[Prof]

Originally Posted by Kazuaki Shimazaki II

1) Even if you can justify the elected officials because at least society picked them, how do you justify the appointed official.

I don't really see why that matters...

2) If it is the duty of citizens to obey laws, then it is the duty of the lawmakers to constantly reassess the benefits, costs, and ethics of all laws, and certainly it is not their duty to increasingly pamper to the needs and desires of the corporations.

I agree with you here. However, if your opinion is that the lawmakers are not fulfilling this role, it is the citizens' duty to protest about it while still obeying the existing laws.

It is hard to be certain of the best reply when you do not specify the difference. I will proceed henceforth by assuming:
"Morally unjustifed" = "you perceive that the law's advantage is inadequate to compensate for the loss of freedom"
"Morally objectionable" = "you perceive a disadvantage in the law, beyond the loss of freedom it entails"

Please suggest necessary corrections.

That's not quite what I meant. I'll give an example. Suppose the government were to pass a law requiring people to wear red socks on Wednesdays. That law would have no moral justification but it would not be morally objectionable to obey it because the colour of my socks has no moral relevance. However, if the government were to require people to be naked on Wednesdays (even if they could morally justify the decision), I would consider it morally objectionable to obey.

Actually, in that specific case, you should add in the extra factors of the discomfit and dislocation suddenly removing possessions from a person or family would cause. True communists might not have individual property, but they do still have, by necessity, individual possessions. And it does cause substantial inconvenience for them to be taken, and possibly genuine pain.

That's true, but you're still relying on the morals of the individual to consider the pain caused to the victim. You just cannot rely on people acting in others' best interests, hence the need for laws to be absolute, not based on individual morals.

Yet a law that does not adhere to ethics is nothing more than a tyrannical statement. The importance is in the collective, not the personal.

By whose ethics do you judge the laws? My point in this thread is that it is not down to individuals to pick and choose the laws they obey based on whether or not the law can be justified according to their own morals. Only if obeying a law would contradict my own moral beliefs would I consider disobeying it. If I questioned the moral justification for a law then I would consider protesting against it, but I would not disobey it.

Applying this to the original topic, I don't have a problem with laws which 'protect' record companies against piracy. However, if I did disagree with it, I might attempt to raise the issue with those in government but I would not take it upon myself to consider the law 'un-ethical' and ignore it.