At 2:11 PM +1300 7/12/01, Tony McGregor wrote:
On Fri, 7 Dec 2001, Simon Byrnand wrote:
Nice argument, except for the fact that the list archives are *archives* not a database.
That's irrelevant. The act applies to "Any writing on any material"
[snip]
I believe old newspapers are covered by the act.
The act is at:
http://rangi.knowledge-basket.co.nz/gpacts/public/text/1993/an/028.html
So if Juha, for instance, were to consider this newsworthy and write a piece setting out the information in question, by way of illustration, what then? This is a hard problem. How to balance the rights of privacy, which IMHO should be guarded, with the laws of physics. Once a thing has been said, it can not be unsaid. (x,y,z,ct) has t monotonically increasing in all cases that we know. In the digital domain a bit can be changed from 1 to 0, so it is possible to erase information without any trace. Except that a bit can also be copied tracelessly, so in fact once information has escaped into the digital domain it can not realistically be called back. For example, if I accuse Andy of egregious mopery contributing to the delinquency of a typewriter and do so on a public mailing list, what is his recourse? He can demand a retraction. If I have the information on a web page he can demand I remove it, but it is just NOT possible for me---or anyone---to find all the places in the world that might now hold copies of this quite baseless statement and remove them. -- Michael Newbery Technical Specialist TelstraSaturn Limited Tel: +64-4-939 5102 Mobile: +64-29-939 5102 Fax: +64-4-922 8401 - To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog