Computer Ethics, Summer 2012

Corboy Law 602; Tuesdays & Thursdays, 6:00-9:00
Week 1, Class 1

Goals:
Example: is file-sharing stealing, if nobody lost anything?

Overview of some issues:
         

Week 1 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


  
Michael Eisner's June 2000 statement to Congress (edited, from Halbert & Ingulli 2004).


1.4.2: ethical theories
There are two great (classes of) ethical theories:
    1. Deontological: rules-based; we have fundamental duties we owe others
    2. Utilitarian: consequences-based; we establish moral rules for their social utility
    3. Relativism: superficially appealing, but ultimately unsatisfactory

Midterm, final exam, 3 papers

Plagiarism rules: be sure ALL quotations are marked as such, and also cited.

When you write, be sure you organize your points clearly and address the question. Grammar and style count for MUCH less!


§1.3.1: Evaluation of Automatic Teller Machine side-effects
Walter Wriston was CEO of CitiBank in the 1970's when ATMs were then widely deployed in New York City. Wriston was at one point credited with the realization that many if not most New Yorkers actually preferred ATMs to using human tellers; they did not particularly like that form of human contact. [source: newspaper article I read long ago]

Furthermore, ATMs are available when it's convenient for you; many banks still have very limited late hours.

As for unemployment, Baase has data that tell a different story:
    1983   480,000
    1993   301,000    ( this drop was due in part to ATMs)
    2006   600,000   Wow!

As for the electronic trail, that exists equally for teller transactions. If you live in a small town, the ATM is likely to offer greater privacy.

One proposal for addressing ATM crime is to give patrons a "duress PIN", eg their regular PIN backwards. The main reason this has never been implemented is that there appears to be little need for it.


§1.3.2: "Themes"

Why study computer ethics?

1. An opportunity to look at old problems in new setting.

Do old analogies apply? Classic case: copyright. Note that in some sense computing provides a testbed for classical ethics: computing supplies many examples of classical ethical dilemmas in a new context.

2. New rules required as we adapt to new technology. Examples:
3. Varied sources of solutions to new problems. Example: cell phone case study, Section 1.2. Cell phones led to:
4. Global scope of the Internet: good and bad
5. Tradeoffs
    between privacy and convenience. True of computers, true of door locks.
   

Computers are a form of technology. Why do we talk about "computer ethics" but not "automobile ethics" or "aircraft ethics"? (Note that we do talk about medical ethics and biotechnology ethics.)

Ethics
Some people like to distinguish between ethics and morals by saying morals are what we do; ethics is the study of morality, or how we reason about what we do.

Descriptive ethics: what do people actually do
        compare sociology, etc

Normative ethics, or PREscriptive ethics: what SHOULD we do?

Are we going to figure out right and wrong here? No. But we will figure out how to:

Law

What are laws for?



For the last one, note that the goal is to encourage investment. Possibly at the expense of justice! (Think about that one; is that a bad thing?)

(Some people have argued that software patent law fails to provide a "consistent basis for economic activity", in that patent lawsuits are unpredictable to an unusual degree. Other people disagree.)

Sometimes lobbying isn't driven by money. Consider the controversial Illinois anti-eavesdropping law, which according to a Chicago Reader article at http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/chris-drew-art-peddling-law-arrest-illinois-eavesdropping-act-aclu/Content?oid=2448923
may have been intended to ban the recording of police:

And thanks to a 1994 amendment that makes it nearly unique in the nation, [the eavedropping law] doesn't distinguish between public and private conversations....

Part of a 1994 omnibus crime bill sponsored by former Chicago police detective Wally Dudycz, then a northwest side state senator, the amendment was a pointed response to a 1986 case (People v. Beardsley) in which the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that what a cop says during a traffic stop isn't private and therefore can be recorded for use as evidence.

The Seventh Circuit has ruled (May 9, 2012) that the law "likely violates" the First Amendment, and has ordered Cook County to stop enforcing it. See here. Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit, who has spoken in defense of the law, was apparently not on the panel that issued the ruling. The case continues.

CRIMINAL v CIVIL law

What the rules are:
    contracts
    torts (non-contractual obligations)
    criminal law

What is "illegal"? Are copyright violations "illegal"? Usually, something is "illegal" if it involves a violation of criminal law. Defamation (libel/slander), for example, is seldom referred to as "illegal", despite the potential legal consequences. ("illegal" = expressly against the law, "unlawful" = not authorized by law, but implicitly not in compliance)

Actually, as we discuss copyrights, it is worth noting that essentially all infringement is a civil matter, not a crime against the state (ie not "illegal").

legal safeguards for you or your organization
economic consequences of established rules
the "rule of law"

how the law is actually being interpreted

Law and the courts
    Federal:
            Supreme court
            Circuit courts
            District courts

    State courts:
       Note the New York State "Supreme" courts are the ones to hear parking infractions.
    
