--/mp] 06:36, 29 Oct 2004 (BST) Human Rights, are they a useful tool for social change, as a vision for an architecture of social organisation beyond the nation state? And how do human rights relate to the democratisation of ICT? - or how I came to realise that we just have to get on with it and leave the old world behind! Or notes for a phd chapter.......

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Introduction

The combination of the internet, which is build mainly on free software and vice versa, and the wider movement of movements that supports this “democratic and rightful” development of ICT has created a wealth of tools for communication and organisation that are offered freely by voluntary collectives and cooperatives1 (partly driven through passionate opposition to Int£rnet £xplorer, M$ Window$, Photo$hop, H$tmail etc., For instance wiki.aktivix.org, www.mozilla.org, www.fsf.org, gaim.sf.net, www.jabber.org.). Do we have "rights" (whatever thay may be) to these new tools? Should we all have them? Should free software be protected by human rights, or is it already?

Article 19, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Human rights are good because they point towards...

equal entitlement
global solidarity
hope

Human Rights are no good because they point towards...

homogenisation (gleich-schaltung, social engineering, like advertising/TV)
individualism (in the worst case scenario the nazi/fascist; Stirner?; rave culture?
- there is obviously a tension between the two former, leading to..
psychological aspects (am i a consumer, then – where is the button to push for my identity to appear?)
and even worse: enforcement (Balkan and Clinton's Party, Iraq didn't really work?)
illusion (wishy-washy liberal dream detached from any reality)
natural law problems (no empirical/stable foundation?)

Reconfiguring human rights

Getting on with it, it may be a good idea, worth exploring, testing and networking around; it seems that some good people are on the case!

Origins

Before there was "rules accounting" (<-modern legal practice in the "litigiation society"), there was jurisprudential expert (<-that hasn't changed!) contemplation, there was a context based legal process with few laws written (that has changed, now they do rules accounting and line their pockets), but before there were processes of reasoning leading to the establishment of the legal architecture with which we circumscribe ourselves in the modern world. Many of these laws are highly questionable and even more are overly complex and alienating, such as corporate tax and patent laws, and they do not find a sound philosophical basis in processes of reasoning with a view to the fair and just, - rather these laws are implememted, superimposed as a measure of control. Everybody knows that they cheer in Wall Street when the unemployment is up, because it makes labour cheaper and more readily available; it is no accident that there are unemployed people and poverty - how else can you get people to join the army?

This clear forking of legal theory and practice is a great challenge. If corruption and profiteering, as it might well do, claims the last territory, the theory of law and the reasoned perspective on law to use it as a means to enhance social organisation through community building and distribution of health and wealth, not as a tactical weapon of mass subjugation, will vanish. The White House are well on their way, buying democracy effectively in the U.S., see for instance: http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=386&row=1

The Romantic picture of a dispute: The jurisprudential experts turn up and listen to the respective parties of the dispute. With reason they facilitate a resolution and the conflict is solved through communication. No technocratic empire of rules. Somewhere in between we find ourselves. The world is our world, now we have to do something about it. Let us take the law in our own hands! http://yomango.net/

Etymology

A contextualisation of the usual etymological observations of Ancient legal terms, including Hindu Jurisprudence, in a 'discourse analysis' frame of mind:

What did it mean when they used the words that they did in ancient Greece and Rome?

“regula est quae rem quae est breviter ennarrant. Jus non a regula sumatur sed a jure, quod est, regula fiat”; “The rule describes a reality briefly. The jus (the just and the lawful, from Greek 'dikaion', the right or the law) does not derive from the rule, but the jus that exists creates the rule. From the “Digest”
- (Legal historians have differed whether jurists at Pavia or at Bologna began the revival of Roman law. Research over the past twenty years has demonstrated conclusively that the jurists in Bologna recovered the key text of Roman law, the Digest, in stages during the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. These Bolognese jurists were the first to recognize the importance of the Digest, and, like their Humanist successors in the fifteenth century, they must have searched for manuscripts copies of it. Wolfgang P. Müller's recent essay on the recovery of the Digest sums up the stages of this development: "The Recovery of Justinian's Digest in the Middle Ages," BMCL 20 (1990) 1-29.)

And it is reasonable, then, to suggest that:

human rights opens a discursive space from which to challenge the received opinion

is not here, but over there; somewhere that we could get to: as a metaphor

Our choice

guiding visions (the light at the end of the tunnel: at least we have our human rights...... ;-)

has to be realised through building on social relations from the ground up (development work & ethics/organisation; circumcision..not a right for 'the woman' in certain communities to be circumcised by their mothers and grandmothers.)

