A public discussion of the third version of the Creative Commons licenses has been launched. The main news in version three is (1) New US and “generic” license, and (2) the Anti-DRM language.
Also take a look at the future of Free Media Licensing in two Wikimania sessions:
Lawrence Lessig on The Ethics of the Free Culture Movement
Eben Moglen on Document Licenses and the Future of Free Culture, (includes Q&A with both Moglen and Lessig).
As some of you may know â?? I am concerned with plagiarism (some earlier posts on the subject). In one of these earlier posts I wrote about a situation where a supervisor had borrowed/stolen/plagiarised a student work and presented it as his/her own at the EMAC conference in Milan in 2005.
The plagiarist is a PhD â?? not a student. The conference submission was a five-page paper. There is something very wrong with the fact that a person with a PhD cannot write his/her own five-page conference paper (Actually I would call five pages an extended abstract).
What really annoyed me (besides the bad plagiarism and all it stands for) was the fact that:
The majority of the research ethics committee found that while it was wrong that the supervisor did not ask the students, it was too far to say that the supervisor had cheated. This position was motivated that by calling the supervisor actions plagiarism would effectively be damage scientific research. (from earlier post).
Thankfully today the local newspaper writes that the University Dean has sent the errand onwards and upwards to the research ethics group of the National Swedish Research Council. Maybe by going beyond the confines of the own organisation the message can be stated clearly that plagiarism by researchers is as unacceptable as we claim it is when students attempt it.
After the summer I will teach my course in Computer Ethics at the University of Göteborg. The course tends to cover the typical areas of computer ethics (integrity, property, harmful content, community etc etc). The main problem is getting the students to â??getâ?? that technology has an ethical dimension.
Once the students realise that there is an ethical dimension or problem they tend to react very enthusiastically.
In order to help them â??get itâ?? I am planning something a bit different. I want to get the students blogging and have a minimum requirement of posts in the area we will be covering. The basic idea is that the students will have to find, adapt and post information. Hopefully this process will engage and awaken the students interest.
So I am looking for input:
Does anyone have any similar experience of this?
How successful was it?
What were the pitfalls and strengths?
All feedback will be appreciated…
What happens when you train young people to kill and then pump them full of rhetoric and send them off to occupy a foreign country? The answer is tragedies like Haditha.
The strange thing is that there have not been many more tragedies and that the people who send their armies to war seem to be â??shockedâ?? and â??surprisedâ?? by these events. What were they expecting?
In the wake of the massacre at Haditha where US marines have allegedly killed 24 innocent civilians the discussions about battlefield and occupation conduct has taken off. On the one hand there have been â??damage controlâ?? actions such as the news that following Haditha servicemen are to be given ethics training, or as it was termed in a military statement â??core warrior valuesâ?? (BBC Online 1 June).
On the other hand there is sad news in relation to how abuses by servicemen are being treated. In the UK the Court Marshal cases lead to acquittals: â??The acquittals call into question the future of Britainâ??s court martial system for dealing with serviceman accused of committing abuses while on duty.â?? (The Times June 7)
None of this should be surprising â?? its just tragic. Monbiot writes about the brutalising effect of occupations and closes his article with the words:
Why should we be surprised by these events? This is what happens when one country occupies another. When troops are far from home, exercising power over people they donâ??t understand, knowing that the population harbours those who would kill them if they could, their anger and fear and frustration turns into a hatred of all â??micksâ?? or â??gooksâ?? or â??hajjisâ??. Occupations brutalise both the occupiers and the occupied. It is our refusal to learn that lesson which allows new colonial adventures to take place. (Originally published in The Guardian 6 June 2006).
Why is this interesting for me? Well in part becuase the horrors of war have a tendency to be forgotten since they are uncomfortable and a colleague of mine has asked me to participate in an exciting project on the legal use of lethal force in the military. This will be as part of a larger project on Military Violence and Killing. My part is to look at the Swedish militaries legal framework for use of lethal force and then, if time permits, attempt to ascertain whether this legal framework is reflected in the training and understanding of the men and women who will be forced into situations where lethal violence may occur.
This is particularly interesting since the Swedish military is gradually moving towards a position of more active participation in overseas peacekeeping/peacemaking action.
Right â?? its official. Teaching students about plagiarism is absolutely pointless (see earlier post). Once again my university has sunk to a new low-point.
Background: At the department of business studies two students wrote their masters thesis. Their supervisor then took parts of the text and included it word for word in an article she presented at an international conference. The students were not acknowledged in any way. The head of department defended the supervisorâ??s actions in the student press â?? which is sad, but in a sense an understandable defence. Still sad and it shows a definite lack of backbone.
The errand was to pass through the research ethics committee (Rådet för ärenden om oredlighet i forskning) of the university. Great, honour will be served. A blow will be struck for academic integrity and also show that the stealing student work cannot be considered to be the praxis of our university.
But! I do not believe it. The majority of the research ethics committee found that while it was wrong that the supervisor did not ask the students, it was too far to say that the supervisor had cheated. This position was motivated that by calling the supervisor actions plagiarism would effectively be damage scientific research.
What?? The lack of backbone from the research ethics committee is what damages research. This weak, spineless position legitimises cheating by academics and drags our university through the mud.
Shame on you.
With any luck the students will take the supervisor/university to court and win easily in a copyright violation case. This is not a good development but one which the university has begged for through its spineless attitude.
Its soon time for me to lecture on plagiarism again. I give this lecture every year to groups of students who are about to write their thesis. The idea is both to help them understand the boundaries between quote, citation, paraphrase & plagiarism and to get them to start thinking about the nature of property in relation to intellectual goods.
