On Mon, 2006-05-01 at 17:34 +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote: > At Mon, 01 May 2006 09:58:19 -0400, > "Jonathan S. Shapiro" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > My expected outcome was that the ethical issue has nothing to do with > > whether the artifact is digital. It entirely has to do with the marginal > > cost of reproduction (to the initial holder) being zero, and the belief > > that creating artificial scarcity is fundamentally unethical. > > > > I am still not 100% certain, but I think that this is actually where > > Marcus and I ended up. > > Sounds about right, however, there is an extra dimension, which I > pointed out and you omitted above. There must be a public interest in > the artifact. Otherwise, it would be impossible to be consistent with > the above and defend some amount of privacy, too.
I am curious: shouldn't this apply to digitally encoded information as well? For example, my medical records can be replicated at zero marginal cost. I do not believe that you intend that this should be universally permitted. If you agree, then let me point out a tricky problem hiding here: the decision of what should be freely copyable is now based on *two* criteria: 1. Zero marginal cost 2. Legitimate right of recipient (including public) interest. The second point is fundamentally a value judgment, and it cannot be decided by purely technical means. It implies that there may exist *some* forms of information encapsulation are not only acceptable, but may be ethically mandatory. The main use cases that I bring forward will all rest on this problem. You may say, one at a time "That case is not of interest to the Hurd", but I believe that in the end you will have one hell of a tall stack of socially important cases that are "Not of interest to the Hurd". We will see. shap _______________________________________________ L4-hurd mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/l4-hurd
