Page 20 - Ruminations

18. Life, limb and property

Technology, biology and law are on a collision course; as their
boundaries blur, opportunities for mischief pop up like GMO kernels
of corn in a microwave oven. “Inalienable” rights, justified
theologically and enforced secularly, inevitably conflict in culturally
diverse polities dominated by corrupt oligarchies. That is nothing new;
“life, limb and property” have never been absolute rights, but now
their definitions are deconstructed and complicated by scientific
advances in biotechnology and electronics.
The crux of the problem is a new conception of “information” as
property related to (and a property of) life and limb. It pits citizens
against corporations, with the government as unreliable arbiter. Digital
capture, storage, analysis and reproduction of both the basic
components of life and the smallest tics of human behavior are big
business. Individual rights related to them are under attack, and may
be indefensible. Similar unresolved issues remain with artificial
intelligence and its media.
To be answered, or ignored, or denied as valid questions, are:

1. If sentient life can be created, can it be owned? By individuals? Can
it be killed with impunity? What can it create and kill?

2. What is information or data? In what cases is it property? Can it be
bought and sold, licensed or destroyed?

3. Can I use my own DNA to grow a person? Kill or eat it? Is that
murder or cannibalism or suicide? Can I do that for another person’s
DNA? Is that theft? Or violation of copyright or patent?

4. Can property have rights? What is its legal standing? If nature
randomly creates an organism already patented, who owns it?

5. What is ultimately inalienable? If all the minutiae of every organism
can be digitized and synthesized, is there still a distinct whole with
some legal protection?

6. Thoughts are becoming mechanically readable, and therefore able
to be captured (voluntarily or not); should all such mental content be
owned (or copyrighted, regardless of originality) by their thinker?
Could they be used in evidence against a person without a search
warrant?