zlacker

Well, philosophy is one of those disciplines in which work is always being done, but it's takes time for any work to become well recognized. Some day, some ethics ideas written by someone living right now will be something everyone reads about in philosophy 101. But we can still apply many of the frameworks from hundreds of years ago to current ethics problems. There are no completely new moral ideas, everything is similar, influenced by, or related to ideas that others have come up with.

As you point out, there are plenty of utilitarian and/or consequentialist arguments for piracy. From an academically philosophical perspective, these aren't "right" or "wrong" arguments, they're just from a different school of philosophical thought than some other arguments which may dismiss concerns of utility or consequence.

a consequentialist might say: "Piracy is fine because the DMCA causes chilling effects which are bad, regardless of the wishes of the author."

a utilitarian might say: "Knowledge is good for society so piracy provides greater utility for mankind, more than it harms a few authors."

but a deontologist might say: "we have to respect the rights given to someone to reproduce their work, regardless of bad consequences"

All of these are academically valid arguments, regardless of which one any of us subscribe to.

>>kube-s+(OP)
A pragmatist might say, "Piracy can only be contextualized and not objectively analyzed".

It's a completely different set of arguments from someone like us who can object on aesthetic and philosophical grounds, vs. a poor kid from Brazil who just wants some cultural exposure.