Contemporary Applications of Antonio Rosmini's Views on Personhood: Slavery and Intellectual Property Abuse

In this paper I shall propose some remarks regarding an issue that recent developments of mobile communications make more and more urgent. At first sight, the issue might be classified under the heading of intellectual property. Unfortunately, however, its bearings reach much deeper. I am talking about connecting intellectual property to human rights. It is true: human rights relate to natural law, while intellectual property relates to civil law. For every cell-phone today can take or steal voices, images, and whole performances, which can be posted for profit. Traditional private and public spaces were always local and as such subject to local legislation, the internet has provided instead a global space of communication, no matter how virtual and immaterial. In this global space, the defense of one’s private rights is proving to be increasingly difficult, for to date neither social conventions nor legal sanction have been provided. The hope is that the dynamic networks that have bloomed up in the internet will find themselves remedies in order to protect one’s private sphere. The point is, however, to do so internet users must prove to be strong in their ethical and religious assumptions. What is a stake is the formulation of a legal anthropology of human rights. Antonio Rosmini-Serbati’s personalist philosophy provides an effective stand for defending the sanctity of life in accordance with the Christian anthropological view. The paper considers a number of case studies, in which the predication (known already in the Roman Law) of “active slavery” applies.