Giving this lecture today is aided by the current discussion on copyright and file sharing. In my IT & ethics course I regularly attempt to discuss the problem of file sharing and ask my students what they believe is the moral position of the person who illegally downloads music or films. Usually among my students 80-90% of those who download music do not consider there actions to be morally wrong and nor do they consider themselves to be stealing. The most often used legitimisation of their actions:
1. that they are not depriving anyone of use.
2. the entertainment industry is rich enough.
3. they would not buy that which they download and therefore there is no loss to the industry.
Considering these points it is interesting to attempt to raise awareness about plagiarism. In one way it is pretty easy: if you get caught you will be punished and it is humiliating. But this is not a good starting point since the stress is on not getting caught as opposed to building awareness.
Attempting to discuss student plagiarism is made more difficult recently when two professors have been accused (correctly) of plagiarising others work in their books. One is a professor at the University College of BorÃ¥s who has been sloppy when quoting others his/her own defence other are harsher and call it plagiarism (DN 29/4 â?? 2006)
The second is a professor at the University of Göteborg who has stolen other peopleâ??s works and included them in his work. The excuses for this theft was that the book was written under a very short deadline and the works from which he borrowed material are included in the bibliography.
We would never accept these excuses from our own students then why would these professors even think that the excuses would work for them?
Richard Owen has written an article Vatican ‘cashes in’ by putting price on the Pope’s copyright in The Times.
The Vatican has been accused of trying to cash in on the Popeâ??s words after it decided to impose strict copyright on all papal pronouncements.
For the first time all papal documents, including encyclicals, will be governed by copyright invested in the official Vatican publishing house, the Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
The edict covers Pope Benedict XVIâ??s first encyclical, which is to be issued this week amid huge international interest. The edict is retroactive, covering not only the writings of the present pontiff â?? as Pope and as cardinal â?? but also those of his predecessors over the past 50 years. It therefore includes anything written by John Paul II, John Paul I, Paul VI and John XXIII.
The decision was denounced yesterday for treating the Popeâ??s words as â??saleable merchandiseâ?? and endangering the Churchâ??s mission to â??spread the Christian messageâ??.
A Milanese publishing house that had issued an anthology containing 30 lines from Pope Benedictâ??s speech to the conclave that elected him and an extract from his enthronement speech is reported to have been sent a bill for â?¬15,000 (£10,000). This was made up of 15 per cent of the cover price of each copy sold plus â??legal expensesâ?? of â?¬3,500.
Not too long ago I wrote about the Vatican Ethics in Internet report being pro-Free Software. The times seem to be changing even in the Vatican. Maybe we will see papal lawyers suing for unauthorised copies. Could this lead to a black market or file-sharing of the popes texts? Would you download a papal torrent?
Most technology companies that want to be active in China have to sign the â??Public Pledge of Self-Regulation & Professional Ethics for China Internet Industryâ?? which requires ISPâ??s to inspect and monitor national and international sites and block access to harmful content. In the case of China many companies are eager to take part in what promises to be a large and potentially profitable market. Therefore many companies are prepared to sign the Pledge to gain access to the Chinese market among the more notable signatories is the company Yahoo!.
A good example of this is Microsoft who has has shut the blog site of a well-known Chinese blogger who uses its MSN online service in China. The reason for shutting down the blog is that the blogger discussed a high-profile newspaper strike that broke out in China one week ago. Read more at New York Times “Microsoft Shuts Blog’s Site After Complaints by Beijing“
Its not often I get the chance to quote the Vatican but apparently they are for Free Software- Here is a quote from their “Ethics in Internet” report.
“The technological configuration underlying the Internet has a considerable bearing on its ethical aspects. Use of the new information technology and the Internet needs to be informed and guided by a resolute commitment to the practice of solidarity in the service of the common good. The Internet requires international cooperation in setting standards and establishing mechanisms to promote and protect [that common good]. Individuals, groups, and nations must have access to these new technologies. Cyberspace ought to be a resource of comprehensive information and services available without charge to all, and in a wide range of languages. The winner in this process will be humanity as a whole and not just a wealthy elite that controls science, technology, and the planet’s resources. Determined action in the private and public sectors is needed to close and eventually eliminate the digital divide.”
Ethics in Internet
Vatican Report
Today I attended an excellent lecture by Professor Tännsjö on the subject of Euthanasia. He presented arguments from the virtue ethics tradition (absolutely against the practice) and the rights-based tradition (absolutely for the practice). If continued by presenting the utilitarian approach which he argued was mainly positive.
The goal of his arguments was to present the idea that intentional active aid to die was something which should be discussed in the official channels in Sweden. The reason why this has not been done, according to Tännsjö, could be found in five arguments against euthanasia which he presented and then debunked.
Arguments against active right to die:
– That such a right is unnecessary. This is a silly argument since it apparently is necessary for those who desire this right.
– Such a right would be a threat to the palliative care. Again strange argument since the right to die would not be made compulsory in any form.
– Pressure placed on the dying to â??askâ?? to die. I didnâ??t think that Tännsjö really answered this one properly. He claimed that this would not happen.
– Economic arguments. There would be pressure placed upon the health care system to save money. This is not an adequate argument since it is not compulsory to desire to die, no great saving could be made.
– The slippery slope. To me this argument is really silly since it is about creating safeguards. I have never liked this argument since it is a call to paranoia. Loosely based on: If we let some people do it, then they all will do it and where would it all end?
An interesting point that came up was the fact that suicide among the elderly had decreased in Holland after euthanasia became legal. In addition to this the amount of research on how and why the aged die is much more active in Holland since they allow euthanasia.
On the whole a very interesting way to spend a Sunday afternoon.