License to Copy

Up until very recently, I found the licenses under which programs are distributed to be very boring. Similarly, when I installed software on my computer I clicked the ‘I agree’ button without reading through them carefully, as I know I’m not planning on doing anything that anyone would mind me doing with it. Consequently, I think it is quite weird that the thing that has caught my interest above everything else in the discussion about free software is the various licenses.

From what I understand by what I’ve read about the various licenses is that the default one is the copyright. Basically, when you write code and state that it is copyrighted, no one but you may copy the code or make money from it.

Free software can either be copyleft or copycenter, both wordplays on copyright. Both kinds of licenses grant the right to modify and redistribute software. The difference between these is that modified copyleft software must continue to be copyleft, meaning that no following modifications may become proprietary. Copycenter software does not have that restriction. A famous example of a copyleft license is the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), whereas Berkely Software Distribution (BSD) licenses are permissive (modifications may become proprietary should the modifier want to) and copycenter.

I can very well understand the need for copyright, as it’s an incentive to write code that you can earn money from. If no one may copy your code it might be easier for the people who want to use your program to buy it from you than to make their own version. If the program is copyleft, it might not be freeware, but it will be much easier to make your own version of it.

The copyleft alternative is an even better alternative, in many cases, as it gives people the right to help make software better. What I can’t understand is why a programmer should wish to use a copycenter, permissive license. If the programmer likes free software enough to decide to distribute her code freely, why would she decide to let other people make money from it? Of course, businesses like Microsoft or Apple will be thrilled to be able to use free code and turn it proprietary, but why let them?

The only answer I can find to that is that writing code and seeing others use it, even if the others make money from it, may feel like a big enough accomplishment. However, it does feel like a sucker’s payoff.

Paranoid Programmeroid

I think free software is great. I mean, really great. People ‘working together’ to build helpful applications is, naturally, generally a very good thing. But there some small drawbacks and even some scary parts.

The first thing is a matter of feeling ‘this is my code’. In most (if not all) licenses for free software, a central part is that you need to include the name of the author of the code you borrowed from. But that can be easily bypassed if you want to; if you just alter the code sufficiently and hope no one will read your code carefully enough to recognize its similarities with that of another programmer. The free software licenses to some extent depend on trust, and it’s not always easy to trust people you don’t know.

To look at this from a slightly different angle, if you steal the free software code from another programmer you could simply modify the code to make it look different from some free software, take it off the free software license and sell it for money. No one will have the right to look into your program to notice that you are basing your program on someone else’s code. I have no idea if this is something that happens, or happens enough to make it a big problem, but it feels like it’s very possible. Also, I don’t know if any free software license organization has lawyers employed who could help people who feel like they have been stolen from. It could be an interesting idea, if the funding was available.

Another thing is that someone could deliberately sabotage code, opening security gaps in it to be exploited at a later time, or installing spyware at the same time as the ‘benevolent’ code. Of course, this is very possible also in software that isn’t free. It’s probably also less likely to be the case with free software as other users may have read through the code and found weird parts of it. Why I added the thought here is that it anyone can use your code for whatever, you have no control over its final destination. Sort of along the lines of how a clock is innocent until it’s the timer of a bomb.

However, the problems I have listed here are more paranoid than valid. Free software is still a good thing, and these points don’t really take anything away from that. In my next entry, however, I will explore some more valid issues with free software.

It's Never Too Late For Pirate Comics

I should have posted this last week to fit the theme, maybe, but better late than never.

BBC = Bye Bye Commercial?

It's quite interstesting to see that BBC reasons that development of open source software is a part of Public Service.

Free as an Ogg

A week ago, the FSF (Free Software Foundation) launched a campaign called 'Play Ogg', to get people to use the 'ethically, legally and technically superior audio alternative to the proprietary MP3 format'. I must say I had no idea that the mp3 file format was patented.

You Don't Own It

The first kind of file sharing I think about when hearing the term is the one where people share music with others. That was the first file sharing I came across, in the form of Napster. A friend of mine was studying at the university, and had a very good internet connection. Someone had told her about Napster, a program which she had promptly downloaded.

