Computer Ethics, Spring 2011
Corboy 301 (moved from soc 013)
Readings
Read all of chapter 1 and the first three sections of chapter 4, especially:
cellphone case-study in 1.2.2
ATM case study of change brought by technology in 1.3.1
What is ethics? 1.4.1
What is intellectual property?: §4.1.1
Eisner (below)
Michael Eisner's June 2000 statement to Congress (edited, from
Halbert & Ingulli 2004).
Are we owed money when someone takes our idea? http://xkcd.com/827.
Who is copyright for?
Here's another take on the two options discussed previously:
- Musicians have a fundamental right to profit from their work
and creativity, and copyrights enable this right. Music copyrights are
about protecting a basic form of ownership to which musicians are
entitled.
- Music copyrights are there simply as a pragmatic gesture to
encourage musicians, so there will continue to be music for all of us
to enjoy. Music copyrights are about our future self-interest.
Despite the apparently clear distinction between fundamental duty and
pragmatism here, it can be hard to tell.
It might help to think of how we would feel if some relatively minor
component of music copyright -- sheet-music sales, for example, or the
playing of prerecorded music at non-profit events -- were to be deleted
from copyright coverage. Such an action would surely not endanger the
music industry as a whole, so if we object, it is more likely that we
feel musicians are entitled to
the fruits of their labor.
Harm again
In the ethical theory below, a common principle is that we should not
harm others. How can we reconcile this with the idea that it may be
entirely fair to business that, through competition, causes someone
else's business to fail. It is also difficult to find fault with a
consumer's decision to stop renting movies from Blockbuster in favor of
online viewing via Netflix, even though this has led to Blockbuster's
current financial difficulties.
One approach here is to say that marketplace harm is usually unintended,
or, at the very least, is impersonal. Even this, though, is sometimes
unclear. As we will see in the I4I v Microsoft patent case, Microsoft
took actions to improve MS Office with the specific intent of converting some of I4I's customers to Office: "We saw [i4i's products] some time
ago and met its creators. Word 11
will make it obsolete..." [reference in the I4I materials, later]
Another idea is that we're all doing our best to succeed in the world,
but the ups and downs of individual markets are ineluctable,
unavoidable. We cannot predict them or understand them, and so they are
best understood as driven by external forces. Still, this sidesteps the
fact that, for many people in the business world, they are deliberately
attempting to capture some of their competitors' market share.
Yet another approach is to say that if we out-compete someone, we
haven't really harmed them. Most laid-off workers would probably
disagree, but that does not mean they are right.
The literature on ethics is filled with what are sometimes called
"ethical paradoxes":
The Trolley Problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem)
A trolley
is running out of control down a track. In its path are 5 people who
have been tied to the track. Fortunately, you can flip a switch, which
will lead the trolley down a different track to safety. Unfortunately,
there is a single person tied to that track. Should you flip the switch?
The Cave Problem
A large person is stuck in the mouth of
a cave. His five smaller companions are behind him, inside the cave.
The tide is coming in, and will shortly drown them all. The stuck
person could be removed if he were killed.
Some more (many superficial) examples can be found at http://www.quose.com.
The Trolley and Cave problems seem grimly remote from ordinary
experience.
File-sharing, however, is not, hence makes a more everyday example.
Ethical theory
(often inseparable from Political & Justice theories)
Deontological ethics: (deon
= duty)
Based on the enumeration of fundamental, universal principles.
Immanuel Kant [1724-1804]
Kant's categorical imperative:
all our principles should be Universal;
that is, if it's ok for us, personally, then it must be ok for
everyone. Also, whatever it is must be ok in all contexts, not just
selectively (that is, rules apply universally to people and universally
to acts). We are to choose ethical principles based on this idea of
universality.
This is
close to, but not the same as, the Golden Rule: "do
unto others as you would have them do unto you [Matthew 7:12]"
[NB: is the Bible in the public domain?]; outcome might be the same,
but the Golden Rule doesn't have the explicit notion of universality.
Kant also said that people should not be treated as means to other
goals; they should be the "endpoints" of moral action. Kant also
famously claimed the two principles (universal and non-means) were THE
SAME.
Kant is often regarded as a Moral Absolutist, a stronger position than
deontology necessarily requires.
WD Ross [1877-1971]:
more modern deontologist
consequentialism is wrong; Ross identified "seven duties" we have to
each other:
- fidelity [not lying, keeping promises]
- reparation [making up for accidental
harm to others]
- gratitude
- non-injury [do no intentional
harm others; includes harming their happiness]
- justice [or prevention of harm by others?];
- beneficence [do good to others. How much good?]
