DistOS-2011W Justice

Members

Matthew Chou
Mike Preston
Thomas McMahon
David Barrera

Note: research so far moved to Discussion section.

What is Justice?

To understand how justice can be incorporated into a distributed computer system it is critical to understand what justice is. In this section we discuss key concepts related to justice and provide some thoughts on how human justice theory can be related to justice in terms of computing.

Theory of Justice

For our purposes, we will discuss justice as it relates to punishment. From a philosophical point of view, there are 3 main categories of punishment; Teleologic, Retributive, and Teleologic Retributive. [3]

Teleologic:

The teleologic view of punishment is that any punishment should always be accompanied by some beneficial effect. Even though the act of punishing someone may itself be considered “evil”, the overall punishment will be considered “good” if it provides some form of social benefit to the society. For example, if a criminal is punished for a crime and this punishment serves to dissuade potential criminals from committing future crimes, then the overall social value of the punishment is positive.[3]

Punishment from this perspective provides a good model for computer systems as any criminal act will be handled such that punishment is beneficial for the system. A simple example of such a transaction can be visualized through the management of bandwidth. If there is a particular computer who is deemed to be a criminal bandwidth hog, using more resources than it is allowed, the perpetrator’s network connection may be throttled. This punishment would correct the deviant computer while free the resources for other computers in the system to utilize.

Retributive:

Retributive punishment is defined by the belief that punishment itself is either just or intrinsically valuable even if there is social benefit to the punishment. This view is probably best characterised by the phrase “eye for an eye”. Essentially punishment is dispensed because it is necessary to inflict harm on those who do bad things but society may not get any benefit from the punishment.[3] The point of view of retributive punishment is that it is better to punish someone who commits a crime regardless of the severity of the punishment.[2]

It is also important to discuss retributive punishment in comparison to retaliation. Although they both incorporate the concept punishment as a just, and necessary, act, they have very different goals. Retribution focuses on the wrongdoing of the criminal whereas retaliation is based on the right of the victim to seek punishment. Retaliation is based on the concept of deterrence; if you are convicted of a crime then someone will get to exact revenge and thus you will pay a price. Retribution requires a criminal to pay a price for the crime committed and thus he should internalize how the crime has a negative effect on society. [1]

Although the necessity of punishment is certainly true, it is hard to see a situation where truly retributive punishment is beneficial for a computer system. Since computers on a distributed system are sharing finite resources, inflicting punishment on criminal computers, without considering the benefit/harm to the society, may result in further negative effects on the system. If a crime has been committed, the effects of that crime have already had an effect on the computing system. Punishing the perpetrator of the criminal act will not reverse the effect of the act, and it may adversely affect the system.

For example, suppose a computer is caught conducting spam attacks on other computers and the punishment for this act is to remove the computer from the network. It may be the case that the criminal computer had previously provided a very efficient connection to some data set but now there is no way to communicate with this computer. As a result, members of the remaining network must use a less efficient connection to reach the same data, thus the punishment had a negative effect on the system.

Teleologic Retributive:

This third view of punishment combines the concept of the need to punish within the limits of what is considered reasonable punishment for the crime. From this perspective, punishment is necessary and provides a valuable service to society but it is only enforced within acceptable limits.

To illustrate this view of punishment, consider the spam attack example from the retributive section above. If the punishment is reduced from being removed from the network to simply blocking a specific type of communication originating from the criminal computer, then it would be considered a teleological retributive punishment. This new punishment would match the severity of the crime but also still allows the other computers on the network to utilize the efficient network path through the criminal computer.

Structure of Punishment

John Rawls provides a definition of the purpose of justice as providing two primary functions; first, justice assigns rights and duties for the basic institutions of society, and second, justice describes the best way to distribute the benefits and burdens of society. [1] This view fits well within the scope of justice for a distributed computing system as there are very clear roles which can be assigned and there are finite resources which can be used to manage the “benefits and burdens” of society. These roles will be further discussed later in this article..

Justice Involving Computers

How Justice applies to the realm of computers. This includes how a computer can be exposed to Justice vs. how the user would be involved in the Justice applied.

Crime and Punishment

A broad description of possible crimes committed within the scope of the class, and punishments for those within the system and attackers from without.

Concept: Justice Web

A description of the Justice Web implementation discussed by our group.

Resources

[1] Posner, Richard A., Retirbution and Related Concepts of Punishment, The Journal of Legal Studies Vol. 9 No. 1, University of Chicago Press, 1980. PDF

[2] Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition, Harvard University Press, 2003. PDF (preview copy)

[3] Ezorsky, Gertrude, Philosophical Perspectives on Punishment, State University of New York Press, 1972. HTML (preview copy)

[4] Hobbes, Thomas, The Leviathon, first published 1651, republished by Forgotten Books, 2008. HTML

[5] Foucault, Michel, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Random House, New York, 1995. PDF (preview copy)

[6] Nietzsche, Friedrich, Ecce Homo & The Anarchist translated by Thomas Wayne, New York, 2004. PDF (preview copy)