When I got home I downloaded Napster. The program wasn’t working nearly as well on my 56k modem, and it took me about 15 minutes to download a song. In addition, I could only fit about 20 songs on my hard drive before having to get rid of one if I wanted to download another. I didn’t really think there was anything wrong with that, it more or less worked as any other demo.

Then Napster was shut down and I heard about Audiogalaxy, a similar program (although web based) that I used for a while. When Napster was shut down I thought a bit about the ethics surrounding downloaded copyrighted material. The practice, as I was told, was still legal in Sweden as long as you didn’t upload anything. So that’s what I did. The downloading I defended morally by it being so few songs, that I would buy the ones I really liked (an argument that many still use), and that most of the songs I downloaded like that were so rare that I wouldn’t be able to buy them in the stores in Sweden.

Since then, I have a much upgraded hard drive and internet connection. I can easily store all the music that I want on my hard drive, and as long as I can find someone who has it, I can download it in about five seconds.

How has that changed my thoughts about the matter?

I have a much harder time justifying downloading copyrighted material now than before. The argument that it’s ok to download songs that are so rare that you can’t find them anywhere, might still be reasonable. But the fact is that the legal alternative places to download music have grown so big now that you should be able to find most songs you could ever want there.

Personally, illegal file sharing hasn’t changed the numbers of CD’s I buy. I get the ones I really like, which is a maximum of three or four in a year. I didn’t buy more before that, and then music was way more important to me. I would never download a whole CD only to burn in onto a CD-ROM with printed sleeves from the actual cover.

But even so, the arguments against file sharing weigh heavier for me now. Well, actually I’m not even sure if it’s even worth arguing about. There’s really no twisting and turning, I just find it wrong.

The recording companies who own the songs have the right to ask for as little or as much as they want to. They may be greedy bastards, but that doesn’t change anything. I can decide that the music isn’t worth as much as they ask, but how on earth can I just say “nah, too expensive, I’ll go steal the song instead”? I don’t have any right to the songs unless I pay for them. Want it? Buy it. It’s really as simple as that.

You're the Song That I Want

I simply have to show a strip of the comic Zitz, found on another blog about ethics, I think it really portrays the discussions going on in many households regarding file sharing. At least it feels very familiar to me!

What Did You Learn in School Today?

Found an interesting post on the Slashdot newsportal about an idea the music industry has for teaching children that distribution of copyrighted material is bad.

I'll Follow the Law

I'm wondering if not many people have the terms ’legal’ and ’ethically correct’ confused. ‘There’s no law against it? Then it’s ok!’ is a very widespread idea.

Maybe it’s just the Swedish people who are very law abiding. I’ll take the smoking ban in restaurants as an example. Many smokers say, in retrospect, that the law is good, that it’s a good thing that people working in restaurants can now work in a smoke free environment.

What is very interesting here is that smoking in restaurants, pubs and clubs was very widespread before the law was passed. Smokers will now go outside for smoking, but what about before the ban? Did the smokers really need a law to change their opinions or open their eyes to it? It was perfectly possible to go outside to smoke even before the ban.

Is law = ethics?

Another example of this, one that is more related to technology, is TV Links. The site provides links to many streamed TV series, old and new. Sometimes the links don’t work (presumably when they sites hosting the video clips have been shut down), which you as a user can report, but most of the time you can watch episodes of The Simpsons, Grey’s Anatomy or Smallville without problems.

In the TV Links FAQ, one of the questions is ‘is this site legal?’ which is answered by a simple ‘we provide links, nothing is wrong with that.’ They also state that they ‘do NOT support downloading’.

I really don’t see the difference between hosting the videos and providing the links, from an ethical perspective. Legally there seems to be a distinction, sure, but is it right? For the user the videos are still only one click away.

If the people behind the site think that file sharing is perfectly fine, I guess there are no ethical problems with providing the links. But something feels weird, at least to me, when you perfectly well know that something is illegal, but support it just until the point where the law says no. When you follow the letter of the law, but not its intentions.

Does Your Reader Know?

