IA after acceptance

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efle said:
I've always struggled to understand some of the ethics arguments surrounding this topic.

Letting a friend borrow DVD to watch = OK

Library having a single copy of film passed around hundreds of people for free = OK

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V an MP3 and send to a friend = STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM
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I don't think the difference between those examples is hard to decipher at all.

In the DVD/film examples, when someone has the DVD nobody else does, whether that be your friend or somebody checking it out of the library. That would give other people a reason to buy the DVD for themselves also. Now if you ripped your DVD and gave a copy to your friend, that's illegal.

When you COPY the MP3 and send it to your friend, now you both have a copy of it at the same time. If that was legal only one person would have to buy a song, and everybody could have it.

That being said, I don't care if anybody illegal downloads MP3 files, movies, etc... I do it all the time, but don't pretend you can't see the difference.
 
Runner500 said:
I don't think the difference between those examples is hard to decipher at all.

In the DVD/film examples, when someone has the DVD nobody else does, whether that be your friend or somebody checking it out of the library. That would give other people a reason to buy the DVD for themselves also. Now if you ripped your DVD and gave a copy to your friend, that's illegal.

When you COPY the MP3 and send it to your friend, now you both have a copy of it at the same time. If that was legal only one person would have to buy a song, and everybody could have it.

That being said, I don't care if anybody illegal downloads MP3 files, movies, etc... I do it all the time, but don't pretend you can't see the difference.
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The example holds because the end result for the industry is the same. Whether I see Movie X for free by getting at the library vs from a friend vs the internet, I'm not paying to see it any more. It doesn't hold water whatsoever to say "hey you can't do that! I make no money when you get what I made that way!" regarding one method of free public access but not another method of free public access.
 
efle said:
The example holds because the end result for the industry is the same. Whether I see Movie X for free by getting at the library vs from a friend vs the internet, I'm not paying to see it any more. It doesn't hold water whatsoever to say "hey you can't do that! I make no money when you get what I made that way!" regarding one method of free public access but not another method of free public access.
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Loaning to a friend or a loan by a library is legal. Copying and sharing is not legal. Whether the end result is the same for the artist/producer is not at issue. If you have a problem following the law, please don't become a health care provider.
 
gonnif said:
There are two legal issues here need to be cleared up . First is legal ownership the physical copy of the material not the copyright. You have purchase lawfully and that has royalties to the creator of the material and/or the copyright holder. Second is viewing and copyright law does not allow "public viewing" of the material. You can legally watch it yourself, or borrow one and watch it yourself, or in most private, non-commercial situations (family, school room, etc) as long as the copy has been legally purchased via the first sale doctrine. The issue here is obtaining a copy thru illegal means without proper compensation to the copyright holder anywhere along the chain.
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Do you personally see an ethical difference between having a physical movie collection that my friends can borrow out of whenever they want, vs just giving them access to my dropbox of movie files they can download to watch whenever they want? It seems to me the degree of injury to the creator of that content is identical in the two cases.
 
LizzyM said:
Loaning to a friend or a loan by a library is legal. Copying and sharing is not legal. Whether the end result is the same for the artist/producer is not at issue. If you have a problem following the law, please don't become a health care provider.
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lmao come on LizzyM, I'm obviously not saying I can break the law whenever I want
 
efle said:
lmao come on LizzyM, I'm obviously not saying I can break the law whenever I want
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ANARCHY!!!!
disaster-girl.jpg
 
efle said:
Do you personally see an ethical difference between having a physical movie collection that my friends can borrow out of whenever they want, vs just giving them access to my dropbox of movie files they can download to watch whenever they want? It seems to me the degree of injury to the creator of that content is identical in the two cases.
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It's an issue of the scale of distribution. 1 physical copy is going to remain 1 copy regardless of how many people you loan it to. But when you upload it and let people copy it, the scale of distribution changes drastically. I think that's why they draw line in the sand as far as the legality of either action. Even if the ethical implications are the same, they are practically not the same. I agree that if loaning is ethical then distributing copies can be seen as ethical as well. However, this might be a situation when ethics =/ law.
 
efle said:
Wish I could hear LizzyM tell off a physician she sees jaywalking or parking too close to a hydrant. "It doesn't matter that no one was hurt! If you have a problem with rules..."
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You should see what I do to drivers who turn right on red when there is a pedestrian in the crosswalk!
 
