Ethics, Morality, and Intellectual Property rights in theory and fact

May 19, 2013 / Posted in  Perú, Poverty

Ethics in ancient Greece

The ancient Greeks were among the first people to consider ethics, intellectual property and rights of individual in society. The Greeks “created” (δημιουργήθηκε) ethics (from the Greek word ethos: ἦθος, ἔθος, plurals: ethe (ἤθη), ethea (ἤθεα) that came from χαρακτήρας: character that had the originally meaning of accustomed place. It first appeared as a place or barn for horses¹) by realizing that different people in different societies did things in different ways. The Greeks used the discovery method as a tool for critical reflection on what was defined as “right” and “wrong.”

The Greeks of antiquity realized that there was no absolute correct or incorrect way since there was no singular deity, no any singular divine law nor a special revelation in or given to any society. Greeks more than two thousand years ago argued that is wrong for one group to dominate another. Superiority was viewed as a mental state within the individual or group that could be opposed to by any other individual or group. That misguided sense of superiority only led to strife, arguments, and war.

While people can debate what was the best, most appropriate or superior way of doing, saying, researching, possessing, or creating any one thing as correct, the Greeks acknowledged that all people would vainly assume their way was best leading to greater strife as there would never be unanimous consensus or agreement on the methodology or strategy. The evolution of time has taught us that developments in understanding can throw doubt on any way of life making it worthless or priceless. That makes the ways of society problematic and throws life itself into question. To solve this quandary requires a form of what is termed moral rationalism. ² Mental, physical and social enslavement is frequently authority based on brute strength or political force, but seldom buttressed by reason or knowledge. For example, the ancient Hebrews, led by Joshua and Gideon, committed numerous Holocausts against their neighbors, and their blood-soaked deeds were praised by priests who claimed to speak for the community’s deity who ordered the slaughter (Judges 6-8).

During the period when Adolf Hitler’s pogroms eliminated over eight million people (six million of which were Jews), the NAZIs ³ were damned as butchers by their opponents yet praised as saviours by their benefactors and patrons from the flower-carrying young girls in Austria, to the old women in Berlin who tossed bread at the troops–even though the same action of Holocaust that the Allies labeled genocide was identical in the physical and philosophical actions of Gideon and Joshua. From hailed as children of god (Gott mit unus) who was with the troops, to being reviled as demons.  The world divided over the actions of the Third Reich. The Germans and their supporters saw it as a way for Lebensraum while the invaders called it barbarism. The difference between interpretation of word and deed lead to the question of what is natural morality and what is conventional morality.

Natural morality⁴ is commonly seen as getting what a person wants, at the time it is wanted, and without restriction as to how it is obtained–as frequently found in plagiarism, theft of intellectual property, and so forth. This invites a definition of intellectual property.

Intellectual property, that has been an American term or phrase since 1840, is defined as property that results from original creative thought, such as patents, copyright material, and trademarks: protections afforded to those who create something out of “nothing” and then publish or sell it to realize a profit in currency or recognition (without which, many may not research and publish). One of the most dramatic cases of the theft of intellectual property was birthed in the robbery of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) computer banks by a graduate student/MIT programmer and former fellow at Harvard’s School of Ethics by the name of Aaron Swartz.⁵ Swartz reasoned that since tax dollars funded research and publication of the discoveries of that research, the people as a whole had a right to the solutions, findings, and publications of the researchers.  In Swartz tormented mind, the one-time scholar justified the theft of intellectual property, although there were acts that had been passed into law before Swartz stole JSTOR articles maintained on MIT computers.  The intellectual property was protected by copyright that lasts a minimum of seventy-five years.

MIT and JSTOR (a digital library founded in 1995)⁶ ultimately released the documents after a variety of threats from two USA-based terrorist groups (Anonymous and Demand Progress). Not only did these hybrid American terrorists groups issue threats against MIT and JSTOR, but also against witnesses and other private citizens who had knowledge of the federal crime. The promised violence (it did not occur) came from the terrorists group when courageous US Attorney Carmen Ortiz began her criminal prosecution, following USA Computer Fraud and Abuse Act law guidelines. Conventional morality⁷ is the weathervane of one group determining what is in the best interest of that group without regard to subordinate or marginalized units within the same group as when one group determines how a woman uses her body even if their determination is in contradiction to what the individual woman wants, as found in anti-choice gaggles around the world. This circles back to relativism and what power defines as important or expedient without any basic individual rights. This is where ethics, in its pure sense, enters the debate.

Ethical theory draws a distinction between teleological (the philosophical doctrine that final causes, design, and purpose exist in nature, frequently incorporating a concept of a god and divine design being seen as a “final cause”⁸) and deontological (duty, moral obligation, and right action ⁹ theories.

