Thoughts from the TOR thread.

We have a lot of things in the world where freedom conflicts with safety/morality/something, with no clear right answer.

TOR and other anonymising technologies being one example.
Another example might be smart roads and cars that have built-in limiters to enforce speed limits.
The banning of various marijuana/tobacco/alcohol is an example too.
DRM and Region locking of media.
Whether Iran should be allowed to have a (on the surface) civilian nuclear program.
etc.

Of course, everyone considers these things case-by-case, but when the pros and cons are too complicated or balanced to decide, which way do you tend to lean?

I don't like how safety and morality are bunched together. There's every possibility that someone would take the freedom+morality combination, and leave out the safety.

[EDIT:] Say, if people were free and moral* then safety comes implicitly.

*brushing under the carpet what moral means for the sake of the argument.

Oh, I don't necessarily mean safety and morality are together.

Just that freedom is often traded off against various "other stuff".

For example, DRM is freedom vs. profit.

So consider safety/morality/something to mean "lots of stuff, considered individually" :)

Freedom. If freedom and safety are, for whatever, mutually exclusive, I'll take freedom. Of course, that dichotomy is silly, but my point still stands.

I'm in favour of whatever terrorists want.

I quickly realized that even if I had absolute freedom, I am habitually bound and would still be doing the same things I would do if I had limited freedom, so choosing more freedom is superfluous unless choosing safety prevented me from performing my habitual tasks. So with my interpretation of the question, either I can choose to be free and not enjoy the extra freedom, or keep restrictions and be safer with them.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with more freedom as people who are free are free to choose the safe route while retaining whatever other freedoms there are. I'm looking at this issue from the perspective of "what would I like to add to my life?" in which case I would add more safety since I have a self-limiting personality which would waste any additional freedom I am given.

But in the end, I'll choose whatever option fits the situation. If there is a scenario where more freedom is better, I'll chose freedom. When there is an issue that I would like to feel safe about, I'll choose safety. There are very few absolutes.

But what if your freedom comes at the cost of an other's safety? Or vice versa?

Yeah, it's not really a white or black kind of thing.

For example: Driving.

Option A]

Pretty much how things are right now, everyone drives thier own car, collisions happen daily for a large variety of reasons ect ect.

Pretty much you have the freedom/right to drive your own vehicle as you see fit, hopefully within the laws of the road(but lets face it, you can more or less only get punished after the fact in this kind of thing)

Option B]

Everyone has Computer controlled vehicles driving on smart roads, developed to the point where it is almost as safe as flying. The Vehicles drive and plot the course automatically simply by inputing a destination. Between the Smart Roads and Vehicles driving is now faster and more efficient compared to what we have now.

You sacrifice you freedom/right to drive in favor of faster/efficient/safer travel.


for something like that, I'd go with B.

Mike

Darwinism.

I really don't know, to be honest. If I have to sacrifice a little freedom for a lot of safety (like with the computer operated cars), I'll gladly do it. The other way around (sacrifice a little bit of safety for a lot of freedom), I'll do just as gladly. Anything in the middle is case-by-case for me.

Besides, both are quantities that are heavily influenced by your own perception. Put two people in the same situation, and one might find himself both free and safe and the other might find himself restricted and unsafe. It's easy to imagine one guy feeling free and safe in a computer controlled car (after all, you still get to determine where you're going) while someone else could be freaked out of his mind by the mere thought.

freedom to steal?

Basically, yes. Freedom is a neutral and blanket term. Being free means being free to do both good, and bad things.

Though with modern DRM it's more about the freedom to play a game you payed for

I think autonomous cars are a bad example because there's so many other factors to consider, like what if the system is not perfect and randomly kills people x% of the time and stuff like that. People can accept human error but when its a system error, they will sue the car company into oblivion (even if overall, autonomous cars are safer.)


I think a good example is the automatic speed limiter. It's simple enough for its effects to be easily understandable, has some benefits, but is also rather inconvenient.
I think it's a nicely calibrated issue that would have supporters for both sides :)

Shrug, copyright infringement =/= stealing, DRM hurts legitimate customers, online-only DRM limits the way people can play their games, blah blah blah. Plenty of material elsewhere on this.

But yes, freedom means you aren't restricted from doing things. DRM restricts you from doing things, thus it reduces freedom.

Something that directly reduces freedom can indirectly increase freedom by a greater amount. (eg. banning & preventing murder, robbery and assault means people have more freedom to go outside and do things, resulting in a net increase in freedom.)

But I don't think there's conclusive evidence that DRM has those sorts of benefits.

yeah i wasn't really after a debate where people pretend piracy isn't stealing, i was just pointing out the fact that your earlier categorisation displayed bias. im glad you recognise this with your follow up post.

i would query where my freedom to create something that others can't take from me exists though.

Somewhere around freedom to rape.

What keeps me up at night is wondering what it would mean to have the freedom to be raped.

A speed limiter is just a device that helps to enforce the law which already limits your freedom to drives as fast as you want anyhow. I don't see this as a particularly interesting case for the discussion of safety vs freedom.

Because ultimately obeying the law is a choice (with consequences attached, of course). Rule of law works because people put their trust in laws and choose to follow them, not because they are forced to.

Speed limits exist to discourage driving over a safe threshold that varies depending on location, but while exceeding the speed limit does imrpove the odds of an accident, obeying them doesn't really limit those odds either. In-built limiters would simply be reducing the freedom of choice a person has available to themselves while driving for minimal impact on the actual safety of the roads.

I'm well aware of that. I still don't think it's particularly interesting to debate.

Give me your address and you can find out.

Who's biased now? Feel free to create whatever you want. I can have it. You can keep it too. Noone's taking anything. But yes, we're not going into a debate where people pretend piracy is stealing :P


All of that aside, on the DRM issue, I've said that I work in a public library now. We have the legal right to lend works out to the public, including PC games. But most games with online components will tie the CD-key to an account, or other DRM measures. This means we can't stock those games. Similarly, with eBooks, we're using a provider called Overdrive. Apparently Amazon has decided not to support Overdrive in Australia (they do in the US) which means that people with Kindles can't borrow eBooks from us. (Although really, the concept of borrowing an eBook is stupid in the first place, but oh well.)

So yeah, when the law is on the business's side, "piracy is stealing and wrong!". When the law is on the public's side? "Even though we're taking away your legal rights, we need to do it so it's ok!". Businesses seem quite happy to ignore or bypass the law whenever they want, so meh.

Only cowards choose safety over freedom.

I don't think that's a considered position. There's plenty of cases where it's better to choose safety over freedom. It usually boils down to how much safety you receive and how much freedom you give up, cost benefit and so forth.

Pretty much this.

I think we're all familiar with Franklin's famous quote;


I underlined the important aspects. There's liberty, and then there's things core to being human. Losing those things for short-term gain has its problems. It all becomes a subjective problem of what liberties are essential to being a human? Is it all of them?


The thing is; the line is often misquoted as;



by ultra-libertarians who live by the motto of let me do what I want, **** you, and **** the consequences. It's a selfish and irrational view to take.

That's good to know. I've seen plenty of people use the butchered quote, though I wasn't aware of the real version.