I'm not talking about exploits. I'm talking about credit card numbers.
If you want to put together a coherent world view that says it's fine to copy a thousand live credit card numbers to a public Pastebin page, that's fine. I'm not interested in litigating that with you.
What I'm interested in is whether you can then come up with an argument against enforcing copyright that doesn't produce that outcome, because I don't think very many people share the world view that it's just fine to traffic in unauthorized copies of other people's credit card numbers.
Yes, I brought up exploits. Because I'm pretty sure you are comfortable with full disclosure (as am I), and the ethics of pasting credit card numbers is closely related. After all, every pasted credit card number is a boring exploit for a bug that the card companies have dragged their feet on fixing for over two decades.
So I am left questioning the strength of your condemnation of copying credit card numbers. The activity is lame and thus easy to pick on, but that shouldn't matter if we're talking philosophically.
This does tie back to "the fundamental nature of data", in that full disclosure is based on open society principles of sharing data, even when it will end up harming some parties. The Internet is basically a democratic copying machine. The xxAA have been trying to put the genie back in the bottle the whole time, and force a regime of inescapable information control upon us. Regardless if you're still in favor of some copyright term for pragmatic reasons, you have to admit the overriding information environment in an open society is one of permissive distribution.
The credit card numbers is a really dumb analogy, we’re talking about piracy of software, audio and video. I can’t use a copy of a DVD to empty someone’s bank account (not that I should be able to steal from someone with security through obscurity either).
I agree that it's dumb, which is my point: the appeal to the fundamental nature of data doesn't tell us anything about the legitimacy of copyright enforcement.
If you want to put together a coherent world view that says it's fine to copy a thousand live credit card numbers to a public Pastebin page, that's fine. I'm not interested in litigating that with you.
What I'm interested in is whether you can then come up with an argument against enforcing copyright that doesn't produce that outcome, because I don't think very many people share the world view that it's just fine to traffic in unauthorized copies of other people's credit card numbers.