Anarchism FAQ?! WTF?...

[Eric Dunbar]

On 13/02/07, Michael T. Richter <ttmrichter at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >  On Tue, 2007-13-02 at 15:38 -0500, Eric Dunbar wrote:
> >  > However, Ubuntu is used by people in regimes where merely possessing
> > > or even being able to access information on democracy is dangerous
> > > (and, anarchy is the ultimate in local democracy). Is it ethical for
> > > the maintainers of a more-or-less formally associated repository to
> > > expose users in these situations to political risk?
>
> >  I distinguish between political persecutions and intellectual property
> > right prosecutions.
>
>  What is your point supposed to be here, Eric?  That it's not OK to break
> intellectual "property" (an entirely intellectually "bankrupt" piece of
> terminology!) but that it is OK to expose Ubuntu users to political
> persecution?  Or am I badly misreading you?

Flame bait or just bad reading?

Re-read the post(s). "Is it ethical for the maintainers of a
more-or-less formally associated repository to expose users in these
situations to political risk?"

As for the distinction between IP prosecutions and political
PERSECUTION -- I think that's a fairly self-evident comparison. The
one is trivial and relates to REASONABLE legal limits and the rule of
law within the confines of human rights and freedoms protections [1]
whereas the other is subject arbitrary detention without the
protection of law operating within the confines of strong human rights
and freedoms protections.

[1] However much one may disagree with IP rights and protections,
GNU/BSD/whatever your OSS poison may be COULD NOT EXIST without strong
IP rights protection -- what would prevent a company from co-opting a
GNU-protected program and never releasing the code if users could
legally and ethically decide to ignore IP rights.