bmetzler's Journal: MPAA and Ethics

In the LokiTorrent Shut Down article damicatz created a post asking about ethics. Since I can't post replies, and the points he brought up are broader than just stopping illegal downloads, I thought I'd post my thoughts here and start a new thread.

I'm defining ethical in 2 ways, hopefully complementary. First ethical is conforming to accepted professional standards of conduct. Second, ethical is that which will be held up in a civil court.

• Is it ethical to deprive independant artists of a tool to share their work?

• This is sort of like saying that we can't convict bank robbers because banks provide a valuable service to people. If the owner of LokiTorrent was providing illegal downloads then the blame is on the owner for depriving independant artists of a valuable tool, not the MPAA. This is the most bogus ethics problem that the poster brings up.

• Is it ethical to DDoS File Sharing Networks?

• Not sure what DDoS means in this case. If they mean to take a network offline, probably not. It should be done physically. However, the problem is that it is hard to resolve IP addresses to real people as the recent lawsuit that named a dead grandmother demonstrated. In that case is it ok to virtually disable a resource if it can't be done physically? Probably yes.

• Is it ethical to sue a 12 year old girl who lives in the projects?

• Yes.

  That should be more than enough of an answer, but I'm guessing someone would like to know my reasoning. The constitution grants each citizen equal rights. That means that we don't give anyone a pass based on their net worth or the color of their skin. A 12 yo girl living in the projects is just as guilty of crimes committed as a 12 yo girl in a $12 million mansion.

• Is it ethical to sue for $20,000 per song even though each song itself is only worth about a dollar? (And probably more per movie)

• Yes. You can sue for whatever you darn well please. This a why a woman can order a hot cup of coffee, spill it over herself and sue for buca-bucks. It's the court that decides whether your claim is justified or not. In other words, you have every right to sue $20,000 per song, but a judge has the right to only find a defendent guilty for $4 a song or whatever.

• Is it ethical to pollute file sharing networks with bogus files and viri?

• This is a hard one for me. I've checked out p2p networks and not one of them checked my shared files and made sure they weren't 'bogus' and virii free. I'd say there's no reasonable expectation when it comes to p2p, so it probably would be an ethical. The idea is that the barrier to downloading illegal music is becomes so high that you find it more compelling to get the item legally. If a p2p network's terms of service prohibited polluting networks with bogus files and virii, then they might have a case if the MPAA does. But like I mentioned, there's no expectation for that, therefore I couldn't find the behavior unethical.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Ethics and Legality

[johndiii]

Questions of ethics sometimes impinge on legal questions, and vice versa. I believe that you have some confusion in this area. Our legal process is an adversary system. Whether or not a particular course of action is appropriate or acceptable in the legal system does not determine whether or not it is ethical. I will start with the premise that it is ethical to protect yourself from harm, but that it is not ethical to harm others. These two may conflict, in which case it is necessary to examine things