Ethics And Public Domain

This new collection of essays opens with a pivotal essay, not previously published, on the implications of the moral duties which arise out of concern for the well-being of others. The first part of the book concentrates on the consequences of two central aspects of well-being: the importance of membership in groups - the role of belonging - and the active character of well-being - that it largely consists in successful activities. Both aspects have far-reaching political implications, explored in essays on free expression, national self-determination, and multiculturalism, among others. Against the background of the moral and political views developed in the first part, the second part of the book explores various aspects of the dynamic inter-relations between law and morality, offering some building blocks towards a theory of law.

Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" is considered to be one of the most important treatises on ethics ever written. In an incredibly detailed study of virtue and vice in man, Aristotle examines one of the most central themes to man, the nature of goodness itself. In Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics," he asserts that virtue is essential to happiness and that man must live in accordance with the "doctrine of the mean" (the balance between excess and deficiency) to achieve such happiness.

Please read the legal notice included in this e-book and/or check the copyright status in your country. In this enlightening book James Boyle describes what he calls the range wars of the information age-today's heated battles over intellectual property. Boyle argues that just as every informed citizen needs to know at least something about the environment or civil rights, every citizen should also understand intellectual property law. Why? Because intellectual property rights mark out the ground rules of the information society, and today's policies are unbalanced, unsupported by evidence, and often detrimental to cultural access, free speech, digital creativity, and scientific innovation. Boyle identifies as a major problem the widespread failure to understand the importance of the public domain-the realm of material that everyone is free to use and share without permission or fee. The public domain is as vital to innovation and culture as the realm of material protected by intellectual property rights, he asserts, and he calls for a movement akin to the environmental movement to preserve it. With a clear analysis of issues ranging from Jefferson's philosophy of innovation to musical sampling, synthetic biology and Internet file sharing, this timely book brings a positive new perspective to important cultural and legal debates. If we continue to enclose the "commons of the mind," Boyle argues, we will all be the poorer.

European memory institutions are repositories of a wealth of rare documents that record public domain content. These documents are often stored in ‘dark-archives’ to which members of the public are granted limited access, resulting in the public domain content recorded therein being relegated to a form of ‘forgotten-knowledge’. Digitisation offers a means by which such public domain content can be made speedily and easily accessible to users around the world. For this reason, it has been hailed as the harbinger of a new ‘digital renaissance’. This book examines the topical issue of the need to preserve exclusivity over digitised versions of rare documents recording public domain content. Based on data gathered through an empirical survey of digitisation projects undertaken by fourteen memory institutions in five European Union Member States, it argues for the introduction of exclusive rights in digitised versions of rare documents recording public domain textual content as a means of incentivising private-sector investment in the digitisation process. It concludes by presenting a detailed proposal for a European Union Regulation that would grant memory institutions a limited-term related right in digitised versions of rare documents held in their collections subject to stringent exceptions and limitations that are designed to safeguard user interests.

Everywhere we hear talk of decline, of a world that was better once, maybe fifty years ago, maybe centuries ago, but certainly before modernity drew us along its dubious path. While some lament the slide of Western culture into relativism and nihilism and others celebrate the trend as a liberating sort of progress, Charles Taylor calls on us to face the moral and political crises of our time, and to make the most of modernity's challenges. "The great merit of Taylor's brief, non-technical, powerful book...is the vigor with which he restates the point which Hegel (and later Dewey) urged against Rousseau and Kant: that we are only individuals in so far as we are social... Being authentic, being faithful to ourselves, is being faithful to something which was produced in collaboration with a lot of other people... The core of Taylor's argument is a vigorous and entirely successful criticism of two intertwined bad ideas: that you are wonderful just because you are you, and that 'respect for difference' requires you to respect every human being, and every human culture--no matter how vicious or stupid." --Richard Rorty, London Review of Books

As a core text for undergraduate courses in new media, media ethics, and global communication, Ethics in the Digital Domainhelps students explore the big questions surrounding the impact of the digital domain on our daily lives. There are those who promise an enhanced human future through adoption and acceptance of digital culture, and those who condemn this shift in no uncertain terms. What are the positions taken by futurists and technology inventors and adopters on these issues? Through a series of case studies, this groundbreaking text challenges students to consider the future they will inhabit. Should they fear such changes or embrace them? What ethical systems will help provide guidance in this new world? What role will they have to play in this ecosystem? Will their humanity survive? Does it matter? Presented in a format designed to initiate debate and discussion, Ethics in the Digital Domain covers enduring debates in ethics such as privacy, copyright, libel, consent, surveillance and the necessity for truthful discourse. It also looks at new dimensions introduced by media practices in digital media, including: 24/7 tracking of handheld devices machine-to-machine and machine-to-human communication promises of immortality in the cloud the movement of AI robots toward humanlike activities Regardless of where students stand on the different issues raised here, they will find themselves in ethical conundrums because the tensions raised are both ordinary and profound in the new world of digital media ethics.