efle said:
nah, ethics are absolute, laws are what change
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Shouldn't have said absolute. Meant ethics has too many interpretations compared to law which is written and less so. Regardless, law is better to create order than ethics. I forget my original point but it was probably something like: ethics don't matter much here because law trumps it in this case.
 
blackroses said:
I'm more curious what my ethics professor who assigned a $220 textbook for a 10-week course thinks about it.
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Textbook prices frustrate me to no end! I bought two very expensive textbooks for Organic Chemistry 3 because my professor absolutely lead us to believe that we would need them both in class and for exams, but I've probably only cracked them open once each. The worst is that others in my class might be able to justify the price because they're chemists and this might be useful for them in the future, but I was just taking this class for fun and to complete my minor. At least one of the textbooks I could rent cheaply via Amazon. The other one was well over $100 and I couldn't find reasonable rentals anywhere.
 
LizzyM said:
Loaning to a friend or a loan by a library is legal. Copying and sharing is not legal. Whether the end result is the same for the artist/producer is not at issue. If you have a problem following the law, please don't become a health care provider.
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****, I knew that beer I drank in college was foreshadowing a career of unethical behavior!
PS didn't you say your kids had fake IDs? 😵
 
Affiche said:
****, I knew that beer I drank in college was foreshadowing a career of unethical behavior!
PS didn't you say your kids had fake IDs? 😵
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Who said anything about beer?

That said, if you think that you are above the rules, that the rules are stupid and only stupid people follow them (or only stupid people get caught breaking them) you are going to have a hard time in medicine where there are numerous laws and rules governing your behavior.
 
LizzyM said:
Who said anything about beer?

That said, if you think that you are above the rules, that the rules are stupid and only stupid people follow them (or only stupid people get caught breaking them) you are going to have a hard time in medicine where there are numerous laws and rules governing your behavior.
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My point was that not all laws/rules hold the same value, and implying that they do is silly. People with speeding tickets or who drank in college aren't exactly law-abiding citizens, but it's quite the leap to suggest they're so criminal they should stay out of medicine.

Alas, this is SDN, where no one is pure enough to enter this field save sweet baby Jesus in the sky himself.
 
Affiche said:
My point was that not all laws/rules hold the same value, and implying that they do is silly. People with speeding tickets or who drank in college aren't exactly law-abiding citizens, but it's quite the leap to suggest they're so criminal they should stay out of medicine.

Alas, this is SDN, where no one is pure enough to enter this field save sweet baby Jesus in the sky himself.
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It's not the rule breaking, it is the attitude about rule breaking. What I was seeing in this thread was the argument that the law shouldn't matter because loaning a book or a DVD to a friend is equivalent to copying and sharing a an electronic file because in both cases a friend gets to read the book or see the movie.

There are not many people who would be derailed by an IA related to downloading music for personal use. But saying that the law is dumb and the school shouldn't be giving IAs for law breaking using school Wi-fi is not going to gain any traction with me.
 
LizzyM said:
It's not the rule breaking, it is the attitude about rule breaking. What I was seeing in this thread was the argument that the law shouldn't matter because loaning a book or a DVD to a friend is equivalent to copying and sharing a an electronic file because in both cases a friend gets to read the book or see the movie. There are not many people who would be derailed by an IA related to downloading music for personal use. But saying that the law is dumb and the school shouldn't be giving IAs for law breaking using school Wi-fi is not going to gain any traction with me.
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@LizzyM The law is dumb.
 
LizzyM said:
It's not the rule breaking, it is the attitude about rule breaking. What I was seeing in this thread was the argument that the law shouldn't matter because loaning a book or a DVD to a friend is equivalent to copying and sharing a an electronic file because in both cases a friend gets to read the book or see the movie.

There are not many people who would be derailed by an IA related to downloading music for personal use. But saying that the law is dumb and the school shouldn't be giving IAs for law breaking using school Wi-fi is not going to gain any traction with me.
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I think Efle wasn't saying that there is nothing wrong with breaking a law, only that the ethical background for the law isn't distinct between borrowing movies and file sharing.
 
mw18 said:
I think Efle wasn't saying that there is nothing wrong with breaking a law, only that the ethical background for the law isn't distinct between borrowing movies and file sharing.
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I think that's still missing the forest for the trees. This one example of an ethical dilemma about the validity of this IA is overtaking what should be the main point, mainly: if you want to become a professional, then behave and conduct yourself like one. OPs future is probably not over, but hopefully they take a valuable lesson from this experience.