Judges write opinions, which carry significant weight with other judges.

One of the themes of this course is watching how judges and legislators grapple with complex social changes wrought via technology. Sometimes it seems that the courts, at least, are getting better at this, decade by decade. However, note the following:

Wednesday, January 18, 2012: Wikipedia shut down entirely, and Google made their logo go dark, in protest of the proposed SOPA/PIPA laws. These laws have since gone nowhere.

SOPA and PIPA represent an astonishing degree of technological cluelessness. More below.

File Sharing

First, a clarification: by "file-sharing" I mean the free exchange of .mp3 files (and now video files) on the internet, typically peer-to-peer (because big servers are subject to lawsuits, unless they are offshore). The person uploading the music does not receive compensation, either directly or through advertising. Some file-sharing software is advertising-supported, but that's a separate issue.

recent events on the filesharing front:

Wednesday, January 18, 2012:  SOPA/PIPA protest shutdown

Thursday, January 19, 2012: the FBI shut down megaupload.com, a massive file-sharing site; see http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/19/feds-shut-down-file-sharing-website. However, megadownload.net is still here.

What do you think of these sites?

As for SOPA and PIPA, here are a few highlights (mostly from SOPA):
Google settled sometime in 2011 with the US Dept of Justice for allowing "Canadian pharmacies" to advertise through Google. These sites sold legitimate prescription drugs to Americans at reduced rates, but this turns out to be illegal in the US. However, Google may still list such sites in their search results.

What do you think of laws like PIPA/SOPA? They clearly have the potential to have drastic affects on our ability to upload material or to blog.


If seven million people are stealing, they're not stealing.
      - David Post (Temple Univ Law School) [Sometime around 2000?]
   
What did Dr Post mean by that?


Questions about what you download (from better to worse?)
  1. Is it ok to listen to the radio?
  2. Is it ok to play the radio at a party?
  3. Is it ok to record off the radio? What about TV?
  4. What about downloading lyrics?
  5. What if I already own the CD? (either lyrics or entire tracks)
  6. Is it ok to download music files off the internet?
Most people would probably be ok with all but #6 here. Note that #2 might be construed as illegal if the party were in any way not a "private home affair". One court did rule against #5, in a lawsuit against mp3.com, but one may suspect the court did not really believe mp3.com was properly checking if patrons already owned the CD.

Some of the first early popular sites on the internet were song-lyric repositories. Sometime in the late 90's most of the originals apparently got cease-and-desist letters; one industry-supported site would display the lyrics but wouldn't let you copy or save them, and the display would vanish after ~20 seconds. (Had the developers not been aware of screen-capture?)


Why wasn't the illegal copying of books through photocopying a major issue?

Why wasn't the illegal production of audio cassette tapes (from LPs, radio broadcasts, and live concerts) a major issue?



Now let's expand the previous list to focus on file sharing in the music-CD context.
  1. Is it ok to borrow a friend's physical CD?
  2. Is it ok to give a digital copy of a track to a friend?
  3. Is it ok to give a copy of an entire CD to a friend?
  4. Is it ok to let your friend pay you for the blank disk?
  5. Is it ok if you just met your friend 30 seconds ago, for the sole purpose of selling the cd, and the price also includes a nominal copying charge?
The first three apply as well to iTunes-type digital tracks.

Many people have at least some concerns with #3, though it somewhat depends on who you mean by "friend" (cf #5).

How is online file-sharing different here? Numbers 4 and 5 don't really apply, though what would you say if an online file-sharing service required you to pay the uploading contributors? How different would the profit motive make things?

One classic slippery-slope argument is the Bart & Fat Tony d'Amico scene in Simpsons 8F03, written by John Swartzwelder.

 At work, Fat Tony gives Bart a present, in gratitude for his help with the distribution of smuggled cigarettes.
   
Bart: Uh, say, are you guys crooks?
Tony: Bart, um, is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family?
Bart: No.
Tony: Well, suppose you got a large starving family.  Is it wrong to steal a truckload of bread to feed them?
Bart: Uh uh.
Tony: And, what if your family don't like bread?  They like... cigarettes?
Bart: I guess that's okay.
Tony: Now, what if instead of giving them away, you sold them at a price that was practically giving them away.  Would that be a crime, Bart?
Bart: Hell, no!
Tony: Enjoy your gift.

