PmWiki | EAO / FreeSoftwareAndHumanRights

''Free Software and Human rights''

In the previous chapter we looked at questions of identity and community in human formation and education, as affected by digital culture. What of the question of human rights and digital culture? This question is not at the forefront of global discussion, unfortunately. It deserves to be.

Software is an object of investigation for all kinds of human situations today, since the computer, whose 'nervous system' is provided by software, is beginning to exercise control in all areas where human beings interact. There is no relationship or transaction in cyberspace which is not spelt out in some way through software code. Software is by now a part of rights and law as a regulator in the real world and no longer limits itself, within the realm of cyberspace, to being a functional equivalent of law. In fact Australian High Court Judge Mr Justice Kirby, publicly recognised that computer code (software) tends to make laws obsolete or meaningless: "We are moving to a point in the world where more and more law will be expressed in its effective way, not in terms of statutes solidly enacted by the parliament...but in the technology itself, code", says Kirby. (http://news.cnet.com/Judge-on-privacy-Computer-code-trumps-the-law/2100-1029_3-6231713.html ). Think about that for a moment – who writes computer code? Certainly not High Court Judges! Kirby is really saying that the programmers will be the ones who control law related to their software. This is one of the issues that puts closed and proprietary code starkly under question! A look, then, at software in relation to human rights is well overdue.

When it comes to quoting the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights, it is usually Article 19 on freedom of opinion and expression that is quoted:

-> 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.

One must always consider the context of 1948 when the Universal Declaration was made – immediately after the Second World War when mass media was used effectively by Nazi Germany to crush the rights of millions. The context was mass media. Article 19 is about certain freedoms – it is not in fact about any right to communication, and given the extent of development over 60 years since the Universal Declaration, many would say these these freedoms do not adequately deal with a set of rights that are now known as 'third generation' rights, which go beyond mere freedom of opinion and expression, to include areas such as democratic media governance, participation in one's own culture, linguistic rights, rights to enjoy the fruits of human creativity, to education, privacy, peaceful assembly, and self-determination. These are questions of inclusion and exclusion, of quality and accessibility. In short, they are questions of human dignity.

If we immediately bring in the matter of Free Software at this point, it is clear that it is more conducive to the kinds of rights being expressed above than is proprietary software. But a problem we face is that there is not, as yet, a sufficient communal effort to represent this point of view. Individuals and small groups are entirely convinced, but there is a need for a more consolidated and wider support for a human rights perspective to software.

Digital Rights(:nl:)