- self-improvement [perhaps "taking care of oneself"]
Is this list complete?
But perhaps the biggest problem for deontologists is what do we do when
rules conflict? Ross had a theory for handling this, though it is not clear how effective it was.
Abortion: duty to mother v duty to fetus
This would be the issue
facing someone trying to use
ethics to decide whether to support or oppose a law banning abortion.
Copyright: duty to copyright-holder v duty to society
But the rights of the copyright holder and the rights of society are
largely not in conflict!
What about one's personal duty,
when faced with the choice of downloading music?
Consequentialist ethics
Jeremy Bentham 1749-1832 & John Stuart Mill [1806-1873]:
Consequentialism
(Utilitarianism):
the good is that which brings
benefit to the people (greatest good for greatest number). This is also
sometimes referred to as the "greatest-happiness principle". Another
way to look at it is that it calls us to weigh benefits against harms.
Bentham's original formulation called for maximizing "pleasure" and
minimizing "pain", for society as a whole.
[Bentham apparently believed it was not ok to HARM a minority to benefit
the majority, though this has always been an issue
with Consequentialism. One approach to this problem is to weigh HARM
much more heavily than BENEFIT, but what if the HARM is just to one
person? More on that below.]
Bentham developed an entire legal code based on his theories.
Bentham's version had a problem with justice: is it ok to take the
factory from the owner? (That scenario remains a central obstacle for
consequentialism.)
Mill wrote a book, Utilitarianism.
He was much less flat-consequentialist than Bentham. Bentham thought
all forms of pleasure were comparable; Mill felt some were "better"
than others. Mill also recast the idea as maximizing happiness rather than "pleasure".
Social Contract; Locke,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
We make rules to move from the State of Nature to Civilization. That
is, we agree to social/ethical rules due to their CONSEQUENCES, because
we WANT those consequences.
Law and the Social Contract
Ethics and the Social Contract: Ethics are in our long-term self-interest? (Under the
social contract)
The idea is that if we lie, or cheat or steal, then eventually our
reputation will precede us, and we will end up losing.
Problem: this theory works better for some scenarios than others.
John Rawls [1921-2002]: In
negotiating the Social Contract, everyone must be placed behind the
VEIL OF IGNORANCE, not knowing whether they would be strong or weak,
rich or poor, healthy or sick. (This is often interpreted as "decide on
society before you were born") They would then choose what world they
wanted to live in. What ethical & legal rules do you want in place?
[Usually thought of as a theory of justice, not ethics, but these are
actually pretty closely related.]
How do you think Rawls would vote on health-care reform?
How do you think Rawls would choose between capitalism and socialism?
More on consequentialism
zero-sum consequentialism: The
idea is that, notionally, we score everyone's benefit or damage
numerically, and add them all up. The foremost problem with this
approach is that it accepts solutions in which one person suffers
greatly, but which produces a modest rise in the fortunes of everyone
else. Ursula LeGuin wrote a short science-fiction story on this theme:
"the ones who walk away from Omelas." This is also a theme of William
James in his essay The Moral
Philosopher and the Moral Life.
Look up "omelas" on Wikipedia to find James' quote and a link to the
full essay; the quote itself follows.
Or if the hypothesis were offered us of
a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's utopias
should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one
simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things
should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a specifical and
independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately
feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness
so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when
deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain? - William James
min/max consequentialism:
goal is to choose actions that minimize
the harm to those affected most
(to minimize the worst case, ie to minimize the maximum). Example:
taxes; everyone pays a share and social progress is thereby funded.
disinterested-person
consequentialism:
To decide for or against a rule using consequentialist reasoning, you
must be a disinterested party: you must NOT stand to gain personally in
any significant way. How does this shift our perspective in the
copyright debate?
act consequentialism:
consider consequences of each individual act separately. Some lies may
thus be
permissible while others may not be. The same would apply to music
downloading: music from some bands might be fair game. But how do you
decide?
rule consequentialism: use
consequences of hypothetical actions to formulate broad rules. For
example, we ask if we are better off tolerating lying or not; we might
then arrive at the broad conclusion that lying is not helpful to
society, and we would apply it in every case. Rule consequentialism
generally fares better under critical analysis than act
consequentialism, but there is a difficulty with how broadly the rules
should be interpreted. Is your rule that "lying is always wrong"? Or is
it that "lying when someone will be hurt is wrong"? Or "lying is wrong
even if no one is hurt, if by lying I gain something I would not
otherwise receive"??
