No. Imagine a museum was displaying an oil painting that had been illegally taken by the Nazis in the 1940s and kept from its rightful owners, who were alive today and appalled that their property, evidence of the 20th Century's worst war crime, was hanging on someone else's wall. Now imagine someone broke into the museum, took the painting, and returned it to their owners.
That person is guilty of breaking and entering and, I believe, of theft.
We are a nation ruled by laws, not people. It is via the due process of law that claims like "all the information held in JSTOR is the property of the citizens of the US" are resolved. It is not up to Aaron Swartz.
That's the Civics class version. The real version is more about realpolitik. People make the laws, and use violence (or the threat of it) to carry them out. And these laws will predictably reflect distributions of power in society.
When we had slavery, those laws deserved to be broken without hesitation. Repeatedly. Virtually no one believes all laws, in each country, should be followed. In fact, direct action basically means you will not Do As You're Told, and thereby disobey someone's law.
(What does the US goverment do in places like the Middle East and South America? Try to remove governments which make laws they don't like, and install ones which do.)
So back to your example, yeah, no one sheds a tear if someone returns paintings to their rightful possessors, having taken them back from thieving Nazis (and their shady beneficiaries). Same goes for the British Museum and anything they stole via colonialism.
What right do I have to restrict your access to knowledge?
What if someone went around the entire country and put every book into a huge safe. Then locked the safe shut and let anyone enter the safe for $25 a pop. Would you be okay with this? Would you cite the law and accept your fate?
Yes, this is a country governed by laws, and we're all grateful. But those laws can and are at times abused to create monopolistic practices, like restricting access to research.
Ask yourself, just what value does JSTOR add that's worth $25 per article in the modern day of digital distribution?
Huh? What right does a museum have to display that painting?
No reasonable person questions that the laws get things wrong or create opportunities for market abusers. But hopefully, most reasonable people don't believe that the antidote for those problems is vigilantism.
It's not a natural right, but that statement makes it sound like you're against copyright. If that is the case, I don't think many people agree with you.
No. Imagine a museum was displaying an oil painting that had been illegally taken by the Nazis in the 1940s and kept from its rightful owners, who were alive today and appalled that their property, evidence of the 20th Century's worst war crime, was hanging on someone else's wall. Now imagine someone was invited into the museum, took a picture of the painting, and wanted to, but didn't post it online.
That person is guilty of breaking arbitrary laws guided by poor analogies between the physical and digital worlds and, I believe, of nothing.
We are a nation ruled by laws, not people. It is via the due process of law that claims like "wow, we need to wake up and change some of these ridiculous laws" are resolved. It is not up to just Aaron Swartz.
That person is guilty of breaking and entering and, I believe, of theft.
We are a nation ruled by laws, not people. It is via the due process of law that claims like "all the information held in JSTOR is the property of the citizens of the US" are resolved. It is not up to Aaron Swartz.