> If you allow illegal activity as a form of protest—when it is not the absolutely last option—, then you negate the legitimacy of the law in general.

There are old law on the books that no one in their right mind follows today. It's probably one of the ways a law gets repealed eventually - people stop obeying, state stops enforcing, and then perhaps a repeal happens. I don't think this is anything against the legitimacy of law system in general. It's just that it has many ways of working.

Though in this case it's more nuanced, as this is not against the copyright in general, just specific uses.

You're adding enforcement into the picture. Nonetheless, it is intended for law enforcement or the courts to judge whether to suspend the former. But to what point the two have that privilege depends on the specifics of the legal system. Meaning, unrepealed, weird old laws the US is known for could not necessarily stay unenforced in other countries.

A law has no inherent legitimacy simply from being a law. It must either reflect a social more or uphold public safety or, at the very least, be useful as a rule.

Should people be paid for the work they do? Yes. Should people be paid for the work of others? Maybe, if they contributed in some way. Should we pay an academic journal which charges fees for people to submit to them? No, that's absurd.

I think OP's point is that breaking any law undermines the principle of rule of law in general.

And I think that is an absurd conclusion. Nobody seriously thinks violating the speed limit or ripping your own DVDs is on the same level as murder or fraud, yet the former two are routinely violated to society’s benefit, with no impact on murder prosecution.

I do not subscribe to it myself, but "dura lex sed lex" is literally millennia old, so it's hardly an obscure notion.

It may have had more value in more savage times millenia ago before the proliferation of very many victimless crimes.

The best way to get a law changed is for everyone to be breaking it all of the time.

Laws only works because everyone follows it most of the time. If everyone is breaking a law, the government can't punish everyone, and eventually people start to wonder why it is a law in the first place.

We've seen this happen with other laws in the past, quite often. Pot legalization comes to mind.

Everyone is the magic word here. Reality isn't that trivial unfortunately and we aren't talking about instances where this approach worked, but whether this kind of approach is justifiable as a general procedure. While pot legalization is going well, there's also an opioid crisis. Does that mean we should further deregulate the opioid industry?

Beside, the majority isn't necessarily in the right either. That's why no matter what you and society need to process the fact that you have broken the law; note that I'm using the abstract term process, which

> That's why no matter what you and society need to process the fact that you have broken the law

Not really. People can do what they want. And that includes breaking bad laws, and trying to get away with it.

There is no obligation to "process" this fact, by turning yourself in, for whatever.

A perfectly valid strategy is to instead break bad laws, and try to get away with it. And if enough people do this, then it has an effect, and may eventually cause the law to be changed.

>> The best way to get a law changed is for everyone to be breaking it all of the time.

> Everyone is the magic word here

Unfortunately the "everyone" in this case is just a handful of centralized services - because data-hoarding, like so many other things, becomes vastly cheaper when you do it at scale. It turns out that Sci-Hub and LibGen are not so different from YouTube, FB and other SV unicorns - their vulnerability to legal shenanigans of various sorts is exactly the same!

Yes. The opioid crisis is directly caused by regulation.

"If you allow illegal activity as a form of protest—when it is not the absolutely last option—, then you negate the legitimacy of the law in general."

I don't think that's true if the laws in question are the result of corruption. Rich companies have been paying politicians for some time to keep copyright and patent laws strong in a way that suits their interests instead of the voters'. Resisting laws that came from bribery should be considered a standard part of democracy. Probably even celebrated as virtuous.

Looking at the topic here, I'd say Alexandra is doing something virtuous given corruption and incompetent administrators led to a system where all that research was concentrated in hands of tiny number of greedy players that did about nothing in return.

Agreed. I've thought of this as the 24/Jack Bauer line of thought. Torture is illegal and should be- but if you've tried everything else and you're running out of time before the nuke hidden in Los Angeles goes off- break the law and torture the terrorist.

Then- go to the cops after saving the city\failing to save the city and turn yourself in. Accept the consequence for breaking the law. Civil disobedience embraces this- civil rights activists fighting Jim Crow laws were more than happy to get arrested to highlight the injustice/immorality of the law.

Calling pirating content civil disobedience though is disingenuous in my opinion, especially if you have the means to access it the proper way and are using it to access your career. If you want to 'protest' then download it and then send an email to the FBI that you did so and then publicize it.

It seems very harmful to me to curry punitive action unless you are part of a mass movement with a valid aspiration to revoke the immoral law. Gratuitous self-harm just makes you a drain on everyone. Your moral purity is not worth harming the whole society.