IRIE International Review of Information Ethics ISSN 1614-1687 Vol. 15 (09/2011) Ethics of Sharing edited by Felix Stalder and Wolfgang Sützl Editors of this issue: Dr. Felix Stalder Zürich University of the Arts Research project "Media Activism" at the University of Innsbruck Email: [email protected] Dr. Wolfgang Sützl Research Project "Media Activism" at the University of Innsbruck Email: [email protected] Editors of IRIE Prof. Dr. Rafael Capurro (Editor in Chief), Dr. Michael Nagenborg, University of Applied Sciences, Stuttgart, Germany, IZEW, University of Tübingen, Wolframstr. 32, D-70191 Stuttgart Wilhelmstraße 19, D-72074 Tübingen, Germany E-Mail: [email protected] E-Mail: [email protected] Prof. Dr. Johannes Britz, Prof. Dr. Makoto Nakada, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA and University of Tsukuba, Japan, University of Pretoria, South Africa Tennodai, Tsukuba, 305-8577 Ibaraki E-Mail: [email protected] E-Mail: [email protected] Prof. Dr. Thomas Hausmanninger, Dr. Felix Weil, University of Augsburg, Germany, QUIBIQ, Stuttgart, Germany, Universitätsstr. 10 , D-86135 Augsburg Heßbrühlstr. 11, D-70565 Stuttgart E-Mail: [email protected] E-Mail: [email protected] augsburg.de IRIE International Review of Information Ethics Vol. 15 (09/2011) Vol. 15 (09/2011) Content Editorial: On IRIE Vol. 15 ...................................................................................................................................... 1 Felix Stalder and Wolfgang Sützl: Ethics of Sharing ................................................................................................................................... 2 Andreas Wittel: Qualities of Sharing and their Transformations in the Digital Age .................................................... 3 Mayo Fuster Morell: The Unethics of Sharing: Wikiwashing ................................................................................................ 9 Marie-Luisa Frick and Andreas Oberprantacher: Shared is not yet Sharing, Or: What Makes Social Networking Services Public? ........................... 17 Vito Campanelli: Remix Ethics ........................................................................................................................................ 24 Clemens Apprich: Teilen und Herrschen: Die „digitale Stadt“ als Vorläuferin heutiger Medienpraxen ..................... 33 Michel Bauwens: Understanding Peer to Peer as a Relational Dynamics .................................................................... 41 Alessandro Delfanti: Hacking genomes. The ethics of open and rebel biology ................................................................. 52 © by IRIE – all rights reserved www.i-r-i-e.net ii ISSN 1614-1687 IRIE International Review of Information Ethics Vol. 15 (09/2011) Editorial: On IRIE Vol. 15 made possible by the internet and its respective platforms. So, has sharing of information a special virtue in What is the core of this publication, of a publica- the information society? How are choices of shar- tion in itself? Etymologically the notion ‘publication’ ing or withholding of information justified? Is goes back to the Latin ‘publicus’ which means sharing subversive of the new global information ‘common’, ‘of the people/state’. So once executed, regime, or an integral aspect of it? the publication, the content, the fruits of the This issue brings together contributions towards scientific labour needed to produce it belong to an ethics of sharing that embed the new techno- everyone, to the people? Far from it! According to logical potentialities linking them to their actual applicable law and common moral standards the social impact. In our understanding, information (intellectual) property fully remains with the ethics "deals with ethical questions in the field of originators. It is only accessible for everyone (in digital production and reproduction of phenomena the case of our journal even accessible for free) and processes such as the exchange, combination and everybody can make use of it; but only ac- and use of information." So, the task of developing cording to the very defined rules of the scientific an ethics of sharing is both descriptive – helping discourse, i.e. citing and referring. us to understand the contemporary complexities of Scandals about the illegal obtaining of doctoral the ethics of exchanging information as it emerges degrees by extensive plagiarism in Germany have from using digital technologies across a global reminded us of this specific aspect of the rules of range of social and cultural contexts – as well as the scientific game. So what is ‘common’ with normative – helping us to address blind-spots and regards to this publication and what exactly is clarifying