a business where prices are fair, compensation is fair... the people who run, say, Exxon Mobile who blatently overinflat prices to take advantage of misfortune and intentionally skimp on safety measure to inflate profits and line their own and their investors wallets are no better than theives and murderers