A friend of mine had a blog for just under a year about life and love. She has 300 regular readers towards the end, who sometimes commented on what she wrote. The blog talked openly about the goings on in life.

On YouTube, the user Lonelygirl15 added her first video blog in June last year. In the blog she talks about things in her life, like my friend in her text blog. Lonelygirl15’s blog became a huge success and millions of people watched it.

These two blogs have one thing in common in that they are utterly fake. My friend made up a character that she writes about, much like she has always been writing stories. Lonelygirl15 was an actor hired by three aspiring script writers, who wanted to use a new and interesting media to tell a story.

In September, Lonelygirl15 was revealed and many fans were really upset by the fact that it was all a lie. Some comments on the revelation videos are more along the lines of ‘haha, told ya’, but some seem genuinely hurt.

So, the questing is: is it right to lie about yourself in blogs? And if you do, should you ever tell anyone?

I’m not really sure if I like fake blogs. On the one hand, it’s an interesting medium to write in. Most sincere diary blogs are pretty boring, so a fake one could provide more entertainment. On the other hand, people who read or watch blogs can become emotionally invested in the author, who after a while can seem a bit like a friend – those people could be hurt by finding out their ‘friend’ was a fictional character. If you reason from a ‘happiness maximizing’ standpoint, however, the entertainment you give your readers by faking might outweigh the possible anger that could surface if they found out it was all fake.

If you have a fake blog and get a bit tired of it, you have to decide what to do about it. Should you just leave it and never tell any of the readers why you stopped writing? Should you write a “goodbye” post and say you decided to stop writing? And if so, should you in that post ‘out’ yourself?

In the case of Lonelygirl15, when she was ‘outed’, many people were, as I previously wrote, upset. The question is, is knowing the truth better than being blissfully ignorant?

I wish I had a good answer to that. In this case the question might not be very big, or important, but there are many other situations to which the basic question can be applied. I have always in theory leaned towards the harsh truth, but I can’t say it’s always the best choice, or that being brutally honest it is the ‘right thing’ to do.

Ads are Expensive and Free

Wait, a minute, is this actually what it seems to be? A place where users make video ads for reals brands, for free... Something is fundamentally weird about that.

Her 15 Minutes of Shame

Ok, this might be funny, but poor woman... Basically, a reporter for Metro asked some people buying groceries if they knew they could end up at Konsumbloggen, a humorous blog written by a cashier at a grocery store. One of them answered that no, she hadn't thought of that, and now she will and it doesn't feel too good. Of course, this got her on the blog and her picture has then been reposted on many blogs throughout the internet. Funny, yeah, but knowing she said she didn't want to end up on blogs, it's not very nice.

Obee Doo, I Wanna Be Like Me

Now, maybe I have lived in my own little world, secluded from technical inventions, but until this week I had never – to my recollection – heard the term ‘Web 2.0’. Wikipedia’ing it led me to realize that even if I hadn’t come across the term before, I have used many applications that would fall under this category (and the fact that I used one of the top web 2.0 applications for finding this information was rather funny).

One of my first contacts with the web 2.0, according to the Wikipedia definition, was on Amazon. The feature I’m talking about is really basic, the ‘customers who bought this item also bought…’ one. Calling it a web 2.0 feature may be pushing it, as it is pretty old by now, but it fits the description.

So, what would be the problem with this function? Well, to start with, I didn’t really see anything wrong with it at all. Sure, companies make a lot of money by using information about my preferences if I buy something from them, which means they are saving information about me (whether that information is linked to my customer ID or not).

But really, how much do I care about that on a personal level. In fact, it’s probably worth it to be able to easily access for example other books by the same author without doing a new search. On my favourite shopping site, Asos, I have more than once found nice stuff by looking at those recommendations. If I find a nice top, it’s often linked to matching jewellery, or at the very least there’s a good chance of me liking at least some of the suggested items.

But there is a less obvious downside to this as well. If we use those recommendations to a large extent in many aspects of our lives, things might get very boring. If you watch a movie you like, and use Imdb or any other movie site to recommend movies like it, or Allmusic to find music, you might find things that you like. But the better those sites are at recommending things that are very close to what you already like, the less you will be exposed to new influences. It might be exaggerating, but functions like these could make us more predictable and boring.

