Illegal but Ethical

[chris.teodorski at gmail.com (Chris Teodorski)]

Adrian,

Your prof is clearly an idiot.  Of course things can be ethical AND
illegal.  Relieving a cancer suffer's pain by providing them with
medical marijuana is both ethical and illegal.   Most forms of civil
disobedience are both illegal and ethical. 

My favorite example is Mr. Twister, the parking meter feeding clown.  He
would drop quarters into peoples meters that were about to expire.  He
was given a fine by the city of Santa Cruz because they had an ordinance
that prohibited feeding a stranger's parking meter.  Clearly what he was
doing was ethical.

On the technology front, Mr. Richard Stallman would suggest that
providing someone with an illegal copy of software in an attempt to be a
good neighbor would fall into the ethical and illegal category.  At his
talks he spends lots of time talking about how software licensing has
turned well meaning people into "pirates".

Chris



Adrian Crenshaw wrote:
> 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
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