Teleology requires attention to utilitarianism that enables us to examine utility or usefulness, intrinsic value, instrumental value, and understanding of similarities and differences that exist between ethical egoism, ethical altruism, and utilitarianism. Each of these has the ultimate question of “what is the intrinsic value of what is produced for whom?” If it is something that is produced that helps everyone, such as an AIDS vaccine, it has greater value than a translation of an early cuneiform script on the mixing of blood and water that will not be used or understood by many—but the appreciation of Hammurabi’s Code that is the antecedent for the Laws of Moses and the Torah, although 1200 years younger than Hammurabi’s Code, is better known and more directly affects a larger number of people. Ethics requires that what is done does not harm nor hinder another person: if by stealing (downloading) a paper researched and written by a professor disignites (extinguishes or suppresses) the interest of the researcher and leads to the abandonment of research, then that is ethically wrong. If one paper inspires others to research and publish, it can be considered ethically right but at a price: the potential discouragement of the original researcher. This occurred when the Roman Catholic Church forbade any questioning of the account in Joshua where the sun stood still in its circling the earth so that the warrior could kills thousand more.

“Discourses” by Galileo published in Leiden 1638 (in personal library).

This obscuration of the conduct of inquiry was maintained until the Polish monk Nicholas Copernicus ventured to define heliocentricism and published it only while he was on his deathbed. It did not emerge with any force until the unholy Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church censured Galileo for arguing that the sun did, indeed, stand still and the earth moved around the sun—an idea that remain an evolving pregnancy within the womb of time that did not stir until Stephen W. Hawking requested a look at the trial records of Galileo and was told by the Polish Pope John Paul II not to go where the creator went.¹⁰

The refusal of John Paul II did not deter nor dissuade The Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University (the chair was established with the stipulations in Lucas’ will was that the holder of the professorship should not be active in the church (Sir Isaac Newton was the first holder and petitioned King Charles II to let him be exempt from taking holy orders).¹¹ Hawking (who retired in 2009 on his 67th birthday, as required by the university¹²) went on to discuss the Big Bang, black holes, and the beginning of time.¹³ This is why the concept of right and wrong is not fixed.

Immanuel Kant on morality of happiness

 Theory can help illuminate concepts and situations but it does not and cannot substitute for the work of becoming a moral person. Morality is self-determined (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was among the earliest to give self-determination a definition and use)¹⁴ and self-selected but it must fit into the broad area of what is right for all people. The individual (singular and collective) must determine what is best for the self and for the community. Immanuel Kant defined this problem as one of universalizability: determining moral worth over or separated from feeling and emotionalism.¹⁵ This requires facing, concretely and directly, one’s own ego and suppressing it for the good of all.

Self-interest and gratification is not the same nor of the same value as the interest and gratification of the community that is to be treated as a single unit. What must be recognized is not what the individual wants to do, but what is done for the universal good: taking tests, marking papers, dialoguing, and so forth. The problem here is that it is not imperative that the individual feels good about what the individual did but that the individual acted unselfishly: with no thought of external or internal reward. For example, when an individual finds a wallet with money in it, the individual seeks outs the owner and returns the wallet and money without expecting or requesting or demanding some compensation for being honest. The same is true when one approaches a website that has intellectual property that the publisher has spent time and money on putting online and then charges a fee so that expenses can be met and a profit generated that encourages additional coverage, the individual pays the fee and does not hack into the system to steal the material and then send it out to the world in violation of intellectual property rights and copyright or trademark laws (as with restyling the Coca-Cola or Izod trademark).

It is through ethics that the individual understands and can control the self. What most people forget is that selfishness is not the result of an excess of self-love, but the absence of self-love, since the absence of self-love leads the person to seek out to gain all that can be obtained, as with hacking into a computer bank, making pirated copies of CDs, DVDs, books and articles, plagiarizing from Wikipedia and other sources, and claiming that the individual has the right because of any number of reasons and causes. True love is helping others without a thought of personal gain or glory. In Perú the issue of ethics, intellectual property, human and civil rights are constantly under attack and many people ignore all ethical considerations. Part of this problem is because Perú is a deeply divided nation: a very few super rich and numerous poor, with a dwindling middle class (as is the current case in the USA). The poor feel the need to be equal and to feign the equality will buy cheap pirated DVDs, CDs, books, and so forth to be able to join in the discussion of their contents, even though the cinemas are grainy or of poor quality, the photocopied texts are incomplete or propagandized, and classes they attend are poorly constructed without subject matter teachers. Education has been on the slide downward for decades, with no attempt to arrest this travesty until the 1980s¹⁶—when”>http://arthuride.wordpress.com/tag/ranking-peru-universities/.]—when education also became a commercial market especially in the sale of textbooks that are saturated with errors and the hiring of people who have an incomplete education.¹⁷, with Perú falling behind all nations and at the nadir in South America. ¹⁸ The teachers refused to take competency exams and most cannot even pass the simplest of tests on the subject matter they allegedly declared as their major area of concentration.¹⁹

Perú professionals recognize that teachers are no longer respected in their community, as their ability to teach is handicapped by bad education that offers little in ethical training or serious classes in subject matter mastery.²⁰. Assignments are not directed to specialists but doled out on the basis of favoritism as in Perú politics plays a prominent role in teacher evaluation, advancement, and retention.