If you talk about clothes or movies, the risk of you staying with what you like from before might not change drastically with the suggestion function. However, if you used a similar function for looking for political blogs, for example, you could get into the situation of never really hearing some other perspective of the world other that that of you and people who agree with you. And then we kind of lose a point with what blogs could be, and will never really get our thoughts and ideas challenged.

Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye

A central aspect in most MMOs is the concept of guilds. Wikipedia states about online computer game guilds that “they organize group activities, regulate member behavior, exclude non-conforming individuals, and react as a group when member safety or some aspect of guild life is threatened”. While I’m considering delving deeper into all of these aspects in a coming essay, for now I’m going to linger on the situation where a player is transitioning between guilds.

If you are guildless, joining a guild is a piece of cake. Assuming you aren’t lying about your gear, experience or online times, you are free to do whatever you want and no one will think less of you.

If you are already in a guild, things become harder. Leaving a guild in which you aren’t really friends with anyone isn’t hard, and then your situation is the same as for a guildless person. If you, however, are member of a guild in which you have friends who like and rely on you, is infinitely harder.

There are many reasons why you would like to move from one guild to another. Easier access to gear upgrades, friends in another guild wanting you to join the, a bigger challenge playing-wise, an argument in your old guild… as I said, there are many reasons. Analysing the ethics of such motivations is tricky. Analysing the way in which it is done is hard, but somewhat easier and more tangible.

Leaving a guild in which you have a good standing can, as I stated before, be hard. People will ask you why and what you are going to do next. If you left the guild because you didn’t like it there and wanted to play guildless for a while, or just didn’t like it there and wanted to maybe apply to join another guild, people will generally be reasonably understanding. If you didn’t like it you shouldn’t be there. Simple.

One thing that is quite common, however, is that you already know where you want to go. That you like it in your old guild, but that for some reason it is not number one on your list anymore. You might even have been offered a spot in another guild. Here is where it gets sticky.

Being offered a position in a guild isn’t wrong. A guild offering a position to a player that is already “taken” can be compared to someone making a pass at someone else’s boyfriend. Maybe it’s wrong, but it’s not the fault of the boyfriend or in this case, the player receiving the offer.

On the other hand, if the boyfriend actively tried to make the other person make the pass, to see if he could maybe get together with a “better” person, we’d think that was immoral. The analogue in a game would be for a person to contact a new guild while still being in one, with the intention of seeing if he’d get in before making his decision, or with the full intention of staying if he wasn’t accepted. This practice is also considered immoral by most players.

But how come? If you compare it with someone trying to replace his girlfriend, it makes sense. But another comparison which would be perfectly reasonable is that of looking for employment. It’s socially acceptable to be looking for a new job without quitting your old one. Why are the reactions to a person applying to a new guild while still being in his old one more like the reactions of a cheating boyfriend than that of a person changing jobs?

Only one reason springs to mind: it’s because of the relationships you have. In the example with the boyfriend, you are hurting a person. In the example of the job you are hurting a company, which might not even be very hurt if you are easily replaceable. If it’s a small company of friends it would be a much worse thing to do.

A guild is something in between. The “job” side of it is the raiding of dungeons, in which the players are needed to work together to achieve something. There is also, however, a “relationship” side. You have friendships in a guild, which can be pretty strong between people who have played together for months. Not as strong as a relationship between two people, perhaps, but still strong enough to hurt when people are left behind.

Lucy in the Sky with Epics

A few months ago, auction sites were littered with accounts and characters from the game World of Warcraft. This was a while before the first expansion to the game was released, and many of the characters to be sold had more or less the best armor to be found in the game. I had a look at Ebay at the time, and it wasn’t very rare to find characters going for more than 2000 dollars.

Now, when you decide to play the game, you have to accept an agreement stating, among other things, “Blizzard does not recognize the transfer of Accounts. You may not purchase, sell, gift or trade any Account, or offer to purchase, sell, gift or trade any Account, and any such attempt shall be null and void.” I don’t know whether this agreement is legally binding, but by signing it by clicking “OK”, you have agreed to its spirit for all ethical purposes.

