Censorship, privacy, copyright...

[Alexander Chislenko <sasha@cs.umb.edu>]

   There seem to be repeating debates about what constitutes censorship,
privacy, and various other rights and freedoms regarding distribution of
information.
 
   I would start with separating the parties involved into a number of
functional agencies (I don't believe in classification of entities -
just functions).
 
   The list would include [possibly multiple instances of] :
 
  - author
  - reader
  - owner
  - distributor
  - owner of the media
  - party mentioned in the message
  -- legal guardians of each of the above.
  - the law
 
(one person or group can play the role of any subset of the above agencies).
 
  These all fit into a simple graph, where we can mark areas where
different terms would apply, and who may establish what.
 
 
  A number of things that cause repeated arguments, seem to be evident
regardless of one's political affiliation, such as:
 
 - an author is the original owner, and can lose ownership only voluntarily.
 
 - nobody may be forced to read anything
 
 - the owner has a right to share - or not! - the information with a reader.
   the concept of censorship applies to control of the third party
   ('the law' in the above list) - not the owner!
 
 - the distributor and media owner have nothing to do with the contents
   of the message (i.e. in their pure functional form - of course, their
   impersonators may combine these functions with others).
 
 Other parts may be arguable, but at least the terminology should be clear.
 
 - copyright refers to the owner
 
 - privacy refers to the parties functionally involved with the *contents*
   of the message.
 
 
  And so on.
  I would expect that there should be lots of good books on the functional
relationships of various parties around information, strict definitions of
terminology and descriptions of different positions on what various agencies
should have the freedom for, and what gives you rights of such an agency.
 
  Are there such books?
  A FAQ on the topic would probably be useful, too.
 
[  Or maybe, there is nothing of that sort?
  There are examples of endless debates on undefined topics - such
  as 'human identity', where the seemingly fundamental concepts are
  language-specific and, even in English, extremely vaguely defined.  ]
 

-- sasha@cs.umb.edu