At Fri, 2 Mar 2007 18:36:55 +0100, "Stefano Spinucci" virgo977virgo@gmail.com wrote:
from the site http://www.ethipat.org
- About Ethipat *
The Campaign for Ethical Patents is an initiative of the FFII.
...
Why "Ethics"? Ethics is our sense of justice, our sense of the balance in a relationship. When a law or system treats many people unfairly, it's unethical. People have abused the term, saying "business ethics", which is an oxymoron like "military intelligence" or "industrial action". Businesses do not have a sense of ethics unless they are very small, or run by very clever and dominant people who understand that balance and fairness can be good for profits.
Surely "ethics" is totally subjective? We've defined ethics in terms of discrimination. If we argue against a system or law because we don't like it, we're being subjective. But if argue against it because it treats certain people unfairly, we're being objective. Ethics, when framed like this, is not philosophy, but a real yardstick that we can use to measure the balance, and overall value, of any social system, partnership, agreement, contract, etc.
Wordnet defines ethics as follows: "motivation based on ideas of right and wrong." This nicely captures the idea of ethics as a framework for evaluating the correctness of an action (or inaction). Thus, the idea of labelling something as ethical or not implicitly makes reference to some ethicical framework; there is no ethical or unethical without evaluating them in the context of a sense of right and wrong.
By entitling your campaign the way you have, you make it appear that the current system is necessarily unethical. This is, of course, non-sense. The framework that you have set up, one based on formulations of fairness, may certainly judge the current system in this manner. But that does not imply necessity of judgment. Given that the system currently exists and there is resistance to change it is proof that there are ethical frameworks in which this is not condemned. The result is that your title implies that those frameworks that do not share your ethical judgment are invalid. This is no way to start a dialogue or promote understanding; this is a type of emotive propaganda.
Your definition of subjective and objective have similar flaws.
Why not call your campaign, a campaign for balanced patents? This immediately highlights the real issue, anyway.