(Is it legal for me to play this in class?)

One way to look at these slippery slopes is to be very wary of "incremental" arguments in ethics. On the other hand, another view (which we'll come to) is that the real issue with copyright is preserving the musician's ability to earn money, and (perhaps) therefore anything that doesn't actually interfere with that is ok. Which of the items on the list might interfere with the musician's income?


Conflict:

Is downloading the same as theft? DISCUSSION

Software-copying model: people who illegally copy software often would never buy it; they're just "collecting". No sale is lost in these cases.

Lost sales: if you build a better mousetrap, my mousetrap business may lose sales. Lost sales -- or other harm -- is NOT necessarily wrong!!

Keep this "harm is not wrong" idea in mind.


How does shifting from music filesharing (arguably a legitimate fan response, and musicians may make even more money from concerts) to movie filesharing change things?

How the music and movie industries sees it

Make no mistake; many musicians and essentially everyone in the music industry above the level of musicians sees music as a business, and virtually everyone in the movie industry sees it that way. Many people go into music with the express hope of becoming wealthy. While hard data is difficult to come by, I suspect that a majority of those in the music industry believe they have a "natural right" to the music-related content they create.

Bear in mind that there are many people who have had some idea and feel some "ownership rights" to their idea. Many people, for example, feel that they are "entitled" to profit from a business idea they had, or at least are entitled not to have someone else profit off their idea by copying it. Example: the Winklevoss twins and Facebook. Many of these people are simply engaging in wishful thinking.

"Intellectual Property"

[Why am I using quotation marks here?]

Can you own an idea?

What is the LEGAL basis for music protection? Copyright.

Copyright is sometimes referred to as a form of "Intellectual Property" (along with patent rights and some trademark and trade-secret rights). Is there such a thing as "Intellectual Property"?

     Intellectual property is the work-product of the human mind.  [Halbert & Ingulli, CyberEthics, 2004]
        
How about
        
        IDEAS are the work-product of the human mind
        
Can ideas (including music) be property?

What is property? (Legal and social definitions)

"the right of use, control, and disposition" (topics.law.cornell.edu/wex/real_property)
the "expectation ... of being able to draw such or such an advantage from the thing" in question [Jeremy Bentham, quoted in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_law]

Three classes of property:      
Note that "intellectual property" can certainly meet Bentham's standard of "expectation... of being able to draw .. an advantage".
       
Traditionally, "real property" is considered much more tangible. Nobody can walk off with it, for example. However, easements are a form of intangible real property right.

Intellectual property is a form of abstract property. Here are some other forms of abstract property:
Natural law notion of property: you have a right to things you have created with your own labor (eg things you have made). You have a natural right to things you have earned.

Classic proponent: John Locke 1632-1704 (mentioned in Baase p 33)

The natural right to real property (land & buildings) is slightly hazier in theory, but much more solid in practice. The frontier version of the theory was that you have the right to the land you have settled, developed, and farmed; the practice is that you have the right to use your land as you see fit (subject to zoning, water, and environmental laws).

The big question: Do we have natural rights to IDEAS?

Tradition goes both ways. Ideas meet the Lockian test of things created with your own effort, BUT many ideas have also traditionally been regarded as in the "public domain".

One alternative to natural rights is sometimes referred to as "legal rights" or "social rights": rights are assigned by law for a social goal.

Another alternative is the idea of intellectual commons: that ideas are held in common for the benefit of everyone, and that no one has an individual right to an idea.

United States Constitution

US Constitution states (the "copyright clause") (italics added by me)

Article I, Section 8 - Powers of Congress
       
...

To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

...
       
What is "limited"?

More deeply, what does this say about the nature of our "right" to our works and inventions? It seems clear here that the writers of the constitution did NOT see this as a natural right. The justification for the right is because it promotes a societal goal, the Progress of Science and useful Arts.

How can something be property, if it goes away? People ask this about copyright in the other direction, quite seriously, as if it should be obvious that copyright should be perpetual.

The word "property" carries all sorts of implications to the non-lawyer. But how can a music track be property if you can download the song and I still have everything I had before?

Under the law, the notion of "intellectual property" makes perfect sense; there are lots of limited and/or intangible forms of property. But mostly nobody but lawyers is familiar with these. To most people, the word "property" suggests something that is MINE, like the $5 bill in my wallet (which, alas, I spent).

Property suggests certain rights:

What about this "limited-time" property?

The property-rights view suggests that the limited-time model is a huge concession.

