I'd argue its that degree of difficulty that is at issue here. $15.99 paid to a big corp is very different to an out-grouped minority living in poverty with almost no investment in "the system" than it is to a Princeton student living on his trust fund.
Ethics are for rich people. Morality is for everyone. What this kid did may have violated some of the ethical rules a bunch of privileged people set up to perpetuate and sanitize their own in-grouped society, but Aaron had basically zero participation in that group so its rules must have seemed impossibly distant to him. His actions, however seem to have been both a benefit to him and to his community, vs the other choices he could have made that would benefit him at the expense of his own group. I'd call these actions moral, even if not "ethical".
How different really is this than when Uber or AirBNB thumbs their collective noses at the rules "the man" has set up that seem wrong to them?
Aaron's a hacker, and a hustler, just like us. One of our kind.
Sadly, you are incorrect, and probably in the majority. Rules of ethics are not setup by privileged few; they are the cause of civilized humanity. Without them, we wouldn't have come this far. What he did to hustle the donuts, was fair and ethical. He earned his fair share. But what he did with churning out CDs, was not. We all can possibly see that. But of course, the trade born out of Napster must have been hard to resist. The part about resisting, is where ethics reside.
I'm not saying that his actions were ethical. They were not. I am saying that ethics are not absolute and that there is a point where they simply become irrelevant and can and do depart from "civilized humanity". Ethics and morals can in extreme cases become opposites. The civilization happens when we get them to align and keep them that way.
Allow me to use the Godwin accelerator to draw it all the way out:
"Ja, Herr Kommissar, I saw Frau ten Boom sneak half a dozen Jews into her attic on Tuesday" is the ethical answer. It is the only answer that satisfied the answer's requirements under the law of that time and place. But ethics had ceased to matter, civilization had already failed. Morality was all that was left.
There's a continuum, and being poor, black, and living in Compton in 2003 pushes the puck down the line a little towards uncivilized, into the space where morality starts to hold as much or more sway than ethics. We're just arguing about the amount.
Generalizations regarding the theoretical role of ethics in society are easy to offer. What is far more difficult is forging one's way in a world that systematically shifts the definition of ethics in a manner that privileges a few at one's own expense.
I sincerely hope that your pronouncements regarding the ethics of those less fortunate are met in vigor with your efforts to right their systematic disenfranchisement.
One can have a consistent set of ethics in which imaginary property does not exist.
For example, my personal opinion is that it is unethical to directly support companies working to put the Internet genie back in the bottle, especially for mere convenience.
One can have a consistent set of ethics in which imaginary property does not exist.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but an NBA player's livelihood depends quite a bit on the "imaginary property" that makes it illegal to rebroadcast games and sell counterfeit jerseys.
But the author wasn't the one who brought up ethics. A "hustle everything" set of ethics seems like it would include both breaking copyright law and utilizing it, depending on how it benefits oneself. Perhaps this is approaching a "null" ethics, but if those values are shared by his peer group then it seems like they should still qualify as ethics.
It's just a bit disingenuous to appeal to ethics and morality while really referencing laws, especially when we can see (historically) that laws are often wrong.
Perhaps the issue is that when saying anything is moral, ethical, or legal, we seem to be acting as if there is some universal system of morals, ethics, or laws that we are applying to.
Even the worst behavior is moral, ethical, and legal given certain frameworks.
One of us as long as the ethics and laws he breaks are what we find personally agreeable. Skirt rental laws and you become popular because so few people understand the reason for those laws. Skirt child labor laws and you don't, because people do see the major wrong, even if what you are providing for those children is a better alternative than any of their other choices.
In this case, the guy violated copyright law, one of the laws people tend to not agree with, so he is popular.
Ethics are subjective. In the culture he described this seems like it was no only ethical, but praiseworthy. Ethics are not universal and neither are principles. I think he turned out alright, but that is my opinion.
Fundamental ethics are not subjective. Is murder subjective? A live human disappears from existence by force, how is that subjective? Now, murder something of that live person, say, make him handicapped by force. Is that subjective? You will now claim that it is subjective, because the person is at least alive. No. It is still not subjective. Now, take it further down the food chain. Steal something from a person. Bully him. Curse him. Make his life miserable. All subjective? Nothing is subjective here. The fundamental ethics filters down to the common ethics. If one is subjective, they are all subjective. But you will be hard pressed to prove a murder to be subjective. So, none of the ethics are subjective.
Ethics are not subjective. People merely disagree on what the right ones are.
There is some optimal set of ethics which, if consistently followed, will lead to an optimal set of outcomes. We're not clever enough to figure them out, though, and so people will quite happily come up with their own, inevitably self-serving ethical systems in which "the things I want to do are right, the things you want to do are wrong".
Getting everyone to behave perfectly ethically is impossible, but telling everyone that their own self-serving ethical systems are perfectly valid is one of the worst things you can do.
