Quoting Nadav Har'El, from the post of Sun, 31 Dec: > I don't think this issue is specific to linking, to piracy, or IP laws. > The more basic question is - how much does "free speech" cover you when > you are telling others to break the law, or helping them do so more easily?
that's what legislators philosophize about... on those issues I think I'm leaning to the Libertarian point of view which is simple - you should have a list of rights (like the American Bill of Rights which has been mostly stepped over in the last 30-40 years), which SHOULD be inalienable, and one of them is Free Speach, which you should be able to practice as far and wide as you want as long as you don't take away from other people's freedoms in the process. So submitting a Fatwa is fine. Following it is not. abusing copyrighted matterial is wrong, but talking about it and linking to it is not. Using bombs is wrong, but building them and talking about them is not. (though I'm a pacifist, and this is kinda conflicting with my other convictions) Publishing CC numbers of course harms the privacy rights of their owners, and endangers their assets, (which is another basic right). However if you are not the one who stole them and there is a danger someone will abuse this list, you COULD and probably SHOULD reveal that list to the credit card company and/or the owners privately or in the papers allowing them to know their rights have been violated and they should take the necessary steps. > At what point do you stop being just a "speaker", and become an "accomplice"? the moment you hurt someone else's basic rights and impede on their freedoms. I think it's harder to define those other basic rights than the freedom of speach actually. > I guess your intent matters a lot. If you publish on Wikipedia an explanation > of what Trinitrotuluene is and how it is prepared, a judge will much more > likely be in your favor than if you published a "How-to-blow-up-your-school > For Dummies" step-by-step instruction manual in a website for kids. indeed, now you are mixing in children's rights which is a different issues. underage people are priviliged to have extra protecting rights and parents have rights to protect minors from certain matterials. You can publish that book, but not in a way that may violate those protections and the parents' rights to defend their children by restricting access to that info. that way you will not be able to sell it at a school, or let minors read it in a public library, but it should otherwise be free to be published and purchased. > Similarly, if you passingly mention a link in some mailing list in response > to a question, in "tom lev", this is very different from building a commercial > site whose sole intent is to help others to break the law, while you profit. I can (or should have been able to) give away (or sell) instruments to break safes, spy on people, programs to crack servers. If me and my clients don't actually use them to step on other people's freedoms there's nothing illegal here. > Another real-life example is selling knives, which is a perfectly legal and excatly. > entire profits come from murderers, and you knowingly and delibrately sell > them weapons designed to kill humans with greater efficiency. So it's all a > question of intent. that's where the US courts and the US constitution differ in the last few decades. If napster is providing an infrastructure and tools, is it an accomplice? I think not, but they do. this was not the case in the eighties, see the betamax trial now quoted everywhere. I say that knowledge in itself, scientific data or other types of knowhow, has no morals. it's the action you decide to take that can be judged for morality. Classic example - Dr. Nobel invents dynamite. Dynamite has no morals. Nobels wanted it to be used for easier cuting of stone from mountains and be used for peaceful things, some others decided to use it as a weapon. the knowledge of the dynamite recepie or even the responsible ownership and storage of it, should be absolutely fine. it's the decision of using it or abusing it that can be judged to be right or wrong. of course, most countries would like to control the ownership of explosives before they are potentially abused because people are stupid and can't be trusted, so you need a license even for shooting fireworks. that's beaurocracy helping the law to proactively defend people's writes by taking away some rights. that's fine too because the world is not perfect (as I said, people are stupid). so you sit and write such a bill of rights, and you say that every citizen should have a right to live in a safe environment. that means no explosives next door or high voltage power lines outside his windows, and no celular antenae on his roof. this clearly stops his neighbour from keeping dynamite next door in a high-riser, but nothing to stop a farmer from stocking plastique if there are no near neighbours :-) of course, the usual disclaimer, IANAL, and the above ideas are not water-proof nor were they phrased with enough time to edit them, feel free to "attack" them. -- On the wagon Ira Abramov http://ira.abramov.org/email/ ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
