By that logic, your website can link to a drive-by virus install (it can even host the virus itself), and it is not your responsibility in any way if the user becomes infected as a result -- after all, it was the user's web browser which downloaded the virus code, and the user's web browser/OS that allowed the virus to execute. I, and I think most people, would say that logic is pure garbage. Here's my take:

I would say you *are* responsible for the content/expected behavior of your website, including to a large extent that of 3rd parties when linked directly into your website, since your website enables and facilitates the actions of those 3rd parties. You can avoid all responsibility in my mind only if you make a significant good-faith effort to inform the users about any questionable actions your webpage (including embedded links to 3rd parties) may take, and if the user is able to opt out of such actions before they take place. Allowing the user to opt out can mean saying something like "if you don't like what my website is going to do, don't load my website up in your browser", but only if you find a way to inform the user and give them that choice before those actions have already occurred.

If you don't do those things (not exactly trivial, I know), then I think it is unreasonable for you to say you have no responsibility for anything your website (intentionally) causes my computer to do, including things caused by embedded links to 3rd parties (when those behaviors were known and expected by you). In the case that a 3rd party does something that you did not intend and did not know about beforehand, you are only partially responsible -- you are responsible for the mistake of having trusted an untrustworthy 3rd party.

Now, the question of whether you have done something wrong is very different. Personally, I don't think these web bugs are really that big a deal. Some people do, however, and you'd find me defending you instead of attacking you if you wouldn't try to shift responsibility to the user for actions initiated by the code in your website.

Not saying I disagree with your post as a whole, but if you had RTFA instead of just glancing at the graphs, you would have noticed the author mentions

While I'm sure it happens (and I am sorry that it happened to you), I don't think that is typical of cancer in general -- and since you said 'relatively quickly' you seem to be acknowledging that your mother's situation wasn't typical. That's what is so scary about cancer to me, and I think most who don't really know that much about it -- the idea that it is a slow, wasting illness with a long, difficult treatment process that can make you feel much worse even if (and it's a significant 'if') they will eventually allow you to feel better.

I hope this doesn't come across as callous -- please take it as constructive criticism: Four wasted hours isn't a great thing under any circumstances, but if your time would be that much more precious to you (or those you love) after being diagnosed with a terminal condition, then perhaps you (or they) aren't making the best use of your time before the diagnosis. You or those you love could (for example) be hit by a car and lose any chance to 'wrap things up' in your life -- if there are things you'd want to do or say before you die, please think about doing them sooner rather than later.

Right, because cancer kills you so quickly...

I would think it should replace one of the utilities, though I'm not sure what the other would be.

Interesting -- I had the same fact in my head (diseases tend to become less debilitating/fatal as time goes on) but with a different bit of (equally "obvious"?) natural selection as the explanation: a disease which keeps its host alive and even healthy will be more successful at spreading than one which incapacitates and/or kills its host during the period when the host is infectious. While it is true that dead bodies can be a vector for the spread of disease, a living host can potentially spread the disease for much longer.

In fact, to anthropomorphize the disease a little, the goal it should strive for is not to cause any negative reactions in the host (which implicitly means it can't be triggering the immune system to attack it), and so to benignly infect every human on the planet from now until doomsday. For real overachieving diseases, they should strive to form a symbiotic relationship with the host so that there is selective pressure against being "immune" to the disease, as well as against lifestyle choices that are detrimental to the disease's population in the host. (Of course, when it no longer causes any negative effects in the host, we usually don't call it a disease anymore.)

I would argue that although one person is a sensible assumption, it is not the only sensible assumption, which is what you seem to be saying. In fact, in the absence of any indication of number, I would think the most sensible thing is not to assume anything. (For example, you could have started your response with "If you're comparing to the cost of going to the movies yourself, [...]".)

If you look a little closer at the original post, though, it does include the statement "For the price of two people going to see the movie, you can buy the DVD." That would make two people the most sensible assumption if you insist on making one, however I still don't see any reason he couldn't be talking about a couple, or even a family with children.

There's something I wonder about which sounds like it would be enlightening to GP as well:

If we were using our current detection technology to examine a solar system that has a planet exactly like earth, orbiting a star exactly like our sun, with the same orbital period, etc... how close would the solar system need to be for us to recognize those features? Could we recognize an earth-sized planet orbiting a star in the habitable zone if it were 20 light-years away? What about 30 light-years? How close would we need to be in order to recognize that it is covered in liquid H2O oceans? Would the presence of other larger and/or more-closely-orbiting planets (such as Jupiter, Saturday, Mercury, Venus, etc) make that even more difficult?

