The mysterious case of Ms. Carrie Prejean

[kandrathe]

Restricting our access to only government approved internal material is not, in my opinion, a good step for us to take.

I think your vision of what I meant is drastically different than what I envision.

Right. How do you plan to do that? Uninvent them? Besides, who are you protecting? Us, the common people? No one gives much of a damn what we do, no one is interested enough to spy on us. Sure, if we do something spectacularly stupid in public chances are that it will end up on YouTube. So what? A hundred years ago it would have ended up in the rumor mill. No big change. Then, as now, it was smart not to be stupid. Or, at least, not to be stupid in public.

Wire tapping a phone, for example, we can agree should not be a warrant-less event. I'm not calling for anything like a ban on the means, just an understanding of what is a violation of privacy, which could be considered illegal and the basis for civil or criminal action against the violator.

The reason zoning works is that the zones are separated by space, by distance. Separating them by a mouse click seems pretty inane. Besides, the original intention was to do something exactly like that, thus the .net, .org, .com, .gov, etc., part of domain names. The failure was that nobody was there to enforce it. As always, anarchy only works when everyone follows the rules. Trouble is, you have to be intelligent enough to know the rules. After the September that never ended, and with the opening of the net to AoL, the average intelligence dropped to where the anarchy became lawlessness. Unfortunately, the net is like the world, there is no central authority and what little authority there is is toothless.

I mostly address this in my post to Delc. I agree that there needs to be a loose international governance organization, which sets some minimal rules and has the means to enforce them.

Do this, and about the middle of next week there will be no Lurker Lounge, no Wiki, no free anything. All that will be left will be pay sites, for only pay sites will be able to cover the legal expenses. So, even if this were doable (and in an international medium as fluid as the net, I doubt it is) it is a poor idea.

Again, there might a level of responsibility between nothing and oppressive interference to the level of shutting down the internet as we know it.

First, think about what a document is at the most basic level. ...

Also, I think I answered most of this for Delc. My recent work for colleges and universities was enlightening. All student papers are required to be submitted electronically, and they are automatically scanned against a huge internet library of other papers and sources for plagiarism. It is an interesting technology, because the entire source is not stored, just its uniquely generated digital hash and the source title.

Privacy is a nicety we all like, but it is only a necessity for those having something to hide.

Mostly, because even if I don't have something to hide, hiding is my civil prerogative and I should have some say in how "I" am used.