I am noticing a rise in Holocaust denial with the rising anti-Zionism coming out of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Many of these YouTubers, tiktokers, and podcasters point to the writings of David Irving as proof. I know he is a holocaust denier and an idiot, but I would like to read it so I could point out the exact flaws in Irving’s “evidence” and stop getting the comment “You haven’t even read it!”. I also don’t want to send a penny to this author, but also don’t want to break the law in getting access to it.
How would you go about this situation?
The ethics of social media dictate that stealing from people you’ve decided are evil is somewhere between totally ethical and a moral imperative.
Download a book? Illegally? Online? Through a popular torrent website?
I would never do such an illegal and terrible thing!!
That method is horrible because the author wouldn’t make any money off of it.
Yeah that would be bad. I think we can agree that if there’s one thing that’s even more important than the ideology of an author, it’s definitely capitalism, which is conveniently not an ideology at all, just one of the fundamental laws of the universe. That’s why it’s important to not pirate things for ideological reasons.
I heard there’s this Anna, keeping an archive of those horrible books.
Check if it’s available at a library?
If you borrow it from the library the author typically gets a little compensation
Where? They don’t in the US.
Europe.
read it there
Convenientn’t
“Pssst look at what that guy is reading!”
Just get the torrent
Do you have to agree with everyone you give your money to? What sort of economy would that be?
Buy the book on the premise that you want access to the content he spent energy and time to produce. Just like you’d pay to get access to any kind of content that you want to consume because it is the fair thing to do.
Or get it at the library like everyone else said.
Pirating it is not ethical of course, but furthermore it becomes hypocritical and intellectually dishonest if you would criticize some else for pirating content produced by any other author.
I don’t think people expect that you have to agree with everyone you give money to, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to try to avoid sending money to a Holocaust denier specifically for his Holocaust denial
But the OP wants access to that content. It doesn’t matter what the content is, what matters is someone wrote it and they are entitled to payment from those who want to consume it.
Alternatively they could just not read it or ask the people they are debating to send them a copy if they possess one.
I think the question includes a discussion of whether or not that access is worth sending money to the author, right? Like, even if OP completely agrees with your position about the author deserving money for access and also wants access, they may want to both avoid sending money to the author and to avoid stealing it more. Of course you mentioned the possibility of finding it in a library and someone else in the thread suggested finding it second hand, which are probably both preferable solutions here if they are practical
I just don’t think there’s any room for debate. You can get it on loan, rent it, buy it secondhand or buy it new. Anything else would be unethical.
That’s fine, that just means the ethical question is now “is accessing it in one of those ways worth the consequences of doing so?” You might well say yes or, as others in these comments have, argue that the consequences are negligible. You might say no. It’s still a relevant debate in the topic OP is asking about even if we completely accept your position about which ways of getting access are ethical
I have some big news for you about libraries and second hand book stores.
Do you have to agree with everyone you give your money to? What sort of economy would that be?
Probably a pretty nice one, actually.
Yeah isolating yourself from everyone you disagree with is awesome, truly nothing bad ever comes out of it.
I am fine with isolating myself from evil.
Ergo we should feel obligated to give money to people who we believe are actively harming the world?
You are not obligated to read the book.
You should feel obligated to nothing except to remunerate people fairly for their work if you want it.
Sure, I am obviously not obligated to read the book, but what I was specifically responding to was the following remark:
Yeah isolating yourself from everyone you disagree with is awesome, truly nothing bad ever comes out of it.
which in turn was a response to the following:
Do you have to agree with everyone you give your money to? What sort of economy would that be?
Probably a pretty nice one, actually.
I do try. I actively boycott shitty companies (for 30 years and counting) and my list is long and swollen.
If more people took action on their principles our systems would be a lot less shitty.
Just because you can’t boycott everything doesn’t mean you should do nothing.
Buy it from a used book store. He won’t get any money from it and you’ll support a local small business
Piracy, maybe see if Internet archive has any of his writings. I would just try to find a source where I didn’t have to pay for it.
Legally, you could buy a used copy if you could find one.
You can wheels within wheels this shit for eternity. Answer this question and you’ll have the answer. What do you want to do? Do that.
You can steal it, buy it, borrow it, whatever. Ultimately there is no objective right answer. If you think you’ll be better equipped to counter argue the message by reading it, I say that’s more honorable than arguing against it without knowing what it is.
You could probably pirate it from somewhere
Just break the law lol. The law is made up horseshit 😆
You could just buy the book second-hand. Authors don’t get any of that money, and you’ll be able to get it for much cheaper than new.
People you disagree with may still produce something of value to you.
People who spread disinformation and conspiracy theories should profit as little as possible from it
🏴☠️
In most cases, it’s wrong to violate the social contract, especially while benefiting from it. However: the harm done by violating the social contract should be weighed against the harm of not violating it.
In this case, the harm of violating the social contract is pretty minimal, as copyright law is not a fundamental part of the fabric of society. One can even argue it’s kind of dubious, as something that moneyed interests favor very heavily with no similar moneyed interests favoring a strong public domain.
The harm of not violating it is not only do you give money to a holocaust denier, you’re giving it to him for denying the holocaust. Even worse, you’re giving him money for being wrong, and so effective at deception that you are compelled to spend money disproving him.
The whole point of copyright is to encourage useful works and spreading of knowledge and art. In this case the work is not spreading knowledge, but un-knowledge. Irving is exploiting a loophole in copyright law that allows him to work against its very purpose.
Thus I’d say violating the law is ethical as the benefits far outweigh the costs.
