Letters to the Editor
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Just because it's easy doesn't make it right.
Giving the supermarket an expired coupon is wrong, too.
Although, in our culture, it has become easy to rationalize small indiscretions, small gaffes, and small lies, it all ads up. As they say in politics, it's a slippery slope. Once you gain momentum downward, after a while you end up at the bottom. Hi. Governor Spitzer! Great to see you. You look a little sad....
I'm a professional composer and musician. I have a right to own and exploit my intellectual property, and so does everybody else, including odious people like Rupert Murdoch. The argument made here, that, because there is a free way to accomplish a task easily, is not the same as a legal way to fulfill a small desire. The Digg workaround is a cheat, not a solution.
The argument that WSJ wants us to use the spoof because they have agreed to give it to Digg, is fallacious. The assertion is not known. It's a whopping assumption that what is true for one party is therefore true for all parties.
Is is illegal? I don't know. I'm not an intellectual property rights specialist, nor a lawyer.
I do know this. When I first started coming to the Salon site, I would I would use my computer once a day to log in as "Guest." I had the run of the site when I did this. If I had done this forever, I would have been cheating. I like Salon a lot! I subscribed for two years after trying it out for a few days.
Anybody who thinks this is the same as spoofing my way onto the the WSJ site is disingenuous at best; lying to themselves, or ethically challenged at the worst.
Pay up!