How on earth can it be a problem to mention intellectual property in this discussion? It is the basis of copyright laws that are being discussed, and violated by the ‘pirates’ that are the topic of the OP. I was clarifying my position on what is wrong with online piracy, and it was germane to the topic.
I guess the OP asked one question, viz, “Would you consider it ethical to pirate a offensive work to see how bad it really is?”
So Tripolar was a little away from that. However the OP was all over the place and begged several answers.
And there were several replies that did not answer the direct question. So, yeah Tomndebb fucked up.
I am not complaining about anything. I had requests to keep the thread on topic. I noted that the discussion regarding intellectual property was a legitimate one, but that it was not what the OP had actually sought to discuss. (I agree that the OP could have been clearer, but there was a specific point to debate in there.)
I suppose that I should have simply moved it to IMHO, since the OP was sort of a poll, but topics that are liable to get contentious often wind up being thrown back into GD, anyway, so I left it there.
No one got reprimanded; I just noted that the actual topic was different than a discussion about intellectual property.
My apologies- I was harsh in what I said.
Perhaps if your blurb had been seen to cover all previuos posts that weren’t direct there would not have been an issue.
Pehaps, but there is often a bit of clutter at the beginning of a thread. The only topic that appeared to have legs, (to become a hijack), including both a coherent point and direct responses was the issue of intellectual property.
Well I thought I was on the OP’s point. From the beginning I stated that ‘piracy’ was theft. ‘Piracy’ as used by the OP, is about the misappropriation of intellectual property. Tao and I were discussing that subject. I rejected the OPs notion of a justification for ‘piracy’, so I had little to say on that part of it. I was in somewhat free form at the beginning, but it’s just my way of communicating sometimes.
If you were responding to complaints that’s what you have to do. But it looked like your objection was specifically to my usage of the term ‘intellectual property’, not a general problem in the thread. . You’ve taken legitimate moderating steps in the past on my posts, and unfortunately it will probably happen again some day. This time I just didn’t understand it, and still don’t.
So it’s done. Thank you for responding.
What I see is that an analogy was created to explore the premise, is copyright infringement [del]“piracy”[/del]* theft? The OP places that as the default assumption, so exploring the premise is a bit of a hijack.
- Because it’s not piracy if you don’t have a parrot on your shoulder. Those Somalis who hijack cargo ships? Yeah, they definitely need some parrots. And a pegleg or two. And maybe a cutlass.
Two peglegs? He’ll need that cutlass to lean on, or a very strong parrot to hold him up.
I find the idea that debate cannot examine the assumptions of the question to be meaningless. It essentially means the debate consists of providing different reasons to justify the initial assumption. Essentially each debate takes the form “I’m right, please discuss the different ways that I’m right”. If questioning such a premise is a hijack I would have expected far more moderator interjections than we’ve seen so far.
I saw it, I was parodying the ones who think piracy isn’t piracy if it doesn’t involve a 17th century pirate complete with all the stereotypes out of Treasure Island. Thus referring to Somali pirates as not being real pirates, either.
Well they do tend to give pirates a bad name.
Give pirates a bad name? What, like Long John Sapperstein?
That would be a pretty bad name for a pirate.
Pretty good for a pirate’s accountant, though…