Or am I wrong?
 
sullen-burger said:
I think that's still missing the forest for the trees. This one example of an ethical dilemma about the validity of this IA is overtaking what should be the main point, mainly: if you want to become a professional, then behave and conduct yourself like one. OPs future is probably not over, but hopefully they take a valuable lesson from this experience.

Or am I wrong?
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Yeah I wasn't arguing that it was a smart thing to do. Or that it was the right thing to do. I was just saying that jumping from "he was pointing out similarities in things that are considered to be quite different" to "if you think you're above the rules you don't need to be in medicine" is silly.

The lesson is that if it's against the rules and that if it's something you were caught doing you wouldn't want med schools (whoever) to know about, don't do it. And that never stops really. Not bad life advice. But there are laws that I would like to break, but don't. I don't think there would be anything morally wrong with the act itself, but it's against the law so I don't. I don't understand why that line is tough for people to see. Sometimes things can be against rules and so doing them isn't smart or the legally right thing, but it doesn't make the act an ethically or morally incorrect action.

Edit: Those last few sentences are not a commentary on torrenting. I think it is a more complex issue. But within that issue I understand Efle's point on the progression from borrowing property to downloading.
 
sullen-burger said:
I think that's still missing the forest for the trees. This one example of an ethical dilemma about the validity of this IA is overtaking what should be the main point, mainly: if you want to become a professional, then behave and conduct yourself like one. OPs future is probably not over, but hopefully they take a valuable lesson from this experience. Or am I wrong?
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So people need to be professionals in their personal life and their work life? Sounds merciless.
 
sullen-burger said:
I think that's still missing the forest for the trees. This one example of an ethical dilemma about the validity of this IA is overtaking what should be the main point, mainly: if you want to become a professional, then behave and conduct yourself like one. OPs future is probably not over, but hopefully they take a valuable lesson from this experience.

Or am I wrong?
Click to expand...

It is not a given to me that there is a connection between being a professional and torrenting. What about torrenting makes someone less of a professional? I have to agree with @Affiche here. A lax attitude about *some* rules and laws does not necessarily mean one has a lax attitude about *all* rules and laws.

example: maybe 3/4 of students will drink underage in the United States. That doesn't mean that 3/4 of all people have a total disregard for the law. Everyone is going to Jaywalk at least once. It doesn't mean they are anarchists.

I understand that one is interested in identifying problematic personality traits in individuals when trying to build a professional school class...but this is not the place where you look in my opinion. Cheating, assault, fabricating data, a poor temperament, violent tendencies, inability to take criticism constructively etc are all far more problematic than "willing to download a textbook instead of paying 300$".

If anything, I think we want physicians who are able to distinguish between the right thing and the legal thing. Paul Farmer openly admitted to stealing medication and equipment from BWH to use in his clinic in Haiti. Is he a monster who should have never been allowed to become a doctor? No serious person would argue that. I'm not saying that torrenting is morally laudable just that strict legalism is an excessively draconian way to evaluate someone's character and could even backfire
 
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Sardinia said:
So people need to be professionals in their personal life and their work life? Sounds merciless.
Click to expand...

Can you help me find where I made that distinction?




mw18 said:
Yeah I wasn't arguing that it was a smart thing to do. Or that it was the right thing to do. I was just saying that jumping from "he was pointing out similarities in things that are considered to be quite different" to "if you think you're above the rules you don't need to be in medicine" is silly.

The lesson is that if it's against the rules and that if it's something you were caught doing you wouldn't want med schools (whoever) to know about, don't do it. And that never stops really. Not bad life advice. But there are laws that I would like to break, but don't. I don't think there would be anything morally wrong with the act itself, but it's against the law so I don't. I don't understand why that line is tough for people to see. Sometimes things can be against rules and so doing them isn't smart or the legally right thing, but it doesn't make the act an ethically or morally incorrect action.

Edit: Those last few sentences are not a commentary on torrenting. I think it is a more complex issue. But within that issue I understand Efle's point on the progression from borrowing property to downloading.
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I agree with you.
 
