Can i have some privacy please???

In 1972, Micheal Corleone hid in sicily for months after taking down Sollozzo and McCluskey, for revenge of attempt on his father, Vito Corleone's life. And in 2011, Serena Van der Woodson couldn't walk a block without being spotted and posted on gossip girl. How have our lives changed , or how have we changed it. Imagine a facebook addicted micheal corleone in 1972, constantly updating his status messages, could his coup on 5 families have been possible. I would have to say no.

We have compromised our own privacy and for what, for encroaching upon others??? Privacy, and the safety and security that word has always implied has become an illusion with time and technology. Every National spy network has access to all its citizen's emails and communication. Every webpage you open installs a malicious cookie on your computer which is in fact a spy to track you’re every move. There are analysts and predators in the legal space of digital world collecting data on your every click and close and predicting your behavior.With all these gadgets and technology only thing that has become cheap or even free is information. All you need is a person’s account nickname to find out what he has been doing.With just the information about zip code and date of birth you can uniquely identify a majority of influential population. That is how vulnerable we have become.

How obsessed have we become over gaining information, or rather i should say encroaching upon other's privacy. A person who is not perennially active on social networking circuit is out-casted. The only column that attracts us in a newspaper is Brad-Aniston break up or William-Kate marriage, not Japan's nuclear-seismic-tsunami disaster.

There is a reason we have right to privacy in our constitutions, because we deserve to choose and reveal selective information about ourselves. Constitution states no person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law. It represents our freedom, our autonomy, which is the premise of our society today.

But there is no doubt individual privacy is at its greatest peril at this time with increasing control of government and security services on our every move, which is , they say, absolutely needed to maintain order in society in these troubling times. But we must ponder, haven't we created tool of our own destruction. Isn't it our own doing, which could become our undoing. When this revolution came we chased it , grabbed whatever we could, and now we are fighting against it. Fighting and longing for something which we willingly gave up, our privacy.

Can we even think of a life where there is no privacy. We will be slaves. Our civilization, our philosophy , our values depends on privacy. We must fight for it to preserve it, like species on the brink of extinction ,for without it we are doomed.

Ethical debate over free software!!

“Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept,one needs to think of it as free speech and not free beer”

When Richard Stallman, Founder & President of the Free Software Foundation, said so he was clearly flabbergasted by the encroaching hypocrisy of the suit clad, board room dweller executives of Goliaths of the trade. When this movement was started back in 1985, it started as a social movement,a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software. But this movement, however admirable were its contributions and achievements, its hatred in commercial software world was highly widespread and disturbing. Then they coined the magic term open source in 1998.

As much as they look like each other, they are very different at their cores. While free software stands for freedom, a social reform, an ethical solution; Open source stands for profit, optimal solution. Open source is anything but for freedom, a calculated and heavily funded campaign to crush the free software movement that became a threat to the czars of the business.

But lets find out that even with all the goodwill why this movement was overshadowed. When we look into the motives of writing a free software we find that for some people,often the best programmers, writing software is the greatest fun, especially when there is no boss to tell you what to do. Nearly all free software developers share this motive. Also if you write a successful, useful free program, it will suffice to enhance your professional reputation. And then there is Gratitude, if you have used the community's free programs for years, and it has been important to your work, you feel grateful and indebted to their developers. When you write a program that could be useful to many people, that is your chance to pay it forward. But apparently it was not enough to sustain the consumerist needs of ever hungry human which always demands more compensation than effort.

Then comes the Issue of Ownership which has many aspects to it. Why and How does a person claims ownership? Firstly, the idea of name calling or legacy, where one cannot just use somebody else's creation and put one's own name on it. Secondly, economic loss (however exaggerated), caused by uncontrolled copying and distribution of the product. Thirdly, by the law, in form of intellectual property rights heavily supports the owner. Fourthly, the natural right, where author's desires and interests concerning the program simply outweighs those of anyone else. But then there are arguments that neutralize the some of these aspects like Constitution only permits such system like copyright and doesn't require one.

The Free Software revolution rejects the concept of the programmer as being the owner of the software. Ownership is being completely transferred at the time of purchase. By doing this it is negating the concept of ownership as whole which can lead to a very slippery slope.

Our Economic system depends upon the concept of difference and uniqueness.Without the concept of copyrights and owners, the Free Software Movement would eventually make the business structure working today obsolete.

Free Software revolution also violates Autonomy of the Author ,as once the software is sold to the individual, the buyer is free to do as he deems fit, irrespective of the intent of the programmer.

Despite all this there are some good things about this revolution. In the overall picture it causes beneficence to society, as Free Software provides users the source codes, loopholes in the software can then be removed by the user. It also discourages monopolistic practices and drives out the self interest driven part in the development of the program which in some cases can be against the common good of society. It strengthens the Autonomy of the User as Non-Free Software violates the autonomy of the user by not allowing customizations in the software to better suit the needs of the user.

The revolution is still fighting and hanging on to a loose thread of morality and freedom.I could have been the modern revolution in internet like the modern revolution in Arts which gave immense privilege and authority to the audience, but i guess we were not yet ready for that.