On Mon, 2006-05-01 at 17:17 +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote: > Dear Jonathan, > > I am very sorry that the discussion has taken the course that it has. > It was unnecessary and misleading. It has nurtured miscommunication > and confusion instead of clarity and understanding. I cannot turn > back the time by 24 hours and start anew, trying to find words to > express what I think without hurting you in the progress. If I could, > I would.
Marcus: Thank you. I suspected that the conversation had run away with both of us. I suspect that the discussion of use cases (coming next) will be revealing to both of us. Let us defer the discussion of moral rights in digital information until then. What I can say on this subject now is this: It appears to me that there are cases where disclosure is morally and ethically mandatory. I do not (personally) believe that the encoding of information in digital form should make disclosure mandatory (not even to legitimately interested parties) but there are *other* cases where it is. Simultaneously, there are cases where it is morally and ethically required NOT to disclose, and for this non-disclosure to be computationally enforced. It is obviously not possible to satisfy both of these objectives simultaneously using mechanical means. My belief is that the first situation is extremely rare, and in those cases that I recognize it is something that would legitimately justify the cost and difficulty of forensic analysis. I do see that the "digital information should be free" argument may lead to a much larger space of cases. My belief is that the second situation happens legitimately in computational systems all the time, and that support for encapsulation is therefore pragmatically necessary. I will attempt to show examples in my next message. shap _______________________________________________ L4-hurd mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/l4-hurd
