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Flaming Toadstools of Justice

By on August 9, 2011 47

Here are some ethical conundra I’ve been pondering. Thoughts?

1. Consider the following three cases:

Journey to the Center of the Earth

a. I invite you to my house for dinner. When you arrive, I serve you a casserole made from (what I know to be) poisonous toadstools. You eat it, and consequently die.

b. We encounter each other in the forest. You mention that you’re hungry. I point to (what I know to be) poisonous toadstools, and ask why you don’t eat some of those. You say you can’t tell which things of that sort are safe to eat and which aren’t. “Oh, I’m an expert,” I assure you, “and I can guarantee that those ones are safe.” So you eat some, and consequently die.

c. I post a picture of (what I know to be) poisonous toadstools on my blog, and announce: “Some people think these are poisonous, but in my opinion they’re perfectly safe.” So when you come across some toadstools that match the picture I posted, you eat them, and consequently die.

Let’s say (though of course you needn’t) that I violate your rights in case (a), where I lead you to eat a poisonous substance without your knowledge, but not in case (c), where I merely exercise my right of free speech to state my opinion, and leave you to make your own judgment.

But what about case (b)? Does it involve a rights-violation or not? In other words, is it more like case (a), or more like case (c)?

On the one hand it seems more like (a), because I’m offering you a kind of assurance. Yet it’s not exactly a contract; I receive no good or service in trade from you. And what about:

d) I tell you, “I’ve received a revelation from Zeus, and if you recite the following formula for 90 minutes a day, I can guarantee that you’ll get into heaven when you die.” So you waste 90 minutes every day reciting my formula – and when you die you go to hell like the stinker you are.

Have I violated your rights in case (d)? If not, how is case (b) different? (Do reasonable expectations as to what people are in a position to guarantee come into it?)

2. The usual libertarian explanation as to why it’s a rights-violation to yell “fire!” in a crowded theatre is that doing so violates the theatre owner’s property rights. Or, if the owner is the one doing the yelling, then her doing so violates her implicit contract with the customers.

house and truck on fire

But what if the theatre is unowned? What if it’s even a never-homesteaded natural structure – some sort of narrow, thickly wooded canyon through which a bunch of (non-contractually-bound) people are travelling – where yelling “fire!” would have the same destructive effects as in a theatre?

And is this like case (1b) above, or are they different?

3. For this one, assume IP is illegitimate. You write a novel, and Warner Bros. makes a movie out of it without your permission.

Is it wrong for you to sue the studio, because you’d be practicing censorship? Or is it okay for you to sue them, because they sue people over IP all the time (and indeed will sue unauthorised distributors of this very movie), so you’re just giving them a taste of their own medicine – or liberating some illicitly held property?

And does it make a difference whether you’re suing to demand a) money, b) an injunction to prohibit the film, or c) the film’s release under a Creative Commons license?

How the U.S. Military Protects Our Freedom

By on July 10, 2011 39

When Worlds Collide

Science fiction and mystery author Philip Wylie sounds, from his Wikipedia page, like an interesting guy. His stories and novels (When Worlds Collide is the best known, and the only one I’ve read) have been credited with inspiring some of popular entertainment’s most famous characters – Superman, Flash Gordon, Doc Savage, and Travis McGee. He’s been both hailed as a feminist and condemned as a misogynist for his writings on women (I haven’t read the writings in question and so can’t render a verdict).

But my present concern is with the following rather alarming anecdote:

As early as 1939, [Wylie] had written a story about the Germans making plutonium bombs in a cave in Colorado. “The Paradise Crater,” written for American Magazine, was, as Sam Moskowitz points out, rejected as “too fantastic,” but later was accepted by Bluebook, which turned the magazine over to Washington for approval. When Washington balked, the editor of Bluebook returned the manuscript to Harold Ober, Wylie’s agent, who had “already been contacted by the CIA.” Wylie, who had been put under house arrest, was told by an aggressive major that he [the major] would take Wylie’s life if necessary, to plug the leak. Wylie agreed to tear up the manuscript. But the decision was made to hold back publication instead. According to Moskowitz, “Four months later, the Atom Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Bluebook asked to have the story back. It was published in the October, 1945 number.” Wylie, through his own research, had learned enough about atomic weaponry to become a security risk [John W. Campbell, Jr., editor of Astounding Science Fiction, went through a similar experience when one of his authors submitted a story featuring an atomic bomb].
(Clifford P. Bendau, Still Worlds Collide: Philip Wylie and the End of the American Dream, pp. 42-43; brackets in original. The reference to the CIA must be a mistake for the OSS.)

Reap Artist

By on June 9, 2011 0

Warner Bros. is being sued for using a copy of Mike Tyson’s tattoo in a movie without the permission of the original artist. If the case goes against Warner, they may have to have the tattoo digitally altered when they release the dvd.

Warner is a victim of censorship here, plain and simple. But given that Warner makes money by threatening similar censorship against everyone else, it’s hard to feel sympathetic. For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

Addendum:

Oh, this is too good to be true. The artist who claims Warner Bros. stole his tattoo design is being charged with stealing it in turn from the Maori. (CHT Stephan.)

The Copyright Infringements in the Rue Morgue

By on June 9, 2011 4

In his introduction to Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin trilogy, Matthew Pearl offers in passing an interesting thought on copyright:

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

The brilliant resolution Poe designs for “The Purloined Letter” – that the letter in question is right in front of our eyes the whole time, which is why the police cannot find it – is also a perfect formulation of the odd version of “theft” that exists perhaps exclusively in the area of the law protecting artistic creations, which is known as intellectual property: that something can be stolen and in plain sight at the same time or, odder still, that in copyright law, for something to be considered stolen it must be in plain view. (p. xv)

(I think the connection to “The Purloined Letter” is a bit of a stretch, but never mind.)

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