Here’s some more good news on the Emergency Contraception front: while the FDA process has advanced to the point where EC will probably be available over-the-counter sometime or another soon, Australia is quickly moving one step ahead of the United States: Emergency Contraception is set to become available over-the-counter in Australia tomorrow, January 1.

This isn’t to say that Australia’s EC situation is advanced over that of the United States in every respect. One major difference is that whereas the medical community in America largely supports the FDA’s move towards OTC availability, the medical community in Australia is at best nervous about the move, and in some cases directly opposed. The main issue for them, though, seems not to be the sort of religious Kulturkampf that flares around the American side of the debate. Rather, Australian doctors just seem to be more accustomed than American doctors to controlling the medical lives of their patients, and more jealous at giving up that power. For example, consider this Foucaultian bit of paternalism:

But Australian Medical Association president Bill Glasson said he was concerned that pharmacists were not legally required to record a woman’s visit.

I think that they really need to rediscuss how it is going to operate in the interest of good medical care, Dr Glasson said.

The pharmaceutical society’s national president, Jay Hooper, said many pharmacists would take it upon themselves to record each time a woman wanted the pill.

Not that American doctors don’t also sometimes engage in this tracking and scummy hectoring. At the Auburn University Student Health Center, for example, you could obtain EC–but they’d note when you got it, throw a bunch of red tape in your way, and if I recall correctly, they’d only let you have it once a semester. (The idea in both cases is for doctors to be able to lecture women that they decide are making unhealthy lifestyle choices. I am all for encouraging women to make healthy lifestyle choices, but I can’t imagine that an emergency situation to prevent a pregnancy is the appropriate time to do it, or that forcing women to listen by restricting access to EC until you’re done lecturing them is the appropriate way to go about it.) But the American medical community does not seem particularly squeamish about giving up that control if it means that women are more able to prevent unwanted pregnancies: the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists both lobbied for, and strongly supported, the FDA advisory panels’ decision. In Australia, however, the Australian Medical Association seems nervous and is ready to develop their own house guidelines to try to minimize the freedom it will offer women.

I don’t think, incidentally, that the attitude is a matter of misogyny, exactly. But it is directly connected to patriarchy–it’s a matter of the authoritarian sense of entitlement that modern doctors have always felt and acted out vis-a-vis their patients. The condition exists in Australia and America both, but with regard to over-the-counter pills the Australian medical community seems to have divorced itself from it less than their American counterparts. Consider: at the same time as EC becomes available over the counter for the first time in Australia, so will ibuprofen. And this has caused no small degree of consternation for the Australian Medical Association:

Also from Thursday stronger pain relief medication will be available in supermarkets, a move that has angered and confused doctors and pharmacists. Dr Glasson said the pain killer ibuprofen, contained in products including Nurofen, should only be sold under the supervision of pharmacists. It’s a dangerous move and it’s a backward step.

Patients have to look at the medical aspects of these drugs and get good advice that only the friendly pharmacist can give. Paracetamol is much kinder on the stomach.

Ibuprofen, an anti-inflammatory drug, was only available in pharmacies until the Government ratified the new regulations in October.

. . .

Products containing ibuprofen have been available in supermarkets in the US since 1984 and in Britain since 1996.

The teeming masses of Ozzies will now be able to buy Advil without a doctor’s learned advice! O tempora! O mores!

But however the doctors and pharmacists may whine, the women of Australia have every reason to celebrate. A happy New Year’s to the reproductive rights community in Australia — good show!

Good news this month for women’s reproductive freedom! The widespread availability of emergency contraception (EC) is one of the main breakthroughs for women’s reproductive freedom in the past 10 years. So it’s even better to see that two advisory panels of the FDA recently voted to recommend that EC be made available over-the-counter without the need for a doctor’s prescription. You need to take EC within 72 hours of unprotected sex for it to prevent an unwanted pregnancy, and it gets less effective as time goes on; waiting around for a doctor and a pharmacy are not always a viable option. And there is no possible case to be made that it fails the FDA requirements for over the counter availability. Drugs are supposed to be made available OTC when (1) it is safe to use without a doctor’s supervision, and (2) the instructions are simple enough for self-medication based on the included instructions. That EC is safe, and doesn’t need close observation from a doctor, has been made obvious by all the scientific data and by the past 30 years of experience with both off-label uses of conventional oral contraceptives, and dedicated morning-after pills like Preven and Plan B. How about the simplicity of use? Well, here I’ll defer to Connie Schultz, who investigated the matter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Still, . . . I thought it only fair that I try to decipher them for myself. The kind folks at Planned Parenthood of Greater Cleveland gave me a sample packet. To make it as difficult as possible, I imagined being a sexually active teenager who had abstinence-only sex education.

