[OS:N:] Intellectual monopolies and ethics and Muidallap

Les Bell wrote:
 > If someone takes my work for free and then resells it or otherwise reuses
 > it, they are, it seems to me, in breach of the ethical Principle of Human
 > Dignity, which would have us respect the autonomy and dignity of other
 > people.

What you appear to me to be saying here, and I think validly, is that we 
currently have a system that has in place certain rules (fair or not for 
whoever) and you want to play by those rules (and see others play by 
them), and are upset by people who talk about not playing by them. I 
think it is a fair comment in this respect. Still, many of the rules 
have been changed recently (DMCA, NET, Sonny Bono extention, etc.) so 
some other people are validly upset that the rules keep changing (and 
not in their favor).

I think the deeper question is, as a society,  what sort of world do we 
want to live in? The US confronted this with Slavery, and now is 
confronting it with Weapons of Mass destruction (See Freeman Dysons's 
book "Weapons and Hope" where he argues in part WMD will only disappear 
when we consider them morally akin to slavery), and perhaps someday 
Copyright, Patents, etc. will be discussed in these terms. Is is OK to 
enslave another person (previously yes, recently no)? Is is OK to build 
weapons of mass destruction (previously yes, now it's maybe, but only if 
you're the US or an ally). Is is OK to create an artificial scarcity of 
knowledge by using the prison system to prevent others from sharing what 
you have given them (previously no, now with the NET act etc. yes).
   http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/17-18red.htm

I think there are three valid positions here (to paint with a broad 
brush), depending on your assumptions:
1. The world is full of scarcity, and people are lazy bums and scarcity 
motivates them to work, so monopolies on anything (even naturally 
abundant things) are good.
2. The world is full of abundance, and if there is less artificial 
socially promoted scarcity, the world is a much better place.
3. The world has both abundance and scarcity, and maybe there is a 
middle ground, where somethings can be artificially scarce for a while 
to promote people to work, but then there might be abundance later out 
of this somehow.

It would be an interesting (probably offtopic) discussion to see how 
people come to adopt one of these different viewpoints.

People who argue on this topic to sound believable generally argue for 
this middle ground position (#3) and then say that our current legal 
framework for handeling patents and copyrights etc. is this middle 
ground. I think it isn't, especially with the last 100 years of 
regressive changes, and would argue that with the internet, that 
"someday" for abundance is just around the corner (along with real-life 
StarTrek-ish replicators using nanotech or equivalents). I feel we can 
either build this abundant world and live well, or we can fight over 
scarcity and die badly -- even those of us who are the wealthiest and 
most powerful in the current system as our social structure is now is 
fundamentally unstable (WMD coupled to rich-poor divides very visible 
through the internet). I personally feel that I would rather live in 
society #2 and want to work to help realize that. (James P. Hogan's 
sci-fi book "Voyage from Yesteryear" is one touchstone...)

I don't feel the middle ground position for copyrights is tenable in the 
internet age because it can only be made to happen by extensive use of 
police powers and ultimately imprisonment (like RIAA is starting with 
its 1000 or so lawsuits). See for example:
   http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

The failed US War on Drugs went down this route with Drug Prohibition 
(with the lessons of Alcohol Prohibition long forgotten) and now even 
police officers and judges are saying what we have is a crazy, costly, 
inhumane, and counter-productive mess of a million people in prison for 
non-violent drug use costing $10s of billions of year and destroying 
millions of families. Note: I don't condone recreational drug use here; 
my argument is more that just because something may be morally wrong, 
like excessive alcohol use or adultery, that doesn't mean it should be 
illegal -- the problem is in trying to legislate morality when most 
antisocial behaviors (including copyright violations like claiming 
ownership for another's work?) should be dealt with by other social 
means than the law.

The US now has the highest per capita prison population of any developed 
country (something like 10X that of typical western Europe countries) 
[and arguably some of that high incarceration rate is still a legacy of 
slavery (and related institutionalized racism), which the US kept long 
after most of the rest of the world abolished slavery].

Yet, based on the "NET" act etc. which criminalize most unauthorized 
copying (as opposed to being a civil matter as it typically was 
earlier), this failed War on Drugs is exactly the same future we can 
expect about copyright if RIAA etc. succeeds in upholding their business 
model in the internet age. And then one might expect patents to be 
extended (as they are sometimes for drugs) and have related 
criminalization, etc. This all makes me wonder if in practice their just 
can't be much middle ground (just like there couldn't be one for slavery 
-- in the end having some states free and some states slaver just didn't 
work out.).

How can one make more middle ground for the time being? The GPL is one 
approach. Red Hat's model of service and support offerings is another 
(no affiliation) -- helping make programming a trade like plumbing, 
lawyering, doctoring, etc. involving offering services more than 
products. Another is to have digital rights managment systems that are 
designed to assert freedom, as opposed to deny it.

See for example my comment at:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&th=bc41381803b7e0c0&rnum=1

Since copyrighted materials no longer need statements of copyright in 
them or registration with a copyright office, and since old materials 
may or may not have had copyrights extended, and since rightsholders are 
in practice just about impossible to locate with any complete certainty 
for other than the 1% of most popular works, clearly the current world 
of copyrighted material is in a mess and the average digital work one 
encouners (like this email) can't be used, or shared, or improved. It is 
also nearly impossible to know what material we see on a regular basis 
is formally in the public domain. What we may need in the near term 
while we are living in world #3 is a system that tracks license 
assertions when copyrighted material is created, and allows people to 
easily filter out material which does not have a permissive enough 
license (to their tastes). Then instead of a Palladium solution where 
your computer sniteches on you and tells you you can't do things, we 
have a Muidallap (Palladiun backwards :-) solution which keeps saying, 
"yes, you may go ahead and share that -- here is the freedom audit trail."

These audit trails affirming freedom for copyrighted material are 
analogous in some ways to the "free papers" free black people were 
forced to carry (and lose at their peril) in the pre civil war South. 
Muidallap won't solve all problems (e.g. SCO's claim that coprygithed 
material was introduced into the system and mislabelled) but it could 
give people more confidence day to day in their use of free materials 
and their distribution of copied or original free materials. Yes, in 
practice this can be done manually through license statements in code 
and accompanying images, but in practice it is impossible to do this in 
a big way manually, and also, without an automated solution it becomes 
impossible, say, to make a license filter that filters out copyrighted 
posts to this mailing list which aren't placed under some free license 
allowing at least redistribution. I think it is a half solution for some 
of the same reason "free papers" didn't work -- making free people or 
free information assert their freedom continually is inconvenient, and 
unfair burden, and puts them always at risk of being locked up if the 
papers are lost or stolen. But given the current state of affairs, it 
may be worth pursuing.

--Paul Fernhout

This email is placed into the public domain (except where noted, e.g. 
inclusions that are presumed fair use). Note however that law and morals 
related to identity theft, slander, etc. means you can't say you wrote 
it or alter it in such a way as to indicate I wrote the altered version.


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