Riaan C wrote
doc-phil wrote
Interesting to see John Rawls being brought up. It must be remembered though that his philosophies were largely refuted by Robert Nozick.
I think Nozick's views are more relevant - i.e. the example using Wilt Chamberlain, the NBA basketball player: every person should be able to exploit his/her talents in order to maximise their personal gain. If an artist truly is good enough, they would be able to use their talents to generate their own wealth without the help of the record companies. This is more realistic in todays music industry than it was say, 20 years ago.
Doc-Phil, I'm concerned that you appear to be paraphrasing Nowick's theories selectively here.
As I understand him, any distribution - to be just - must come about in accordance with his own (and probably Locke's) rules of acquisition, transfer and rectification. His view is that any person has a right firstly to own what he produces, and secondly to appropriate anything not already owned by others - with the important proviso iro the latter that when appropriating unowned goods one must take no more than you need and leave enough behind for others.
Am I wrong in seeing the obvious application of his distributive justice theory to this piracy debate? You are correct that he dismisses Rawls' concept of a veil of ignorance (which is, of course only Nowik's view - not proving Rawls incorrect as you imply). But on a consistent application of Nowick's theory (which you purport to agree with), you must then accept that it is wrong to infringe copyright/publishing - which is owned by others; and one may only appropriate what is in the public domain (which is the opposite of piracy). Doesn't Nowick's theory of distributive justice in fact
support the anti-piracy argument? Been a long time since I've read him, so correct me if I'm wrong.
Yes I agree with everything you say here; I wasn't trying to use Nozick to justify piracy at all - I was just pointing out the inadequacies I find with the whole veil of ignorance thing. Yes, I believe copyright infringement is morally wrong - but society is constantly promoting and pushing an immoral society so why should we care what we download?? ? Besides from being morally wrong it is also illegal (or is it?) so that should be reason enough to not do it I suppose. But I don't think society can use morality to enforce its norms since its own sense of morality is so twisted, faulty and ambiguous.
Me implying that Rawls was incorrect must be something I picked up from one of my jurisprudence lecturers. I shouldn't have said Rawls was refuted, that was incorrect word choice. It's just that Rawls has recieved so much criticism that I sometimes feel his theories are n/a.
I like Rawls, he had noble ideas. They just don't have much practical application in solving real problems. ? sweet.
