Communication Ethics book part for Consistent Answers Needed. (This is an automatically generated summary to avoid having huge posts on this page. Click through to read this post.)

As technology continues its march, what we need is a uniform set of answers that we can apply across all of these "content types", because the very concept of "content type" is becoming meaningless. Or we at least need something that can be applied "nearly uniformly"; deviations from the uniform for specific circumstances will certainly be necessary and desirable, but we should start from a firm foundation.

This may sound hopelessly Utopian but I think that is only because we have become used to the gelatinous blob that passes for current law. The reality is we will eventually have something like what I am proposing; the question is whether we get there in fits and starts, only after years of painful lawmaking and judicial oversight, and with lots of useless cruft still in place, or if we get there relatively smoothly because we had the foresight to see change. Lest you think I personally am hopelessly Utopian, yes, I'm betting on the former, but I hope this essay in some small way can help us move towards the latter.

I'd like to look at each of these four sub-questions and examine the issues more closely now; like I said, I don't necessarily have answers but I think I can ask some good questions with the foundation I've laid down.