The difference is that a slave is the legal property of the owner to do as he or she pleases (including destruction of said property, if they deem it necessary). That's a pretty critical difference.
Things can still be characterized as being pretty messed up without resorting to misrepresentation.
There were allowances made for crimes of passion in some cases, and slave codes differed from place to place. Slave codes were revised over time, depending on the goals and fears of the plantation class at the time.
You're trying to draw a bright line here, but it will be hard to do so, because forms of slavery did differ, even in the heyday of slavery in the Americas.
For example, the Code Noir that controlled slavery in New Orleans was less draconian than the codes used in other parts of the American South (e.g., see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Noir). This is one reason for the unique character of black/white/creole relations in New Orleans to this day.
I mean, you're wrong. The sibling comment to mine that links to wikipedia is a starting point from which one can discover that the United Nations and basically everyone agrees that debt bondage is slavery. Because people think of slavery in terms of its material conditions, not the vagaries of its legal procedures.
My original point is the article very explicitly points out that the people are not actually being held in debt bondage. That they are simply staying out a sense of duty.
This is a fundamental distinction. It's still fucked up, but it's not slavery.
> My original point is the article very explicitly points out that the people are not actually being held in debt bondage.
Actually, your original point referenced people being "owned and chained" as being distinct from what was described in the quote you pasted from the article, which has this right in it: "This debt bondage is illegal".
Do you also take issue with the article's use of the term debt bondage?
From Wikipedia:
> Debt bondage (also known as debt slavery or bonded labor) is a person's pledge of their labor or services as security for the repayment for a debt or other obligation.
How is debt bondage different from "staying out [of] a sense of duty"?
Keep in mind that these people aren't free to just walk away--if they are to escape, it has to be just that: an escape. I saw a documentary on this a year or two ago, probably by Vice. The family wanting to leave had to run under the cover of night and rendezvous with someone with a car--only possible with existing outside connections.
Things can still be characterized as being pretty messed up without resorting to misrepresentation.