"the ends justify the means"
This position is based on the consequentialist argument that sometimes
it's ok to lie (the means), because in those special cases (eg not
hurting people's feelings, protecting the innocent) the ends are
clearly an overall good. However, in general consequentialism requires
us to take into consideration the full consequences of the means (as well as the ends), in
which case harsh or inappropriate means might be discarded as
unacceptable.
Famous examples:
Compare justifications of lying
Utilitarian: may be ok in some cases
Act Utilitarianism: very
case-by-case:
Lying to Joe during the job interview: WRONG
Lying to Bob about our having borrowed his car: maybe
Lying to Mary about where we were last Saturday: sure!
Rule Utilitarianism: by category
"Lying to
friends" may be a category that is always wrong.
Or should the category be "Lying to Anyone"?
Deontological theories: Lying Is Wrong. Always. Even to save
refugees from the Nazis.
Kant: no moral issue should EVER be decided on a case-by-case basis
Compare approaches to criminal punishment
Utilitarian: pragmatic; jail is for rehabilitation
Deontological: jail is for punishment
Which approach do we take in current societal discourse?
"Natural right to property" is mostly a deontological notion: Locke's
idea that people had a natural right to the product of their work did
not have societal economic benefits as its justification. However, it is rather easy to defend property
rights with a utilitarian argument.
Constitutional language re copyright is CLEARLY focused on overall
benefit to society (utilitarian)
Many laws -- at least the regulatory sort -- are largely
utilitarian (criminal laws can be very deontological, but even there it
is seldom as clear as what the politicians say). Note, though, that
some aspects
of free speech / freedom of religion make these out to be "fundamental
rights" in a deontological sense.
Some alternatives and special cases
Sweat or have not
A common notion among casual observers of the file-sharing issue is
that you're not entitled to anything if you didn't pay for it. Faulkner
says this well (if floridly) in The Hamlet:
He saw in this second flagrant
abrogation of the ancient biblical edict (on which he had established
existence, integrity, all), that man must sweat or have not, the same embattled moral point which he had fought singly and collectively with his five children....
This is probably a reference to Genesis 3:19: by the sweat of your brow you will eat food..., that is, food and things like it will not come freely, but will require labor.
If I eat your food, you go hungry. If I listen to your music, however, you still have it.
The more serious point is that many would argue that at least some
ideas are indeed part of our common heritage, and some would include
music in this category. Another perspective is that copyright is simply
not physical property, but rather a government-issued grant made solely
to encourage new production, and so biblical views on property are not intended to apply.
Aretaic Ethics
From greek "Arete", virtue or excellence
Important thing is not duties or consequences but one's character. If
you have the right character,
you will be led to ethical action
naturally. [Not mentioned in Baase]
Rights Theory
We all have certain inalienable rights, and the
goal of ethics should
be to preserve these. Note that this is different from duties. Locke's
"natural rights" comes from this perspective. Rights-theory ethics
says, basically, that ethics is about respecting other peoples rights.
Do other people have a right
not to be misled?
Liberties and claim rights: (Baase)
Liberties
(sometimes called negative rights) are rights "to act without
interference"; others SHOULD NOT interfere with these. Examples:
- right to life
- right to (physical) property
- freedom of speech
- right to hire your own attorney
- right to play the music we buy???
Claim rights (positive rights): rest of us have to take measures to
ENABLE your right.
- right to be provided with an attorney (compare liberty version of
this)
- right to an education
- right to have our copyrighted content protected by the government
Sometimes these are in conflict. Claim rights put an obligation on
the rest of us to GIVE UP something, likely something to which we have
a liberty-right.
Rights-theory ethics is probably more commonly about liberties than
claim rights, but both are involved. Note that with liberties, our ethical obligations are to
preserve the liberty-rights of others.
Basis for Property rights
John Locke [Baase, p 33]: Is copyright a PROPERTY right?
"Natural"
rights: special case of liberties (negative rights), like life &
liberty. These are fundamental obligations we have to one another.
"Utilitarian" rights: rights that we grant each other for
improved social function; NOT necessarily the same as claim rights
The Constitution places IP in the latter category.
Religion
How does religion figure into ethics?
Are moral laws simply commandments from God, or does God give us reasons for understanding moral quandaries?
