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Why I Pirate - An Open Letter to Content Creators
40hz:
Different countries, different laws. Along with differing understandings - and expectations.
-40hz (March 11, 2012, 10:02 PM)
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Turn the bank story round - suppose the bank CEO is crossing the street and the handbrake on a parked car fails and knocks him over causing severe permanent damage.
Do you think the teacher who owned the car would get away with the 'shit happens' defence - not only would they be sued to within an inch of their life by the *anker and/or his spawn but the local authorities would also be on it like the metaphorical ton of bricks with probable jail time.
-Carol Haynes (March 12, 2012, 05:00 AM)
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You can advance hypotheticals endlessly. However, in the US you wouldn't necessarily face a criminal charge unless it could be shown that there was some personal culpability for that failing handbrake. If people could be held criminally liable for anything and everything that ever occurred, from any product they ever owned or used, then nobody would buy or use anything.
Not to say you might not be charged. (Criminal prosecutors can be as guilty of grandstanding as any personal injury attorney.) But it's a tough thing to prove in court that somebody knowingly and deliberately did something such that they should be held culpable. Especially for a product failure. (Not remembering to set the handbrake would be an entirely different matter, because you could be held to be criminally negligent for failing to do so.) But usually for something to be considered criminal in the US there has to be clear indications of reckless disregard or criminal intent. So surprise, surprise - "shit happens" can be a valid defense against criminal charges, depending on the circumstances. Not so for civil torts however.
As far as civil suits go, there doesn't need to be a good (or even a real reason) to sue anybody in the US. You can sue somebody because you're having a bad day and you don't like their eye color.
Our court system is clogged with cases totally devoid of legal merit because of it. And even a complete lack of merit (or logical sense) is no impediment to getting a gullible jury to find for a plaintiff. Or to get a defendant to settle in order to avoid the cost of litigation. (Yet another example of risk management.) Such is the 'comedy' of liability litigation in the USA.
The unfortunate side-effect of this is that the bogus cases have introduced so much noise into the system that legitimate claims for redress have gotten devalued in the process. And since so many liability claims are a complete joke, those sued (and their attorneys) have learned to adopt a no-holds barred defense strategy. A strategy that's arguably even more important to take if you are being unjustly accused.
Shame really. Except for the attorneys. As one told me: Law and justice are all well and good. But at the end of the day - be it right, wrong, or something in between - its ALL billable time.
So again: Different countries, different laws. Along with differing understandings - and expectations.
As a society, we get what legal systems we're willing to tolerate. :)
40hz:
Canadian author, professor at University of British Columbia Faculty of Law, has a fantastic (IMO) short book "The Corporation" (there's a 3 hour documentary film to go with it), where he does make that claim.
-IainB (March 11, 2012, 11:03 PM)
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Watched the first few installments on YouTube. Very good presentation. Definitely going to make time to watch it all with friends and discuss. +1 w/IainB - highly recommended.
Ironically, it's available on iTunes! $9.99 to buy, $2.99 to watch. (Why do I find that so funny?)
They also have an extended two DVD set with 6 hours of additional footage available for purchase for $25 USD.
I'll probably buy it eventually. 8)
Deozaan:
You can't absolve the people that make the decisions because the company and the rules tell them that this is required. If you see such decisions being made, you have to have the moral fortitude to stand up to them. But, when placed in a position where morality conflicts with career, most ignore the morality of the situation.
-wraith808 (March 11, 2012, 03:14 PM)
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Could this be because many people today don't understand what morality even is? Consider this article from the New York Times, "If It Feels Right," from last September:
During the summer of 2008, the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith led a research team that conducted in-depth interviews with 230 young adults from across America. [...] Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.
It’s not so much that these young Americans are living lives of sin and debauchery, at least no more than you’d expect from 18- to 23-year-olds. What’s disheartening is how bad they are at thinking and talking about moral issues.
The interviewers asked open-ended questions about right and wrong, moral dilemmas and the meaning of life. In the rambling answers, ... you see the young people groping to say anything sensible on these matters. But they just don’t have the categories or vocabulary to do so.
When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all, like whether they could afford to rent a certain apartment or whether they had enough quarters to feed the meter at a parking spot.
[...]
Again, this doesn’t mean that America’s young people are immoral. Far from it. But, ... they have not been given the resources — by schools, institutions and families — to cultivate their moral intuitions, to think more broadly about moral obligations, to check behaviors that may be degrading. In this way, the study says more about adult America than youthful America.-http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/opinion/if-it-feels-right.html
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Perhaps people ignore the morality of the situation because they don't realize there is a moral issue at all.
J-Mac:
I can't accept that 40hz. "Normal" humans still have that thing we call a conscience, and it still tends to give a twinge when you ignore it. I still see that in young people whom you would think don’t have one. Of course it has been posited by more than one psychologist and psychiatrist that corporate CEOs have a higher incidence of psychopathy than the general population, so that may account for a lack of moral consideration when making such decisions as described above.
Jim
40hz:
I can't accept that 40hz. "Normal" humans still have that thing we call a conscience, and it still tends to give a twinge when you ignore it. I still see that in young people whom you would think don’t have one. Of course it has been posited by more than one psychologist and psychiatrist that corporate CEOs have a higher incidence of psychopathy than the general population, so that may account for a lack of moral consideration when making such decisions as described above.
Jim
-J-Mac (March 12, 2012, 09:13 PM)
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@J-Mac - I'm sorry, but you lost me there. What is it I said that you're responding to? :huh:
My entire point is that there is no such law that requires a corporation, by law, to put making a profit above all other considerations in its day to day operations. And furthermore, in actual practice (since reality so often diverges from what the law says) acting in a manner that goes against the public good is generally frowned upon by the judicial system and the public at large. And arguing for doing wrong in the name of profit is not accepted as an absolute defense in any legal context I'm aware of. Which indicates (to me at least) that individuals and society do have a conscience and underlying moral framework that goes beyond the letter of the law.
Was it possibly somebody else's comments you were responding to? :)
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