Re: freenet URIs and URI ownership

I am clearly being incoherent at the moment ...

The strucute of the argument to do with clowns in the concepts doc, goes 
something like:

X says something using Y's terms.
Because you know who Y is, you know what Y's terms mean because Y has told you.
Thus, if Y's meanings are not slanderous, but what X says together with Y's 
definitions results in slander, then it is X you should blame.

This relies on the idea that there might be some authoritative definition 
somewhere, otherwise we all are just using terms willy-nilly and if what I 
say put together with what you say slanders someone else well then nobody's 
fault really.

To have an authorative definition relies on an authority. If, like in 
freenet, that authority is an anonymous citizen exercising their right to 
free uninhibited speech then there may be a need to consider the wording 
carefully.

If there really isn't an authority then ...

?

I'll inline respond as well ...


Frank Manola wrote:

> Jeremy--
> 
> Sorry, but you *still* need to explain what the problem is better.  For
> one thing, you need to explain the connection between being responsible
> for defining the meaning of URIs and being responsible for certain
> statements or other things those URIs might refer to. 

 >

If you are responsible for a URI then what you say about it has a different 
extra weight to what anyone else says.


> A URI is a *name*
> for something, not the something itself.  If there's a slanderous
> statement made by a person X, say the statement "Joe is a bozo", person
> Y doesn't become responsible for that statement by giving it a name, say
> "the_Joe_is_a_bozo_statement", and saying, in effect, "that's the name I
> use when I refer to that slanderous statement made by X".  Similarly, I
> can use the name "the Monroe Doctrine" without, I hope, being mistaken
> for Monroe.  
>


It is clear that any attempt to tie together rdfms-assumption with web 
functionality has some of these sorts of difficulties.

Jeremy

Received on Thursday, 21 November 2002 18:39:04 UTC