Plagiarism is, without a doubt, the greatest problem in Perú’s education institutions. Plagiarism is common at all levels of education; plagiarism is found in all schools: from parochial to private to public centers.

As an American born and educated teacher working in Peru, I have received entire “essays” that were “copy-and-paste(d)” directly from Wikipedia with the student(s) not taking time to remove Wikipedia text footnoting nor appending the footnotes at the bottom or at the end of their spurious compositions. When questioned the plagiarism, the reply was the same with each student: “All students do it. Our teachers tell us that it is ok!”

When I taught teachers at a university in Perú, the papers I received were, for the most part, also plagiarized, with some lacking the finese of some students. After questioning the teachers who handed in such papers, there replies not only matched student justification, but some claimed “it is our culture, we all do it; no one really wants to teach, but we need jobs.” Most distressing was one teacher who was required to take my mandatory teacher-training courses who never came to class, but sent me an e-mail that he was “trying to get his wife pregnant.”

When I asked students who were in their final year of studies why their comprehension and use of the English language was nearly non-existent, and that they would fail my courses if they did not study more, read the assignments and speak the English language in the classroom, the students informed me that all teachers taught all subjects in Spanish. This was confirmed, voluntarily, by five teachers in one day who came to me and ask that I give their students higher grades.

One teacher passed me a page from the university’s book of regulations that required Spanish to be the language of education in all education courses. I explained that I was trying to teach languages–not education. That, I was told, was irrelevant as all teachers and schools were under the control of the department of education.

To have complied with the university regulation would have been the height of academic prostitution. I refused.  I told the teachers who taught workshops (talleres) that were aligned with my regular classes, we would teach only in English. When they objected and asked why we would teach English courses in English, I replied “because it is what is ethical.” Then I was required to explain the ethics behind my decision.

Most teachers knew very little about ethics. Others thought ethics was a waste of time to consider, teach, or practice in a poor nation. Only a scant few saw my decision as ethical; still they complained that the students asked them to help them (ayudarme)—by teaching in their native language.

My query was simple and the same for each teacher I engaged in dialogue: “Then” I asked, “Why teach at all?” The refrain was always the same: “we have families and need the money.”  There is little ethics in the deliberations of the Congress as more money is spent on the military and “narco-trafficking control” than on education. The education system is cut back because of other “emergencies”: The economy suffered serious setbacks in the 1980s (GDP decline and rapid inflation) under Alan Garcia Perez, a political system threatened in the 1980s and 1990s by terrorists, assaults on the Constitution by the elected president-dictator Alberto Fujimori in the late 1990s, and the undermining of the political system by drug cartels. In education, beginning in the 1970s, a series of governments emphasized expanding access more than improving quality, and quality learning took a nose-dive that nearly went off the chart, especially in the rural areas.

Peru expanded education largely by making it less expensive, so it looked good on paper but had nothing of substance to show in the area of greater intellectual ability or marketable skills.  Education was only expanded with books and materials by principally by reducing teacher salaries in real terms. Except for 1985–87 and an earlier spending jump in 1980–81, educational spending per student fell steadily since the early 1970s so much so that by 1990, spending per student had fallen about 60 percent from 1973-74 levels, whereas GDP had risen about 14 percent and GDP per capita had fallen about 23 percent. This necessarily meant steep declines in teachers’ real salaries. It got worse under the Fujimoris and has not recovered substantially. In 2010, public spending on education was at 2.69% of GDP.²¹ In a (nearly-non-existent) nation that had a legislative body guided by Ethics, the legislators would recall the errors and tribulations of the past, enact laws against those actions that were at the root of poverty, work united to improve the present protecting the ecology and environment by planting trees, outlawing strip mining, and demanding better working and pay conditions for existing labor, and look positive toward a future were the greater good for all would be the focal point.  This, however, is in satire and fiction, as with Thomas More’s Utopia. Immediacy is fundamental in governments with little thought for the next generation while the present generation destroys their mountains and valleys, and with Perú, does nothing to regulate greenhouse gases or curb pollution leading to a furthering of global warming that is rapidly melting the Andes’ ice cap that is the source for Perú drinking water (so that, statistically determined, there will be no natural drinking water by 2020), the soil is burned, and mining concerns stripmind the land so that nothing will revegetate for thousands of years. Over-fishing, declining recycling, and catering to the vested interest of corrupt politicians from “Congresistat Pollo” (José Anaya)²² and Martha Chavez²³ who demanded that her version of the Perú that gave Alberto Fujimori the presidency of Perú for life makes a mockery out of Perú democracy that has continued under Humala who ran on a platform to lift the poor out of poverty by appointing business leaders to posts of authority. ²⁴ It is matching the corrupt governments of the world from the USA to Germany and beyond: once in power, corruption continues. Luis Velarde, an ex-official of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank and a member of the right-wing Popular Christian Party and least ethical person in Peru after the Fujimoris, declared his opposition to the principal election promises of Humala: an increase in wages and a tax on the super-profits of the mining industry (mining is the principal economic activity in Peru). Perú remains poor and ethics is a slogan that has no teeth, no mark, no and bite.

