User:Average/Piracy
Piracy: taking something that isn't yours. Now the US was made of pirates -- it took the land of the Indians, and if you're from the G20 countries, you're one of the beneficiaries of such deeds. Et cetera, et cetera....
So what moral lessons shall we learn from history?
- Everyone likes to have freedom.
- Everybody like to get fair credit for their work: whether physical labor or ideas.
- Life is better working together.
Answer: Collaboration! Just what the Internet is best at!
Like a piece of software but can't afford it? Well, the publisher has apparently given away some rights so they can gain some of the benefit from the "free market" (money). They could have, for example, created special stores or remote execution technology for you to run their software, listen to their music, watch their movies, etc to have greater control, but they decided to trade it for greater monetary gain.
Yet, rule number 2 implies that people deserves some fair credit, so what do you do? Lessig and the Creative Commons have made a pool of shared value where everyone gets to gain benefits, generally satisfying all 3 moral lessons, through the use of a tacit contract via referencing the categories of CC, SA, NC, and BY. When you use the items bracketed with these "licenses", you are expected to comply to an implicit and enforceable (see rule #2) agreement for the duration of your possession. This falls under the spirit of the law, which is principally (and historically in the US) bound to liberty and justice for all, such that if you throw out either one of these two principles, you will have a breakdown of society.
