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In here own words, Rosa Parks was 'tired of mistreatment'; cf., e.g, http://www.grandtimes.com/rosa.html. This in no way diminishes her achievement. More to the point, isn't it a bit silly to compare sharing bootleg media with the civil rights movement? True, illegal downloading ranks down there with jaywalking, but it's hardly a noble cause. I attended a talk by a TPB founder and he made the case that TPB per se is not liable since they only provide the envelope which others use to transmit content. But that conjecture is a far cry from a legacy of slavery and racism.

Rosa Parks had something of a similar choice in December 1955: as a black woman, she was allowed to go "so far" by the authority of the day and actually ride on a city bus, but was required to give up her seat for a white man. Maybe several other black people made the same brave choice previously, and were ignored, or beaten up. Taking a stand won't always work. But if you're in the right, it may be your stand that starts a change.

She had similar choices:

1. Rosa refuses to abide by American law and is not allowed to ride buses at all.
2. Rosa abides by the law by giving up her seat, and is allowed to continue riding buses, albeit on a limited basis, in white America.

I'm not at all convinced by the argument that returning partial search results is better than returning none at all: calling this "partial freedom" (previous post) is misleading. If I look for information in Wikipedia about Iraq, and find no mention of the war in 5 years time because the US Government (not my country) deems it unhelpful, I'd rather no entry existed.

I hope you equally as appalled by attempts to circumvent other laws ... http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/ ... http://www.grandtimes.com/rosa.html

I don't think we'll see action on this area until people start sending annonymous copyright takedown notices to the ISP's of members of congress, as well as the heads of major corporations, showing them the folly of giving others full control over your life and business without due process. Of course such a thing would be illegal and dangerous, and a person would have to be crazy to do such a thing. After all, laws are a social contract, which we must obey in order for society to function. In a society ravaged by terrorism like ours, sending mixed messages is the last thing we can afford.

Uh.. that's exactly what happened.

LOL! Riiiighhht.

Rosa Parks never broke the law. [/sarcasm]

Damn, you're just ignorant and determined to remain that way. I imagine you have a lot to weep about since you apparently have less knowedge of american history than a typical fifth grader.

True. And they arrested Rosa Parks for not giving up her seat on the bus to a white man.

Is it ethical to break the law?

Some would argue that it can be. She might. They might. He might. Heck, some people might argue that treason against one's country could sometimes be ethical.

Mind you, I'm not defending counterfeiting currency, just answering your question. Your question implies that you would say that breaking the law is unethical. I'm always surprised to hear Americans declare that the law is a measure of morality or ethics given that many of the best parts of our country came from civil disobediance. (I realize you might not be American, if so, my apologies. Still, the statement stands.)

At first glance, one might attribute that statement to a computer-illiterate senator or to an incompetent journalist. You may be surprised, then, to find that this quote was from Ken Thompson in 1995. Yes, one of our own - a creator of the UNIX system and the command line we use every single day - condemned the antisocial activities of malicious computer users. Which leads me to ask: why aren't we listening, and where is our moral compass?

A few years ago, it was all the media's fault: the media gave much attention to antisocial criminals who happened to use computers. Nowadays, computer crime is rarely front-page news, especially in light of the recent terrorist attacks caused by the usual suspects. So what kind of notoriety, then, are these criminally insane geeks seeking? The fact of the matter is that the open source community here on Slashdot is not only tolerating illicit behavior; it is encouraging it. We are partially responsible for every Brian West, Eric Corley, Dmitri Skylarov, Ted Felten, Randal Schwartz,, and DrinkOrDie member. We are harboring criminals because we are glorifying their acts and lauding them for "civil disobedience." We are not unlike the Arabs who cheered as they watched the Twin Towers collapse on their (banned) TV sets. And like those ungrateful Arabs, we owe our prosperity to the American government and the capitalist society that so many users here seem to despise. We have become our own enemy.

We, as a community, need to stop tolerating this behavior. Instead of encouraging people like Jon Johansen by sending money to the EFF to help them keep these ingrates' lilly white asses out of jail, we need to send a strong message that computer crime is not consistent with our ethical standards. We need to lead by example - log off of Gnutella, start paying for software (even Windows), stop cracking your DVDs and eBooks "for fun," and start acting like an upstanding citizen. It is only then that the powers that be will start taking us seriously and repeal the DMCA/SSSCA/PATRIOT legislation, and start giving us our rights back. It is crystal clear that we will not get our rights back a moment before we get out of the business of producing criminals, and the first step is to stop empathizing with them.

freebsd guy

While I don't disagree with you, I do remember a funny little law about blacks at the back of the bus.

I also remember Rosa Parks ignoring it.

Not caring about the law and caring that a particular law is stupid are two different things.

It is important to remember that the key to civil disobiedience is being *punished* for your apparent crimes. That is what separates those twits that burn down mink farms from true heroes like Steven Biko .

One had the balls to get caught anyway.

Toodles,
Nephs