Kuhn: Copyleft Won't Solve All Problems, Just Some of Them

Posted Mar 19, 2022 14:53 UTC (Sat) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75)
In reply to: Kuhn: Copyleft Won't Solve All Problems, Just Some of Them by atai
Parent article: Kuhn: Copyleft Won't Solve All Problems, Just Some of Them

Ultimately any "no evil" license is useless against any evil doer, who by definition does not obey rules and laws.

I wouldn't go quite that far. This assumes that the law itself can never be evil, but there are plenty of examples where the law mandated evil rather than forbidding it, e.g. Jim Crow laws in the United States.

Kuhn: Copyleft Won't Solve All Problems, Just Some of Them

Posted Mar 19, 2022 16:29 UTC (Sat) by elel (guest, #100484) [Link] (3 responses)

Point made, though the point doesn't make much difference; the sentence could be re-written to '...who by definition does not obey rules and laws when it does not suit them'.

Kuhn: Copyleft Won't Solve All Problems, Just Some of Them

Posted Mar 19, 2022 19:16 UTC (Sat) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link] (2 responses)

I don't think that definition works either - even Dungeons & Dragons has a two-axis morality system, with law vs chaos and good vs evil, so you can have a lawful evil character who actively tries to hurt people while meticulously following the rules of their society. (Sometimes because their own sense of morality is based around those rules, or sometimes because they are amoral but fear the punishment for breaking those rules). And real life is more complex than D&D, so it seems far too simplistic to say that evildoers are always happy to break laws.

Kuhn: Copyleft Won't Solve All Problems, Just Some of Them

Posted Mar 19, 2022 20:04 UTC (Sat) by isilmendil (subscriber, #80522) [Link] (1 responses)

"Evildoers are always happy to break laws" is certainly too simplistic. Yet, in their own mind most people are the Good Guys.
To set this into the frame set by your D&D example: chaotic good/evil does not care about the law - lawful good/evil only breaks laws for "the greater good".

Intelligence agencies would probably be a good example of lawful. Whether this is lawful good or lawful evil is very much dependent on various factors and up to debate. Yet those agencies all over the world are happy to bend or outright break the law when it fits them to "stop the bad guys".

Maybe things could be different if there was some accountability for bad faith actors.

Kuhn: Copyleft Won't Solve All Problems, Just Some of Them

Posted Mar 21, 2022 21:32 UTC (Mon) by bjartur (guest, #67801) [Link]

Since when have intelligence agencies been lawful?