So, breaking the agreement by selling your account, is that ethical? You could argue that “no, it is not”. That an agreement, whether or not it is legally binding, is ethically binding.

The other reason why it wouldn’t be ethical is that it’s unfair to other players. They have spent a lot of time on their characters, in many cases over a hundred days in total. By selling your account you are making it possible for someone to skip all those days of playing just because he or she has the monetary means to do so.

But are there circumstances in which it could be justified to sell or give your account away?

Say you stop playing, and a real life friend of yours wants to try the game a bit. You let him play your characters for a while, and when your paid subscription runs out, you let him pay for a renewal and continue playing, as it would feel mean to make him start over from level 1 when he knows and likes your old character. Is this wrong? Is it as wrong as selling it to a stranger via an auction site?

Say, in another example, that you feel yourself being addicted to the game. Your girlfriend is getting more and more frustrated, and you suddenly realize you are on the verge of losing her because you are always playing. Deciding she is more important to you than a stupid game, you immediately cancel your subscription. As you know how easy it would be for you to be tempted to start playing again, you sell your character on Ebay. With the money you get, which is a considerable amount as you were dressed in epic gear from top to toe, you sweep your girlfriend off to a romantic vacation to an island in Greece to start making amends for the months of neglect. Is this wrong?

In all scenarios I can think of, I think it is wrong to buy a character. There’s no reason you have to get a character at max level, in the best gear available. The concept of selling is harder. In the first scenario above, it could be nice to know your friend is having fun with your character, the character that you played so long. In the second, maybe the help in saving your relationship is worth breaking your agreement for.

Myself, I can’t really picture selling off my characters. Firstly, I try to honor agreements. Secondly, it would feel strange to know some stranger was running around with the characters I spent so much time on. Giving it away to a friend would be the only option, and then I would think they would be better off learning to play the character by starting fresh from level 1.

He Dit It His Way

I'm having a hard time deciding if this guy is funny or just a jerk. What he does is perfectly by the rules, but hardly nice to his fellow players...

Girls Just Want to Have Fun

...and hopefully as little harassment as possible.

Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except For Me and My Monkey

In March, the Swedish minister of Defense, Odenberg, put forward a highly debated proposition for a new law, commonly known as the FRA law. The law includes passages about allowing certain forms of “eavesdropping” on traffic such as e-mails and phone calls. The proposition stated that the material searched through will not be stored and that it will be searched for certain key phrases only.

While Odenberg states that this law is proposed to safeguard the integrity of individuals and that there will be checks to ensure this, critics are less than thrilled.

One blogger is comparing the proposed law to Nazi-Germany and other dictatorships. He suggests that people should send a copy of all their private e-mail correspondence to the Defense ministry, both to prove a point (that is more or less what the law wants to do, in his opinion), which could be a problem for the servers if enough people did it, and to be a nuisance, as the ministry has to save and file all inbound correspondence.

Does this blogger have a point? Well, I think he does. The Nazi-Germany argument is a bit hard for me to relate to, because I deem it pretty unlikely that my e-mail will be read by anyone using it like that, even if similar things have happened before and are happening in other parts of the world. I think that his other reasons are a bit better.

Bottom line is this law is an intrusion in some way. I don’t think it is very likely that any normal person would suffer from the law, other than a feeling of being watched for some. However, I think the argument is a bit backwards: instead of people having to discuss how the law makes them feel violated, I’d like some rock solid proof, or even statistics indicating that the law would actually help.

For catching terrorists, the law is pretty ridiculous. A keyword based system would be extremely easy to fool. A friend of mine occasionally sends e-mails to China. Just replacing words like “orphanage” with “O” does the trick, and the e-mail gets through. I doubt terrorists would be more careless than my friend. And if this is the intended use of the law, catching terrorists, I think it is unethical to put it in force. Clearly the benefits of the law would then by far be outweighed by the possible intrusion into people’s integrity.

