>From: "Jason Joel Thompson" <jasonjthompson@home.com>
> > >Jason Joel Thompson wrote:
>
> > > > By your argument, it should be legal to counterfeit money.
> >
> > Nice rhetoric, but its not *quite* the same thing. The main reason its
> > illegal to counterfeit money is that the only purpose of counterfeit
>money
> > is to use it to dupe people into giving you things and services of value
>for
> > something which has no value. In other words, its raison d'etre is to
> > facilitate the commission of fraud.
>
>Okay, well this is a -new- argument. The first argument was that we could
>steal music because we weren't physically taking it from someone-- an
>argument by which counterfeiting should also be allowed.
>
>The -above- argument says that we shouldn't counterfeit money because it's
>fraud. It doesn't say -why- we shouldn't commit fraud, but I'm guessing
>its
>because you believe that getting (your words:) "services of value for
>something which has no value" is wrong.
>
>I appreciate you making my argument for me.
I just *can't* let a faulty argument go by without making a comment. Call
it a character flaw. But anyway...
Getting something for nothing is not necessarily "wrong." If I give you my
lunch because I happen to think you're a neat person, and you take my lunch
and eat it, neither of us has committed a moral lapse. On the other hand,
if you print-out from your computer a bogus, but realistic-looking, front
row ticket to lollapalooza and tell me it will get me into the concert and
that you'll give it to me in exchange for your lunch, and by means of this
trickery you hoodwink me out of my lunch, it is clear that you will have
been a naughty boy.
The lines become less clear if you buy my lunch from me, then proceed to
dismantle it in order to discover my secret recipe for making the best
bologna sandwich this side of the Mississippi, and then you proceed to
reproduce those sandwiches and give them to your friends. You have gained
something, but I have not lost anything (namely my recipe for bologna
sandwiches).
-Zero
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