Spin -Off.....Aspie rule follower VS anti-authoritarian

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Better still I could weight up that road with flyers to let motorist know that the is a little car taking pictures and that you should turn back and give them a good bullocking. Or better I can give them what looks like an official ticket that says you will receive a penalty notice through the post and that this is a part of “Camden Councils Revenue Creation Initiative, keeping the cost of your Local Council Tax Down”

When I worked for lawyers for a couple of decades, I was expected to revere anybody who was a lawyer, as being automatically superior to me. That's what I can't do - I can *pretend* to do it, but I noticed that NT staff actually do feel inferior to lawyers/bosses. So, whereas I have to remember to grovel, they do it automatically. I can remember having the same problem in high school - I didn't think the teachers were better than me, or some kind of superior species. I understand about being polite, but not when "superiors" are rude to me. It gets me in trouble. Even royalty - I still can't get hold of the 'superior' idea - though I could learn how to behave. If I remember.

Geez, it seems like I'm different from everybody else. I have a lot , of respect for people in authority, until they demonstrate that they don't deserve respect, which sometimes takes as long as a week.

I never even think about whether rules are logical. I've seen too many things that were true but not logical to have any faith in logic, but I've always had this unwavering devotion to principles, you know, the stuff everybody talks about when they're expected to, but everybody but me figured out before kindergarten that it was just what you say, with nothing to do with reality.

Also, routines drive me crazy, I hate routines. Why would I want to know in advance what's going to happen? Do all you aspies watch the end of a movie before you watch the beginning? Do you read the last chapter of a novel first? Y'all don't make no sense to me sometimes.

Maybe I'm not an aspie. I think I'll call all my friends and tell them...ok, I just did. That didn't take long. Don't know what the problem is, it's really interesting how chinese poetry changed from the Tang to the Sung dynasty, losing some superficial beauty, but gaining in depth. I'm an interesting guy.

Oops, there was a topic here. I was in high school during vietnam and the civil rights era. For you younger folks, that was shortly after the extinction of the dinosaurs. We were required to recite the pledge of allegiance every day. You people in other countries, it's a big thing here. A good friend of mine who was black refused to recite the pledge because the US did not have "liberty and justice for all." I agreed with him about the facts, but I didn't have a problem with that part because I figured I was pledging allegiance to the idea of liberty and justice for all, not saying it presently existed. I never understood the point of pledging allegiance to a flag, though.

Other people's value systems have always baffled me, and they could never understand mine, even though to me things seemed simple and obvious. One time when when I was in the army, I went to a parade to check out the hardware, tanks and stuff, I like that sort of thing. In the row in front of me, there was an army wife with a small child, and she was explaining to him what was going on, "See, that's why we have soldiers, and sailors, and marines, they guard our flag. Wheres our flag?" A truck rolled past with a little flag on the bumper. "There it is, see, isn't it pretty?"

That was a trivial incident thirty years ago, and I still remember it, because I thought the lady was so insane. I remember thinking, "What the hell is she teaching this kid." The thing is, she was the one that was normal.

I was in trouble a lot, always have been. One of the officers in my company who was considerably smarter than most pulled me aside. "You look at things differently from most people," he told me, "The world would be a better place if more people looked at things the way you do...but they don't."

It was many years ago that I read the line from Robinson Jeffers: "The first objective of those in power will always be to remain in power." At the time, I recognized it was it was true, and I've seen it confirmed countless times, but some truths I have never been able to really apply to my understanding of the world. Maybe I really am dumb.

Your reasoning is poor. The musician (or record label more often) offers a product: a song. They offer you the right to listen to that song whenever you want by buying the CD or purchasing an audio file from an online music store. If, for any reason at all, you don't want to get the product on their terms, you have no right to the music. It's really that simple. They aren't shoving the song down your ear canals.

If you can't afford it, do without. There's plenty of legally free music out there, and music is hardly a necessity like food, water, and shelter; so even if there was absolutely no free music (and no radio), your argument wouldn't hold.

