From
the "Some ideas on property" document we chose the passage
from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. In this passage Proudhon talks about how
"property
engenders despotism"
and how "Property
is the right to use
and abuse".
Based on those two thoughts he then poses the question "how
could a government of proprietors be anything but chaos and
confusion?".
He had a petition against the right to title whereas some people
would suggest that the property be shared by everyone he suggested
its entire abolition. He thinks that "harm
and abuse cannot be dissevered from the good"
and that "To
seek to do away with the abuses of property, is to destroy the thing
itself"
1. A situation that this would apply to is if someone were to purchase a smartphone like an iPhone and wanted to put some custom software on it but are unable to do so because of the restrictions put onto the phone by the manufacturer. It relates to Proudhon's idea that property is the right to use and abuse. When you purchased that phone it's now your property and you should be able to whatever you want with it.
2. One of a currently hotly debated issues
in regards of information technology is Net Neutrality, which
consists of making Internet traffic
neutral without Internet Service Providers (ISP) interference or
control. That means, ISPs are forbidden
to favor certain types of traffic over others (such as Netflix,
Spotify or their competitors), block
certain websites (like blocking competition websites, like AT&T
over Comcast). Governments would also stay
at bay when regulating or surveying Internet traffic. Proudhon, a French philosopher,
believed that property, or the concept of it, inevitably created
despotism, and a balance should be
reached between public property and private property in order to avoid it.
3. Surveillance
cases could be observed in China, where American services like
Facebook or Twitter are
banned
by their Government, putting in their place parallel social networks
with strong surveillance and
control.
This entity foresees what it is good and what it is bad for people to
see (in huge contrast of
Western
liberal democracies, on which a concept of individuality is
pursued).This proves the argument
of
Proudhon, on which the government acts like the solemn owner of
people, and in which uses and
abuses
of them as it wishes. Once
again, in an “ideal” public domain on which the Internet belongs
to people, it could use it for illegal
and dubious purposes. Once example would be ISIS abuses the web for
plotting attacks on
civilians.
Other example, at a lesser but more frequent degree, would be online
harassment, trolling and
bullying.
Once more, the argument of Proudhon proves right as “the people”
(or more precisely, The
Mob)
would abuse of an uncontrolled and ungoverned use of the Internet
A
balance between the power of the government and the power of the
people over the use of the
Internet
should be achieved to avoid such situations.
By Chevalier Rouge & Admiral Arsenic
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