This book's status is: Completed.

Communication technology has changed so radically in the past ten years that we no longer even know what is ethical, let alone legal. This book examines why communication has changed, why it is now impossible to think about communication the way we are accustomed to thinking, and proposes a workable framework defining ethical communication in the Internet era. The author applies this framework to the many controversies boiling around the net today, and attempts to derive legal principles (i.e., practical ethics) that can be used reliably, even by those who do not have a deep understanding of technical issues.

An RSS feed specifically for this book is available: The Ethics of Modern Communication - Entry Feed . You can also get an all-in-one-page printable version.

Table of Contents

• Prelude
• The Conventional View of Communications
  • Definition of Information
  • Historical Overview of Information Transmission
    • Hand Copying
    • Gutenberg: Books, Magazines, Newspapers
    • Postal Service
    • Radio and Television
    • Retail Distribution Networks
    • Telephones
    • Final Diagram
  • History and the Internet
    • Before Internet - Almost Attained Stasis
    • After The Internet - Stasis Broken
    • Ethical Drift
    • Legal Attempts To Deal With The Change
• A Communication Model
  • The Model
  • Example
  • Elaborations on the Model
    • Chain of Responsibility
    • Time
    • Intention vs. Literal Speech
  • Fundamental Property: Symmetry
    • A Natural Balance
  • Fundamental Property: Only Humans Communicate
    • The Key to Robustness: Follow The Effects
  • Fundamental Property: Everything Is Digital
  • Review
• Censorship and Free Speech
  • What's The Difference?
  • Free Speech
  • Censorship
  • The Difference
    • Combating Censorship and Free Speech Suppression
  • Summary
• Software and Software Patents
  • What is a Patent?
  • What is Software?
    • What Is Software?
    • Software Is Just A Lot Of Instructions
    • Non-Assembly Languages
    • Brief Review
    • An Unfortunate Dichotomy
  • All Software Is Communication!
  • Patents On Communication?
  • It's Even Worse Then That
    • Unbelievably Broad Patents
    • Synonymous Software
    • Quick Reminder
  • Patents v. Free Speech
  • Patents & Copyright
• The Death of "Expression"
  • What Is An Expression?
  • Why Is The Expression Doctrine Dead?
    • Derivation Trees
    • Expression and Derivation Tree Equivalence
    • Locality
    • Encapsulation
  • A Thousand Cuts
    • Non-locality
    • Expressions That Generate Expressions
    • Programmatic Content Manipulations
    • Dynamism
    • Concreteness
    • Smart messages
    • Violating Encapsulation
  • Conclusion (The Funeral Procession)
• A New Model for Copyright
  • Why Copyright?
    • Copyright Duration
  • The Concrete Part/Human Perception Model
    • Concrete Part of Communication
    • Human-experienced message
  • Analysis of the Model
    • Comparing the models
    • New model
    • Original Model In Terms of This Model
    • Legislating Content
    • Legislating Human-Experienced Messages
    • Goodbye, First Sale Doctrine
    • Citation
    • An Attack?
    • Corollary: Clarification of the Concreteness Criterion
  • Conclusion
• Privacy
  • Review
  • Privacy: Traditional Motivation
    • ``Traditional'' Privacy Defined
    • United States Legal Basis
    • Traditional Privacy Broken Down
    • Analysis
  • Communication Privacy
    • Wire Tap
    • Privacy
  • Privacy Ethics
    • Information Is Power
    • Applying the Privacy Yardstick
    • Who Needs Privacy?
    • A Social/Personal Footnote
  • Privacy Legal Machinery
    • Can We Use Existing Machinery?
    • A New Form of Intellectual Property
  • Practical Privacy
  • Conclusion
• Message Integrity
  • Concrete Message Integrity
  • Human Perception Integrity
    • Human Perception Integrity Defined
    • Recognizing Integrity Violation: Delimiting Messages
    • Renderers Should Be Independent
  • Annotation
    • How Does Annotation Work Technically?
    • Why Annotate?
    • So What's Wrong?
    • Annotation As Censorship
    • Follow The Effects
    • No Annotation
  • Other Integrity Attacks
    • Smart Tags
    • Advertisement Blocking
    • Spam Filtering via Blocking Lists
    • Automated Movie Censoring
    • Others
  • The ``Patch'' Hole
    • What Is A Patch?
    • Complete Power Over Messages
    • Patching In Terms Of The Communication Model
    • Example: The GPL
  • Integrity of Messages as Derivation Trees
    • Observation 1: All Human-Experienced Messages consist solely of Concrete Parts
    • Observation Two: The ``Sender'' is Always On Top
    • Representing Integrity
  • Applications And Examples
    • TiVo: Tools vs. Content.
    • But What About...
  • Why Is Integrity Desirable?
  • Conclusion
• Misc.
• Degrees Of Freedom and Applications
  • Degrees Of Freedom
    • Internal Issues
    • Message Integrity
  • Sender Control Over Message
    • Wildly Inconsistent Answers
    • Consistent Answers Needed
    • Social vs. Individual Effects
    • Receiving Messages
    • What Is the Receiver Allowed To Do?
    • Interaction of Restrictions and Sending
    • Sharing Messaeges
    • Boiling It Down
  • Terminology
    • ``Intellectual Property''
    • Message rights, not Intellectual Property
    • IP Abolitionists
    • Non-Communication Intellectual Property
  • Corporations and the Principle of Symmetry
  • The Law
    • ``Cheat Sheet'' for Lawmakers
    • Exercise: Making a Good Law
  • Conclusion
• The Goals of the Ethics Framework
  • Simplicity
  • Robustness
  • Completeness
  • Short Term Viability
  • Usefulness
  • Conclusion
• Appendix: The Technical Lawyer Cirriculum