Would I, could I, understand what I was reading?

Instruction No. 1: Take the first tablet as soon as possible within 72 hours of unprotected sex.

Instruction No. 2: Take the second tablet 12 hours after you take the first tablet.

I think we women can handle it.

This is some great news. Unfortunately, it is only a promissory note for things to come: the FDA nearly always follows the recommendations of its advisory panels, but even if it is pretty sure that it will make EC over the counter, it is entirely unclear when it will do so. The Bush Administration’s FDA has a long record of foot-dragging on this issue, and it has taken two years of untiring activism to get to this point — quite in spite of the fact that the petition obviously meets all the relevant criteria. But the most recent events are a victory to be celebrated, and the light at the end of the tunnel is now in sight.

Now, here’s a question: chemically, Emergency Contraception is indistinguishable from a large dose of conventional oral contraceptives; dedicated EC drugs were developed based on a good 30 years’ worth of doctors’ off-label recommendations for using OCs. (If a patient needed emergency contraception, the doctor would offer a prescription for OCs and suggest that the patient take several at once.) So if safety and ease-of-use arguments show that EC meets the FDA’s requirement for over the counter drugs, then a fortiori they ought to show that the good old birth-control pill meets those requirements too. So while we work towards getting the government out of women’s medical decisions for the morning-after pill, why shouldn’t we also start thinking about a campaign to get the government out of women’s medical decisions for the conventional birth-control pill too?

It’s been a rough century for the Bill of Rights. It started out with Woodrow Wilson’s totalitarian Espionage and Sedition Acts, proceeded through Franklin Roosevelt’s mass jailing of dissidents and the Vietnam era’s brutal COINTELPRO, and has ended up with Bush Jr.’s USA PATRIOT Act, suspension of habeas corpus, and periodic attempts to push through even more totalitarian surveillance legislation. My intent, however, is not to retell the rather disgusting tale of assaults on civil liberties during wartime (that tale is retold nicely enough by Justin Raimondo, in the context of the John Walker Lindh trial). Rather, I want to wish a belated happy birthday to that good old parchment barricade against tyranny. December 15, 2003 was the 212^th anniversary of the passage of the first ten Amendments to the Constitution.

The Executive Branch has not been very kind to the Birthday Bill. Consider, for example, that most famous of amendments:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

And another Amendment, less frequently cited but no less important, which the Founders considered absolutely essential to preventing monarchial tyranny from the Executive:

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Consider, on the other hand, the conduct of the FBI — and not just the conduct, but the overwhelming sense of entitlement — in pissing all over both of these barricades for liberty:

What a completely surreal evening I had last night. As I’d mentioned, I reluctantly dropped John off at the airport around 4pm or so. I went with him to the baggage counter and waited while he filled out the paperwork to declare his firearms, walked with him to the security line, and kissed him goodbye. I thought I might need some distraction, so I had agreed to meet some friends for dinner at 7pm. I went home, changed, and then headed to the restaurant. Just as I pulled into the parking lot, my cell phone rang.

I said hello, and a polite stranger asked if I was [my name], identified himself as a police officer, then asked if I was safe and okay. My forehead wrinkled, and I said I was. The officer then asked if I knew John, and whether he had (a) been staying with me this past week and (b) brought firearms with him for the purpose of shooting at the local range. I said yes to both, and jumped to the conclusion that John must’ve not cleared each and every gun — I know I’m obsessive about checking mine when I travel — it wouldn’t be unreasonable for him to have left one magazine in when dealing with the number of guns he brought with him. So the officer then asked if I’d mind coming to the airport to talk to him.

. . .

