[Upd-discuss] Re: "Development", "freedom", and UPD's objectives

[Peter Eckersley]

My own position on this whole question is a little complicated.

Theoretically, I lean towards "consequentialism" that picks one of
objectives and seeks to maximise that.  If that objective was
utilitarian, for example, it would have to account for concerns about the
other objectives indirectly.  Consider negative freedom: a utilitarian
should measure the annoyance we experience when encountering an
unreasonable restraint (RMS and his printer, or any of us with DRM, for
example).  Injustice is of concern not only because lower incentives
decrease intellectual labour but because it can be dispiriting to hear
that someone worked their b**t off to invent something and then some
company ran off with the benefits.  Etc.

I personally believe that negative freedom is of no inherent value
except where its loss indirectly frustrates the other objectives.  

The problem with these theoretical positions is that they're far too
nuanced for most public purposes.  If "welfare" is the sole objective, it
will be measured naively.  "Negative freedom" is either held up as a
good of its own, or it's discarded.

I therefore think that if UPD adopted a position on these issues, it
should include all of these goals explicitly.  I think we should try to
keep an eye on all of them, and encourage other people and institutions
to do likewise.

Perhaps unlike RMS, I don't mind if some of our activities are a little
myopic on these issues, so long as they're not entirely forgotten.
Encouraging very clear thought on the ethics of copyright and patent law
is important, but so is getting out, recruiting people, and showing up
to argue against the ubiquitous IPdroids -- even if our arguments are
sometimes pragmatic.

On Thu, Jul 28, 2005 at 05:02:40PM +1000, Peter Eckersley wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 12:03:14PM -0400, Richard M. Stallman wrote:
> >     What will we answer when someone will demonstrate that there are  
> >     better tools than PD to help developing third-world countries ?
> > 
> > I agree with you that we have to be very careful when we cite
> > development as the justification for copyright or patent law.  It's a
> > possible benefit, but we can't judge them solely by their benefits,
> > we have to consider the price society pays for them too.
> > 
> > My response would be that "help" is not defined just in economic terms,
> > and that people in these countries deserve respect for their freedom
> > as much as people anywhere else.
> 
> This is an important philosophical position which could have some subtle
> but not entirely trivial consequences for the kinds of copyright and
> patent policies which UPD aims to promote.
> 
> There are different objectives which one can regard to be of fundamental
> ethical importance, and which thereby become standards against which we
> should judge policy proposals in areas such as copyright and patent law.
> 
> Four important examples of those objectives are (1) `welfare' or
> `utility', (2) justice, (3) negative freedom and (4) positive freedom.
> There are others, of course -- such as `knowledge' or `development' -- but
> this email will be long enough as is.  It may be of value to UPD to have
> some kind of charter or statement setting out where it stands on the
> relationship between ethical goals, because discussions about them have
> affected the Board's ability to make quick decisions on our activities
> and public statements.
> 
> I'll say a minimal amount about each of the four objectives:
> 
> 1. `Welfare' or `utility' is a widely promoted goal of policy.  This
> position, called utilitarianism, is supposed to generalise from our
> intuitions about happiness and fulfilment.  Some argue that economics
> has twisted these concepts by usually defining them as `giving
> people what they want'.  In any case, a utilitarian analysis of
> copyright and patent law would give users far more rights than they
> presently enjoy, but tends not to raise in-principle objections to
> surrendering some rights if users (for example) end up with a
> net-benefit in the amount and quality[*] of software they use or books
> they read.
> 
> [*] the ability to modify software clearly increases its quality at
> least for those with hacking resources
> 
> 2. Justice is one of the strongest philosophical justifications for
> relatively strong copyright and patent laws.  We could pinch a
> concept from Rawls to define justice by asking what we would like to
> happen if we placed ourselves in a random person's shoes.  If I were
> Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I would very much like my efforts to be rewarded
> by the royalty cheques that plucked him out of poverty.  I might want
> that enough to surrender the higher price of his books, were I a reader.
> Of course, justice still gives many grounds to criticise TRIPs or the
> major music industry because of the injustices they visit upon the
> poor/information-poor and musicians respectively.
> 
> 3. `Negative freedom' is the freedom from restraints.  This is the kind of
> freedom that RMS has argued should have an essential place in our
> policies.  In this theory, it may be bad to have someone stop you from
> modifying or copying something, even if your use of that freedom is
> only rare and slightly beneficial in terms of utility or knowledge gained.  
> 
> 4. `Positive freedom' is the practical ability to do things.  Positive
> freedoms can be harmed by negative restraints, but only to the extent
> that a person would have used them anyway.  Positive freedoms also
> depend on what resources one has.  So it might sometimes be good to have
> piece of proprietary software created if the extra choices it gives are
> valuable to people AND it does not suppress others' choices by,
> for example, locking up protocols and file formats.
> 
> It might be good for UPD to have some brief set of principles which give
> us at least an implicit way of balancing these objectives.  I'll put
> my 2 cents about what that might be in a separate email.  But I guess
> the main point is that it would be great if some consensus could develop
> on the upd-discuss list around such a statement.
> 
> -- 
> Peter Eckersley
> Department of Computer Science   &                  mailto:pde@cs.mu.oz.au 
> IP Research Institute of Australia             http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~pde
> The University of Melbourne               

-- 
Peter Eckersley
Department of Computer Science   &                  mailto:pde@cs.mu.oz.au 
IP Research Institute of Australia             http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~pde
The University of Melbourne