What is the consequentialist justification for laws that give ownership and control of software to individuals or corporations (proprietary software)? What is the basic dilemma in giving individuals the ownership and control of software they wrote? Is there any alternative to working with privately-owned (proprietary) software?

Answer:

Proprietary software is a computer software where the publisher or a corporation holds the intellectual property rights. The publisher or the corporation usually holds the copyright of the source code and sometimes patent rights. Consequentialist justification for copyright and patent laws holds that ownership and control of the software encourages inventions and disclosure of knowledge. There is also the justification of giving a greater to the publishers for their efforts and value of their innovations.

There is dilemma of giving individuals ownership and control of a software they wrote is limiting the dissemination and use of knowledge. This prevents the society from leaping maximum benefits from new inventions. Secondly, prices of such software are kept artificially high. Whereas copyright and patent laws may encourage innovations, it is unclear whether they encourage progress. Regarding disclosure of information, it is hard to keep knowledge a secret (Sterckx, 2006).

The alternative to a privately-owned (proprietary) software is the open source software. An open source license grants the user the rights to use, modify and share the software.

Reference

Sterckx, S. (2006). The Moral Justifiability of Patents. Journal of the European Ethical Network, 13(2), 249-265.