10 commandments: very deontological. They are fundamental duties, and
they are expressed as universals.
613 Mitzvot of the Torah: some of these are less universal (though that
is clearly not their point).
Golden Rule [Matthew 7:12]:
"do
unto others as you would have them do unto you"
See also "though shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" [Leviticus 19:18]
This is closer to consequentialist than to deontological, but still
different. It does identify a duty in how we treat others, but any
actual details of how we are to carry out this duty are grounded in
pragmatism: how we would feel
if our action were to be applied to us.
Some people call the golden rule "reciprocity ethics". However,
arguably the rule's real meaning is as a way of understanding how to
treat others, even if they do not reciprocate.
The Golden Rule is closely associated with Jesus, but the Jewish
scholar Hillel the Elder, supposedly born 110 BC but also supposedly
overlapping with Jesus, gave the
following as the core teaching of the Torah:
That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.
Hillel probably said this sometime between 30 BC and 10 AD; a
similar formulation appears in the noncanonical biblical books Tobit
and Sirach. This is similar to the Golden Rule; however, note that
Hillel's formulation is more like
"do not do unto
others what you would not have
them do unto you"
This formulation is
sometimes referred to as the Silver
Rule.
The prophet Muhammad also said something similar: Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you.
[The
Farewell Sermon, 632
AD].
Some ethicists have felt that the Silver Rule is a clearer statement of our
moral obligation to one another, rooted in the underlying principle
that we should not harm others [except of course by competing fairly with them in business].
The latter was clearly expressed by the time of ancient Athens (~500
BC).
Note that the Silver Rule really states "do no harm"; the part about
"what you would not have them do unto you" is really about defining what harm is (that is, it's
harmful if you think it would be harmful to you).
Similarly, the Golden Rule might be shortened to "do good", where good
is defined as what you would want done, but this analogy isn't quite as
exact.
The Golden Rule might be seen as requiring us to give actively to
others, beyond merely not harming them. It is not always interpreted
this way, though.
The underlying "reciprocity principle" of ethics has come up many
times. It is closely tied to the Social Contract theory of ethics.
The Golden Rule has been widely criticized as not providing much of a
way to find out whether others in fact want
to be treated the same way you want to be treated. However, if it is
applied primarily to the "big picture" issues of fairness and
consideration, these objections have less strength.
Professional ethics
Law: lawyers have a legal AND ethical responsibility to take their
client's side!
This can mean some behavior that would be pretty dicey in other
circumstances.
Corporations: have a legal AND ethical responsibility to look after
shareholders' financial interests.
This is not to say that a lawyer or a corporation might not have other
ethical obligations as well.
Wrong v Harm
Not everything that is harmful is wrong.
Example: business competition.
If someone builds a better mousetrap, and you copy their invention,
undersell them, and drive them out of business, many would say that was
wrong. However, if you invent your own mousetrap, even better than
theirs, and still drive them out of business, few would say that was
wrong (and those few would probably own lots of cats).
Not everything that is wrong is harmful:
Hackers used to argue
that it was ok to break into a computer system as long as you did
no harm. While there are some differences of opinion on this, most
people who were broken into felt differently.
Law v Ethics (p 37)
Laws:
implement moral imperatives
implement, enforce, and fund rights
fund services
establish conventions (eg Uniform Commercial Code)
special interests
How do we decide what rules OTHERS should follow?
(Quite unrelated to how we decide what rules we ourselves follow.)
Ethical Relativism: it's up to
the individual [or culture]. "Moral values are relative to a particular
culture and cannot be judged outside of that culture" [LM Hinman, Ethics, Harcourt Brace 1994]. Hinman
is speaking of "cultural ethical
relativism";
a related form is "individual ethical relativism",
sometimes called ethical subjectivism. That is, it's all up to you
personally.
Does ethical relativism help at all with deciding questions facing you?
See Baase, p 32, under Natural Rights:
One approach we might
follow is to let people (or cultures) make their own decisions. This
approach has less meaning in the context of deciding how we should act
personally. It is very attractive because (at first glance, at least),
it is nonjudgmental, seems to
promote tolerance, and seems to recognize that each of us arrive at our
ethical positions via our own path.
Relativism has, however, some serious problems.
First, it doesn't actually provide much help in making decisions about
moral issues; it is more of a commandment not to criticize others.
