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On the defense of piracy enablers
On the defense of piracy enablers
Posted Aug 23, 2005 19:35 UTC (Tue) by mcelrath (guest, #8094)Parent article: On the defense of piracy enablers
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
-- H. L. Mencken
Not that I think the bnetd developers are scoundrels, but I thought the quote was apt.
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On the defense of piracy enablers
Posted Aug 23, 2005 21:29 UTC (Tue) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698) [Link]
Not that I think the bnetd developers are scoundrels, but I thought the quote was apt.Very apt indeed. The people who take advantage of bnetd to use pirated games are the scoundrels, and we must defend the bnetd developers because their work promotes freedom, despite the fact that some people might choose to abuse that freedom. Anyone suggesting that the bnetd developers should be castigated for enabling piracy completely misses the point. We don't blame Tim Berners-Lee when people use the web to distribute pirated material, nor do we try to ban the web.
The Supreme Court used to understand this, for instance when they ruled on the Betamax case. Just as the Betamax had substantial noninfringing use, so does bnetd.
Eric