Unfortunately the contrast between the MeFi commentary and the comments on the entry implies to me that my point didn't make much sense to non-programmers. So, a few clarifications.
I am not advocating a specific plan. My point isn't "we should license and bond programmers", or "we should throw F4I's programmers in jail". I also don't care that much about the Sony/BMG case except as a specific example of where things have gone wrong already. I definitely don't think that we should crucify some random employees of a software company based on some moral code that they weren't a party to and didn't even know about when they wrote the offending code.
What I am saying is: people who create computer programs have a responsibility to the public. Malware, viruses, DRM, and a variety of other ways to subvert a user's computer against their will are all immoral and people who create them should care about that. I may have been overly narrow in simply addressing "programmers" since obviously management plays a role.
I also believe that the public should assert their rights in this regard. I see that Sony is coming under some incredible pressure in this case. That's great, but their executives are still all universally saying "we still believe in copy protection technology". I think the public should reply with a resounding, "no you don't" and continue to boycott Sony until it abandons all copy-protection "technology".
I do have a few new points to make while I've got the floor.
Some musicians aren't total asshats. If you're looking for some music to listen to while you're waiting a decade or five for Sony/BMG to actually listen to their customers, may I humbly suggest the musical stylings of Jonathan Coulton, He provides some awesome music for free download, and it just so happens that he has specifically said that he is anti-DRM and thinks the Sony rootkit is a travesty.
Also, copy protection just doesn't work. It never has, and it never will. It might discourage people from copying things a few times, for a few minutes, but in the large it has no impact. Tycho put this particularly well:
... people who pirate software enjoy cracking it. The game itself is orders of magnitude less amusing. And their distributed ingenuity will smash your firm, secure edifice into beach absolutely every Goddamn time. There are no exceptions to this rule.The whole idea of "copy protection" is flawed. If you take a holistic view of the process, it doesn't even make any sense. The only way copy protection is coherent is if you ignore the part of the distribution process where the customer, you know, uses the thing they bought.
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The first time I read your reference to me, I read "except Mary"! And thus are great conflicts started. Moving on...
One other point I kept meaning to make and didn't get around to is that while there are arguments that everyone should have their medical needs met, up to a certain expense and likelihood of working, no matter how evil they are, and that everyone should have adequate legal representation no matter how heinous the crime they are accused of, I think an analogy from there to computer programs is invalid. (Not that you made one, but since I kept exploring the analogies anyway...) Should a programmer agree to develop what you want, it should act as your agent, but that doesn't mean that any programmer is obliged to develop software for you.
In this way, there might be a second set of prior ethical questions for programmers and their employers or partners: should I make this software or sell it to this person? Perhaps an analogy to car manufacturers, as per your original essay, is better here. While a car manufacturer is not liable legally or ethically if someone buys a car and then uses it as a lethal weapon, if the person told the manufacturer or salesman of their intent, they might be considered ethically bound to not make that sale and/or to inform relevant authorities. Likewise, if they requested the design of a car designed for extra lethal impact when hitting children, we would not judge the manufacturer kindly for designing with that in mind. Part of the ethical bargain car manufacturers have with the public interest (I'm not libertarian) is that while they make extremely lethal devices, they do not facilitate that use of them.
People remembering my last thread might be more interesting in an analogy with gun manufacturers though, who manufacture devices that, should you wish to kill someone with them, will be likely to do it quite well. Gun manufacturers make similar compromises to car manufacturers when it comes to the untrained, incidently. If you're not trained in the use of guns or cars, they don't act as a good extension of your will and the untrained kill people with them accidently (or destroy a lot of property, more so in the case of cars). When does a gun manufacturer or salesman have an ethical obligation not to make or sell a gun? This is actually highly dependant on a bunch of moral questions on which there is not consensus. Apart from my implication re cars above that people are ethically obliged to prevent the unethical use of their tools if they had prior warning, which is controversial enough, there are a minority of people who believe that it's immoral to kill animals, and another larger set (probably a majority in some communities) that believe that it's immoral to kill animals except for food or to end pain and suffering. They might or might not then regard the sale of guns to people openly intending to hunt for sport unethical. Pacifists regard making war as immoral and therefore may regard supplying weapons to some or most or all armies unethical.
This is by way of making the point that the choice "to develop and to sell?" for programmers is likely to be more difficult at the boundaries, ethically, for programmers, than the "to treat?" decision for a doctor, given that users can have, and demand expression of, such a wide variety of wills to act, an increasing number of which can be expressed programmatically.
While I agree with Tycho and think that anyone putting anything in a digital format has to accept that some asshole out there is going to try to crack it (and eventually succeed), I'm not sure I buy the idea of throwing out copy protection all together. Keep in mind that the /., PA, etc. crowd is pretty technically literate and that for most people, the various copy protection methods are a decent deterrent. For example, when I worked at the used media store, we got back a bunch of software b/c it said the user key was already registered. Sure, a rather tech-savvy person might comb the 'net for info about how to get around it, for alternative codes, and suchlike, but most people just want something to work a certain way and when it doesn't, they give up. It's sort of like trying to open a door and finding it locked. Sure, the guys at MIT (or wherever that was) got into picking them, but the majority of people will just walk away.
I agree.
In the legal and medical cases, people are generally in some kind of trouble. Either their body is failing them, or the legal system is threatening to do some pretty awful stuff to them. In both cases there is an expectation that someone should help them.
Programmers/managers/software companies definitely have the right to refuse to produce software or to provide copies of potentially dangerous software to people they don't think should have it. In existing software packages, there are obviously functional decisions at every step of the way. Choosing to not provide a function is fine: after all, if programmers didn't have that freedom, every program would have to be infinitely large! For example in a "background check" application that checked public records, it's certainly not a requirement for the developers to insert a "place harrassing phone calls to this person's current phone number" button.
It's also not necessarily bad to provide functionality that encourages users to do things you as a programmer think is good. VIM encourages me every time I run it to donate money to Uganda. I don't think that's wrong. I would think it's wrong if it actively tried to find my credit card number and bill me every time I used it (even if the money was going to needy children in Uganda) or attempted to inject its nagware into other applications (such as modifying my browser so that any PayPal page would encourage me to make a donation).
The distinction is: if you're going to provide a function, it should do what the user wants. You're under no obligation to provide that function. If the user needs it, they can get it from someone else, and if it's so abhorrent that no programmer will do it, great.
The law has something slightly analagous - although people are afforded a right to legal representation, they are not afforded a right to particular legal representation. Lawyers with ethical conflicts are allowed, and in fact, strongly required, to cease representing clients in cases where they have a conflict of interest.
Unethical, for sure. It's serving the author's needs rather than mine. There are degrees, of course, I think this is only mildly unethical, but it's easy to imagine a scenario where even simple nags like this can be really bad.
Let's say that it's a surprise, and the startup is normally fast, but the 15 minutes are timed for maximum annoyance.
My machine has just been rooted. I really need to edit some configuration files, immediately. VIM correctly determines that this would be a good time to inflict maximum annoyance on me. The only reason this isn't a total disaster is I can probably kill VIM (because linux, at least, is doing what I want) and launch another editor.
After all, if I am going to wait 15 minutes for an editor, it might as well be Emacs ;-).
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