!!as opposed to something that's based on anything “supernatural” or divine; neither is it to be awarded from the top down by the magnanimous liberal patriarch!!

In a legal context

driving in this side and in that side

marijuana and the criminalisation of socially accepted/acceptable/responsible patterns of behaviour

The law and social organisation

social engineering vs. unfolding flowers

Should Free software be protected by human rights?

What does free software have to do with human rights? or vice versa?

How are they related? Are they both tied to community and capacity building?

Is Free Software a contribution to the realisation of Article 19?

What is "The Free Software Movement"?

In another chapter

. There is a quick/early draft here, which was used for a conference presentation at Edge Hill College.. http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/Research/smg/Conferences2004/info/papers/pedersen.pdf

It outlines stuff like...

different configuration of property rights; subversion, distributive property rights; copyleft, open source as a derivative; Indymedia as an implementation of the software and the idea.
The wider movement for Freedom of Information; new connections, network formations, and the sharing, transposing and mutation of ideas in cyberspace and in the street. www.geneva03.org; www.oekonux.org;
the omelet analogy; the unopenable bonnet, thus unrepairable car; black box; demystification and an opening of and beginning for common sense in the understanding of technology

THE CHAPTER IS essential to the thesis and hence to the understanding of how free software relates to human rights.

Free Software as community building and realisation of Article 19

An example of the just (the "jus" from the greek/roman quote above), the practice that is aimed at an intellectual commons and based on sharing and cooperation. It is project that is clearly aimed at realising Article 19. Which indicates it close relation to the human rights vision: it not only is a useful contribution to the realisation of A19, but also serves a good blueprint for social organisation beyond the nation state. Just as the viewpoint noted earlier on human rights it can help to challenge the status quo (http://www.apache.org, GNU/Linux.....and MIR, see for instance http://www.indymedia.org.uk; http://www.groklaw.org; http://www.slashdot.org)

The other teams

the World Bank, IMF and the UN doing “infodemocracy” stuff (www.developmentgateway.org. www.unicttf.org.) – but they do it in a different way:

“Globalisation from above and without” and “Globalisation from below and within”

This is also stuff in another chapter; however, it should be mentioned that the boundary between “the globalisation forms” are blurry in campaigns, such as http://www.crisinfo.org.

Should the Free Software community be protected by an Act or a Treaty or the like?

Do we need a Free Software Act (see http://www.fsc.cc/node/view/69)

Is there a need for further rights?

What does it mean, more rights?
Do we need things like www.virtualrights.org?
- This relates the general idea of a treaty and convention proliferation (the gravy train of theory and little practice) and associated bureaucratisation of the otherwise great idea of human rights.

The rant

Free software is under threat from the expansionist and destructive nature of capitalism. In the guise of patent laws the global software industry lobby, headed by William Henry Gates III, is pushing hard for en EU software patenting directive that could be devastating not only for the Free Software community, but for the European software industry generally. A complete disbalance of democracy (Arlene McCarthy doing the US software industry lobby job is our local “Labour” MEP (http://swpat.ffii.org/players/amccarthy/index.en.html. )) shocking even green liberals in the EU. Dany Cohn-Bendit is involved in the organising against the directive. And it is in many ways an environmental thing: it is our technological environment we are talking about and it is a tension point between the EU and the US! Even capitalists should be aware, the European software industry could be threatened. Read more here: http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=stallman+software+patents

The choice of non-choosing

YES, we might say, -because.......and we might say no...and we might be doing both...

Engage and reform

if the planet really is going to be circumscribed even further by electro-magnetic fields beaming out of fancy gadgets they should at least be as Free as possible.
a counter-movement is needed, so why not engage with the whole apparatus?
the technologically embedded human being, as we are, should at least have the right to choose and be able to see and understand her environment, and if human rights is a good tool that works in synergy with free software to create a democratic technological environment, then why not embrace it, articulate, sign the seals?

Engage through disengagement: build that other world which is possible

(More rant or rhetoric) - Do not compromise, either part of the solution or part of the solution. Because it is not that easy: once you are in there, in the powers of corridor, everything can be morphed, it can be changed.

If the community remains self-organised -out here- no one can change the GPL, -it is a community of trust-, we do not want professional politicisation, consequent corruption and liabilities. We stay on the outside, or the new inside that is not the nation state, but that other world which is indeed possible. It is not in a Victorian Palace (http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/10/299593.html; http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/10/299962.html), but happens if you participate and do your bit. We need no rulers and representatives, just go home, - we're sorting it out! The federation of freedom thrives.......................

User:Mp:Thesis:Chapter:Human Rights & Free Software

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