Digital rights (and responsibilities?)

Independence Hall in Philadelphia; they talked of rights here

Tettner (2011) has used crowdsourcing to collate a list of proposed digital rights. This is a fascinating and thought-provoking list although I would argue with several contributions.


I am sceptical of the modern mushrooming of rights. I agree with Chafee (1919) that "Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man's nose begins". Humans have evolved in tribal groupings with competing characteristic behaviours. For example, fierce loyalty to the tribe is generally seen as a good thing ('team spirit') but loving your neighbour can easily mean hating your enemy and lead to conflict with other teams, tribes, groups, ethnicities, religions, nations. Groups are defined by excluding.

The island at Runnymede where the Magna Carta was signed

Another example. "An unfair society is a society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit." (Murakami, 1987, 2000, 2003; p266). It is paradoxical that the British Conservative party seeks to be the party of law and order whilst at the same time being the part promoting free enterprise since crime is as free an enterprise as you can get. Societies have evolved laws as a way of coping with the tensions and conflicts that inevitably arise through such conundrums. The law essentially places a marker on the spectrum between, in this case, a totally fair society (no enterprise allowed) and a totally unfair society (no restrictions; 'might is right'). This marker moves up and down the spectrum in different cultures, in different societies and in the same society at different times. When Samuel Pepys was young in 1660 there were no moral qualms about trading in or owning slaves. His wife was 14 when they married.

The fact that we have to move the marker as times change is for me an argument against having a fixed moral code enshrined and fossilised in a 'holy book'. This makes me impatient with those whose moral authority relies on quoting ancient scripture. I feel it is morally lazy not to revisit the fundamental arguments each time.

I apply this 'spectrum' approach to morality to the issue of rights. Rights necessitate responsibilities and duties. If you have the right to swing your arm you incur the responsibility not to hit my nose. If you have the right to freedom of information I have the duty to provide you with that information should you ask.

So I am miserly about rights. The only fundamental right I would grant is the right not to be discriminated against when the basis for the discrimination is something over which you have no control, such as your gender or the colour of your skin. (It always perplexes me that the right to practise a religion, over which you have some control, is usually seen as more fundamental than the right not to be discriminated against because you are a woman.) All other rights need negotiation. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr said: "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic."


So let us examine Tettner's crowdsourced rights. I have simplified the ideas considerably and this may have distorted the original intentions; please see the original blog posts.

• The right to access the internet;
• The right to access information; presumably a balance needs to be negotiated between this and the right to privacy
• The right to be digitally literate; whatever this means
• The right to share information;
• The right to modify the information;
• The right to free music; this and the previous two rights start to nibble away at the concept of intellectual property
• The right to unplug;
• The right to not know;
• The right to have multiple identities;
• The right to change one's mind;
• The right to lurk.

Some of these seem somewhat trivial compared to the grand rights of freedom of speech or the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.



The most interesting concepts are the right to unplug and the right to not know. 


One of the pressures imposed by the internet is the expectation of immediacy. If you send an email or a text you expect an immediate response. I have been required to assist a colleague when they are in work and I am on holiday on a beach staring at a beautiful sunset and talking on the phone. I have been asked by my boss at 8AM in the morning whether I have read the email he sent at midnight. I have been woken at 3AM by a text from my stepson telling me to switch off his alarm clock set for 6AM because he isn't coming home. I have even been told (by someone I will not name) that it is assumed I agree to the proposals sent in an email because I have not answered. I believe I have the right to silence. To put it another way, your right to send me a message does not mean I am obliged to read it.


And the right to not know? It has always seemed to me selfish for those having an affair to confess it to their spouses. It might help you with your guilt but it sows the seeds of doubt in your partner's mind such that nothing will ever be the same again. I think I would rather not know. I am not sure whether I would want to know if I had some terminal disease involving rapid degeneration and imminent death but I am sure that I would like the right to choose whether I know or not.

References


Chafee, Z. (1919) Freedom of Speech in Wartime, Harvard Law Review 32: 932, 957


Murakami, H. (1987, 2000, 2003) Norwegian Wood translated by Rubin, J (2000) Vintage, London edition (2003) ISBN 9780099448822


Tettner, S. (2011) I believe that .... should be a right in the digital age11) blog posting dated 28th March 2011in The Centre for Internet and Society blog available at http://www.cis-india.org/research/dn/i-believe-that-______-should-be-a-right-in-the-digital-age accessed 24th April 2011


Wendell Holmes, O. (1919) Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47, 52 (3 March 1919).