Knowing This, Knowing That

Can't help but think, when reading this blog entry, about all the interesting this the US government could do with a list of every perscription drug a person ever bought, apart from what it's actually needed for.

With a Little Help From My ISP

Integrity is an initiative (initiated by Bahnhof) that ISP's and web hotels can be a part of, saying they won't shut down websites or volunteer informations about their customers unless obligated by the law. The initiative has its roots in the declaration of human rights, articles 12 and 19.

Gossip Makes the World Go Around

I watched the movie ‘The Queen’ just the other day. It’s a movie about Queen Elizabeth, and the death of Lady Diana plays a major part in it. One of the first things that pop into my head when I’m thinking about the concept of ‘integrity’ today is therefore the personal life of celebrities. Diana was more closely watched than most celebrities, and definitely more than anyone in Sweden. Pictures and stories about her and many others with her have been in gossip magazines for ages now.

A while back a friend told me about a forum she reads every now and then, a gossip forum about Swedish celebrities. I got the link today so I had a look. Threads you can find there are ‘Who is the financier with the champagne?’ (debating what financier it is who bought a very, very expensive bottle of champagne according to an article in some newspaper), ‘Celebrities you have done drugs with’ and many other similar threads. There are also links to several gossip blogs.

So, what am I trying to say here? It’s basically the same argument that you’ve most likely heard before: is it right to gossip?

From an ethical point of view, you could argue that it is. The gossiper could claim to be a believer in hedonistic utilitarianism: the amount of happiness from the people who enjoy hearing the gossip will be larger than the amount of sadness from the person the gossip is about. Many other people would follow other ethical rules, for example saying that it’s not ok to encourage the paparazzi and that even celebrities need some space. Myself, I read the gossip pages in magazines at times, and I click on links every now and then to pages with gossip. But I can’t say I think that it’s the ‘right’ thing to do, and I beat myself up about it.

On a side note, what I also think is interesting in the case of that forum, is that the people being gossiped about would have a hard time suing someone for libel. First of all, it’s ‘just gossip’. But every now and then, a gossip magazine has to make apologies to celebrities for printing things about them that weren’t really true. On a forum such as this one, that’s still read by a considerable amount of people, it’s much harder to get that apology. There is a law, the ‘BBS law’ (1998:112), which could possibly be applied. It more or less states that the person in charge of an electronic bulletin is responsible for making sure that inappropriate material is removed. This is, however, something that’s first and foremost used in cases of forums distributing child pornography or copyrighted media, not libel. As a result, people can gossip on forums such as this one to their hearts’ content, and can be pretty liberal with the truth. The joys of modern technology.

Oh, and I’m not posting the link to that forum. That’s the least I can do to feel a bit more ethical about this!

Ethics Without Borders

One organization which I have been interested in learning more about ever since I first heard about it is Ingen människa är illegal (No one is illegal). The name is, in my opinion, extremely well chosen, and each time I hear it I can’t really shake it off. It gets to me.

IMäI is a network for people who believe in open borders, that everyone should have a right to live anywhere they choose ‘with the same social, political and economic rights’. It has chapters in four cities in Sweden. IMäI helps refugees that hide from the authorities in fear of being sent back to the country from which they fled, by helping them with food, clothes and rent.

IMäi’s ground principle is, as I said, that borders should be open. The network doesn’t believe in the notion of nations and claim to lack moral obligations to uphold them. They don’t see why anyone could have a right to close borders and classify anyone as an ‘illegal immigrant’. Until all borders are open, they will help refugees to hide from the authorities.

This is a clear case of civil disobedience, which I did not particularly like in my entry about Planka.nu. However, this network might have a point. They won’t obey by the rules (in this case, laws) because it would hurt people. Their reasoning is obviously ethical in some way; they aren’t just choosing not to follow rules because they don’t want to.

So, what sort of ethics do the members of this network abide by? I would deem it some kind of utilitarianism, most likely preference utilitarianism. They want people to be able to live where they choose to. Another view would be to classify it as hedonistic utilitarianism, as they want to make people happy. The reasoning then would be that the happiness of the people who get to stay in their new countries by far outweighs the unhappiness of anyone else.

