[A2k] Users' rights

[Seth Johnson]

I think "users" is at least an advance beyond "consumer."

Remember that regardless of their falling short in some ways, this is
still a new administration (in the US) and so you are still in a
position of being able to take the initiative in unexpected ways that
can delineate things.

I say this because something that strikes me that would handle all
concerns really well would be to call it "information users' rights."

Get away from the work as a static whole, let the context clarify that
the information you're speaking of is the information that comprises the
work, and audaciously use the term "information users' rights."  You can
disregard the grumblings that will arise and just welcome in the
transformed context.

It seems to me that this is a good moment to all-innocent-like raise the
fact/expression dichotomy point.  The implications will be huge, but
undeniable at bottom.  You're already in with the A2K initiative; just
take this step and you induce all the right discussion.  The dismay
won't matter.  The point will be scored and you'll be all set to play a
new game that's all about the right concepts.

And you get to see what this administration has to say about this.  They
haven't been posed with this analysis yet, and it will take the
discourse back to the terms of (was it the Green Paper or the White
Paper?  Or both?).

:-)


Seth

-----Original Message-----
From: Federico Heinz <fheinz@vialibre.org.ar>
To: James Love <james.love@keionline.org>
Cc: "A.C.Story" <A.C.Story@kent.ac.uk>, Janice Pilch
<pilch@illinois.edu>, "a2k@lists.essential.org" <a2k@lists.essential.org>
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:54:59 -0300
Subject: Re: [A2k] Users' rights

> On 29/06/2009, James Love wrote:
> > I think it is appropriate to set out rights for different
> stakeholders,
> > without having to prove in all cases that the rights meet a
> particular
> > standard used for human rights.
>
> That was not my point. I was agreeing with Alan in the idea that
> thinking in
> terms of "limitations and exceptions" is a problem, and only pointing
> out that
> "user's rights" may not be the best alternative because it bolsters
> an
> artificial creator/consumer dichotomy.
>
> I realize that "human rights" has its own problems, because it is
> usually
> interpreted in a narrow sense as defined by the Human Rights
> declaration,
> that's why I offered "people's rights", but there are probably better
> alternatives which I am too stupid to think of.
>
> 	Fede
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