Governing an information society - 4/4

[rishab@dxm.ernet.in]

Real crime on cyberspace? The analogy to violence of action, such as murder, 
is violence of data, the fabric of cyberspace. This may have many forms:
belief or opinions, knowledge, information and data crime.

Violence of belief (thoughtcrime) - while some people feel that to discuss 
rape is to perform it, and discussing crimes is subject to a range of 
conspiracy and riot-control laws worldwide, this really can't be a crime in
any free society.

Then there is the knowledge crime - theft of intellectual property. This is 
in my view the single biggest issue in an information economy, but it can 
be addressed by a combination of encryption technologies, to prevent 
'unauthorised' access, and the decentralized, non-governmental civil system 
discussed previously.Intellectual property can in any case not be treated 
quite as land and bonds are, and there are practical and moral issues 
involved in just what it is, which I may talk about in the future.

Information crime - 'unauthorised' access of other information such as
mail, unreleased memoirs etc, is basically an issue of privacy and can only
be practically addressed through technology.

Data crime - 'cracking', 'phreaking' etc usually reflect a total lack of 
responsibility on the part of _administrators_. "Officer, I left my wallet
on the kerb 10 minutes ago, and now it's gone!" Better security and greater
awareness will prevent most of it. If you do happen to catch a cracker, go
through the same old _civil_ system. It is not really practical for a central
Thought Police to actually find data criminals, without huge and non-specific
violations of privacy. And data criminals don't need to be put in jail, they
are probably the most affected by 'cyberdeath' - disconnection, digicash
accounts cancelled, reputations muddied. I wouldn't want to do that to _anyone_
actually ;^)


A thread I started months ago ('Cyberspace is by nature crime free' / 'Crime
and punishment in cyberspace') led to similar Tim May-ist conclusion - let
the police (and the minimalist government) attend to murders in brickspace,
we cybercitizens will look after ourselves.

Concluded.

Rishab
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Rishab Aiyer Ghosh             "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind!
rishab@dxm.ernet.in                   take stone from stone and wash them..."
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