By comparison, the intellectual-commons view suggests that any rights to the creator are a concession.
   
Using the term "intellectual property" to describe ideas introduces BIASES.

What about "FAIR USE"? This is the notion that some copying is legitimate without any obligation to the creator. The original notion was to allow excerpting for quotes and reviews. The use should be relatively noncommercial (educational was best), and should not diminish the market for the original. We'll go into details later; the important case to be familiar with is the SCOTUS Sony v Universal Studios, the "Betamax" case, in which the court ruled 5-4 that VCR recording for the purpose of time-shifting did constitute fair use.

Summary:
  1. Intellectual Property is a legitimate concept.
  2. It is well accepted by lawyers.
  3. However, lawyers also automatically understand that it is different from real or personal property.

  
    -- "if seven million people are stealing, they aren't stealing"
    -- is it ok to download music?

Another take on this might be to ask whether music as "intellectual property" can survive, given that out in the real world huge numbers of people see nothing wrong with file sharing, or at least with file sharing so long as other people are doing it too.

Intellectual Property and the Free Market

In a completely free market, I would sell my goods (chickens, say) for whatever I could get, and buy other things. Could shareable mp3 files exist in such a market? Once I sold one, the buyer could resell for next to nothing (or literally nothing). The supply, in classical terms, would be infinite, leading to a price of zero. Exactly as is happening in the real world.

This point is related to Stewart Brand's famous aphorism, "information wants to be free". The point isn't that information should be free, it's that, in the high-tech world, it ineluctably will be free, absent a strong regulatory system.

Nor is the point that newspapers and magazines should place their content online without charging for access; the second part of Brand's aphorism is "information also wants to be expensive"; that is, it is expensive to obtain and produce.

Here are some concepts for discussion; the italicized claims are meant as points for debate.

1. Any free market requires some sort of legal system to keep people from stealing my chickens rather than paying. Copyright is no different.

Is this true? If the legal system ensured only that all transactions were voluntary, we would still have a music price of zero. There is a big difference between forbidding involuntary transactions (that is, physical theft), and regulating voluntary ones. More generally, we could enforce any buyer or seller terms on the immediate exchange of every transaction, and still have a music price of zero. If the seller demanded that a buyer agree to a long-term license restriction, that would be beyond the scope of the immediate exchange.

[Note, while we are on the topic, that this is a good example of the importance of the legal groundrules on economic activity.]

Bottom line: debate point 1 is problematic. Copyright is different.

2. This argument shows that intellectual property can exist only in a regulated economy; that is, intellectual property only exists once the market rules are defined. Another example is patent terms: the value of a patent only exists once the length of time the patent lasts is established.

The argument, in other words, is that IP can exist only to the extent our markets have been regulated. For true Chicago-school economists, all regulation is suspect, but note that many conservatives appear to feel that IP "property rights" run deeper than simple market regulation. And aren't all real markets subject to some degree of regulation? And aren't contemporary markets subject to a considerable degree of regulation?

Bottom line: debate point 2 is probably correct, but it's not necessarily a bad thing.

3. Real markets are regulated in all kinds of ways, so this is not a meaningful distinction (compare with #2)

Intellectual Property can only exist once the market is created; physical property exists beforehand and Locke argued that physical property rights exist beforehand. But why should that be a meaningful distinction? Do natural rights matter? (It is certainly true that real markets are subject to many regulations, but the question is whether that is relevant to the alleged distinction between Intellectual and Lockean property.)

Bottom line: debate point 3 is reasonable, but most of us have some belief in "natural rights".

A variant might be regulation in support of IP is a hallmark of an advanced society.

4. The Tragedy of the Commons dooms IP.

That is, copyright is in our mutual long-term interest. But as meaningful enforcement is difficult, we have to each agree to abide by copyright law. At first we might each abide by our agreement, in the interests of maintaining the music economy. But it is always in our short-term best interest to ignore our promise and download privately; this makes the music industry like a "commons": supported by individual contributions (the agreement not to share files) but in each individual's best interest to "cheat". In most other situations studied, the commons are doomed.

Bottom line: time will tell on this one.

The Napster Defense and the Napster Model

Napster was the original music-sharing website. Their legal defense was that they did no actual copying; they merely connected a user who wanted a song with a user who had it in their online library. In that sense, they were "only a search engine".

What do you think of that?

What would happen to music if all file-sharing were free? One idea is that the "Napster model" would emerge: musicians would get paid for performances, but recordings would all be free.

Could this model support enough musicians that there would still be new music to listen to?

