@Night Ripper,
Night Ripper wrote:I didn't ad hominem you and if I did then I apologize.
No need to apologize to me, when people use logical fallacy in argument it hurts them more than me.
Quote: Please, let's keep this civil. Calling me intellectually dishonest doesn't prove my arguments wrong so you're just wasting your time.
I didn't call you intellectually dishonest to disprove your arguments, they weren't arguments, they were intellectually dishonest straw men, and so blatantly so that it seemed deliberate. Pointing out intellectual dishonesty, as I have is not uncivil. Employing it, as you have, is.
If you don't want to be called intellectually dishonest then don't be intellectually dishonest. Don't put words into their mouths over and over, making
straw men for you to knock down. Don't devolve into weak
ad hominems and ignore their arguments.
In debate it's important to point such tactics out and I have every intention of doing so if I see you making straw men again.
Quote:That's nonsense. In your magical fairytale world the government sends me a nasty letter demanding money and then I bend over and take it. What happens when I ball that letter up and throw it in the trash? Suddenly, I've committed a new crime! Nonsense, the original crime is still what you're advocating death or imprisonment over, otherwise you would just let me ball up the letter and toss in the trash.
No, I don't advocate prison for downloading mp3s. But I
do think that resisting arrest should be its own crime because I think arrests would be a great deal more complicated if it weren't so. And no, they wouldn't be getting killed for downloading an mp3, but for threatening the life of an arresting officer and whether or not you are capable of comprehending why, this
is a separate crime. Without the ability to enforce arrests we could not prevent crimes that you do agree should be on the books. And if you don't like the law use your vote and try to change it, you have no right to simply decide what parts of the social contract don't apply to you and to resist society's attempts to enforce the laws.
But in any case, this is a stupid red herring. Who has been killed over an mp3? Your hyperbole does your arguments (on the rare occasion that arguments actually emerge) no favors. If you want to argue that the punishment is disproportionate to the crime you have plenty of evidence to do so in reality (like the exorbitant amount they want to charge per song when they sue but how they refuse to pay the same rates for their own cases of infringement) and don't need to go into rape dungeons and death fantasies.
And even if these fantasies were occurring it would merely indict the way intellectual property is being protected, not the concept itself of intellectual property. In other words it would indict the means to an end but not the end and you can't pretend like it does and think nobody will notice (seriously, you can't be as dumb as you are arguing, a small bit of edification on your part on how to argue would go a long way in improving your debates, you are smart enough to argue better than this).
