custom and privacy

[Zooko Journeyman <zooko@xs4all.nl>]

A million monkeys operating under the pseudonym "T.C. May" typed:

> I of course remember _lots_ of things about people, I share those memories
> on occasion (without requesting permission), I mention names, and I
> certainly don't recall every giving one of the subjects of my memories a
> cut of the action.
> 
> In a free society, it is not possible or acceptable to control what others
> remember or gossip about. Or even sell commercially.


The infinitive "to control" here confuses force with contract, 
coercion with civil pressure, and law with custom.


I believe Bill Frantz's original article made the distinction,
and I believe it stated that his thoughts were in the context 
of the latter.  Unfortunately cypherpunks sometimes seem unable
to preserve such contexts in follow-up articles.


In a free society, such as the one that I enjoy with my 
colleagues, friends, compatriots, acquaintances, enemies and 
perfect strangers on the Net, it is indeed possible and 
acceptable to exert individual and collective social pressure 
to influence the use and dissemination of information.  
I could, but won't, give many examples of people requesting 
that maintain certain privacy bits attached to information they
gave me, and people graciously respecting the privacy bits that 
I transmitted along with my information.  Sometimes these 
people were friends or acquaintances of mine, other times they
were perfect strangers who acted out of professional self-
interest, reputation-preservation, casual generosity, and/or--
as per Bill Frantz's article-- familiarity with and respect for
custom.


I applaud Bill Frantz's effort to direct the minds of 
cypherpunks towards a topic which is valuable and relevant, but
which is not reducible to the convenient mental shortcut of 
"government BAD, not-government GOOD".


Zooko, Journeyman