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Matt Butcher reports on the North American Computers and Philosophy (NA-CAP) conference that had FOSS and Open Access as its two main topics.

For example, Samir Chopra and Scott Dexter, one a philosopher, the other a computer scientist, presented a paper on the so-called “Freedom-Zero Problem” with the Free Software Definition: How can one claim that it is morally responsible to mandate the unrestricted access to and use of code even in cases where this will certainly lead to harm? For example, why doesn’t the GPL forbid Free Software from being used in nuclear weaponry, or for torturing other humans? This ethically charged issue reappeared in numerous conversations throughout the conference.

Chopra & Dexter have a blog and they have just published the book Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open Source Software. Read the introduction. This is how Steven Weber thinks about the book:

In Decoding Liberation, Samir Chopra and Scott Dexter recapture and extend a part of the conversation that will ultimately be much more important than business models, patent and copyright law, or total cost of ownership for a piece of software. What does the open source model offer to political, artistic, and scientific freedom, and thus to the human enterprise of creativity beyond the guts of a computing machine? Their book is an eloquent, thoughtful, adventurous, and exciting dive into what really matters about changing the rules of code.

I hope to have time to read the book one day.

Some picks from the program:

• The Freedom Zero Problem: Free Software and the Ethical Use of Software
  Samir Chopra & Scott Dexter
• Acting for the Best and Acting Legitimately: Challenges Facing the Stronger Claims of the Free Software Movement
  Jamie Dow
• The Free, Open Source Option as Ethic
  John Bork
• Open Source Philosophy and “Democratic Rationalization” in Africa
  Evaristus O Ekwueme
• The Missing Link: Computer Ethics and Formal Methods
  Darren Abramson & Lee Pike
• Panel: A Skeptical Look at Wikipedia
  Panelists: Tony Doyle, James Caufield, Don Fallis & Marc Meola
• Web 3.0 – Tools for Co-operation? Social Philosophical Remarks on the Desirable Possible Future Development of the Internet
  Wolfgang Hofkirchner

Is software work or is it labor, asks David M. Berry in the Free Software Magazine. He refers to Hannah Arendt’s distinction of labor and work.
Following the Ancient Greek tradition, Arendt defines labor as something done of necessity. Labor used to be the duty of slaves, now it has become the life of the masses, something that docile bodies do to “make their living”. Work is seen as an activity that creates something that lasts. Work is important because it makes politics possible:

This is important because it is only by escaping necessity (i.e. the constant requirement to produce things we need) that we can begin to communicate and become human as political animals. For Arendt, Work is a prerequisite for the possibility of Action – the realm of great deeds and great words.

Berry argues (like Marxists and the critical theory before him) that in today’s society, we’re all caught in a spiral of laboring and consuming and always alienated from the product of our work. Free software is promising in this respect because the products of free software activities are work - something that lasts - and also commons, i.e. something everybody has access to.

Free software certainly has liberating potential but what makes hacking possible, economically? Free software might turn labor into work, but at whose expence? While we build an information society here in the North, we’re at the same time “outsourcing” the labor into the South in the form of production of food, clothing and electronics. And often on not so fair terms.

Rusty Russell has this brilliant piece on how copyright is a penalty system, not a reward system:

The first poorly understood point is that copyright on my work does not give me the right to copy it. It prevents everyone else from copying: a so-called “negative right”. As an example, if you own the last copy of my autobiography, I don’t have the right to make a copy: it’s your property. You don’t either: it’s my copyright. If you destroy that last copy, my copyright still exists, but is useless. This illuminates something noone ever spelt out for me: that copyright is a weakening of property law. Normally when you buy something, you get all the rights the previous owner had: if you buy apples off me and sell apple juice in competition with me, I have no legal recourse. Copyright weakens property law by not transferring the “right to copy” with sale: that sliver of rights is removed from every copy and remains in the hands of the copyright holder.

Even if copyright disappears, property rights don’t:

The traditional focus on copyright, without considering the property which is its source, skews the copyright debate quite badly. Works which are no longer copyrighted are often said to “fall into the public domain”. This is a terrible phrase, which implies that property rights are being destroyed. We don’t say that apples, which were never copyrighted, are “in the public domain”. Or consider UK singer Cliff Richard’s accusation that, as copyright expires, “every three months from the beginning of 2008, I will lose a song”, as if the songs will no longer exist.