Not liking something is not the criterion for deciding whether to purchase something or not: desiring possession is. If you want it enough to have it but not enough to "really like it" (or however you might describe a song you'd actually pay money for), you have the choice of either buying it or doing without (poor you!). By analogy, imagine if I snuck into your house and stole all your stuff. Now I couldn't afford to buy it all from you upfront and I don't really like any of your stuff either (you have pedestrian taste in furniture, by the way!), but you see, it would be nice just to have a recliner even if I don't like it and cannot afford it. Now, of course, you may cry foul because my stealing from you has a very real and tangible impact on your lifestyle, but you're talking about the morals guiding the acquisition and exchange of products from other people and not about the utilitarian consequences such transactions might bring about!

I guess that means you get all the "free" music you don't like; and I get all the free furniture, food, electronics, and appliances from you that I don't "like" either. Fair is fair!

You can have Peebo's shoes.

You weren't going to buy shoes, especially his ugly shoes because they're not worth it. So, just take them from him without asking. It's ok. He has justified it for you.

flawed analogy

if i download a song none actually loses anything.. i have never brought a cd in my life, i download everything.

the fact is, paying for music has now became obsolite, alongside the abacus the horse(except from a hobbie point of view) and the slide rule.

The analogy holds. The effects—whether anyone really "loses" anything—are not important; that's a completely different question. This is a question of fairness, legality, and moral principle rather than a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis. I answered this challenge already in the initial response.

I'll give you a second analogy, though, that might draw in some more similarities in terms of "loss." I think some of these retail stores are charging outrageous markup on these fancy clothes. Surely, it costs maybe 35% of the sticker price to pay for the costs of production, shipping, and employee wages (assume it does for the sake of argument). Instead of taking these clothes up to the cashier to pay the old-fashioned sticker price, I'll just sneak them out of the store—but I'm not shoplifting because I'm "donating" 40% (which I think is enough profit for them) back to the store. So, in the end, there are no losses (except less profits for the guys who are already too rich). Paying the retail price is obselete; I decide how much profit the stores get for what I buy from them. I've never paid retail price in my life; I set the donation for everything.

I don't really understand how you're donating 40%.

Anyway I do think you're right. I mean, how are artists going to be able to live off their art if no one pays them? And they won't be able to make anything half as good if they can only do it in their free time after work (nor will they be motivated to).

You're also missing my point. I'm not even addressing the question of how paying for or not paying for music downloads will effect the musicians (that's a question of economics and business practices). I am addressing the question of whether it is right to decide to take something without paying the asking price for any arbitrary reason, a question of morality.

I know that's not what you've been saying. That's why I added it. Otherwise I'd just be restating your point.

Anyway, how are you donating 40%? I'm really interested in finding out. Maybe if you sneaked some money into the cash register?

It doesn't really matter how; it's just for argument. The "donation" is a euphemism for stealing the items but then mysteriously giving a portion of the price back. This scenario isn't real; it's just a device for proving a point.

I have always been so terrified to be rebuked, fined, charged for a fault of mine, caught without the fare or anything of the sort, that, to give an example, I managed to get only two or three tickets in all my driving career. I think the maximum infraction I might commit is walking out the zebras. Mine is not respect for the rules, these are often senseless and arbitrary, but sheer cowardice in face of the authority and fear of humiliation at the hands of someone in charge. The shameful fear of being shamed.

i agree with lastwish. it is not feasible to compare downloading music to stealing furniture or shoes, as noone loses anything. recorded music is reproducible. now, if you have a device by which you can reproduce shoes or furniture, i would have no objection to you coming round here and taking a copy of some of my things.
in terms of fairness and moral principle, if not interms of legallity, i would definitely say there is a big difference between actually stealing a tangible object from someone and making a reproduction of an audio recording.

The economic consequences of an act do not define its morality or even legality (legality is simply based as what the law says, and the law forbids copyright infringement). I am not suggesting the copyright laws are the best (I would advocate much shorter copyright terms) or that the recording contracts are ideal, but that's not relevant to the issue. When a seller offers a good, service, or even a license, you as the buyer have a right to negotiate with the seller for better terms or not to buy the product; if the seller is not open to alternatives, you just have to move along to something else.

It's easier to understand how stealing an X-Box 360 or a billiard table is morally wrong (and also illegal), but the abstraction of a digital product of which copies can be made at insignificant cost is more abstract and easier to deceive oneself by. Copying that song, software program, movie, or e-book is cheap and (usually) easy, but that isn't the reason why you are usually charged a price for those things. The cost comes in producing those things in the first place and the talent and skill needed for that. Arbitrarily deciding you don't like it enough to pay for it but still want to benefit from its consumption is wrong whether anyone loses money or not.

