Rights: LJ/WFI, public/private, legal/moral
This LJ Abuse / Warriors For Innocence debacle has brought up an important conflict in the way we use terms like "rights." A number of users have written that LJ has violated their right to free speech. On the other hand, jamie_miller makes the point that words like censorship, free speech, and right to expression pertain to the relationship between a government and its citizens. Only a government can commit censorship; a private, for-profit company can allow or disallow whatever content it chooses on its servers.
A few months ago I engaged in a discussion with febomac about whether the partner of a pregnant woman has a right to a say in whether she has an abortion. Of course not, I said, that's a relic of the patriarchy; should an abusive or absent partner be able to force a woman to carry a pregnancy and run the health risks of childbearing? To which she responded, quite sensibly and from a much different angle, but shouldn't some partners have a say? If my husband and I were to conceive a child, I feel like he would have a right to some say in what happened to it.
In essence, we were having two different conversations. I couldn't understand what she meant: how could some people have a right, and others with the same legal status not have it? And there's the key: I was thinking of legal status. When I used the term "right," I was thinking of it in the very narrow, legal sense of the term: absolute obligation enforced by the government universally on all people who fall into the same category in its view.
But that's not how we use the term on a daily basis. We say, "I have a right to know if my boyfriend is cheating on me." "I have a right to be involved in that decision about the budget at work, because I've put a lot of time into it." "I have a right to know what my grade is in the class at the moment."
Now, I think we understand, when we say it, that we mean it in some private sense that's unrelated to the government; we understand that we couldn't sue to get involved in that work decision. Where it gets slippery is in cases like this one, which involve a private institution -- a university campus; LiveJournal -- that had previously permitted certain freedoms, revoking them. When users assert that we have a "right" to write what we want in our privately-owned speech outlet, some of us mean it in the private sense; some mean it in the legal sense; and some of us haven't made the distinction.
There are certain private institutions that act in a quasi-governmental capacity, I would argue, and therefore we expect, intuitively, that they will operate under principles similar to the ones that bind the government. University policies of fairness and intellectual freedom lead us to expect it to behave in much the same way as a government institution, which is purportedly bound by those principles. Because LiveJournal had not previously regulated the content of its journals, we come to think of it as operating under the free-press umbrella.
Now, in a strict legal sense, this isn't true. And on occasions when that becomes apparent, like this one, there is a lot of outrage. The legal picture is not the whole picture. I may not have a legal right to give input on that work decision, but that doesn't mean that there would be no moral violation if I were left out.
We use the term "right" in two senses, then. One is legal. The other is moral. To make the distinction clear, I'll replace the moral sense with "claim" and "obligation."
A husband does not have, and should not have, an absolute legal right to veto his wife's abortion by virtue of his legal status as her husband. In the context of an ongoing, loving relationship, though, a given individual man might have a moral claim to participate in the decisions surrounding his partner's pregnancy. And legally, LiveJournal can control the content it permits on its servers however it sees fit. But they've created a community that was instituted and perpetuated on the premise of (relatively) unrestricted expression and communication. We are invested in this community as such. Thus, morally, we have a claim upon them to continue to provide this environment, in accordance with their prior actions. And it's morally appropriate to experience and express outrage at a capricious, unjustified change in that environmnent.
A few months ago I engaged in a discussion with febomac about whether the partner of a pregnant woman has a right to a say in whether she has an abortion. Of course not, I said, that's a relic of the patriarchy; should an abusive or absent partner be able to force a woman to carry a pregnancy and run the health risks of childbearing? To which she responded, quite sensibly and from a much different angle, but shouldn't some partners have a say? If my husband and I were to conceive a child, I feel like he would have a right to some say in what happened to it.
In essence, we were having two different conversations. I couldn't understand what she meant: how could some people have a right, and others with the same legal status not have it? And there's the key: I was thinking of legal status. When I used the term "right," I was thinking of it in the very narrow, legal sense of the term: absolute obligation enforced by the government universally on all people who fall into the same category in its view.
But that's not how we use the term on a daily basis. We say, "I have a right to know if my boyfriend is cheating on me." "I have a right to be involved in that decision about the budget at work, because I've put a lot of time into it." "I have a right to know what my grade is in the class at the moment."
Now, I think we understand, when we say it, that we mean it in some private sense that's unrelated to the government; we understand that we couldn't sue to get involved in that work decision. Where it gets slippery is in cases like this one, which involve a private institution -- a university campus; LiveJournal -- that had previously permitted certain freedoms, revoking them. When users assert that we have a "right" to write what we want in our privately-owned speech outlet, some of us mean it in the private sense; some mean it in the legal sense; and some of us haven't made the distinction.
There are certain private institutions that act in a quasi-governmental capacity, I would argue, and therefore we expect, intuitively, that they will operate under principles similar to the ones that bind the government. University policies of fairness and intellectual freedom lead us to expect it to behave in much the same way as a government institution, which is purportedly bound by those principles. Because LiveJournal had not previously regulated the content of its journals, we come to think of it as operating under the free-press umbrella.
Now, in a strict legal sense, this isn't true. And on occasions when that becomes apparent, like this one, there is a lot of outrage. The legal picture is not the whole picture. I may not have a legal right to give input on that work decision, but that doesn't mean that there would be no moral violation if I were left out.
We use the term "right" in two senses, then. One is legal. The other is moral. To make the distinction clear, I'll replace the moral sense with "claim" and "obligation."
A husband does not have, and should not have, an absolute legal right to veto his wife's abortion by virtue of his legal status as her husband. In the context of an ongoing, loving relationship, though, a given individual man might have a moral claim to participate in the decisions surrounding his partner's pregnancy. And legally, LiveJournal can control the content it permits on its servers however it sees fit. But they've created a community that was instituted and perpetuated on the premise of (relatively) unrestricted expression and communication. We are invested in this community as such. Thus, morally, we have a claim upon them to continue to provide this environment, in accordance with their prior actions. And it's morally appropriate to experience and express outrage at a capricious, unjustified change in that environmnent.