Petition für Schließung einer Lücke im Grundgesetz

Die gemeinsame Sprache ist ein Voraussetzung für den Zusammenhalt des Landes.

Sie im Falle Deutschlands ein noch zentralerer Bestandteil der nationalen Identität als anderswo.

Ich höre es mit Unbehagen, wenn die Deutsche Bahn dem Publikum mithilfe redundanter Ansagen signalisiert, sie sei ein globales Unternehmen mit englischer Amtssprache.

Erst recht will ich nicht, dass in 30 Jahren das Bundesverfassungsgericht beschließt, es sei einem Kind der türkischen Volksgruppe nicht zuzumuten, in der Sprache einer von mehreren anderen Volksgruppen unterrichtet zu werden.

Die Landessprache richtet sich nicht nach momentanen Kräfteverhältnissen sondern ist Bestandteil des langfristigen Gesellschaftsvertrages.

Deshalb bedarf sie auch insbesondere in ihrer amtlichen Form besonderer Klarheit, Einfachheit, Systemhaftigkeit.

Der amtliche Validierungsparser muss bei eigenmächtigen und überflüssigen Importen aus dem Englischen mit einer Fehlermeldung abbrechen.

Aus der bloßen Nennung der Sprache in Art 22 GG folgt all dies indes nicht.

Das Anliegen der Petition ist viel bescheidener. Es geht um eine Fehlerkorrektur (bugfix) des Art 22, der bereits allerlei Identitätsmerkmale auflistet aber das wichtigste unterschlägt.

Derweil kämpft der Berliner SPD-Senator Torsten Hilse für die Verankerung des Deutschen in Berlins Landesverfassung.

Economics of ought-be Growth

“While the UK digital music market has expanded, widespread illegal downloading means it is growing much more slowly than it ought to be”, says a British study.

One might wonder how the authors succeded in measuring what the growth of a market “ought to be”?

I interpret “ought to” as a shorthand for “would if the law was enforced”.

I also see no real reason to doubt the effectiveness of copyright enforcement as a way of bringing the market size closer to what it “ought to be” in this sense.

It is often pointed out that many of those who download would never buy legal copies anyway. However they prevent the grandma, who would never download illegal copies anyway, from attributing a high value to legal copies and from buying them as Christmas gifts for her grandson.

Her grandson will have learnt by example that music works are normally available for free and that only stupid or backward people pay for them. He may even be one of those few who have rationalized their cognitive dissonances into a pirate ideology. But probably he is just indifferent, and his copyright-based morality may be brought back on track simply by a credible enforcement effort.

The Internet generation often argues that “technological innovation” has rendered copyright-based business models obsolete. But what is touted here as “new technology” is really in a grey zone between “technology” and behaviour, between code and law. The pirate ideology, too, can thus be changed by setting examples of enforcement. Filesharing code can probably be adapted to legal requirements. That may cause burdens, but whether we want to accept them is a political rather than a technological question.

In 2003 we tought the European Parliament that “data processing is not a field of technology”, and I still believe that, even when it is convenient to the music industry. Code is Law, and so called “technology” can be a camouflage for ideology. Adapting code to different societal needs than those of the early anarchic Internet does not necessarily mean reversing any real technological innovation.

The interest in maximizing the size of the information product market is shared by the industry, FOSS developers and society at large, especially in industrially advanced nations. But society at large has some other, opposing interests as well, such as that of privacy, anonymous wifi hotspots, free culture. I’d say illegal downloaders really suck, in every sense of the word, but cracking down on them is an uphill battle that becomes more and more costly to society as, due to improvements in both technology and data processing, information is liberated from its material support. Considered from the reality of the escalating “digital dilemma”, the information producers are perhaps still making more money than they “ought to”.

Non può esserci libertà senza il dissenso religioso

Lo dice Sergio Romano nel Corriere di oggi.

Però sembra ignorare che si può avere dissenso religioso senza libertà.

Lutero si ribellò a Roma, ma la sua Chiesa non fu meno dura con gli anabattisti di quanto il Sant’Ufficio lo fosse con i luterani.

Lo stesso vale per il cristianesimo crudelmente perseguitato dal imperatore Diocleziano che dopo meno di un secolo si impose al impero Romano e perseguitava i pagani.

Lo stesso vale anche per l’inquisizione delle ortodossie politiche di oggi.

Quando un movimento si sente vincente, i istinti persecutori si fanno strada, e ciò sembra valere a prescindere dei contenuti toleranti o meno dell’ideologia di questo movimento.

Ciò che conta, secondo Romano, è che il protestantesimo, autorizzando il lettore della Bibbia a leggere i testi sacri senza la mediazione di un interprete, a creato una pluralità di interpretazioni e letture, lasciando al potere civile il compito di far gli convivere all’interno di una stessa società.

Ma temo che si illude Romano quando esprime la speranza che forse assistermemo un giorno alla nascita di un protestantesimo islamico.

Sembra cadere nella trappola di coloro che trattano tutte le religioni come uguali per nascita, come facciano p.e. i eredi volgari del marxismo, chi tentano di spiegare tutto soltanto come superstrutture ideologiche di una lotta economica.

Non si può prescindere ad infinitum dal contenuto della religione.

Il Corano non solo lascia meno spazio all’interpretazione che il Vangelo, ma predica anche un spirito assai diverso con insegnamenti spesso opposti.

Si potrebbe dire che gli Luteri islamici esistono già da qualche tempo. Sono coloro che tornano ai testi fondametali, alla prassi originaria del movimento. Si chiamano Fratelli Musulmani, Chomeini, Mullah Omar, Al Zawahiri, Bin Laden, …