I can “log on” to a computer library, copy a virtual book onto my computer disk, and send a copy to your computer without creating a gap in anyone’s bookshelf. The same is true of valuable computer programs costing hundreds of dollars, creating serious piracy problems. This feature leads some, like Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation, to argue that in cyberspace everything should be free – that information can’t be owned. Others, of course, argue that copyright and patent protections of various kinds are needed in order for there to be incentives to create “cyberspace property” in the first place. The only constitutional issue, at bottom, isn’t the utilitarian or instrumental selection of an optimal policy. Social judgments about what ought to be subject to individual appropriation (in the sense used by John Locke and Robert Nozick) and what ought to remain in public domain are, first and foremost, political decisions.
Predictor: Tribe, Laurence H.
Prediction, in context:The 1997 book “Computers, Ethics, and Society,” edited by M. David Ermann, Mary B. Williams and Michele S. Shauf, carries a reprint of the Sept./Oct. 1991 The Humanist magazine article “The Constitution in Cyberspace” by Laurence H. Tribe. Tribe, a Constitutional scholar, suggests a Constitutional amendment that would clarify the relationship between new technologies and fundamental constitutional protections. He writes: ”A person’s mind, body, and property belong to that person and not to the public as a whole. Some believe that cyberspace challenges that axiom because its entire premise lies in the existence of computers tied to electronic transmission networks that process digital information. Because such information can be easily replicated in series of zeros and ones, anything that anyone has come up with in virtual reality can be infinitely reproduced. I can ‘log on’ to a computer library, copy a virtual book onto my computer disk, and send a copy to your computer without creating a gap in anyone’s bookshelf. The same is true of valuable computer programs costing hundreds of dollars, creating serious piracy problems. This feature leads some, like Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation, to argue that in cyberspace everything should be free – that information can’t be owned. Others, of course, argue that copyright and patent protections of various kinds are needed in order for there to be incentives to create ‘cyberspace property’ in the first place. The only constitutional issue, at bottom, isn’t the utilitarian or instrumental selection of an optimal policy. Social judgments about what ought to be subject to individual appropriation (in the sense used by John Locke and Robert Nozick) and what ought to remain in public domain are, first and foremost, political decisions.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1991
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Copyright/Intellectual Property/Plagiarism
Name of publication: Computers, Ethics, and Society (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: The Constitution in Cyberspace
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Pages 213, 214
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne