I'll Follow the Law

I'm wondering if not many people have the terms ’legal’ and ’ethically correct’ confused. ‘There’s no law against it? Then it’s ok!’ is a very widespread idea.

Maybe it’s just the Swedish people who are very law abiding. I’ll take the smoking ban in restaurants as an example. Many smokers say, in retrospect, that the law is good, that it’s a good thing that people working in restaurants can now work in a smoke free environment.

What is very interesting here is that smoking in restaurants, pubs and clubs was very widespread before the law was passed. Smokers will now go outside for smoking, but what about before the ban? Did the smokers really need a law to change their opinions or open their eyes to it? It was perfectly possible to go outside to smoke even before the ban.

Is law = ethics?

Another example of this, one that is more related to technology, is TV Links. The site provides links to many streamed TV series, old and new. Sometimes the links don’t work (presumably when they sites hosting the video clips have been shut down), which you as a user can report, but most of the time you can watch episodes of The Simpsons, Grey’s Anatomy or Smallville without problems.

In the TV Links FAQ, one of the questions is ‘is this site legal?’ which is answered by a simple ‘we provide links, nothing is wrong with that.’ They also state that they ‘do NOT support downloading’.

I really don’t see the difference between hosting the videos and providing the links, from an ethical perspective. Legally there seems to be a distinction, sure, but is it right? For the user the videos are still only one click away.

If the people behind the site think that file sharing is perfectly fine, I guess there are no ethical problems with providing the links. But something feels weird, at least to me, when you perfectly well know that something is illegal, but support it just until the point where the law says no. When you follow the letter of the law, but not its intentions.