He didn’t. The quotes in these tweets are fake. If I search for these quotes these tweets are the only results. Twitter is a hostile platform to reality as reality can get in the way of virality. Hence why you never see sources on twitter. This was likely written by someone with only a passing familiarity with gandhi’s position on WWII who probably guessed at how he would speak based on his character in Civ.

What did gandhi actually think the Britiish should do in 1940? In his actual words:

I want you to fight Nazism without arms, or, if I am to retain the military terminology, with non-violent arms. I would like you to lay down the arms you have, as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these, but neither your souls, nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.

Basically he was speaking for an extreme form of non-violent civil disobedience, not capitulation.

Also a famous gandhi quote: “Stop believing everything you see on twitter you gullible rube”

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.