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GPL Hard to Enforce?
the-dark-kangaroo writes "The GPL may be difficult to enforce due to a lack of clarity over who owns the copyright to the software, according to a legal expert.
Lucie Guibault, an assistant professor of intellectual-property law at the Institute for Information Law in Amsterdam, said at the Holland Open Software Conference in Amsterdam, that the GPL should clarify who is the author of the software to ensure that open source software distributed under this licence receives legal protection."
Actually I woul argue just the opposite. It is most definatly unethical to try and keep knowledge secret just to maintain your economic superiority. After all letting them have the knowledge (assuming it is only economiclly usefull and not militarily) is in and of itself no skin off your back and the fact that it stops you from exploiting them in return for this knowledge or its fruits is irrelevant.
As an analogy suppose you were visiting a poor diabetic for dinner. On your way in you scan the room trying to memorize everything you see as you have trained yourself to do at great effort because you often find it gives you an advantage. In so doing you spot his insulin hiding out of the way under a pillow. After dinner his blood sugar shoots up and he can't find his insulin. Now you could demand to garnish his already small wages in return for telling him where the insulin is hiding. After all you did make an investment to gain this information and it isn't your fault he lost the insulin. However it would still be morally wrong to do so.
In general when helping someone costs you very little and aids them greatly you have a moral obligation to help. This is just as true when the other person is in another country as when they are in your neighborhood. Furthermore it is hard to think of an example where the benefit is potentially so great relative to the cost. The information itself costs nothing and at worst we improve the standard of living in these other countries and lose our supply of cheap labour (more likely though everyone gains because as these countries become rich they too produce scientific and engineering knowledge). Conversely this information offers the possibility for these countries to pull out of poverty and go from horrible suffering to a comfortable existance.
Finally, why should countries be the relevant units? Why is it that other americans should have the right to this knowledge but not Indians or Iraqis? Is there something special that makes americans more worthy?
Sure you might reply it matters because it is the result of US scientists (which isn't even necesserily true). However, this doesn't answer anything. Why isn't it the children of all scientists who should have the right to this information, or perhaps only the people in the state it was discovered? Or if you want to make the taxpayer funding argument shouldn't only the rich be given access, the poor after all are on net recieving resources from the government and hence can't be said to be funding the research.
The choice of countries as the relevant group of people who should benefit is merely a selfish choice or just an emotional one. We do it out of warm feelings of nationalism or because this lets us extract the most money from other groups. However, it is morally irrelevant and wrong. There is no relevant moral difference between someone born 100feet south of the US-Mexico border and one born 100feet north.
I understand that we all get used to and expect a certain quality of life. We start feeling we deserve this high paying (relative to other countries) job or such a good salary. However, if your salary drops by half you still have hospitals to treat you, indoor plumbing, water, police, fire, a TV, radio, and cellphone (though less minutes). Allowing this sort of information and jobs to migrate to the third world makes the difference for them between abject poverty and a minimal level of comfort and health. If you really believe all men are made equal the fact you were born an american can't mean you deserve these things and they don't, who your parents were shouldn't make a difference. So it is clear the only moral thing to do is not try and block this flow of expertise and jobs.
Of course we should implement a massive government insurance scheme so that one segment of society is not bearing the brunt of this cost alone but this is a topic for another day.