Just for interest's sake, here's a Canadian perspective on this. Canadian law (and especially case law) is very different than U.S. law. There are no longer any grounds to sue for simply copying music in Canada, because the copyright authorities impose a levy on recordable media to account for any potential financial losses due to copying. It amounts to several cents for a single recordable CD (i.e. most of the cost of a blank CD goes toward this levy). Now, because they're already being compensated, and since they're the only ones with standing to sue for infringement (other than individual artists themselves, who can't be troubled to appear in court over a few dozen copies of their songs), music copying for personal use is pretty much unlimited, even if it
might technically be a violation, because they're already being compensated in lieu of damages. (Provided that you use media on which the levy was paid.)
I'm not touching whether it's objectively right or wrong, though...copyright law here is bad enough, but look at the
"Mickey Mouse" amendment to U.S. law if you want to see real depravity.
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Originally Posted by Mike
If a majority of the population thinks it is ok, then it should be legal. That is democracy.
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Or, alternatively, it's called tyrrany of the majority. If 50% + 1 of the U.S. population decided, "hey, we outnumber the Whites now, let's oppress them", would you agree in principle, that it should be legal? And what happens if you can't get a majority (say, there are 3 distinct points of view, or worse, a continuum of views)? What to do about the deadlock? Sorry, but this is no way to run a government.
Real democracy (as in, every citizen gets a vote on everything) is not a stable or an ethical way to run a government, because, simply put, most people do not become sufficiently informed to vote on every single issue with any sort of eye to the larger picture. Even if they were sufficiently informed, that 50% + 1 scenario, or something like it, could easily become reality.
Fortunately, nobody lives in a real democracy. We have levels of government that, if nothing else, exist to make sure that craziness like the above doesn't happen easily, because the representatives must cater to the whims of all people, and not just those in the majority. It's also why a representative's duty is not simply to act in accord with the majority of his constituents—he's supposed to be the one who distills the many disparate points of view into a reasonable solution. While this rarely works perfectly, it's better than mob rule.