On Sun, 2003-05-04 at 12:20, Ian Clarke wrote: > > Moglen points out exactly what my "legal" compression is > > intended to make obvious: the law must treat some numbers > > differently than others, and this is absurd. > > What if I send my friend a signed email saying "If you kill Oskar, I > will pay you $20,000", and my friend, knowing that I am serious, kills > Oskar. > > Is the law justified in treating the data within that email differently > than, say, an email asking my girlfriend to pick up some milk on the way > home from work? >
The data is evidence of a crime. The law treats some fingerprints differently from others. Also, the example does not relate to "ownership" of the data in the message or restrictions on what I do with that data. Things are changing rapidly just now, and the law has a hard time keeping up. I am no legal scholar, but I want to be able to access any knowledge I get interested in. I want to be able to obtain any song I heard on the radio many years ago -- it's _my_ memories which are unlocked by that song. I don't want to be forced to listen to commercials. I want to be able to buy unrestricted computers and use them for whatever I want. Ditto for network bandwidth. I think this issue (free access to information) is amazingly similar to the right to evaporate seawater and extract salt. Wide-scale civil disobedience, which made the attempt to suppress absurd and untenable, worked in India last century. Maybe it can work here, too. I'm quite sure that democracy is completely incapable of changing these laws in the normal course of affairs. It will require some sort of widespread civil disobedience in which people stand up and accept the absurd consequences of their actions. If you try to hide like thieves, the public will think "they deserved it -- they _are_ thieves." Change will only come when the public sees the absurdity of what their governments are doing and feels ashamed of it. So, Freenet nodes can't hide like thieves. They have to do what is required by the letter of the law, but maybe they can do it in such a literal way that the evil spirit of the law is evaded. -- Ed Huff _______________________________________________ devl mailing list devl at freenetproject.org http://hawk.freenetproject.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