Here's another analogy that might clarify the issue further because no tangible, physical good is stolen: You've heard about this new movie Pirates of the Caribbean 2, but you thought the original Pirates of the Caribbean was crap, and you're pretty much broke anyway, so you'd never pay to watch the movie. But you're bored and feel that watching any movie—even a crappy one—would keep you occupied. At that moment, your friends come up to you and tell you they have a foolproof way to sneak into the movie theater to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2 without getting caught. You and your friends use a crow bar to break into a back door past the ticket taker and close the door firmly shut. Then you enter the auditorium just as the movie starts. You believe you have done nothing immoral because no one loses any money since you would never have paid to see the movie anyway and your watching the movie in the theater in itself costs no one any money.

Now maybe you do think sneaking into movie theaters isn't wrong and for all the same reasons you think downloading copyrighted music without permission isn't wrong. In that case, there is no reason to continue debate because your moral reasoning would be a mirage, a mere contrivance to excuse yourself from responsibility for your actions rather than any actual sense of right and wrong or good and bad. If this happens to be the case, I wouldn't put it beyond you to rationalize any questionable act you commit as justifiable.

i am afraid i still disagree with you. what you are saying in effect is that stealing an x-box 360 is morally equivalent to making an exact copy of one, assuming the individual concerned has the means to do this. obviously by producing your own x-box 360 you are likely infringing several copyrights held by the manufacturer of the device, but, in my own opinion anyway, this would not be morally comaparable to say, stealing said device from a retailer or taking it without permission from someones house. in the same way, shoplifting a pile of cds or stealing them from someones home is not morally equivalent to downloading the same albums from an illegal file sharing service.

and nothing that we have mentioned here can really be equated to breaking and entering into a cinema. that is a different matter entirely.

it does appear to me that your moral outlook is primarily based in legal terms, if you honestly think that recording a song that you like from the radio is equivalent to stealing a cd from a music store or from someones house.

whereas, my sense of morality is based more on logic and on the tangible and measurable outcome of a certain action or situation.

however, i think we should agree to disagree on this, as i cannot see us coming to any mutually satisfactory conclusion.

I would be fine if the people who copied copyrighted music without permission admitted to doing something morally tantamount to theft. Intellectual property is a valid class of property, and its existence does have moral implication in addition to its legal implications. The CD you buy your music from is really just a shiny disc; it's what it encodes that makes it valuable. Likewise, I believe Congress has a responsibility to make the intellectual property laws constitutional. My moral outlook is independent from what the law defines; it is just in this case the law does require moral behavior. The copyright laws, as a whole, have some problems: Allowing corporations to hold copyright over works essentially into perpetuity is immoral because it grossly inhibits the cultural diffusion of ideas (an area that distinguishes intellectual property from other property); the copyright laws exist to protect a creator's moral right to profit from his or her work (as a manufacturer of boats should be allowed to make a living from the boats he or she sells). Beyond this creator's lifetime, this personal right loses force.

A moral philosophy based on "logic" and the measurable outcomes of an action is known as consequentialism (and utilitarianism for the main theory). Utilitarianism, by the way, is no more logical than, say, deontology, virtue ethics, contractarianism, or any other system of moral philosophy, but it relies on different premises. Most utilitarians calculate the right action to choose as the one that brings the most utility to the most people, but you seem to rely on a more egoistic version of consequentialism (i.e., an act is right if it brings me the most utility while not depriving others of utility).

My personal view of morality has some aspects of utilitarianism in it, but it mixes in the ideas of deontology and contractarianism as well. I believe people have rights regardless of consequences, and we have a duty to respect those rights in others. I believe, for example, people have a right to control what they create until it infringes on other rights. They can, if they choose, offer their creations for sale, but they don't have to; they can give them away, or they can set them at a ridiculous price. Others, of course, have it in their rights to negotiate for a different price, but even for a creative or intellectual work, they don't have a right to make a copy just because they dislike the terms of sale.

Consequentialism is a pretty weak moral position. You can probably find tons of philosophical arguments against it with a simple Google search or in your neighborhood library's philosophy shelf. Its premises allow for dubious acts such as the position you hold—and much worse.