Quality of education declined as less attention was paid to learning and greater emphasis placed on memorization and taking “set courses” dependent on methodologies, strategies, didactics and pedagogic training than on subject mastery. Quality of education, as measured by pupils’ scores on international tests, is at the low end in Latin America, much below Mexico’s, Chile’s (where all of society advanced under the exceptional leadership of Michelle Bachelet, President 2006-2010), Argentina’s, and Colombia’s results on the same tests.  Ethics were sacrificed for a rise in immediacies of learning levels that did not remain stable and most of the subject matter learned was quickly forgotten and/or never used.²⁵ Private universities proliferated with national universities, all competing for students and all offering cookie-cutter courses, with degrees in education becoming increasily less valuable and teachers knowing little, as seen in the results of the national examinations given teachers when Jose Antonio Chang was Minister of Education.  Chang, alone, attempted to restore ethics and credibility of the education system in Perú,²⁶ but was immobilized with the teachers’ union SUTEP that was more worried about jobs than student learning.²⁷

This is the common refrain throughout Perú where nearly every “Profesor” ²⁸ taught in at least two or three schools to make a livable income. Weak attempts at paraphrasing exposed the vulnerability of others, so they would “talk Spanish” and pass students to retain their positions and with that earn a modest living.

What is universal is contempt for reading, writing, speaking or listening–usually without comprehending what is read, written, spoken or heard.  While Perú does have some good students, a few, most students prefer the discotheques over libraries, classrooms, and dialogues with colleagues and teachers.

Alcohol, drugs more at Disco Atica-Chiclayo

There are no less than two discotheques and three bars within one kilometer from my university, and the throbbing music can be heard on campus–yet the existence of these entertainment centers is against the law.  This is openly ignored by police and judges.  With well placed bribes or payment of extortion money to local police and judges, the discotheques continue to belch out music and pour beer at all hours.  Drug use is ignored and sex is common. When I complain to Perú judges, the judges look away.  When I complain to the local police, the police threaten to carry me to the Ecuador border and push me across the imaginary line.

What must be done is to raise the standards for students, demand that teachers master the subject matter of their course, and cease slavish devotion and dependency on the internet and bogus cites, reject plagiarized papers, and maintain a firm criteria along with a logical assessment strategy.²⁹ Ethics must be taught if this is to be accomplished.  Requirements must be stiffened and strengthened. In the area of foreign languages, the foreign language must be taught in the targeted language and neither supplemented with nor avoided in favor of teaching in the vulgar (meaning common) language of the street.

Allowing dictionaries to be used during an examination defeats the purpose of the test as dictionaries, by themselves, can neither provide an accurate nor an acceptable translation any more than can Babel fish or Google Translator. A hungry, homeless, unwanted, ill person does not care about ethics. Those who starve the body and the mind for personal or assumed (psychological, religious, sexual or social) gain will never have an ethical society and intellectual property will have no value or development.

Av. José Balta (Chiclayo)

Modelo and José Balta will employ most under-educated graduated students selling illegal copies of current films while other students will drive taxis carrying tourists for Menú. Blockbusters, that closed on January 3, 2010, and employed 48,000 people (36,000 in the USA)  because of bankruptcy due to pirated DVDs, took more than 4,000 jobs out of Perú because of DVD piracy.³⁰  Two Musica left Chiclayo because of piracy, and each time a Peruano “saves some soles” by buying a pirate copy of a DVD another Peruano will be out of work in a little time.  Today most major firms abroad refuse to sell any product, rightfully, knowing that it will be copied, and Peru will continue its decline into darkening obscurity and deeper poverty as all intellectual property rights are ignored and piracy/plagiarism increases.