Right, but I'm saying their choices and actions might have been _different_ in a world where the state of copyright law has been entirely upended.
It seems crazy to me to make up a hypothetical world that is almost totally different in the key facts, then apply their choices from *this* world, and judge them for that. Their choices seem, at least to me, to be a pretty direct *response to the existing* broken copyright system.
I think "it would've been a more fair choice, if they had only put books into their collection that were 20+ years old" is an entirely fair criticism. "I think the current action they took, if taken in a repaired copyright system, would be unethical, therefore this action was unethical" is a mostly irrelevant statement.
It's like saying "movie ticket stand-in" anti-segregation protests were unreasonable, because in a hypothetical world where there wasn't segregation it would just prevent a fair theater from operating. It might be true, but it's not relevant because that's not the world that the protests were taking place in!
It seems crazy to me to make up a hypothetical world that is almost totally different in the key facts, then apply their choices from *this* world, and judge them for that. Their choices seem, at least to me, to be a pretty direct *response to the existing* broken copyright system.
I think "it would've been a more fair choice, if they had only put books into their collection that were 20+ years old" is an entirely fair criticism. "I think the current action they took, if taken in a repaired copyright system, would be unethical, therefore this action was unethical" is a mostly irrelevant statement.
It's like saying "movie ticket stand-in" anti-segregation protests were unreasonable, because in a hypothetical world where there wasn't segregation it would just prevent a fair theater from operating. It might be true, but it's not relevant because that's not the world that the protests were taking place in!