possible ethical frameworks to address made public by the publication? unresolved issues regarding these practices. Interesting questions but yet a misleading ap- And what do we and should we finally do with the proach for the subject of this issue. The scientific truly impressive contributions gathered here to discourse and its standards of publishing and provide answers to the above named questions citing are not and have never been the template and guidelines for the outlined task? We share of what is driving the largest communication them with you leaving them to your appropriate machinery ever: the world wide web. In fact, the use – whatever you may make out of it. guiding principle of the underlying technology – Yours, html and the internet protocol - was to realize an unprecedented ease of referring (i.e. linking) from the editors. one publication to another explicitly leaving out the scientific standards of citation. This informal sharing of information is fundamentally woven into what we call most appropriate: ‘the net’ – the P.S. Please take also note that we added another loose coupeling of communication shared by article to the last issue (No. 14) on “Teaching anyone with anyone. Information Ethics”. Bernardo Sorj and Mauricio Lissovsky examined the use of the internet in In information ethics though ‘sharing’ has been Brazilien Public Schools and what it needs to make discussed so far only implicitly in terms of privacy, appropriate use of the costly equipment and the intellectual property, secrecy, security and free- new technologies becoming more and more avail- dom of speech. But not only that libraries have able to teachers and pupils in the country. Unfor- been at least challenged by search engines; also tunately we became aware of their most interest- recent developments of a second order like the ing observations and conclusions only a few weeks encyclopedia project Wikipedia, the emergence of after the copy date of the last issue. But not living social networks like facebook or disclosure plat- in the Gutenberg Galaxy anymore this is not an forms like WikiLeaks have shown that there is a ultimate criterion of exclusion but only a few more need to go beyond the scientific habits and legal lines of html added to the website. standards of sharing knowledge and distributing information to understand and govern the com- municative space and exchange of information Editorial: On IRIE Vol. 15 1 IRIE International Review of Information Ethics Vol. 15 (09/2011) Felix Stalder and Wolfgang Sützl: Andreas Wittel’s contribution). We need to be Ethics of Sharing critical of the contradiction between the culture of sharing amongst users and the commercial ambi- tions of many platforms on which this sharing takes place (Mayo Fuster, Marie-Louisa Sharing has emerged as one of the core cultural Frick/Andreas Oberprantacher), and, of course, values native to the networked environment. the contradiction between the spread of a popular However, as Manuel Castells (2009, p. 126) put it: remix culture and the demands of intellectual "In our society, the protocols of communication property rights incompatible with it (Vito Campan- are not based on the sharing of culture but on the elli). While sharing became a dominant theme in culture of sharing." This points to the fact that digital culture in the last few years, we should not sharing, first and foremost, is a structural feature, forget that it is not related to particular new a particular way of communicating and of organiz- technological platforms and applications, but ing. It is often handled independently of what is present also in earlier stages of the internet cul- being shared, or which effect these acts of sharing ture (Clemens Apprich). Keeping this in mind, it is have in concrete situations. Thus, from a social or productive, even if necessarily speculative, to cultural point of view, sharing remains ambiguous, enquire into sharing as a general paradigm that and its ethics needs to be examined in particular underlies social processes across different do- cases as well as across cases. Such examinations mains, informational as well as physical (Michel will position themselves beyond many of the Bauwens, Alessandro Delfanti). popular debates, where sharing is often connected to a Utopian discourse, that may resonate deeply The Ethics of Sharing remains an open frontier of in Judeo-Christian thought, invoking images of both contemporary social development and re- community and justice that may or may not be search in information ethics. At this point, every- justified. thing is in flux, and what we need to do is trace early patterns and point to fields of contestation. The centrality of sharing within the network envi- We hope this