Individual Rights for Droids?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This is really cute.

 

It goes by the clunky title: "Renegade Cut - Are Droids Slaves?"

 

But it is such a well-done metaphor, it's smile material.

 

 

Michael

[syrakusos]

We have had this discussion before. My paradigm is the science fiction story, Valentina: Soul in Sapphire by Joseph H. Delaney and Marc Stiegler. Back in 1984, electronic filing of legal papers was still science fiction. In this story she files her own corporation papers, becomes a legal entity under law, and sues for emancipation. It is already a long-established fact of law that corporations have rights and can prosecute for them against real individuals.

When the first computer viruses were created, I wrote several articles arguing that as they show the attributes of life, they are alive, by definition. (In fact, you would be hard pressed to find any definition of "life" that applies to all examples of it. Just for an easy one: life has the ability to reproduce; so, mules are not alive?) Being alive is one thing. Being sentient is another.

I think that the best common arguments were given in "Measure of a Man" in Star Trek: Next Generation. Here is the crux, but the entire episode is worth enjoying.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PMlDidyG_I

Also, remember that in Star Wars, Anakin and his mother were slaves also. Historically and globally, slavery was an institution different from Negro Slavery in America. In Cairo 1600, a Bosnian slave woman sued in court some men who attempted to cut her own of a deal with her master. No free woman in London or Paris of the time could have done that. In classical Athens, the slave Pasion was the richest banker and he used his own wealth to buy his freedom.