They told me that John was in a little trouble. They dodged my questions at first, and then said he had brought a firearm with him that he had not declared. The way in which they said it implied that he had a gun I hadn’t seen, that it was loaded, and that it was on his person. They didn’t outright say any of those things — but they very adroitly led me right to that conclusion. Then they started asking me questions. Who was I, how did I meet John, what were our political views, did we meet with others who might have similar political views on his visit… lots of things that were clearly leading right to the idea that he was some sort of militia nut who was here on a recruiting mission or some such.

They started out treating me like some poor stupid femme who’d been unknowingly lured into some sort of illicit affair with a Very Dangerous Fellow. On top of that, both were extremely flirty. They seemed to think that I didn’t know John had any guns with him. When I said I did, they wanted to know how many and what types. Then whether I knew that he had illegal high capacity magazines with him. I said that so far as I knew, all of his high-cap mags were pre-ban and thus not illegal. They asked if I knew he’d made modifications to his guns. I said sure, he’d put a new trigger in his Glock while he was here. Stupid, stupid questions calculated to make me think he was some sort of maniac.

Then they moved on and asked me if I knew what kind of literature he had with him.

Fortunately, this is not just a jeremiad about the decline and fall of civil liberties in America. The Executive branch is not the only branch of government there is (gee, it’s almost like they designed the Constitution with this sort of thing in mind…), and the news is not all doom and gloom. In particular, two federal courts have given the Bill of Rights a belated birthday present, by striking down the Bush administration’s assaults on habeas corpus and the Fourth Amendment in the case of Abdullah al-Mujahir (nee José Padilla) and the internment camp at Guantanamo Bay.

The Bush administration, of course, is not about to take this lying down, and they are planning to appeal this up to the Supreme Court if they have to. Good — let the battle be joined, just in time for an election year when the Left and civil libertarians need to mobilize. In the meantime, take a moment to celebrate. Give the Bill of Rights a reading, and say a thank you to the Second and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals. Happy birthday Bill of Rights — and here’s hoping for many happy returns.

For further reading:

• GT 2002-08-10: Judge Doumar has made his ruling; now let him enforce it.
• GT 2002-06-11: An Important Update from the War Information Council

Roderick has a new argument for anarchism. Here’s how it goes:

1. If anybody should rule, philosophers should.
2. But philosophers should not rule.
3. Therefore, nobody should rule.

Any philosopher who denies (1) is excessively timid; any philosopher who denies (2) is excessively bold. Hence moderation demands assent to the conclusion.

It’s worth noting that Roderick’s argument also succeeds in combining the thesis embodied in uncritical democracy (2) with the antithesis embodied in Platonic totalitarianism (1). Thus anarchism is the dialectical synthesis of two genuine insights which are disastrous when taken out of context. Maybe this will convince Chris Sciabarra to be an anarchist again…

Minor updates have been made to the original post for clarity and removal of typographical errors.

You may or may not have noticed it already, but there’s been a bit of a change around here at Geekery Today. I’m proud to announce that recently I freed the content on these pages through a copyleft. What that means is that you can, except where I note otherwise, copy and distribute any of the works on this website, and you can also make and distribute derivative works based on them. What’s the catch? Only that the copies or derivative works you produce have to be honest, and they have to stay free. The copyleft license is the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 license, which requires that the original author must be given credit, and that any derivative works or reuse of the original work must also be distributed under the terms of the copyleft. (For more exact details, see the copyleft notice.)

Image from Roderick Long’s Unblog

Of course, I’m not anywhere near conceited enough to think that there’s any great demand for reproductions or derivative works based on my pedantic ramblings. My motives are much more ideological than that: I’ve done this because I don’t believe that there are any such things as intellectual property rights; I don’t think it’s possible to enforce copyright law without violating the rights of ordinary people to make peaceful use of good old-fashioned tangible property, such as pens and computers and your own brain. (If you want a good argument about why this is the case, I don’t have one on hand. Fortunately enough, Roderick Long does, in brief in Thoughtcrime, and at more length in The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights. Thank goodness for the free exchange of information!) In short, intellectual property restrictions are nothing more than State aggression on a massive scale. Worse still, they’re a form of State aggression that is getting worse every day, and, increasingly, violently stifling innovation and the progress of civilization.

