Slashdot Mirror
Facebook, Google, and Intellectual Property
Scott Jaschik sends us to Inside Higher Ed, where a librarian explains why the tradeoffs we're facing with social networking sites — e.g. privacy vs. a space to build one's personal "brand" — echo issues faced years ago by academics who publish in journals that their institutions' libraries can not then afford. The author argues that, as the Open Access movement is busily restructuring academic publishing, we need to find a way of retaining the personal value to the individual of social networking and Web 2.0 sites, and not allow that value to be eclipsed by the commercial worth of the data the sites obtain about us. In the author's view, the tension is in "...the fundamental relationship between the individual's desire to share their thoughts and experiences with others and the commercial entities that provide the distribution channel for that act of sharing."
>>or for free if they're willing to put up with ads on their pages.
;)
Or completely free with no ads whatsoever http://pages.google.com/
Perhaps I am misinterpreting the article. I thought TFA was about a person (or persons) in academia (or whatever) being able to openly (freely as in beer) share their research; which is in opposition to the journals that publish the cream-of-the-crop and then hide the research away from the rest of the world (including possibly the authors). This seems a little out of whack, but it's how it's been for years. There should be a reversal--research needs to be available. If the author(s) institute cannot even afford the journal subscription, something is wrong. How would I as an individual get access to research?
How we know is more important than what we know.
I certainly espouse the ideals of human rights, but the gp points out that these rights are only as strong as any given government's will to protect them. Not only that, but it is possible to read this sort of protection as imposition (see the problems with Islamic head-scarfs in secular countries such as the Netherlands and Turkey).
I also disagree that the content of certain human rights spring up spontaneously. What we know as human rights is a Western import, and thus inspired by Christianity (not even stemming from Greco-Roman philosophy, which had no concept of the universal rights of human beings, only citizens).
I do believe that what we consider human rights are simply the embodiment of a 'beneficial' swing in the movement of what Nietzsche called the will to power. I mean (to put in the least technical language possible): the strongest wins, and luckily (for us) the winning side espouses human 'rights' that concur with our opinions, which is only natural because these our the basis of our culture.
This is not entirely true--the first declaration of human rights was written by a Zoroastrian, not a Christian.
That empire was the first in the world to guarantee liberty and religious freedom, and was not again matched until much, much later. (The legal abolition of slavery in any empire would not be repeated again until the 2nd millenium AD, to my knowledge.)
There is a compelling case to be made that Christianity gave birth to capitalism, which in turn spawned democracy and legal recognition of human rights. (Rodney Stark's book The Victory of Reason is perhaps the flagship of this philosophy.) And while Christian theologians certainly touched on the idea of natural rights, as afforded by the Creator, their integration into legal systems occurred in Islamic empires before they did in the Christian world.
It is very interesting, though, that you can directly trace the concept of human rights to monotheistic religion. Ultimately the doctrine of free will is the precursor to any philosophical recognition of human rights, and Zoroastrianism and Christianity are perhaps the two religions that focus most heavily on free will. (Personally I believe Islam does too, but the theology surrounding human will vs. God's will inspired a very fatalistic bend to modern Islam, which is unfortunate.)
You CANNOT know what I will say next. Therefore until YOU shut me down physically, I can say anything I want. If you cannot force me through raw power I CAN say whatever I want.
Therefore it takes an effort to stop me saying what I want.
That says "natural right" to me.
"IP" however, requires force to make exist. That's not a natural right. That's an enforcement of a right.