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A comment on The Pirate Bay - 9 years and still bloody runnin. Parent comment

Re:The Pirate Bay - 9 years and still bloody runnin by carbocation on Sunday September 16, 2012 @02:39AM (#4528495)
Lawyers talk about malum in se (bad, in itself) and malum prohibitum (bad, because we have prohibited it). I think these are useful concepts, even if we choose not to use the terms.

Mala in se I (tautologically, perhaps?) don't support. For mala prohibita, it really depends on context.

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Re:The Pirate Bay - 9 years and still bloody runnin by jsilence on Sunday September 16, 2012 @02:44AM (#4528507)
Interresting distinction. Raises the question why we are prohibiting things that are not malum in se.
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Re:The Pirate Bay - 9 years and still bloody runnin by tptacek on Sunday September 16, 2012 @04:26PM (#4530224)
Because they are the rules we've adopted to make society, the markets, contested access to scarce resources, drug safety, or what- have- you work. Sometimes there's more than one set of workable rules, but we have to pick one.
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Re:The Pirate Bay - 9 years and still bloody runnin by carbocation on Sunday September 16, 2012 @02:55AM (#4528531)
Ideally, because contextually it makes sense. It might not be inherently evil to drive 180 miles per hour, but we might guess it to be statistically unsafe in residential neighborhoods, so we prohibit it.
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