Neil Bothwick schreef: > On Fri, 12 Aug 2005 15:17:40 +0200, Holly Bostick wrote: > > >>Big Brother may be watching you, but you watch Big Brother-- that show >>with the incredibly ironic name-- don't you? > > > No way! > > >>So who are 'you' (generic) >>to talk about 'privacy'? Much less as a inalienable right, when it's >>clear that this right can be happily bought and sold? > > > The contestants are not really selling their privacy, just performing for > pay. but even if they were, it is theirs' to give or sell, not ours to > take. > > I thought that the whole point of an inalienable right was that it could not be bought or sold (or given or taken, for that matter).
I was thinking about the distinction you made, and wondering if it meant that I could legally sell my (supposed) inalienable right to freedom/liberty on eBay (i.e., can I sell myself into slavery-- not indentured servitude, but actual slavery, which would be the only condition in which I had sold my inalienable right, rather than just my labor for a specified amount of time). If I did, would the buyer be performing an illegal act by buying my right to liberty? The contract itself is, by your reasoning, perfectly legal, but it is illegal to hold slaves, because it compromises my "inalieanble" right to liberty... which I have sold, which (according to you) I may do. But of course, I do not have the right to sell my liberty at all in·al·ien·a·ble Audio pronunciation of "inalienable" P Pronunciation Key (n-ly-n-bl, -l--) adj. That cannot be transferred to another or others: inalienable rights. because inalienable rights may not be transferred to others, by any means, willing or unwilling. So any such contract is invalid. I really question the distinction that Big Brother contestants are performing for pay, rather than selling their right to privacy. At what point is the distinction made that they're 'performing', rather than just 'living' under specified conditions? Because they're on TV? But that's a circular argument-- they sold their right to privacy (which they presumably may not sell, if such a right is inalienable) to be on TV, but because they're on TV, their right to privacy no longer applies, because any appearance on TV is classified as a 'performance', even if that performance appears indistinguishable from 'real life'. Witness the many live surgery shows now appearing. That actually *is* real life... isn't it? But the patient has consented to overlook (for pay, or other compensation) their (inalienable?) right to privacy when their body is being sliced open (or is the interior of your body not private?) in order that it be televised. In any case, it looks to be a damn slippery slope to be starting down, if one really is concerned about what 'others' may observe about one and what others may not observe. Is the right to privacy actually inalienable? If so, is all of it inalienable, or just some of it? How much? If not, and we have no inalienable right to privacy in any degree, then all we're talking about is a (relatively) minor agreement between humans in order to maintain society (as opposed to a meta-agreement like the inalienable rights to life, liberty, etc), and those are always going to be something where some of us don't agree with the compromise ultimately reached. But this is back to where I started... the ultimate meaning of "the right to privacy" and the extent and nature of such a right, is a far more important question than whether Mozilla is accepting "dirty" money from Google, who (possibly) violates said right...because it's impossible to judge whether someone is violating a right that is indistinct in extent and ambiguous in meaning. Holly -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