Lucca said:
It is not a given to me that there is a connection between being a professional and torrenting. What about torrenting makes someone less of a professional? I have to agree with @Affiche here. A lax attitude about *some* rules and laws does not necessarily mean one has a lax attitude about *all* rules and laws.

example: maybe 3/4 of students will drink underage in the United States. That doesn't mean that 3/4 of all people have a total disregard for the law. Everyone is going to Jaywalk at least once. It doesn't mean they are anarchists.

I understand that one is interested in identifying problematic personality traits in individuals when trying to build a professional school class...but this is not the place where you look in my opinion. Cheating, assault, fabricating data, a poor temperament, violent tendencies, inability to take criticism constructively etc are all far more problematic than "willing to download a textbook instead of paying 300$".

If anything, I think we want physicians who are able to distinguish between the right thing and the legal thing. Paul Farmer openly admitted to stealing medication and equipment from BWH to use in his clinic in Haiti. Is he a monster who should have never been allowed to become a doctor? No serious person would argue that. I'm not saying that torrenting is morally laudable just that strict legalism is an excessively draconian way to evaluate someone's character and could even backfire
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I honestly think doctors need to break rules sometimes, and be willing to do things because it's right, even if they may get in trouble for it.
Trying a risky procedure that can get them in trouble, a psychiatrist sharing their patient's violent tendencies with the police,etc.
 
mwsapphire said:
I honestly think doctors need to break rules sometimes, and be willing to do things because it's right, even if they may get in trouble for it.
Trying a risky procedure that can get them in trouble, a psychiatrist sharing their patient's violent tendencies with the police,etc.
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A psychiatrist notifying the police if they have reason to believe someone is a threat to others is definitely not going to get them in trouble. And there are a lot of procedures which are risky but approved for use and won't get you in surgery. Otherwise several surgical subspecialties would not exist.
 
cactusman said:
A psychiatrist notifying the police if they have reason to believe someone is a threat to others is definitely not going to get them in trouble. And there are a lot of procedures which are risky but approved for use and won't get you in surgery. Otherwise several surgical subspecialties would not exist.
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I couldn't come up with better answers,okay? I was just trying to sound less vague ._.
 
No one has even articulated that the reason why schools dislike torrent services on their WiFi is because of server load and bandwidth volume consumption. Torrenting is despised not because of the files that are shared, but because of the file sharing element. It boils down to logistics and schools not properly allocating investor dollars (tuition from students) into student infrastructure. The schools likely have no policy against ethernet connection based sharing and the fact that this was specifically a WiFi based infraction further cements the notion that it is a logistical problem painted to be an ethical-legal dilemma out of convenience to the institution.
 
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mwsapphire said:
I honestly think doctors need to break rules sometimes, and be willing to do things because it's right, even if they may get in trouble for it.
Trying a risky procedure that can get them in trouble, a psychiatrist sharing their patient's violent tendencies with the police,etc.
Click to expand...

On a fundamental level I agree with you about people needing to break rules sometimes. I think MLK, Jr puts it pretty darn well.
“One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws”

In my mind it is practically self-evident that obeying a law can be morally problematic. But I find a non-trivial problem arises in deciding which laws are moral and which ones are not. How do you exercise civil disobedience without merely becoming a law unto yourself?

This is particularly concerning for physicians. Physicians, in a socially local sense, are in a position of supreme power. Therefore, I think it becomes quite dangerous in such a position to take on the responsibility of carving out some form of Moral Truth independent of social consensus (i.e. the Law). Indeed, I wonder if it is irresponsible (even immoral) for a physician to simultaneously hold the role of activist as this position of moral authority independent of the Law could corrupt the way they exercise their local position of power.
 
@JJRousseau The law is a means to an end. Nothing more, nothing less. Attempting to intellectualize or rationalize it would be a crime. The people who need legal representation the most are those who have been slighted by institutions that can leverage financial capital to hire the best attorneys and dilute moral crimes into trivial legal date reassignments and settlements.
 
@sullen-burger Sure. Why not. First of all when it comes to conditional if-then statements, it is an illogical fallacy to presume that pursuing the "then" will necessitate the "if." Students who aspire to be doctors,can emulate the doctors they so adore like House MD. Maybe not the best example. But it doesn't mean that they are any closer to becoming a physician than other students. Therefore, cavorting around the pretense of being a professional has far less value than finding the qualities inside a professional such as: going beyond a 9-5 workday, being creative to find solutions, and adhering to a personal ethical guideline has far more tangible value then using a buzzword like be a "professional" or adhere to professionalism which managers have used as a by-word to chastise undesirables inside the work place.

