On Fri, 2 Sep 2011, Neil Gardner wrote:
I think the law sucks, but I also think 99% of people complaining about it are doing so because of a massive sense of entitlement and because they disagree with the distribution and licensing models chosen by the private organisations that own the material.
Not quite. Some are doing it because they dispute the morality of the very notion of "ownership" in the sense you've just quoted. People keep forgetting, these are "rights holders", NOT "possessors", and therefore not "owners" in the traditional sense. Any notion of "ownership" that isn't directly tied to "physical possession" is just a social contract, codified in law. Some people think that entire social contract has become corrupt to is core, and thus the "ownership" being asserted by the rights holders has no moral weight, and so such people feel liberated to ignore it, regardless of what the law of the land might say. If we want English-style riots, let's just carry on ignoring ordinary people's notions of equity and morality, and punish them for flouting laws that have dubious moral backing. -Martin