Subject: a perplexed view
polidoc@galactica.it
Date: ma 25 marras 1996 - 13:16:14 EET
I am the manager of the Documentation Service of a pharmaceutical firm.
May I offer a humble remark: I subscribed to this newsgroup to have an
idea of what was going on in the difficult marriage between technology
and copyrights.
The impression I received is summarised in a list of ominous words -
papers, committees, rules, amendements and sub-amendements, protocols
and recommendations... in other words, the good, old, never dying
dinosaurish bureaucracy.
Governments and committees have a right and a duty to prepair
regulations - but it seems that they cannot choose between total
censorship and useless paper shuffling.
A legal protection in the informatic world is a police car with a
clockwork-loaded engine, trying to pursue felons dashing on the
information highways on their Ferraris. I am seriously perplexed when I
read dissertations about how to define the 24 hours or 30 seconds
permanence of a document in RAM - expecially when you have
smart-brained teenagesr crashing the defences of the Pentagon archives,
just for the fun of doing it - not to mention porno pictures, nazi ads
and how-to build-your-bomb booklets freely circulating in the WEB.
There is a simpler idea growing in the more responsibles circles of the
WEB - considering that ALL the electronic information depends on
service providers, make it COMPULSORY to put your signature on EVERY
electronic transaction, and ruthlessly discard every document, message
or communication that cannot be traced back to a sender.
It is technologically feasible, and it produces the electronic
equivalent of the "paper trail" the FDA is so fond of.
It will not eliminate thieves and burglars, of course, but it will make
it easier to use the existing legislation to pursue them. Otherwise,
close down the WEB. It is not a super-detailed marriage contract that
will prevent adultery - nor a ponderous multi-nation treaty that will
prevent someone from keying in the simple sequence COPY *.*.
This is not criticism - I am only trying to be realistic.....
Best regards
Alberto Nencioni
polidoc@galactica.it
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : ma 29 huhti 2024 - 01:20:14 EEST