Anyone have any insight into this?

Actually, the original post said "the christian deity"; if you can manage all 26 letters following that specification, I will be truly impressed.

I'll take a stab and answering your question -- both the one you literally asked and what I think is the spirit behind your post and question. (Sorry that this is at times redundant with other posts, it took me quite a while to write this, and those posts didn't exist when I started.)

You asked, "Why is making it easy for people to steal ethical?" The question itself makes it sound like you think it is not ethical to do so under any circumstances. But this leads us to absurdities. Is making it easy for child pornographers to send pictures to each other unethical? Yes? Ok, so adding "file transfer" capabilities to instant messaging clients must be unethical. Is making it easy for people to counterfeit goods unethical? Yes? Ok, so running eBay must be unethical. That's the same logic as saying "TPB makes it easy for people to steal, therefore running TPB must be unethical." At this point, I'm going to assume we agree that facilitating an unethical activity is not necessarily unethical.

On the other hand, I do agree that facilitating an unethical activity can be enough to make something unethical. You might argue that TPB was created with the intent to facilitate these activities, whereas the other examples I gave clearly were not, and that makes all the difference. To a large extent (but not 100%), I would agree with you on that point, and I will agree that it does make TPB's situation more grey. However, I don't think the case is closed on TPB at this point in the discussion -- if TPB's place on the ethical/unethical spectrum is based on the activities it facilitates, then we must ask how unethical those activities are.

I would argue that downloading software (or other types of bits) via torrent is never by itself unethical. Here is an example to illustrate why (this example happens to be true). Just a few months ago, I reinstalled Windows. There was a shareware application for which I had bought a full license, and I wanted to reinstall it. However, I couldn't find the install file. I still had my serial number in an email, but the version of the software available for download on the website was already at the next major version number, and so my serial number wouldn't work. Perhaps I could have contacted the company and asked for them to make an older version of the application available, but there was no guarantee that would have gotten me anything but wasted time. Instead, I found a torrent for the version I had bought (which included a keygen that I didn't need) and downloaded it that way. I think you will agree that there was nothing unethical about that, because I had already paid the author for the software.

Furthermore, even using software without paying for it may not be unethical. Here is another true example, actually involving the same piece of software. When I was in college, I used that application illegally -- that is, I think I found a serial number online which I hadn't purchased, and used that to eliminate the nag screen that would periodically interrupt use of the application (maybe I downloaded a crack, I don't recall). If that serial number or crack had not been available to me, I still would not have bought the full version -- it just wasn't worth it to me, relative to the amount of money I had. So, when we compare the two possible situations (one where there was a serial/crack available to me, and the hypothetical one where there was not), the author made the same amount of money from me either way ($0), but without the serial/crack I would have merely been less productive (I probably wouldn't have continued using the app). I benefited, and no one lost anything. Therefore, I do not consider what I did unethical. As a side note, it is entirely possible the author actually benefited... when I graduated and scored a fulltime telecommute job, I found myself using that application throughout the day while earning a healthy income, so I decided to go ahead and buy the software. Had I not been using it for years, I likely wouldn't have bought it then (I would possibly have found something else, or maybe I would have just been used to making due without it). In addition, while I was a grad student I was a teaching assistant, and often used that application on my laptop while teaching -- a student once asked me what it was I was using, and so I wound up telling the whole class what a wonderful tool it was. That definitely wouldn't have happened if I hadn't had the serial/crack. The point here is that unauthorized use isn't even itself a problem ethically -- it is merely the lost income to the author (when income is truly and realistically lost) which might cause it to be unethical.

I say "might" because even here, when looking at the big picture, there are mitigating factors when one consideres "benefit to society". Let's say you need to get paid at least $X in order for it to be worth your while to write this software as opposed to doing something else. I'm assuming your software provides some good to society, regardless of whether that good is more like "entertainment" or more like "enhanced productivity". You getting paid at least $X is good, because then you provide good to society through more (or improved) software -- but more people using your software rather than less is good too. Considering only these factors (and I know it's oversimplifying a lot here), the best thing for society is a situation where you are making at least $X from your software development efforts and as many people as possible have access to your software. It does not matter if all of those people have contributed to your $X or not. In evaluating whether the torrent of the software you wrote is really helping or hurting society, we would need to weigh the reduced income to you versus the benefit to society derived from the extra availability of your software. If it reduces your income to the point that you quit developing software, that's probably bad. But if it doesn't, it is entirely possible that the illegal distribution of your software has provided more good to society than harm to society.