Second, when it comes to personal life, the OP in question used the school's WiFi in order to torrent. However, presuming that you are a student living on campus, then you get to a point where your campus life is your social and out-of-school life. Telling someone that they will learn an important life lesson about being professional inside and out of work is ridiculous. It's like telling someone to treat their personal life analogous to their work life and if you have ever worked a job that wasn't a joke, then you should understand the joke in patronizing someone else on the vague premise of failing to be a professional.
 
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JJRousseau said:
On a fundamental level I agree with you about people needing to break rules sometimes. I think MLK, Jr puts it pretty darn well.
“One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws”

In my mind it is practically self-evident that obeying a law can be morally problematic. But I find a non-trivial problem arises in deciding which laws are moral and which ones are not. How do you exercise civil disobedience without merely becoming a law unto yourself?

This is particularly concerning for physicians. Physicians, in a socially local sense, are in a position of supreme power. Therefore, I think it becomes quite dangerous in such a position to take on the responsibility of carving out some form of Moral Truth independent of social consensus (i.e. the Law). Indeed, I wonder if it is irresponsible (even immoral) for a physician to simultaneously hold the role of activist as this position of moral authority independent of the Law could corrupt the way they exercise their local position of power.
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I agree with the first half of your argument. I think the second half has it backwards. Those in positions of power should have a coherent worldview with which to enact that power, understanding that their relation to the law is different than someone without power. Conversely, the immoral thing would be for the powerful to evacuate themselves of that responsibility by merely reflecting the law. The role of power ought to be to stay and guide the rod, not to become an extension or tool of it.

That being said, I think that line of thinking is way too abstract for this simple issue. Torrenting or not torrenting reveals nothing salient to the professional about someone's character.
 
Sardinia said:
@sullen-burger Sure. Why not. First of all when it comes to conditional if-then statements, it is an illogical fallacy to presume that pursuing the "then" will necessitate the "if." Students who aspire to be doctors,can emulate the doctors they so adore like House MD. Maybe not the best example. But it doesn't mean that they are any closer to becoming a physician than other students. Therefore, cavorting around the pretense of being a professional has far less value than finding the qualities inside a professional such as: going beyond a 9-5 workday, being creative to find solutions, and adhering to a personal ethical guideline has far more tangible value then using a buzzword like be a "professional" or adhere to professionalism which managers have used as a by-word to chastise undesirables inside the work place.

Second, when it comes to personal life, the OP in question used the school's WiFi in order to torrent. However, presuming that you are a student living on campus, then you get to a point where your campus life is your social and out-of-school life. Telling someone that they will learn an important life lesson about being professional inside and out of work is ridiculous. It's like telling someone to treat their personal life analogous to their work life and if you have ever worked a job that wasn't a joke, then you should understand the joke in patronizing someone else on the vague premise of failing to be a professional.
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You missed my point entirely so responding to this is futile. I've already said all that I am qualified to speak to in this thread.
 
JJRousseau said:
On a fundamental level I agree with you about people needing to break rules sometimes. I think MLK, Jr puts it pretty darn well.
“One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws”

In my mind it is practically self-evident that obeying a law can be morally problematic. But I find a non-trivial problem arises in deciding which laws are moral and which ones are not. How do you exercise civil disobedience without merely becoming a law unto yourself?

This is particularly concerning for physicians. Physicians, in a socially local sense, are in a position of supreme power. Therefore, I think it becomes quite dangerous in such a position to take on the responsibility of carving out some form of Moral Truth independent of social consensus (i.e. the Law). Indeed, I wonder if it is irresponsible (even immoral) for a physician to simultaneously hold the role of activist as this position of moral authority independent of the Law could corrupt the way they exercise their local position of power.
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You sound like my philosophy prof.
 
Gurkhali said:
And his MCAT score. (I kid)
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This post would be particularly humorous (and a bit ironic) if you knew that on my first take I received an 8 on the verbal 🙂.

EDIT: I should think the namesake of my username would have fared much better than that!
 
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