Reddit reviews Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars

Said in mocking tone: "Aw, boo."

> It's more likely the downvotes were from people in the computer security field who understand that the internet is the 2012 version of the wild fucking west

Sad for you, I actually have worked in computer security, now I'm a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property and internet law, I'm in-house for a company that makes, among other things, enterprise grade security software, and that is just total fucking bullshit. Everything you are saying is infuriatingly wrong.

In the last 30 years, there have been fifteen sets of laws passed by the US congress directly regulating online behavior.

Not only that, this:
> Most of the outcry over CISPA has been from the people who want to keep the internet some sort of lawless land where they can anonymously download their fill of horse porn while some other guy steals 4 million identities and sells them to fraud mills in taiwan and china.

Is just utter fucking bullshit. I don't even know where to start: the internet is not just for horse porn, and your argument saying that open = evil is a classic 'moral panic' argument, the opennness of the internet is precisely what has allowed google, airbnb, amazon, twitter and foursquare to work, and if you cannot understand that horse-porn is an unfortunate but necessary externality of this open-ness, it is because you are a dumbass; the people who write this legislation don't know how to check their own fucking email, and are utterly unqualified to be doing this; identity theft is already illegal and passing new laws about using computers in identity theft won't make it less common; local law is not going to regulate behavior in china; the list goes on.

The only 'wild west'-ness of the internet is that computers are general computation machines, and code can be run on them to do pretty much anything, but, other than that, the internet is regulated by all the same laws that your behavior IRL is regulated by. It has multiple governing bodies, ranging from the US courts to the UN and Icann. Many thick textbooks and treatises exist on internet law. Not just that, but, if you have read Code 2.0 by Larry Lessig, and it is abundantly clear you have not, you would know that law simply doesn't change the way the internet works, it just changes what you can throw people in jail for. So, basically, CISPA and SOPA do not make the internet a better place or reduce cybercrime, and, even, if they were perfect, it is still theoretically impossible for these bills to accomplish those goals, and, often the proposed legislation makes the problem worse. It is literally outside the possible realm of law to stop people from being gullible idiots and falling for nigerian scammers.

So, basically, everything you have said is wrong, and, sadly for you, I not only have a JD, but my first career was in IT, and just... nothing you are saying is right, and not only is it wrong, it is just retweeting the hysterical nonsense of copyright maximalist groups and people who are paroxysmically and unjustifiably afraid of terrorism and willing to throw their rights away because one time a few brown people did a thing with some planes. I sincerely hate that this was your answer, because this is precisely the sort of bullshit that makes me so fucking depressed: not only are your arguments wrong, they are based on luddite misconceptions, actively hinder progress, are not shared by experts, and, most importantly they employed rhetorical devices designed to make your opponents look like criminals and pornographers, so, sincerely, go fuck yourself. I am not 'implying' that you are a pornographer or a criminal, I'm actively calling you a douche, and I fully stand by my decision to openly call you a douche and claim your contribution to the debate as a detriment to society, because at least I'm being goddamn upfront about it.

This is posted as a second reply, because I mean to answer your question directly and to the best of my ability regardless of how you clarify your last line.

The idea that trespassing on intellectual property rights is akin to stealing is not accepted by everyone. I think it's fair to say that you portray opposing perspectives as rationalizations which do not merit extensive debate; not only heterodox positions, but thinly veiled excuses for participating in behavior everyone really knows is bad.

This perspective is not new. I highly recommend reading William Patry's book on the subject; he is without question one of the most well studied and best copyright lawyers in the world today, and he illustrates why a false and manufactured moral viewpoint regarding the subject of intellectual property has been used by minority interests to pass bad law.

(Of course, from your perspective, this consists of protecting the minority's rights, rather than unnecessarily restricting behavior in order to create artificial monopolies which do not favor creation or innovation).

I can understand this, and instead of saying that these are merely rationalizations to appropriate rights you do not deserve so that you may profit from them, I accept them at face value. However, after reading your post and the attitude it takes, I feel that I may be far too charitable.

edit: When I speak of a false and manufactured moral viewpoint, I certainly do not regard all maximalist copyright rhetoric as such, or all its supporters. Instead, I suspect it can be generalized as the main motivation behind the most powerful backers of excessive restriction, while other individuals may well share similar concerns for very different reasons.

From your perspective, it seems obvious that anyone who disagrees with you does so primarily because they want free things - that they should lose the argument by default. While this may or may not be true, I feel that you have not proved it and do not need to use this tactic. You can still illustrate the reasons why major backers of copyright reform have taken their positions (and refute specific arguments you find incorrect) without pidgeonholing your opponents' views.