The possibility of the situation I just described is a result of the fact that you are trying to work against the current state of the world: you have tied your business model to artifical scarcity. The resources to distribute your software to everyone who wants a copy are cheap, practically free even -- yet instead of embracing that (for example, maybe you could officially use P2P to distribute software, which has the potential to lower distribution costs), many companies fight it to the point of spending additional money and resources on DRM and various "copyright protection" schemes. There are ways to make your money without attempting to artificially restrict distribution, but probably not without changing your business model somewhat. The more companies change their business models to embrace the way things are rather than fight a losing battle against it, the better off society will be -- it is generally a more efficient way to do business to embrace reality rather than to waste resources fighting it, and in this case society can reap additional benefits as well (more people will have access to the software). To give a few examples, some lucky software developers are paid to work on open source projects -- they still get paid, and yet their work is freely distributed. Shareware actively encourages distribution. Some companies provide free downloads, but state that the program may only be used without a paid license by non-commercial entities; granted, they're still relying on laws to make their business model work, but at least they aren't worried about trying to artificially restrict distribution of their software. There are probably other ways to embrace things rather than fight them as well.

To summarize and bring this back to the point, TPB and other sites that facilitate P2P are providing a service which facilitates an action that by itself causes no harm. The only way it can cause harm is indirectly by causing someone not to pay you for software when they otherwise would have -- but if you are relying on artificial scarcity as an incentive for people to pay you money, then not only are you wasting time, effort, and/or emotional strain fighting a situation you could be embracing, that artificial scarcity itself is worse for society than the natural abundance which is the alternative.

I don't expect you to agree with me after reading this, but I hope you can at least see where I'm coming from.

Seriously? You think greed is the only motivator? As far as I understand the word, even loose definitions of greed only apply to the desire to acquire external rewards. So, you could be greedy for money, greedy for food, greedy for power, even greedy for praise -- though I think that last would be stretching it as far as most people are concerned. In the end though, those are all forms of extrinsic motivation. There is also intrinsic motivation, and I can't fathom applying the word "greed" to that.

Maybe you were saying that you don't think intrinsic motivation is effective. The interesting thing is that extrinsic motivation has been found to be weaker than intrinsic motivation in terms of producing results, while at the same time stifling a person's ability to be motivated intrinsically. This means that someone who grows up in a society filled with extrinsic motivators will have much, much weaker intrinsic motivation. In those circumstances, it would be easy for someone to mistakenly assume that greed is an inherent characteristic of human nature, since the person feels it as well as sees it in everyone else -- but that doesn't mean intrinsic motivation can't be just as strong or stronger. There's a reprint of an article from the Boston Globe about that topic here: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.html

Interestingly, your anecdote doesn't undermine the point GP was making at all, and actually supports it. In your case, you say that the only media you don't buy is stuff you'd never have known exists if it weren't for youtube and similar free sources. This says that the RIAA and MPAA haven't lost any sales due to your watching youtube, since there is no media that you don't buy merely because you can get it for free elsewhere. Based on that anecdote, there is nothing to lose (at least to people like you) from giving away your art for free online. Based on GP's anecdote, there is something to gain from people like GP.

I understand you were really trying to make a sarcastic point about anecdotes, and how they don't count as data. However, you failed miserably.

Drat. I clicked the wrong moderation. Replying to revert it.

Sorry, I can't say -- I only bought it last night, and that was so I could disassemble it and use the parts for something else. I've never had a mini-mag before, so I also can't compare brightness. All I can say is that it is pretty bright for such a small flashlight, and the way you can focus or spread the beam with a twist is pretty slick (though incandescent mini-mags may do that too).

Take a look at the new LED mini-Maglites. They have "candle mode", where the reflector (and housing) screws off and leaves the bare LED exposed -- giving fairly uniform white light. I have one, and looking at the single LED, I'm pretty sure they use a simple, ~1/4in hemispherical lens. (Maybe the manufacturing of such a lens requires a great deal of precision/cost, but in terms of its optical properties I see no reason to assume there's anything complex about it.) The light does seem more intense if I point the flashlight straight at the wall than if I have it angled ~75 degrees from the wall, but not a lot. On the other hand, there is a very significant drop in illumination at 90 degrees.

It may add cost (the LED version retails for just over twice the cost of the incandescent version), and it's not perfect, but it doesn't add any significant weight at all. Incidentally, since the LED was not used due to its directionality in this case, they also had to use an extra-deep reflector in order to get good intensity when used in normal "flashlight" mode.