Re: Stallman Admits to Copyright Infringement

[Jules Bean <jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk>]

On Tue, May 16, 2000 at 02:30:40AM -0700, Joseph Carter wrote:
> On Tue, May 16, 2000 at 10:18:07AM +0100, Jules Bean wrote:
> > There's such a thing as laws getting out of touch with what the people
> > need.  It is a fairly well accepted fact that widestream taping of
> > music has totally failed to cripple the record industry, despite its
> > dire predictions. There's also such a thing as civil disobedience, and
> > the people showing the government its laws are out of date, knowing
> > that the government is beholden to corporate pressure and some
> > standard democratic measures are ineffective.
> 
> For the record, it's worth pointing out something most people seem to
> miss:  Civil disobedience is not a legal defense.  You can claim it is why
> you did something that is illegal under current laws, however it does not
> excuse you from the consiquences of your actions should the powers that be
> in a given instance of such decide to press the matter (usually to make an
> example of someone early on to prevent further civil disobedience,
> naturally..)

Of course not.

But my point was more that civil disobedience needn't be immoral,
although it is illegal. There is something badly wrong when a majority
of the people disagree with a law in a democratically elected
government.

Incidentally, I have heard of a US example of civil disobedience being
protected under the 1st amendment --- burning draft cards.  But that's
an exception, not a rule ;)

Jules

-- 
Jules Bean                          |        Any sufficiently advanced 
jules@{debian.org,jellybean.co.uk}  |  technology is indistinguishable
jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk              |               from a perl script