Second, we often don't really believe in moral relativism. Example:
murder/genocide; do we really mean that this is would be ok in Darfur
if the Sudanese culture accepts it? The Nazi culture (at least the
culture of higher party members) accepted genocide; do we really want
to stick with relativism here?
Finally, the central claim of relativism is that it is wrong to criticize the ethical principles of others.
This in itself is an absolute
(non-relative) statement, and as such is self-contradictory!
The utilitarians and Kantians seem to suggest that part of an ethical
theory is how it affects everyone;
that is, it's not just up to you.
Intellectual Property revisited
Some references in
Baase illustrating that "Intellectual Property" is indeed a special
case and not just an instance of physical property. For physical
property, once we buy it there are no further strings.
p 199:
When we buy a movie on digital video disk (DVD), we are
buying one copy with the right to watch it but not to play it in a
public venue or charge a fee. [license/copyright strings attached]
p 200: five copyright rights [would these ever apply to physical
property?]
- make copies
- produce derivative works (except parodies); includes translations
- distribution of copies
- performance in public
- display to the public
p 201 [is the future of the laws on physical property in doubt?]
Nicholas Negroponte: "Copyright law will disintegrate"
founder, MIT Media Lab
founder, One Laptop Per Child; goal: $100 laptop
Pamela Samuelson: "[no they won't]... balanced solutions will be
found"
Cornell Law prof
writes Legally Speaking column in Comm. ACM
Suppose we do agree that songs
are a form of property. Does that
automatically mean we agree on what theft
is? A bit of thought makes it
clear that the answer is no:
traditionally, the point of theft is that
it denies the owner the use of the item. Traditional notions of theft
just don't make sense here.
What about "unauthorized use"? That's a reasonable first approximation,
BUT it opens up a huge can of worms as to what constitutes
"authorization" and what constitutes "use".
Application of deontological/utilitarian analysis to music file-sharing
Music stakeholders (list from before (simplified)), with an indication
as to how they might fare under file-sharing.
"signed" musicians
|
lose
|
"indie" musicians
|
gain
|
recording industry
|
lose big
|
stores & distributors
|
??
|
current fans
|
gain
|
future fans
|
lose
|
Utilitarian perspective:
probably uses tradeoffs as summarized in the table above.
(might or might not weight recording industry $$$ losses higher than
others.)
Deontological perspective probably would NOT consider these tradeoffs.
signed v indie musicians and copyright
Utilitarian: which scheme is better for which type?
Deontological:
- Do we owe signed musicians the right to decide distribution?
- Do we owe indie musicians the right to an opportunity?
- Could we have both??
A deontological perspective
on copyright
This is surprisingly hard to argue. Some options:
- Before using anyone else's idea (or creative work), we must have
their permission
- We must respect the artist's right to profit from their work
But these raise even more questions. For the first option, what if the
artist wants to put
peculiar limitations on the use of their work, such as no ripping
tracks or no playing tracks in random order or no fast-forwarding? For
the second, "profit", option, do we allow artists to declare retroactive restrictions? Should
every new use
require new permission (probably with new fees)?
Bottom line: copyright is fundamentally about compromise between
artists and society, and it is very hard to discern fundamental duties
that are substantial enough to imply our financial obligation ("respect
the
creative works of others" doesn't necessarily do that).
Deontological perspective:
universal principles: respect for others, fairness, honesty
One approach: downloading is a form of theft. This seems to be where
Eisner was coming from. Does this really work for copyright?
Another approach: "we simply do not have ownership rights to
information" (Stallman, later)
After all, we cannot own slaves either (in the US since 1865)
Kant, the Categorical Imperative, & file sharing: do I really want
file sharing to be ALWAYS ok? If not, I should agree that we have an
obligation not to download at all. But "categoricity" is not the central
point: duty to others is.
Also, is free downloading a form of "using" other people? (Kant was
against that)
On page 227, in the first paragraph in 4.3.5, Baase states
[Copyright infringers] benefit from the
creativity and effort of others without paying for it. To most people,
that seems wrong.
This is as good a statement of any of the idea that the holder of a
copyright is entitled to try to profit
from their work. Note, however, that copyrights do not extend to
several areas where creativity and effort may be expended to come up
with a profit-making strategy: business ideas are not copyrightable and
the general legal opinion is that it is
fair for someone to take someone else's business strategy and run with
it. That is the essence of the free market.
A problem with strict ownership of [musical] rights: social progress
really stalls. We'll
see this later with patents, but entertainment is also based on
incremental development, and one artist's response to others.