ThePherocity

Okay, fine, I'm being an asshole.

I read the article. The author intends to create an environment where a select few take a risk so many can gain access to the material.

I hope he gets hit by a truck today. I really do. There isn't, nor will there ever be an argument where the enablement of child molestation and rape is acceptable. And if there is collateral damage, then so be it. I'd rather 100 go to jail wrongfully accused than to enable 1 child to be rape. This guy make me sick. Seriously Rick, please kill yourself.

Since ethics isn't fixed, then what watermark do you suggest to define a universal ethics. It's like euthanasia, is it ethical for a doctor to commit murder if it's to stop terrible suffering? It was ethical to own slaves, but not ethical to have them work on a Sunday. Nowadays, having staff work Sundays is ethical (although your probably a jerk) though it's no longer ethical for them to be slaves.

I don't know, I'm not a patent lawyer. I'll let the experts figure it out.

Not only excusable, but encourageable. It's a LAW. It's maliable. If it's wrong, fix it. The reason we have them is to govern what we can and should do.

Of course they are, but they are paying licencing fees to use the features that they are. Otherwise they would be sued.

Well, absolutely, Samsung is leveraging Google's, and many companies R&D. But R&D isn't cheep, intuitive, or obvious. Blackberry decided not to copy Apple very much, still created some great phones from a product view and they died. Nokia copied not at all, and they're not doing too well. HTC copied a little, and they are doing okayish. Samsung copied a lot more and is doing the best. My argument is all ideas should be free. We should adopt the good ideas globally so every phone copies the best ideas. You get an inventors monopoly for as long as it takes to reverse engineer. In our current product cycles, that's ~2+years. All problems solved.

Again, that may be an act of war, but since it's not against it's own people, it's not Orwellian.

No, I'm not, and the reason you think I am is because you're not looking at the whole picture. Apple invests it's shareholder dollars in R&D on the promise that they will return on that investment. Apple spent years getting it right, and then Samsung copies the work and spits out a competing product in a fraction of the time. Apple is suing because Samsung stole ideas, and Samsung is leveraging it's business on Apples R&D.

Now, I don't think ideas or design should have a monetary value. But if you live in a world where ideas have currency, then stealing ideas is theft. We need to change the laws so ideas are free to all men. Apple isn't the problem, it's simply the best at navigating the problem.

Apple is a company compelled to be greedy. It's actually the law for Apple to make as much money as possible given any legal and ethical way it can. Suing another giant tech company over legitimate patents is ethical. The system is designed so that a trial determines if the patents are legit. This is what happened. If you don't like that, then fix the fucking patent system. Quit whining that your favourite tech company lost.

Companies are not teams, they are simply the manufacturer of a product that you either bought or chose not to buy. If you don't like the way a company is legally and ethically running it's business, then change the law. Don't boycott the company who is succeeding best at working within the framework provided.