Re: Overheard on the scanner

In article <he1u249hpcflsn9lbh4io2df88csqcq99r@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 Douglas Berry <penguin_boy@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> On  15 May 2008 21:30:47 -0400 "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> carved the following into the hard stone of rec.arts.sf.fandom 
> >Douglas Berry <penguin_boy@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >> "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >>> You're moving the goalposts.  We weren't talking about people who
> >>> vandalize property, but about people who walk harmlessly across it
> >>> after seeing no sign.
> >
> >> So, a hole ripped in the fence isn't vandalism?
> >
> >It isn't vandalism by every person who walks through the hole.
> 
> Ah. So, if someone else committs a criminal act, it's OK for you to
> benefit from it?

Frequently.

Suppose I'm one of the two physicians in a town, and someone murders the 
other. There is nothing morally or legally wrong with my benefitting 
from the reduced competition.

Do you disagree?

Consider a more recent and less defensible example. The state of Texas 
decides that a pregnant woman is a minor, despite her showing them a 
birth certificate showing that she is 22. Since they claim she is a 
minor, they hold her in state custody. She has a baby. They finally 
decide to concede that she is, in fact, 22. But since her baby was born 
in Texas and they have been arguing that all members of her religious 
sect are presumptively unfit as parents, they claim the right to seize 
the baby. 

The baby was born in Texas only because they had held her there, which 
they now concede they had no right to do. Does that mean they can't 
claim control over the baby? Legally speaking I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

-- 
 http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
 Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
 Published by Baen, paperback in bookstores now