Illegal but Ethical

[irongeek at irongeek.com (Adrian Crenshaw)]

Hi all,
    I was listening to the Thomas Wilhelm interview, and the ethics part got
my attention. I recently got in academic trouble at school because I said
something can be illegal but ethical, and in the teacher's mind I would not
let it go. I think I brought it up three times, in context, and it took
about 3 min of class time. I used the classic "Are there Jews in your
basement", and lying about it if there are,  asked in Nazi Germany as and
example where something is illegal, but ethical. I was slamed later because
this is "extreme" and "not business related" and in the complaint I was
slammed as "anti-law" and "anti-ethics". Is seems in the tech field, there
are many examples of items that a business related, illegal but ethical. A
few examples:

Cleanflicks buying DVDs, making edited copies to rent, and keeping the
originals in storage (DMCA violation)
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CleanFlicks

Posting prpitary data that shows voting machines to be vulnerable (DMCA
again)
http://www.eff.org/cases/online-policy-group-v-diebold

I might be able to tie this in as well
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

Any other examples you can think of with items that are business related,
illegal but ethical? Got a good reverse engenering example?


Thanks,
Adrian
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.pauldotcom.com/pipermail/pauldotcom/attachments/20091004/9ffc59e9/attachment.htm