Legal consequences are facts, morals are values, they are different things. There is no necessary connection between law and what is right, cf. nazi germany, ussr, aztec human sacrifice, etc.
> That's where my confusion stems from: neither abolishing copyright is that, nor are the 4 rules of Free Software.
Neither copyright nor codifying the 4 rules are strictly necessary. I’m not sure where your confusion lies.
> I'm also not sure if I get the reference. The author opposes copyleft on the grounds that it's based on copyright
The author opposes licenses which seek to apply the rules of property to intangible items for reasons which he has specified in the op. “Based on copyright” is a lossy encoding.
> four freedoms being law
Oppose on the same grounds as copyright.
> The author is clearly in moral agreement in the four freedoms, but advocates allowing people to break them in the ideal world. Since the ideal world is just as impractical in terms of minimum viable rule set, why not simply use the four freedoms as the moral base?
Not all immoral behavior should be prohibited with the coercive power of the state.
But consequences come from judgements, and judgements reflect values. Therefore law, like morality, necessarily includes values.
> There is no necessary connection between law and what is right
As a moral relativist, I would say that because law defines morality, it makes right by definition. But at the same time, there are many moralities, and so, many rights.
> I’m not sure where your confusion lies.
It's that the author decided to take a stance already, and I'm not finding a good justification for one over the other.
> The author opposes licenses which seek to apply the rules of property to intangible items
Perhaps here lies the crux: nothing in the four freedoms seems to me like a license or rule of property, because none of them enforce scarcity. I got an impression that the author didn't oppose them on those grounds, but I might be misreading.
> Not all immoral behavior should be prohibited with the coercive power of the state.
But this is the value judgement I'm questioning. Apart from situations where it would be destabilizing due to different values of the people, why not? And since the article already lays out two fully destabilizing options, why not choose the option that aligns with their values better?
if law defines morality then we are unable to say any law is immoral. We are also unable to make laws on the basis of our moral judgment because that would be circular reasoning.
> It's that the author decided to take a stance already, and I'm not finding a good justification for one over the other.
The justification is that in the author's view, property rights are a social technology for allocating scarce resources and i.p. are not scarce (in the economic sense).
> But this is the value judgement I'm questioning. Apart from situations where it would be destabilizing due to different values of the people, why not?
There are at least two reasons. One, what you mentioned: different people have different moral judgment but must live together using the same law. So law must account for different people's morals without favoring one over the other any more than necessary. Secondly, since we can't test moral judgments in a laboratory in order to give them objective reality, we must approach moral questions with humility and that leads us to refrain from using the coercive power of the state to enforce our values on other people when possible.
> And since the article already lays out two fully destabilizing options, why not choose the option that aligns with their values better?
I'm not convinced that both options are equally destabilizing.
thanks for your thoughtful reply.
Author here. As a point of clarity, I oppose codifying the four freedoms into law because the only way to do it is under a regime of intellectual property. That is, it requires assuming, at some point, that ideas or intangible things are property.
But it is true: consequences must be related to what is good/allowed and what isn't. So law is a moral code, but not only that.
> we seek the minimum viable ruleset that allows us to live in peace and leave questions of morality up to the individual
That's where my confusion stems from: neither abolishing copyright is that, nor are the 4 rules of Free Software. Since the author finds both acceptable, why favor one over the other?
> Moral because ideas are not scarce/rivalrous and so not properly considered property
Maybe I'm missing something, but neither the four freedoms, nor abolishing copyright depend on treating software as property.
> because law as an instrument is wielded by interested parties who have disproportionate power
I'm also not sure if I get the reference. The author opposes copyleft on the grounds that it's based on copyright, which they oppose to, but copyleft as a legal trick would no longer be needed with the four freedoms being law.
Maybe to clarify my confusion, this fragment:
> I would support the right of persons to publish binary programs while making its source code obfuscated or impossible to attain. This is a clear violation of the four essential freedoms as described by the Free Software Foundation. Yet, it would be legal---but perhaps not ethical---to do it in a world in which intellectual property does not exist.
The author is clearly in moral agreement in the four freedoms, but advocates allowing people to break them in the ideal world. Since the ideal world is just as impractical in terms of minimum viable rule set, why not simply use the four freedoms as the moral base?