PS3 jailbreaker arrested in Johannesburg - world first

[shadowfox]

Are you going to tell me you'd follow any law no matter what it was? We have people in history who did that. We don't think very highly of them now.

And how do you do that? Just think about it for a bit.

Are you really this naive?

There's a reason we consider ourselves civilised. Making laws unenforceable leads to violence and anarchy. As to the how - I answered that question already. That little process you quoted above ... that's how things actually work in a democratic society. If you live in South Africa, you're part of that society.

And yes, I follow every law, even if I don't personally agree with them. They are there for a reason, and breaking them makes me a criminal.

[kaytel]

In a constitutional republic like the United States, people often think that the proper response to an unjust law is to try to use the political process to change the law, but to obey and respect the law until it is changed. But if the law is itself clearly unjust, and the lawmaking process is not designed to quickly obliterate such unjust laws, then Thoreau says the law deserves no respect and it should be broken.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_D...ence_(Thoreau)

[shadowfox]

*applause* You quoted Wikipedia. The problem with Civil Disobedience is that not everyone is a pacifist like Martin Luther King Jr, or Ghandi. Hence you have a situation like the one currently in London, where people use it as an excuse to commit crimes like theft and vandalism - and people end up getting hurt and killed.

So - basically, I can't completely disagree with you except that your statement:

It is every citizen in a free society's duty to evaluate the laws and break those they disagree with.

is innaccurate. The law needs to be specifically unjust in the view of many (and by unjust we're looking at human rights violations) before Civil Disobedience needs to be considered.

So I stand by my original argument - there is a process involved in changing a law. If the law is not unjust, Civil Disobedience has nothing to do with it. You can't arbitrarily decide you don't like a law and then misbehave to get it changed.

[captainpaste]

Wow. Go SAPS!

[dleerob]

Wow. Go SAPS!

How's that for an IPAD 2 post ;-)

[tpex]

How's that for an IPAD 2 post ;-)

Rich

[HoboMincer]

Rich

Ditto

[lilors]

they have to arrest somebody at least once a year to earn their salaries

[pixelpusha]

I am glad when the get these guys that sell all these counterfeit games etc. I can to agree ALMOST understand a person pirating for personal use, but when you sell pirated goods that is just plain stoopid and wrong. Takes a kind of person to sell stolen goods ...

[redice723]

Piracy will never end, arrest one group today, the other 500+ just wise up (not to mention they now have more customers). Maybe if everything was sold with better value people would be less likely (notice I say less as people will always go for the cheaper alternative) to make use of pirated goods.

As for the title, you can't tell me this was the world first piracy arrest. Or is this the first time the 'pirate' happened to be a ps3 jailbreaker?