Kazaa, P2P and Morality
I'm with Meg on this one, for the simple fact that moral obligations reside with people and can't be transferred to software. P2P technologies like Kazaa simply enable the copying of remote files--if people use Kazaa or one of its competitors to knowingly do some wrong, the problem lies with the users. This is, ultimately, no different from a photocopier being used to copy textbooks.
Greg said: Technology is designed with uses in mind (ethical or unethical, legal or illegal), and it's valid to critique the producers based on their intent.
A good point, and I didn't intend to completely absolve the producers of responsibility. But still, a technology can't be bad on its own no matter what the producer intends. It just can't--only the uses of a technology can be morally evaluated. Which is why I think the users of an application, in the end, ought to be held responsible for how they use it.
The problem is that a vast majority of users of P2P apps use it for an illegal purpose, without compunction, and show no signs of changing. And I guess I'd agree that the makers of Kazaa set out to exploit this trend.
But so what? Like Meg says, Kazaa (the application) doesn't steal things on its own. Its users use it to steal things (you know, just like you used to tape your friends' records). Kazaa the company may engage in some unethical practices--and affiliate-revenue hijacking is right up there--but that too doesn't make Kazaa (the application) bad.
On an unrelated note, I've been looking lately at eMusic as an alternative to file-trading. It offers unlimited downloads, a song catalog that appeals to my tastes (emo/punk/electronic, plus every single Slayer album), quality mp3s, low price.
I'm not even sure I agree with myself here--certainly there are some technologies that are designed solely to do harm (weapons of mass destruction, anyone?) and I wonder if these aren't inherently bad even if they're never used. During the Cold War the mere existence of nuclear weapons altered global politics, so I think my argument that only uses of a technology can be morally evaluated fails at this level at least.
This obviously goes far beyond the file-trading discussion, but it's an interesting question nonetheless: how much does the intent of the designer matter when considering the worth of a technology? Intuitively, I think it counts for very little, but I still find the argument that, say, "Kazaa was designed to steal things" hard to refute.
