Social Networking Sites
Social networking sites depend on acquiring as many user accounts as possible in order to make money (primarily through advertising, the sale of at least aggregated information about its users, etc.). In this way, they are at least somewhat sensitive to the interests, needs, and opinions of their users.
If you find that the “Terms of Use” of your favorite social networking site conflict with your own ethics and underlying assumptions regarding IP, it would be an interesting exercise to write to the site owners (either individually and/or as a larger group) and explain your disagreements and reasons for these. If nothing else, their response(s) to your communications might provide additional material for interesting ethical analysis!
Intellectual property and culture: Confucian ethics and African thought As the example of Ubuntu and the differences between US and EU approaches to copyright suggest, our attitudes and approaches to matters of intellectual property – specifically, how far, by whom, and under what circumstances such materials may be justifiably shared – are strongly shaped by culture.
As a further example: US copyright law is moderately clear with regard to what counts as “fair use” for teaching and research purposes – at least as far as printed materials are concerned.2 In particular, under most circumstances, it is illegal for me to make, say, photocopies of an entire book that I would then distribute to my students at the beginning of the semester for their use during the course. On the other hand, in the US I would be allowed to place original materials, such as articles or book chapters, on reserve for my students in the library; they are then free to check out these materials and make copies of them – as part of their “fair use” of these materials as students.
By contrast, European copyright law makes no equivalent provisions for “fair use.” And, on the third hand, in Thailand I received a now highly cherished gift from some graduate students: a nicely photocopied version of an important book in philosophy of technology, complete with a carefully crafted cover, on which the students inscribed their names. In US circumstances, this could only be seen as a crass violation of copyright law: in the Thai context, this copying was seen to be a mark of respect, both for the (famous and well-known) author of the text and for me as the recipient of the gift.
In the latter case, the gift from the students reflected not simply relatively limited economic resources – a (consequentialist) reason often cited as a justification for making illegal copies of materials. In addition, it reflected the influence of Confucian tradition: as Dan Burk has summarized it, Confucian tradition emphasizes emulation of revered classics – and, in this way, copying (as it was for medieval monks in the West) is an activity that expresses highest respect for the work of the author. By the same token, a master philosopher or thinker is motivated primarily by the desire to benefit others with his or her work – rather than, say, to profit personally through the sale of that work – and so she or he would want to see that work copied and distributed widely rather than restricted in its distribution. As Peter Yu summarizes, “copying may be an important living process for a Confucian Chinese to understand human behaviour, to improve life through self-cultivation and to transmit knowledge to the posterity”
