"Nanolaw with daughter" by Paul Ford.
I don't know exactly how this story appeared in my reading list and when I opened it, it took me a little while to understand what it was about.
Written by Paul Ford, this is the account of a father in some future America, teaching his daughter about 'nanolaw', describing a world where litigation is automated and individualized, where copyright and liability are such fundamental aspects of daily life they become simply another household chore.
What's so curious about the story is that it's hard to decide whether this is bad -- it's not about injustice, after all. Ford suggests, quite rightly, that in our daily life we commit a multitude of micro-crimes, by the letter of the law, which common sense prohibits us from taking seriously. In this future information flows so freely that you can, practically, be held accountable.
This rings close to home. We're already seeing a shift in corporate litigation that directs software patent ingringement suits not to the big companies (who have deep pockets, good lawyers and ample defensive patent portfolios) but to smaller or independent developers.
But he doesn't propose paranoia. The future he presents is perversely reasonable, where it's understood that most such micro-crimes are committed innocently, and because litigation can be applied to millions of individuals (as opposed to a group of millions of people), any one individual's liability is comparably minuscule.
There's all sorts of inconvenience, injustice and horror that you just get used to. When I lived in Northern Ireland, all us kids knew where IRA safehouses were, and now and then you'd go to the shopping centre and find piles of flowers and wreaths where a policeman had been killed. Soldiers with automatic weapons would ask to inspect your bags and you'd just let them, because it's just one of those little inconveniences like the rain.
Seriously nutritious food for thought, especially if you resist the knee-jerk reaction of outrage and horror.
No comments:
Post a Comment