Ethics and Intellectual Authorship

Ethics and Intellectual Authorship

Nildo Viana

"The author is not a merchant or owner, but a creator, a human being produces his works to fulfill their potential. "

The problem of intellectual authorship is usually approached from the perspective of copyright. A few times the issue of intellectual authorship is approached from a broader and important perspective which is that of ethics. It is understood by ethics not morals but the fundamental values ​​that must accompany any humanist and libertarian conception, that is, we are referring to certain ethics as it does not consider that there is only one ethical (VIANA, 2000). So the question is how the libertarian ethics addresses the issue of intellectual authorship.

The so-called "copyright" come from a conception of intellectual production as if it were a property or merchandise. The author in this case stands as an owner or merchant. The product is a commodity or property which can be used by others if purchased or authorized. Copyright is the most explicit form of the bourgeois conception of intellectual authorship. Respect for copyright means or payment for a good or else the authorization for use of a property.

From the perspective of a libertarian or humanistic ethics, the question arises differently. The author is not a merchant or owner, but a creator, a human being who produces his works to realize its potential. The author is the one who creates, produces a particular work. His work is an objectification of the author. The creator manifests itself through his creature, and therefore everyone must recognize who is the creator of the creature. It is not, in this case, commercial or proprietary right, but identification between author and work.

In this sense, "as long as the source," that is, as long as we recognize the author of the work (this is the "main source", and the location of "publication" is a secondary source, the disclosure of which is useful, but not is part of the issue of intellectual authorship), is guaranteed the ethics of humanistic perspective. Therefore, there is no sense in certain academic journals require the author's permission to publish his work in other media outlet to reserve for themselves the notorious "copyright". Copyright so should be abolished? The answer would be positive as long as you think of a global social transformation. However, within the framework of the current society, in which the intellectual and artistic productions are "goods", then the copyright still have a copyright protection function, because otherwise, some could publish and sell as a commodity the work of others without even needing your permission.

The mastermind generates, in capitalist society, the copyright. The problem occurs when it reverses this logic, when the copyright overlap intellectual authorship, as in the case of someone "buy the copyright" of the work of others and this "miss" their "rights", which reveals, simultaneously, alienation and commodification.

Similarly, the form of an ethical perspective, the author should follow the precepts pointed out by Marx: "the writer must earn money to live and write, but in no case shall live and write to make money" (Marx and Engels , 1986). There is the ethics of non-writer on the writer, which should lead to the recognition of intellectual authorship, and ethics of the author towards the reader, recognizing the latter as a human being and not as a consumer.

References

Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich. On Art and Literature. Sao Paulo: Global, 1986.

VIANA, Nildo. Philosophy and His Shadow. Goiania: Germinal Editions, 2000.