CIRCA:Ethics Codes and Charters (excerpts)

From CIRCA

PRIVILEGING THE INFORMATION SOCIETY: IS THERE A HUMAN RIGHT TO COMMUNITCATE?

• Raphael Capurro and Intercultural Ethics

“one main task of intercultural ethics is to foster cultural identities not through their isolation or mere addition or even collision but through a process of communication being held more and more on the basis of the digital “infosphere.”” (11)

- Consider the digital divide.

- Consider the necessary conditions for dialogue (Geoffrey).

Does digitization reproduce inequalities?

“The digital globalisation not only reinforces and expands upon the divide between the digital haves and have-nots but also makes more explicit and even deepens existing inequalities” (Warschauer 2002) – quoted in Capurro on page 12.

“Intercultural information ethics matters not only in order to overcome the isolation of moral traditions with regard to the Internet but also in order to provide a platform for pragmatic action, for the kind of declarations and (quasi-) legal agreements that can be used as a framework for preservation and fostering of cultural differences in the new digital environment. It is still an open question how far these activities could and should be coordinated by an international agency or by one of the existing UN bodies or by some other kind of institution” (18).

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

Article 19: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” (pg. 15 in Capurro)

- What about the freedom to express non-expression? Sacred indigenous burial rights and ceremonies, for example.

- “hovering around the idea of equality” (Keavy)

- Right to publishing—where does it come from? What about academic responsibility and integrity? Where did the language of “[academic] rights” come in?

- Negative (no one can stop you from doing it but they can sue you after) and positive rights (right to shelter; society has to take some initiative to ensure these rights are met (Geoffrey))