[klagermkii]

I feel that by reducing it to a binary legal question you've already dropped so many layers of nuance which help shape peoples own moral or ethical view of it. We all know that distributing copyrighted goods is against the law, reducing a complex question to an irrelevant simple one does nothing to help settle what people may feel is legal overreach.

Also even the "right to reproduce and distribute a copyrighted work to the public is solely that of the copyright holder" is not an absolute when you look at things like mechanical royalties.

[wrigby]

That's a very good point - I wanted to point out that the issue is clear from a binary legal perspective, and my personal stance from an ethical perspective is that reproduction and distribution _should_ be the sole right of the original creator (unless otherwise assigned). I don't think I communicated that effectively though.

I can definitely see that it's not a simple issue, and I think you're right to point out the nuance that I didn't acknowledge.

Compulsory mechanical licenses are an interesting beast for sure. I'm not really sure what to make of them from an ethical standpoint.

[klagermkii]

I feel like most people are acknowledging the legal perspective in this thread. The comments are using words like "draconian" or "going too far" or "The law is clear: complicity in copyright violation". There's very little doubt that the four top pirates on that site are breaking some kind of law, it's more about how hard they should be punished or if the law is fair as it currently stands.

There's this interplay between the law and ethics as to how much your ethics are shaped by what the law currently says, vs the law being shaped by the communal ethics of people. I think when you reference a detail of the law (say first-sale doctrine) as a black-and-white first principle for your view of ethical IP handling it feels like there's not much room to move the ethical line. If there is some kind of absolute author moral right to first-sale, why even put a time limit on copyright or patents etc?

Personally I feel that people should be able to make a living (and more) from producing creative or useful work. Everyone benefits from that. I think the legal details beyond that including copyright terms, exclusivity, first-sale, reselling used software, importing of trademarked goods, mechanical royalties, license agreements, patent pools. All of that to me is ugly hacks on ugly hacks to try and make a workable system out of it. And I don't care if people throw all of it out so long as they can still come up with a viable way for people to make movies, make video games, make music, make medicine and make useful software applications while still being able to support themselves and their family that doesn't just depend on charity.