Message Integrity - Next Chapter for Communication Ethics

The next chapter of my Communication Ethics essay has been posted, Message Integrity.

This is the second-most important chapter, behind only the final conclusion chapter, because it addresses the most insidious attack on our freedoms to date. Message integrity has proven very difficult to understand or identify and many otherwise well-meaning people have gone to bat to defend attacks on message integrity as a result.

As a historical note, in some sense this entire essay started with this chapter. "The Ethics of Modern Communication" started out as a sequel to my original Third Voice paper, and was intended to handle the issues raised by that essay in a more rigorous framework. At the time, I had thought some tweaks and clarifications to current law would suffice; the more I got into it, the more I realized that the current infrastructure can not survive, and the larger the essay grew. (I intend to revise the introduction to better reflect my surprise at what it has taken to bring coherence to this area of ethics/the law.)

What remains now is the final tying together chapter, which is still being written, a "Misc." chapter which will be published in a deliberately unfinished state, and some appendices which I think are of interest, but are not in the main track of the essay. This will all be published in one final lump, since everything but the final chapter is written (and much of it has been writter for a long time). After that, the essay will be done, and the request-to-not-link restriction (unless you have a substantial comment) will be lifted.