Thread: What is murder?
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Old 11-28-2006, 09:57 AM   #4
Kitsune
 
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Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: At the Stern, Raising the Black
Default Re: What is murder?

While I agree with most of what Jürgen says, he is probably somewhat imprecise. So let me nitpick a bit by saying that what constitutes murder depends also on the exact nature of the "someone" in question and the place where you commit the deed. Simply because it is only murder to kill someone who is regarded as a person by the law.

Some examples: in some Transhumanists exclaves like for example Luna City nearly all kinds of sapient infomorphs including Ghosts, sapient Shadows and self evolved SAI's have citizen rights and even Fragments are treatet as minors. In the EU Ghosts and SAI's are regarded as citizens while in the USA Ghosts are citzens while SAI's are not - they have the legal state of animals (its quite interesting to reflect about the consequences of this for the use of SAI's in the US - apart from the fact that the US handling of the matter could easily be critizised as "hidden biochauvinism"). In India and China even Ghosts have only the legal status of "inferiors" - wether that means that to kill them is punished with less severity is open to debate. Finally, in the TSA all kinds of informorphs are seen as largely information, even Ghosts have only animal rights.

Apart from that there are some other issues one could have with Jürgen's opinion. To delete an informorph regarded as a person or to destroy the cybershell running it could be regarded as assault, alright. But there are all kinds of nice twists that could appear. Like for example what if the infomorph in question had no safety copies of himself stored away (because he is careless or because he strictly believes that those copies are just copies and do it no good) and the death is therefore is final? What if the perpetrator didn't know that? Still assault? Or is it murder now?

Likewise, one could argue that to deliberately destroy safety copies of an infomorph person is more than just "destruction of property". It significantly increases the risk of the infomorph being killed once and for all - therefore some could say that this constitutes at least assault. And to do so as part of planned operation, let's say goon-1 destroys the copies, while at some other place goon-2 destroys the cybershell that runs the victim should probably be regarded as plain and simple cold blooded murder in the case of both goons.

Lots of interesting cases for "Law & Order 2100"...
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