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Posted in Site News at 8:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“According to some views, certain rights derive from God or Nature” –Wikipedia
Summary: Whether secular of religious, political or apolitical, people are assumed to have rights, however nowadays the term “rights” is ascribed to corporations, which are not humans
The word “right” was in some way hijacked by the “bad guys” — those who see themselves as being “right” by merit of being more powerful than everyone else. Originally, but to an extent to this date, the word right was mostly associated with laws that protect the public from those with too much power. Phrases like “rights holder” probably diluted the word “right” in the same way that the word “open” got misused in many ways (we covered this a lot in the past). One might argue that the word “free” came to mean inexpensive and “freedom” now means deregulation (i.e. more power to those already in power), so when Dr. Richard Stallman told me that the name “Techrights” would not be clever — arguing that “rights” is a loaded term — I went with that name anyway. That name was actually proposed by our Web host, Tracy. By the way, Stallman will be on a future episode of TechBytes, as soon as we get everything sorted out. The subject of consultation regarding name can be brought up there.
“Companies do not have rights, people do.”Patents are sometimes said to fall under “intellectual property rights” (IPR), which is funny because a site with “rights”in its name actually goes against many of those so-called ‘rights’, alleging instead that it is the right of inventors to do their work without reading patent applications and the right of citizens everywhere not to pay tax to companies in other countries that had nothing to actually offer other than pieces of paper. What we find in some of those sound bytes that contain “rights” in them is that just as “freedom” came to mean deregulation (e.g. “free market”), rights came to mean something that actually harms real rights of citizens. It’s all PR-speak and we need to take back our vocabulary, even if the path there is a tad abrasive. Companies do not have rights, people do. █
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