I am, as I wrote earlier, all for following rules in most cases. I think that it’s my moral obligation to follow the laws that we all, in a way, decided on together (also some form of preference utilitarianism – if we decided on the law together, a majority of the people would be happy if I followed it). But in this case, I am willing to rethink that. Ok, I don’t think that a world without borders is a viable option, but I also think that the immigration policies in Sweden and most other countries are pretty messed up. Sometimes, the people working for the authorities have made the wrong decision, and I won’t be the one to judge people who try to help fellow human beings.

Don't Free the Animals

It's not easy to be ethical when nothing seems to be the 'right' choice or view. Take, for example, the PETA and PAAP organizations. Looking around on the PETA site, you read about why animals should have rights just like people, and sure, I am not a big fan of fur. Then you look at sites such as the PAAP one - and of course, I'm not against research that could find a cure for AIDS.

Being able to access all this information this easy on the Internet is a great thing, I guess, but it makes it hard to say anything at all for sure. I want easier times where everything is black and white and the bad guy is called something like Xzargrohk and wears a devilish grin!

Teehee

I'm gonna use of of these digital resistance meters to locate something intersting to write about in my blog...

Do Unto Others...

I was planning on writing something long and elaborate about the sites godhatesamerica.com, godhatesfags.com and godhatessweden.com. However, I'm having a hard time taking the author and his church seriously. I know they probably mean every word of it... but to most of the people who link to those sites they are a source of comedy. I guess that, in a way, they see it as 'no publicity is bad publicity', as they would be utterly unknown to most people without the Internet.

Most Christian people I know are pretty nice and peaceful, even though some have views I do not share. Those people probably despise this church even more than I do for doing what they do in the name of God. Kinda like Islamic terrorists ruining things for normal muslims around the world.

Ok, not going to write much more about this. I just want to say that the ethical grounds for this church are, in my opinion, highly questionable. I know that the Bible has things to say about homosexuality and that this could be wiewed as an ethical ground for 'preachings' such as what is conducted on these sites, but the Christian love and 'Do Unto Others' messages seem like so much better grounds.

To Pay or Not to Pay

Planka.nu is a site and network with the intention to form opinions about public transport in Sweden. The group behind it is a syndicalist movement who believe that people should not have to pay for the use of public transport. The website offers a form of 'insurance' for people who skip paying. The 'insurance' consists of paying 100 SEK (compare with the prices in Gothenburg: a monthly fee of 375 SEK for people under 26 years and 500 for people above) and then, if you get caught not paying, having the organization pay your fine.

So is this civil disobedience aiming to change something about society, or a way for people to save money without a 'higher cause'? Planka.nu argues that if enough people stop paying for public transport, there will be no choice but for politicians to make it free and financed by taxes. This argument can be seen as some form of welfare utilitarianism; the members of planka.nu have decided not pay their fees to, in the end, make public transport available to everyone regardless of their ability to pay for the service. Critics of the network argue that this is not what will be achieved, that the fees for the people who actually do pay will increase instead.

I think that the reasons why people join Planka.nu are not always a will to change the future of public transport. The people who do this for their own benefit I cannot view as ethical. I can, in a way, understand those who use this form of civil disobedience to change the rules, and I applaud their ingenuity – it is a very clever idea.

However, there are two reasons why I don’t like their reasoning. First, I don’t think they will succeed and this pretty much means that the only thing this network has achieved is higher fees for the people who do pay, just as the critics say. If this is true, the welfare utilitarianism argument will be reversed: instead of a large number of people benefiting from the actions, a small group of people ride the busses and trams for free while the larger group has to pay for them.

The other reason is that I think there is a value in following the democratic process. Civil disobedience is acceptable in certain extreme cases. But generally speaking: if you want to be part of a democratic society, you have to accept that a certain number of things about it won’t be to your liking. If you want to change them, you should use democratic tools to do that. If you join Planka.nu, you have decided to not play by the rules and every time that happens the democratic process is weakened a bit. In this case, I don’t think that it’s worth it.