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0 pointsknz4211y ago0 comments

> i'm saying we need to stop immoral behaviour when it is happening. we can't define morals in law, and the law is the only thing corporations understand. we can't change laws and retroactively apply them.

Two things:

a) you can definitely capture part of your morals in law, like "don't kill". Our anti-genocide legal system is built for this purpose and applies to corporations as well as to individuals.

b) at the time of the Apartheid, unlike during WWII, crimes against humanity were already prosecutable "anywhere on earth". In other words we can definitely prosecute IBM now for a crime they committed under a law that was already active when the crime was committed, and which has no statute of limitation.

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foxhill11y ago

> you can definitely capture part of your morals in law, like "don't kill"

ah! but you can't!

for instance, if someone was about to kill your partner - is it illegal to kill them before they succeed? yes. immoral..? grey.

the law is a rough cookie cutter shape that somewhat follows the edge of the fractal-like surface of morality. you can't capture morality in it's entirety into a legal document.

> at the time of the Apartheid, unlike during WWII, crimes against humanity were already prosecutable "anywhere on earth".

i don't know much about apartheid, but at the time, the SA gov't believed it to be legal (of course). the US didn't recognise it as wrong for a long time (late 80s?), and even then, that doesn't necessarily mean it was recognised as a crime against humanity. and it's hard to see from the article the dates of the specific actions that EFF are complaining about.

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