I've got a few ideas on information, access, responsibilities, etc that I'm going to bounce into the ether; mostly for no better reason than to get them from guilt-tripping me whenever I come across them ...
So, first off the run: responsibility for content. This was triggered by various slashdot articles on the responsibility that engines like Google and the Internet Archive (apparently) have for their content.
This is my, off-the-top-of-my-head, IANAL*, response to these.
Thing is, one should have to prove that Google is consciously providing access to the copyrighted information. Problem is that law around the world hasn't caught up with the fact that computers blindly do what they're told to do, and are - currently - unable to assess the content they're indexing/uploading/transmitting/etc. Thus, computers are held, in a way, to be "employees" of a company, and so their human "employers" are held responsible for something they know nothing about until notified after the act. Same problem is occurring with defamation issues - bulletin board/forum/chatroom admins, owners, and moderators are being threatened with legal responsibility for the content posted by others, on the grounds that they supply the access that allowed others to post the bad stuff. When, in fact, it was that "click" of one button that completely replaces the editor and publisher that current defamation laws are built around.
Anything that blindly provides content without assessing that content first, and any legislation that covers that access (copyright, human rights, and defamation are prime among them), is being hit with assumptions that if you own a computer, you know what it's processing at every given moment of the day.
I could go further with this, but I'm going to leave it there until I've got some more coherent thoughts.
*IANAL: I Am Not A Lawyer.
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