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

[Peter Eckersley]

Replying to this part of the email is definitely getting caught in
open-ended philosophical discussion, but I can't help myself :)

On Fri, Jul 29, 2005 at 11:34:08PM -0400, Richard M. Stallman wrote:
>       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.
> 
> This "utilitarian analysis" assumes that what matters is the "amount
> and quality" of software: that freedom itself counts for nothing.  So
> you would take away my freedom and hand me a large amount of
> high-quality proprietary software, covered by licenses I would refuse
> to sign, so I wouldn't use them at all.

In which case, the utilitarian analysis was too naive.  A wise
utilitarian would consider that many people have in-principle objections
to restrictive licenses, as well as the many other factors that have
contributed to the successes of free software.  And if some of those
people get angry about restrictions, that must be counted too (it would
have to include all the code you didn't write because you were working
on policy, for example :).  Personally, I believe that if a thorough
utilitarian analysis was conducted, it would recommend some
kind of public funding system, like the ones that we've dicussed on
other occasions.

I also believe that if a utilitarian oracle was given the narrow choice
between the present system and no copyright/patent/EULA restrictions on
software at all, it would favour the latter.

But a utilitarian might conceivably favour some very narrow restrictions
on freedom (such as allowing a 3-5 year exclusive right over binaries,
provided that source code was deposited in a public repository) over no
restrictions at all.  Such a system could even be good for
free-software-only users, because of the extra free software that would
appear a few years after it was released in a proprietarian fashion.

But all of this is a nice illustration of why utilitarianism is more
sensible in theory than in practice.  It's very hard to know how to apply
it correctly.  It's hard to figure out what to put into the analysis, and
very hard to calculate the tradeoffs.

> 
> A crucial characteristic of real freedoms is that it makes sense to
> give the same freedom to everyone.  However, only a system of extreme
> communism would give everyone the same wealth.  Thus, these "positive
> freedoms" don't correspond at all to our ideas of human rights.  They
> have nothing to do with freedom.  Let's call a spade a spade, and call
> this "wealth".

I think there are some important differences.  

The degree of a positive freedom is not only determined by wealth but
also by fair distribution of that wealth, by "negative" freedom from
restrictions, and by the presence of knowledge and ability.

As for human rights, some of them appear to correspond closely
to negative freedoms (such freedom of political thought and organisation)
while others are exclusively positive (the right to education).

I agree that the words "positive" and "negative" are confusing in this
context but I didn't invent that jargon.  Perhaps if better words were
used, these concepts would be more widely recognised outside of a few
academic disciplines.

-- 
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