Napster eventually lost their case, but not quickly; they were then replaced by multiple different music-sharing services: kazaa, morpheus, limewire, gnutella, ....

The Music Industry

Let's start with a couple quotes from the sheet-music industry. Here's the copyright notice on sheet music from Unity Music Press:

Copying music without permission of the publisher is wrong.
It hurts the composer, the publisher, and ultimately YOU. The money earned from the sale of this publication is used to make new music available. If you photocopy this music, YOU are making it more difficult for composers and publishers to produce new music for you to use and enjoy.
Don't photocopy this music without permission of the publisher.

Note the "utilitarian" perspective here: if we don't adhere to copyright rules, we'll only be hurting ourselves in the future.

Lorenz Publishing includes the following line:

If it were not for this [copyright] law and public respect and acceptance thereof, the publication of material such as this would be financially impossible.

What do you think of the "public acceptance" of copyright law as far as filesharing is concerned?

What do we owe the music industry? For many people, it matters whether we're talking about individual musicians, or about recording-company executives. Ignore that for now; assume if necessary that most of the money goes to musicians.

Some arguments in favor of file-sharing:
What are some arguments in favor of music-industry rights? Ultimately, they usually are in one of two categories:
Which of these is the more important? Is it all about our obligations to musicians, or about our own future self-interest?

Who is copyright for?

Here are the two primary justifications for copyright:
  1. The music people have a right to profit from their work
  2. If file-sharing takes over, the music industry goes away, and we'll have less to listen to
The two approaches have very different bases: the first is about "natural rights" and our fundamental duty to respect them; the second is about pragmatism and our own long-term self-interest.

Here's another take on this idea:
  1. 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.
  2. 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.

Along the same lines, if filesharing is stealing, who is being stolen from?

The conventional answer is that the theft is from the creator. What other answers are possible? Do you believe them?

Suppose someone counterfeits a $20 bill. Who is being robbed? This is complex; is the analogy to copyright violations apt?

Finally, when we see someone's creative work being ripped off, which do we think?
In parts of Europe, creators have moral rights to their works. These are copyright-like rights that cannot be sold or taken away. They don't cover royalties, but they do cover someone's alteration of the original work.


There are two major schools of thought on legal interpretation of copyright:
  1. Copyright exists to define property rights for authors and other creators. Exceptions to copyright (Fair Use, limited time) are to be construed narrowly. In cases of conflict, the rights of creators are assumed to dominate. For example, while in the music industry copyright is primarily focused on recordings themselves, it applies just as strongly to, say, lyrics.

  2. The public has a major interest in copyrighted content. Copyright law serves to create several public rights. In cases of conflict, the claims by the public are to be taken very seriously. To close a form of public access, content creators need to prove not that they would lose money but that they would lose so much that the incentive to create new works would be diminished. For example, while allowing the recording of TV shows off the air might violate the letter of copyright law, it does serve the public interest and may not violate the spirit of the law.


Are we owed money when someone takes our idea? http://xkcd.com/827.

What ideas, if any, do we have to pay for?

Should Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, really have to pay Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss for the "idea" of Facebook?

This is important: is copyright an example of the broad right we have to our own ideas, or is it a special case? And if the latter, why is it a special case?

Copyright applies to anything "creative" that we produce: written works, music and movies, of course, but also  photographs, paintings, characters in written works (eg Harry Potter), architectural plans, and (with certain limitations) designs of household items, clothing patterns, and craft projects. Sometimes even a musical style can be protected, though that is also often done under trademark law rather than copyright.

Business ideas seldom fit this "creative" model, though we will late in the semester address business-method patents.



Here are yet again the two contrasting approaches to copyright and file-sharing

Copyright is an expression of a fundamental obligation we have to artists (deontological)
 Copyright exists solely to encourage artists to create new works (utilitarian)              
Issues
What exactly is the obligation here?
Why does the obligation often seem related to return on investment?
Does this obligation apply to the use of ideas?
Does this obligation extend to record-industry executives?
 Issues
If copyright is purely Utilitarian, why do we often feel that some
fundamental duty is at stake?
File sharing is taking something from the artists
 File sharing might be taking from all of us, collectively

Harm again

In the ethical theories 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 for a business to, through competition, cause someone else's business to falter or even 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.

Ethical Paradoxes

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:
  1. fidelity [not lying, keeping promises]
  2. reparation [making up for accidental harm to others]
  3. gratitude
  4. non-injury [do no intentional harm others; includes harming their happiness]
  5. justice [or prevention of harm by others?];
  6. beneficence [do good to others. How much good?]
  7. 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?