foessmei@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (Reinhard Foessmeier) (04/07/89)
In his message of Wed Apr 5, Jeff Daiell <jeffd@ficc.uu.net> comments on the "Perspectives of a New Communicational Morality ..." (H. Frank), posted by me. I feel that my posting about Frank's theses were a little misleading, and failed to convey the meaning of the original article. I shall therefore comment on some of your statements from my knowledge of Frank's whole paper. > Whoa! Bookburning time again! Big Brother is going to protect > us against things we don't need to and shouldn't -- in *his* > opinion, of course -- know. > Aside from being authoritarian and elitist (Lyndon LaRouche rides > again!), this is sheer sophistry. Material pollution violates > people's rights, in that there is no choice involved. But every > individual has the option of whether to watch TV, switch on the > radio, buy any given publication. To be perfectly -- well, > "frank", about it, Just Say No To Censorship. I could not agree more to your last sentence, and I am sure so would prof. Frank. I am a little in doubt about the "option of whether to watch TV ..." -- I am, e.g., somewhat concerned about those channels that broadcast cartoons all day long -- are you sure all parents resist the temptation to leave their children in front of the TV set when they are busy? Certainly that "option" is a bit restricted in the case of children. And certainly it has become difficult to avoid certain channels of information, so-called "obtrusive" information. Frank says in his article: ".. liberals may demand the right to damage or destroy themselves by poisonous pharmaceutical drugs. I do not oppose this demand... ... liberals may demand the right to stupefy themselves by soul-destroying cultural drugs. I do not oppose this demand. Yet we should all demand protection against an *obtrusive* effort to familiarize us to soul-destroying information flooding, and protection from an *inevitable* informational molestation." (*...* emphasized by me) |>2. The development of international scientific communication with the goal of |> future advances is more important than short-sighted, frantic acceleration |> of present advances in any special branch. In a nutshell: Advances for |> future communication are more important than communication of present |> advances. ["Maxim of the priority of the communication process"] > I'm not convinced the two are incompatible -- but if they are, > who decides which is more important? And how is that enforced? They are not mutually exclusive -- the term was "priority". And it is not enforced, it is discussed, and anybody can make his choice. For instance, learning a foreign language takes some time that cannot be used for scientific research, yet it will enable us to communicate our results to a larger community and possibly avoid the same work to be done over again in another country. Doesn't that seem obvious? > Several thoughts here. First: *again*, we have to listen to the > old mind/body dichotomy crap? That is, in this case, once again > the nonsense that there's a difference between intellectual > property and material property? That while people have a right > to the fruits of their manual labor, they don't have a right to > the fruits of their mental labor? Of course there *is* a difference between intellectual and material property -- if I steal the first one, you still have got it, if I steal the other, you don't. That is, information can be *copied*, while matter cannot. I agree with you that people have a right to the fruits of their mental labour, and that copyright is a way to ensure they do get it -- the question is, is it the only way? Copyright as we know it, has some drawbacks; if I publish a book in a "Western" country, there may be a lot of people in the world who could never afford that book, yet they cannot reprint it in their country because of copyright. Yes, I see there would be the danger that third-world reprints would be smuggled into the original country and sweep the original book from the market -- t'if there were no problems, we'd need no discussion. But does this mean we cannot consider it? Apart from that, copyright has been weakened by photocopiers, and to protect software against copying is really a nightmare -- could it be in the interest of authors that we are discussing alternatives? > Second, note that Numbers 1 and 3 seem to be contradictory. > First, Datafuhrer Frank wants to protect us from too much > information for our poor little untermenschen minds to handle -- I think the above remarks cleared up this misunderstanding. > Fourth - uh, is Datafuhrer Frank trying to tell us that material > communism has worked well enough to be a role model that > the information sciences should adopt? If so, what planet > is he living on? Material communism has meant poverty, > oligarchy, mass murder, brutal repression -- the list goes > on. Is *that* what he wants the software field to emulate? It is hard to argue against such a flood of emotions -- please note that I was not yet alive when my country was ruled by the "Fuehrer". You may have a look at the field of scientific research, where information is free (and people get paid from funds). This is a limited form of informational commun-ism; it is widespread practice in many countries (including God's own country), and I don't think this practice has restricted the efficiency of scientific research. > I'll defend Herr Frank's right to support authoritarian > elitism. But count on me to oppose any attempts to > implement it. I call elitism the attitude of those among my colleages that think those who speak and publish in English are worth more than the rest of us. (This is not directed against you as a native speaker of English; o es Ud de Tejas?:-) Frank is speaking in favour of equal linguistic rights, and I cannot see any elitism in his maxims. > I hope anyone who gets a chance to contribute to this "international > discussion" points out that Datafuhrer Frank's positions do not > represent a "new communicational morality", but a very old, very > tired immorality: Big Brother Knows Best -- and I hope contributors > will work against such abominations. The "chance" to contribute is there, and you have taken it! In my opinion, Frank's theses are anti-Big-Brother, but this is just an opinion. -- Reinhard F\"ossmeier, Technische Univ. M\"unchen | "Matena horo foessmeier@infovax.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de | estas plena je kapdoloro" [ { relay.cs.net | unido.uucp } ] | (Zamenhof)
lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) (04/10/89)
From article <784@infovax.lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de>, by foessmei@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (Reinhard Foessmeier): " " In his message of Wed Apr 5, Jeff Daiell <jeffd@ficc.uu.net> comments ... " > ... To be perfectly -- well, " > "frank", about it, Just Say No To Censorship. " " I could not agree more to your last sentence, and I am sure so would " prof. Frank. I am a little in doubt about the "option of whether to " watch TV ..." -- I am, e.g., somewhat concerned about those channels that " broadcast cartoons all day long -- are you sure all parents resist " the temptation to leave their children in front of the TV set when " they are busy? You're fooling yourself. You say you're against censorship, then in the next sentence say that you're uncertain as to whether censorship ought to be imposed on TV cartoons. Do you think censorship is ok just so long as one does not mention the word? " ... so-called "obtrusive" information. No -- as I read further I see you think that censorship is ok for public information, you're just against censorship of information passed between consenting adults. Right? A plausible extension of many people's views about obscenity. But let's do call things by their right names. Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu
ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) (04/12/89)
In article <784@infovax.lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de> foessmei@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (Reinhard Foessmeier) writes: >Of course there *is* a difference between intellectual and material >property -- if I steal the first one, you still have got it, >if I steal the other, you don't. That is, information can be *copied*, >while matter cannot. This is a fairly common line of argument, and while I've always felt uneasy about it, I only just saw the fallacy. The fallacy is the unstated assumption that the only value in having a piece of "intellectual property" resides in HAVING it. But that's clearly wrong. In order to run Scribe, for example, I need to have a copy of Scribe, and I need to have a licence for Scribe. The value _to_me_ of Scribe is being able to use it. But for all I know to the contrary, Unlogic may use Troff or LaTex internally. The value of Scribe _to_them_ lies in having control of copying. As soon as someone makes a copy of the Scribe sources and starts making new executables and giving them away, they no longer have that control. That is, the person who steals that copy HAS permanently deprived them of the real source of value. To make this as clear as I can, we have a product which runs on /370s. We have not got a /370. The value _to_us_ of a copy of our program which would run on a /370 is thus rather small. What _is_ of value to us is the fact that we can make and sell such copies at will, and nobody else can. If somebody made an unauthorised copy of our source code, we would have lost that completely, and in the absence of enforced copyright laws our only hope would be customer loyalty. (To avoid misunderstanding, we do test the /370 product. We just have no _other_ use for /370 cycles, and thus no /370 of our own. That's no criticism of /370s.) Even with material property, the value isn't always in _having_ the thing but is sometimes in _controlling_ it. Some conservation societies, for example, buy land which would otherwise have been put to unwise use. The value to them of their ownership is not in being able to do things with the land, but in being able to _prevent_ certain things being done.
rupley@arizona.edu (John Rupley) (04/13/89)
In article <985@quintus.UUCP>, ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: > Even with material property, the value isn't always in _having_ the > thing but is sometimes in _controlling_ it. Some conservation societies, > for example, buy land which would otherwise have been put to unwise use. > The value to them of their ownership is not in being able to do things > with the land, but in being able to _prevent_ certain things being done. What a magnificent idea! THE SOFTWARE CONSERVANCY Monies donated to the Conservancy could be used to protect certain software from use by the public (and by symmetry, the public from use of such software). Which software? The mind boggles! MSDOS, of course. All editors, except your favorite? All ``ls'' options, except those you use? Jerry Pournelle? and whatever deep dark desires......... John Rupley rupley!local@megaron.arizona.edu
ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) (04/13/89)
In article <10212@megaron.arizona.edu> rupley@arizona.edu (John Rupley) writes: >In article <985@quintus.UUCP>, ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: >> Even with material property, the value isn't always in _having_ the >> thing but is sometimes in _controlling_ it. > >What a magnificent idea! > THE SOFTWARE CONSERVANCY >Monies donated to the Conservancy could be used to protect certain >software from use by the public (and by symmetry, the public from use of >such software). No, the conservation societies are not attempting to protect the land from use by the public, nor the public from the existence of the land. What they are trying to do is prevent _legal_ but _destructive_ use of the land. That was the point of my metaphor: a conservation society which is trying to protect a nature reserve is usually delighted to let hikers and biologists have access to the land; what they want to do is prevent strip-mining or clear-felling or the like. The value of title to the land to such a society (would that more could _afford_ such an approach) is not in keeping absolutely everyone out for all time, but in letting people in for some purposes but not others. Thus the software analogy is someone who wants to make a program _available_ to some people but not others. For example, when I was studying at Edinburgh I posted a free implementation of the UNIX strings library (all V7 + Sys5 functions plus several more) to net.sources, asking that it not be used for military purposes. I wish I had thought of GNU-style copylefts back then, be sure I would have used one. (Not that it would have stopped anyone, but it might have made them think a bit.) Ironically, the whole of Richard Stallman's scheme would fall to the ground if it weren't for the fact that the rest of the country believe that becuase it's the FSF's property the FSF have the right to set the conditions under which it may be used.