In light of all this, you might think that I’ve chosen a rather odd means to my ends–trying to fight back against intellectual monopolists by placing my works under a restrictive licensing scheme that depends upon international copyright law. In fact, it’s not nearly as odd as it might initially seem. Saying that copyright laws are illegitimate is not the same as saying that nothing it’s currently used for is legitimate. It just means that none of its legitimate uses are legitimate because of a right to control your intellectual property.

For example, say that you write a brilliant philosophical essay, and send me a copy for feedback. I put white-out over your name, write my name in, and send it off to Mind. Have I done something wrong? Well, certainly—what I did was dishonest and mean. More to the point, have I done something criminal? Well, yes. But it’s not because I’ve violated some right to control "intellectual property." Rather, it’s because I’ve committed fraud—I’ve passed something off as my work when it is in fact yours. There’s no need to talk about "intellectual property rights" to deal with this, any more than there is to deal with someone who sells Tofurkey^TM as Thanksgiving turkey (or vice versa).

So what about a copyleft? Well, the terms of the license allow for free copying, distribution, performance, and creation of derivative works, without having to ask the permission of the author. So putting up a copyleft is not a restrictive use of intellectual property law; it’s a statement of the author’s intent not to use intellectual property law in aggression against peaceful reuse or creation of derivative works.

Of course, the license does add two restrictions: first, copies and derivative works have to accurately credit the original author for her work, and second, copies and derivative works also have to be distributed as free content under the terms of the copyleft.

The first restriction, however, is just a restatement of the requirement that we considered above–that the users of the information cannot commit fraud. They can’t pass off your work as somebody else’s, and they can’t pass off somebody else’s work as your own.

The second restriction is where the real genius of copylefting lies. If anyone wants to reuse the copylefted content, they also have to free whatever they copy or produce from the restrictions of traditional copyright law. But the restrictions of traditional copyright law are unjust; since enforcing them constitutes a violation of rights, enforcing a copyleft to prevent them from being enforced is like using a gun to keep innocent people from being shot–a defensive, rather than an aggressive use of force. Copylefting reverses copyrighting from within, using the illegitimate power of the State against itself to undermine the arrogated power of intellectual monopolists.

It is worth noting, though, that copylefting didn’t originate for use with the written content on webpages. It originated from the world of Free / Libre / Open Source Software. What I’m talking about here is a bit different from what they are talking about. Copylefting as I am deploying it deals with how information can be used once it is published; copylefting as it is deployed in the FLOSS world has to do with that, but it also makes specific requirements about what information should be published. GPL-style licenses allow for free reuse and modification of source code, but they require that any source code for these derived works be distributed under a copyleft. That’s copylefting in the sense that I’m using it. But they go a step further: they don’t just impose a restriction on how the source code is to be distributed if it is distributed; they also require that it actually be distributed. That’s copylefting in a different sense. While enforcement of copyright law is a violation of rights, it’s perfectly legitimate to choose to do whatever you please with your own copies of information. In world without copyright, Microsoft would still have every right to withhold their proprietary source code; a closed-source business model is not criminal.

Nevertheless, not being criminal isn’t the same thing as not being wrong. Closed-source software doesn’t violate anyone’s natural rights, but it does suck. The reasons for using FLOSS are reasons of cultural politics: FLOSS is better than closed-source because it fosters innovative use of technology and high-quality, co-operative, participatory projects. It also provides affordable access to high-quality software for underprivileged users. None of these are matters of justice (except in the extended sense of fairness or equity); but justice is not the only virtue.

In short, copylefting, or freeing content can mean one of two things. It can mean freeing information users to make whatever peaceful use they like of the copies they already have. Or it can mean making copies more freely available for information users to make innovative, peaceful uses. I think that only the first goal is enforceable; but both goals are desirable. This connects with a point that I have often made about the relationship between anarcho-capitalism and anarcho-socialism. The first sort of free content has to do with the virtues of a free market: it is a matter of the form of a free society, i.e., that the organization of society must be free rather than coerced. The second sort of free content has to do with the virtues of open, participatory institutions within the free market: it is a matter of the content of a free society, i.e., the specific organizations that people ought to choose to freely form.