Yes, it is immoral to break an unjust law when that law does not ask you to do something that breaks God's law.
You know, this the typical view of Romans 13, but there are honestly a number of ridiculous aspects to it. Does virtually any activity magically become immoral just because we have a government that feels the need to write a law about virtually anything?
Do you believe you have the right to copy a $100 bill in your wallet and spend it as if it were real?
I wouldn't do that, but our currency system is already fraudulent to begin with, so I don't see why I should care.
Precisely!
Of course, Nick may respond with, "The government does it, why can't I?"
I'd agree with Nick in this case. At least kind of. I wouldn't counterfeit money because it would reduce the purchasing power of other people, rather than hurting the banksters that are the real criminals. So I'm not advocating this. That said, the entire currency system IS a fraud.
Ron Paul has discussed this actually, he didn't defend counterfeiters, but he did point out that the Bible commands "Honest weights and measures." A monetary system which bankers can inflate at will to benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else is fraudulent, not honest.
Again, I'm not advocating counterfeiting, that would only hurt honest civilians, not the banksters. I'd much rather see people use gold, bitcoin, or other currencies that the banksters cannot manipulate, regardless of whether they have a legal right to do this or not (Using honest money is commanded by God, its not evil, so I don't really care whether the laws try to enforce the Federal Reserve monopoly or not). But the entire Federal Reserve System remains a fraud.
And Nick would be correct.
Indeed.
I just found Ron Paul's "End the Fed" in a used bookstore and started reading. I knew the Fed was bad, but I didn't know just HOW bad.
Okay. Once we understand that in a real contract, it has to be agreed by both parties and each party has to show they agreed (sign). We can get onto how a country would handle creative media without copyrights.
The good thing is, a free market would take care of it almost seamlessly. People want good music, books, poems, and all manner of good ideas. There are people that can provide it IF they have a reasonable risk of compensation for the effort. Especially with the internet, these sets of people could get together. Perhaps it would work like a patron system, where the paying people get to see it first. And/or it could work as a derivative system where artists can sell the live performance, not the recording. And/or we can add licensed official copies, creating a powerful collector's market; this would include numbered sets of artwork for a book or cover art on a CD. And don't forget the power of advertising. If an author is good, all the inexpensive copies are just free advertising for the percentage of copies that the author sells. And don't forget, that is true free advertising whereas even digital downloads aren't free because they take time and bandwidth. So the author actually gets the better deal in a market without copyrights. And let's not leave out software. But it's the easiest one because it makes money on its own; think of a company that says "Wow, these computers could make our work creating documents so much easier, but if an idea like that gets out, people will use it without paying us for it! Forget it, we'll just spend vast quantities of more dollars doing it on paper! That'll show'm!"
And there is one more thing. With copyrights, you can't get a break as an author because there are other people selling horrible books in your way. What they have that you don't have is a good relationship with the gatekeepers of book distribution. Every copyrighted media has gatekeepers, and it's *them* that make the real money, not the artist. Thus, all the best artists aren't the ones that rise to the top, but a few of them on top of a pile of artists that shouldn't get the distribution they have. That's what copyright has gotten us.
OK, I'm still a little confused but I think I understand this.
I don't see how. I have always heard that it is perfectly legal to make copies of my own legitimately purchased materials for my own personal use, such as copying my own CDs to my iTunes and then to my iPod. Of course, copying from iTunes to iPod is part of the agreement with Apple anyway, but still.
The law says that you're buying a license, but it may allow you to copy your own. I'm not sure. It certainly should allow you to do that.
So you don't think it is stealing anything from the musicians or authors to do that?
I admit that my stance on IP is not settled and that I'm playing Devil's Advocate but... why do you have an inherent right to someone's possible future purchase?
You wouldn't have that with anything else.
How is not buying something theft?
