By posting this link, are you trying to indicate a belief that I am exhibiting this fallacy?
Can you explain how?
GP asked, "Why are people breaking copyright law?"
I thought I gave a reasonably solid explanation - some of the people in question aren't breaking copyright law while others (certainly a good number of people here on HN) don't regard copyright law as a legitimate imposition of state power in the information age.
Because you could trivially modify the statement to be "for the people who live in a jurisdiction where copyright law applies, why do they X" and it would be clearly the spirit of the question (and even that is imprecise).
The net effect of your means of conversation isn't a more cogent conversation. Instead, by causing everyone to over-specify their statements you force conversation with you to be only for the things that can be fully specified for low cost.
This is only your loss. Some people will not talk to you because they know you'll just be looking to say "gotcha", not help arrive at the truth. When most people bring up ideas with others they're looking for meaningful invalidation or corroboration with the net effect of refinement of the idea.
It's often popular, so you'll amass karma on HN, but I don't think you'll find it productive when improving your worldview. Forums like this have a wide variety of people with a varying degree of sophistication in a subject. You can appeal to the people with the least sophistication in the subject and be very popular. But you'll annoy the people who are skipping unnecessary steps. This is fine, but you'll end up moving the forum in the direction of less sophistication.
If a maths analogy will help: imagine that you are in a group of first year maths students talking about the reordering of terms of a sequence. To the more advanced students, this means we are talking about a convergent sequence and specifically a bijection from N to N. Since it's a conversation the details are elided and these students are already making the assumptions that are, to them, obvious. Objections that their statements are untrue for some divergent sequences will simply lead to those people being left behind when the next chat happens.
In practice, on the Internet, some people just aren't told where things are spoken about. I only tell you this out of love. Good luck.
> The net effect of your means of conversation isn't a more cogent conversation. Instead, by causing everyone to over-specify their statements you force conversation with you to be only for the things that can be fully specified for low cost.
under-specifying is also a problem, especially when the framing is a bit sloppy. it leaves a lot of room for weaseling about what was or wasn't meant, and people end up talking around topics and not arriving at some kind of understanding.
it seems to me that the problem here is the question, which seems to be poorly rendered given the context it was presented.
> Because you could trivially modify the statement to be "for the people who live in a jurisdiction where copyright law applies, why do they X" and it would be clearly the spirit of the question (and even that is imprecise).
...but I responded to that too, and that's the most important part of my comment. Most people in the USA clearly don't recognize copyright law as legitimate. It is flouted everywhere by everyone.
GP seemed to assume that refraining from breaking copyright was important to most people; it isn't.
You are applying propositional logic rigor to a comment made in a casual setting that you fail to apply to your own position. Let me show you how..
>Not everyone lives in a jurisdiction where copyright law exists.
How many? How did you gather this data?
> Among those who do, not everyone lives in a jurisdiction where this action is a violation of that law.
How did you survey the jurisdictions of people accessing this information? What legal standard did you apply to come to your conclusion of people not breaking laws?
> Of those who do, not everyone recognizes copyright law as legitimate or binding on their conduct.
Who has communicated to you that they don't recognize copyright law as legitimate or binding? Why is the number statistically relevant?
You see? Anyone can apply rigor to any comment. It took me 5 seconds just like it would take you five seconds to apply rigor to any other comment.
>I thought I gave a reasonably solid explanation
I didn't see any explanation, only a logical argument. A logical argument is not means to establishing truth. Cats have four legs and a tail, but a dog is not a cat.
> Who has communicated to you that they don't recognize copyright law as legitimate or binding? Why is the number statistically relevant?
To my personally? Only maybe a few dozen.
But obviously these laws are ignored everywhere and by everyone in the USA. Surely you don't mean to suggest that it's a law that enjoys widespread perception of legitimacy?
What makes you think people have any interest in following this law in the first place? It seems like you haven't really given this foundation, which is crucial for your original comment.
You might want to read up about the Berne convention, various international copyright treaties and such. You can "ignore" laws, but you might find yourself in handcuffs on a plane, clutching an extradition order if you get popular enough. In any case that is an irrelevant aside as far as I am concerned. I don't wish for people to be jailed over this.
>What makes you think people have any interest in following this law in the first place? It seems like you haven't really given this foundation, which is crucial for your original comment.
Wow, really? Yes, I admit, my argument assumes that normal rational people don't go breaking laws.
> Yes, I admit, my argument assumes that normal rational people don't go breaking laws.
I mean, yeah, that's a very strange assumption. Throughout the history of common law societies, normal rational people have indeed gone around breaking bad laws.
Many foundational thinkers, dating back to the magna carta and further, have argued that citizens are morally bound to do this in order for this legal system to work. It's a big part of the basis of the western legal tradition. Of course Henry David Thoreau is the best known, but he's certainly not the first, nor is he an aberration
Take this example: cannabis has been prohibited federally since 1937 - surely you don't think that the persistent, substantial part of the population who has consumed cannabis throughout that time is abnormal or irrational?
...and to add a slight but meaningful nuance: remember that in the tradition of the legal republic, the state is not the sovereign - the individual is. So, each of us has to determine for ourselves which edicts of the state are in fact legitimate laws.
It's a perfectly valid view to hold that copyright or drug prohibition (or whatever) are not legitimate laws. You then have to ascertain the reaction of the state (a reaction which you are free to hold as illegitimate / unlawful) when it finds that its edicts are being disobeyed. It's up to each of us to build community consensus around us to disobey these edicts in keeping with our view of the legitimacy and constitutionality of the law.
We are also free to use our own sensibilities about these laws when deciding to refrain from making a citizen's arrest (this refusal during the fugitive slave law period is part of what led to the creation of slave patrols, some of which have evolved into today's professional police forces) or to refrain from finding guilt as a jury.
By contrast, this discretion is not cognizable for a magistrate or peace officer, whom, at least traditionally, are bound to regard all statutes of their jurisdiction as lawful.
This is a cornerstone of the common law tradition.
