[fleitz]

The United States is founded on illegal behavior (sedition and treason). If the founders of the country have taught us anything it should be that great things come from those willing to break the law in furtherance of mankind.

[kjhghnjmk]

And Hollywood is founded on piracy (Edison's first presentation was a pirate copy of the lumiere's voyage to the moon) and IP crime (movie makers moved to Hollywood form NY because they were violating Edison's patents on the cameras)

[adsr]

But not necessarily so. It's an inappropriate generalization, what illegal behavior is good, all of it?

[anonymoushn]

Whether behavior is good or bad is independent of the law.

[adsr]

Certainly, but what I opposed was the generalization "great things come from those willing to break the law". It's an attempt to create an association with something that is generally agreed upon being something good, and law breaking in general. It's an association that does not exist, logically.

[david_shaw]

In his defense, the full quote was that "great things come from those willing to break the law in furtherance of mankind," which I think excludes a large chunk of illegal behavior.

[adsr]

Yeah, but the problem is whose definition of furtherance we should use, certainly it could fit into almost any agenda depending on who you ask. I think it's highly probable that these founding fathers would actually stand up and defend a mans right to protect his property. But we will never know their thoughts on DRM, which is another reason the argument is more of an appeal to emotion than reason. To be fair though, you see this type of argument all the time, especially in politics and news reporting. But the argument is rhetorical, the conclusion does not follow by logic necessity from the premise. And the issue of being independent from England and be able to influence how to govern the state, is different from just opposing the means in which a private company decide to protect their investment in R&D and so on.

[fleitz]

Actually Thomas Jefferson wrote a fair deal (no pun intended) on copyright and ultimately he was ambivalent as to it's benefits, but he certainly recognized that copyright's ultimate aim was to enrich the public domain and was not intended to give ownership to ideas.

"Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. 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. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole 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."

Also, copyright is a legal claim, so almost any argument about it will be rhetorical. (Rhetoricians and Sophists were basically the first lawyers) Copyright itself does not logically stem as a necessity of the conditions. With regard to rhetoric logos is one of the rhetorical appeals so even an argument based purely in logic can be rhetorical in nature.

[moomba]

The point is when people talking about breaking DRM, they aren't necessarily doing something illegal. There are a lot of legitimate reasons for breaking DRM that don't violate the law. It would be completely ridiculous for stack overflow to ban discussion on this topic altogether.