Anarchism FAQ?! WTF?...

[Eric Dunbar]

On 14/02/07, Michael T. Richter <ttmrichter at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  On Tue, 2007-13-02 at 22:11 -0500, Eric Dunbar wrote:
>  > > > 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?
>
>  No.  Now that you've clarified it, my first impression was right.  You do
> think dubious claims concerning intellectual "property" are more important
> than people's actual freedoms and lives.  I tend to think the reverse.  This
> is not going to be resolved in an Internet mailing list so I'll be letting
> it drop.

Alas, I cannot let it drop with your implication that I consider IP
rights as more important than political freedoms. That is not the
case.

I consider people being PROSECUTED for IP rights violations a
non-issue. It's perfectly legitimate and not something the maintainers
should concern themselves with given that enough people are violating
IP rights willy nilly, NOT FOR REASONS OF PRINCIPLE, but simply
because they want music XYZ, video XYZ, software XYZ or technology
without paying for the privilege.

Persecution of a person for possession of a certain text is a
different story and maintainers should be asking themselves some tough
questions if they risk endangering people's security.