Technological determinism and the naturalistic fallacy
Sorry for the long title. 'Technological determinism' is the view that the Internet is an unstoppable force (for good) and that trying to close down piracy sites such as Pirate Bay and TVShack will just lead to them being reopened elsewhere. Implicit (often explicit) in this view is that this force is on the side of good, and right and so on. A victory of the People against the Man. The naturalistic fallacy is the fallacy that because something is the case, it ought to be the case. Though it does not invoke the fallacy, this very nice site here explains it very well in the context of the 'free culture' or 'piracy' movement.
Yes. It is technologically easy to:
Yes. It is technologically easy to:
- Drive 120 miles an hour.
- Use someone else’s credit card to purchase goods online.
- Log into someone else’s bank account and transfer money to yourself.
- Shoot someone with a gun.
Labels: web 2.0 nonsense
posted by Edward Ockham at 5:13 pm
1 Comments:
>> 'Technological determinism' is the view that the Internet is an unstoppable force (for good) and that trying to close down piracy sites such as Pirate Bay and TVShack will just lead to them being reopened elsewhere.
I'm not sure if you're challenging this or not, but I think it is largely accurate.
>> Yes. It is technologically easy to: [...] Shoot someone with a gun. This does not imply that it is right to do so.
No, it doesn't. But at the same time, law enforcement does not accomplish very much by going after the middle-men, who hook up gun buyers with gun sellers.
The fact "that trying to close down piracy sites such as Pirate Bay and TVShack will just lead to them being reopened elsewhere" doesn't imply that piracy sites such as Pirate Bay and TVShack are morally right. But I think it does imply that law enforcement is not going to accomplish very much by shutting them down, even if they do make an example out of some of the proprietors.
Of course, one problem is that it's not particularly easy to go after *any* of the parts of the operation. I'm not sure there's much at all that law enforcement can do. So long as the meme of "copyright infringement is not theft" remains so popular, it's going to be an extremely difficult thing to stop.
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