Ethical dilemma?

[Boerseun]

Originally Posted by InfiniteNow

If the laws don't protect EVERYONE equally, then they are meaningless and are no longer laws.

I'm not too sure about that. If a hitman botches a job, and only maims the victim, and subsequently gets fired from the mob, can he file a lawsuit for unfair dismissal? Can a drug peddler working a tough neighbourhood claim danger pay from his employer? I don't think so. All these people are making a living through knowingly breaking the law, and they must live with the associated risks - with no recourse to the law. You can't ignore the law in your line of work and then try to fall back on the law when you get your fingers burnt.

Same with kiddie-porn afficionados, I think. If they get onto a website promising them a lolita-fest, only to have their fingers burnt, I think they'll feel very silly and move on with their lives. Hell - a few might even quit after seeing their IP's logged. They might paranoically believe that the fuzz are gonna pop through the door any minute! So, apart from generating money for a tiny, cash-strapped government agency, some more good might even come off this.

... the laws (even if it's just for fraud) must apply to all citizens the same way or they mean nothing.

I agree, and that's where the dilemma comes in! But think of it this way, from an ethical point of view:

Any normal person knows that surfing kiddie-porn is illegal (at least in my country). Breaking the law, you should expect some repercussions. Unfortunately, controlling what people surf on the net is almost impossible - look at China, for instance. So, enforcing laws on the net is basically a pipe dream. Yet, there are people breaking the law (surfing kiddie porn), safe in the knowledge that no harm can befall them. So, if they go to this particluar site, and burn their fingers and lose a few bucks in the process, it might be seen as a sort of a "fine"? A penalty paid for knowingly breaking the law? This might give them an aversion to future visits to other websites, 'cause who knows - they might have to pay good bucks to see a screen telling them what bad people they are, and that their IPs have been logged. So we might even throttle visits to other sites eventually.

I can only see good things coming from this...

[InfiniteNow]

If you allow it for one, you must allow it for another.

Let's say, using this precedent, some religiot group decides that beer is bad, so they pretend to sell beer online, and once you submit your credit card you don't get any beer and they use all profits to ensure beer is made illegal. They lobby with that money, and run negative ad campaigns, and they reinvest all proceeds to making beer harder and harder to buy, and ultimately impossible.

Or, let's say that they tasted some really bad oxtail pokjie so they buy a few butcher shops, and when you try to buy oxtail they take your money but don't give you any oxtail, and they then ciphen all funds from oxtail sales toward the abolishment of oxtail availability.

Or, they don't like porn of any type, and they setup all sites like this...

Bastards. You best leave my visual stimuli alone!

The only difference is that you personally are opposed to child porn (as most of us are), so it seems okay to single it out. It's a bit like trying to limit the free speech of people who don't believe in evolution. While I whole-heartedly disagree with what creationists say and do, it's their right to say it, because speech is protected by law.

In the same way, the equal application of laws is itself tacit in the law, unless special provisions are outlined in the text of the law. Following this to the next step, fraud laws would themselves be fraudulent if they only applied to those who "we don't like" or with whom we "disagree."

[Qfwfq]

In most counties only magistrates can authorize deception and illegal doings where necessary to catch a crook. Are you going to tap their phones and plant bugs in their house and then justify it because of the aim? If your sister doesn't hold the power, in her jurisdiction, she just can't do it; she could only suggest it to whoever is competent.

Dura lex, sed lex.....

[mynah]

One of my cousins was a policeman in Soweto, but eventually had to be boarded and received counseling for post traumatic stress syndrome. He said one of the things that really got to him was the high incidence of child rape: In one particularly bad area girls usually lost their virginity before they could walk. In a recent survey, some 15 percent of South African school kids said that they have been raped. Unfortunately, only about one in 200 rapes in this country ever leads to a conviction. Although I'm concerned about it, I'm not surprised at the large number of South Africans who are turning to unorthodox means of dealing with crime.

[GAHD]

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