But it’s only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can’t just steal that idea and duplicate it. We’re going to aggressively protect our intellectual property Our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and creativity of the American people It is essential to our prosperity. In a recent speech, for example, US President Barak Obama claimed:

This seems to be the view of much of the entertainment industry, as well as public officials and legislatures in countries that produce and export a lot of intellectual property. These think that all ideas and artistic creation should be held in common and be freely accessible to all.Īccording to fundamentalist protectors, owners of intellectual property deserve just as much protection and means for redress as those who have had their handbags or televisions stolen, including civil and criminal sanction against those who have violated their intellectual property.įor them, the massive penalties that are sometimes attached to illegal downloading are important because they send a clear message that this practice should not be tolerated. On the one hand, there are what might be called “fundamentalist libertarians”. Two rival camps dominate public discussion around the ethics of illegal downloading.

So appeal only to the illegality of downloading doesn’t settle whether it is okay, morally speaking. Rather, they tend to think the laws governing these behaviours were unjust. Same-sex relationships, divorce and many other practices that are now widely accepted as morally acceptable were once outlawed and criminally sanctioned.įew people think they were wrong just before they were legalised. But there are many things that have been illegal that people don’t think are morally wrong. It might seem obvious that what they will do is wrong.

But will they be doing anything morally wrong? Legally speaking, what they will be doing is a violation of intellectual property rights, or “piracy”. Many millions of people throughout the world will illegally download the fifth season of Game of Thrones, released today by HBO.

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