From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Date: Mon Jan 11 1999 - 08:10:33 MST
caliban@gate.net wrote:
> Turmadrog, Renegade Balseraph of Technology <wolfkin@freedomspace.net> wrote:
> > On Sat, 09 Jan 1999, Samael tempted me with this question:
> > >The majority of extropians on this list are in favour of perfect human
> > >inviolability (ie people never have the right to affect another person
> > >without their permission - except in self defence).
> >
> > Yes, I'd agree with that.
>
> As would I, of course -- but the Devil is in the details. That is, as
> David Friedman points out, the tricky part is defining what counts
> as "to affect another person." Friedman takes (what I believe is)
> an intuitionistic approach, and suggests that the threshold falls
> somewhere between shining a flashlight at them and shining a
> laser beam, but that's an awful lot of room.
Not necessarily. While it is now a crime to shine a laser beam at a person (given
that lasers are used also for aiming firearms, thus playing a laser beam on someone
is a threat, tantamount to assault with a deadly weapon), there are significant
amounts of property rights cases where property owners are protected from neighbors
who use too bright or too many broad beam spotlights at night. There is a case
progressing right now a couple miles north of me in Hanover, NH where Dartmouth
College wants to put 80 foot high towers with spotlights over one of its soccer
fields and be able to keep them on until after 11 pm.
Similarly, noise pollution cases abound in the case books. If there weren't a law
here in NH that grandfathered all outdoor firearms ranges from noise control regs,
the gun club which I sit on the board of directors of would have been shut down
long ago by city folks who moved up here to properties near our club without doing
due diligence as to the existence of our club and the noise we produce. Even then,
we still get letters from the City Council whenever some flatlander claims in a
complaint that we were firing off automatic weapons at 5 am, even though that is
outside the hours that we permit our members to use the facilities at, and ignoring
that it is always other neighbors of theirs doing the shooting on their own
property.
Mike Lorrey
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:02:46 MST