tinfoil hats are making more sense to me!

[Puke]

Highly unlikely it'll be feasible outside a lab for many, many years to come.

[K. Darien Freeheart]

Business decisions should be allowed to be secret before they are fully implemented.

I'll agree with you that that makes sense right now. Let's also assume that this device, the technique, is ENTIRELY passive, that your THOUGHTS are broadcast as electrical impulses...

If thoughts are actually broadcast and a technology is made to capture them, would you still think this would be true. If the idea/plan and the like were as public, as accessible and as broadcasted as yelling your idea in a crowded restaurant, would you still hold that making record of them was aggression? I mean, some trade secrets are kept in ways that we'd think today are a major burden. I don't know if it's TRUE, but I've read that the process to make the ingredient in Coke is kept "broken up" within a group of Coke employees and as a condition of employment, these employees are shadowed by corporate security to prevent them from ever talking to each other.

It might be false, that's not the point, but IF and when (since I'm sure it'll happen at some point) human thoughts become passivly readable would the same hold true or would you simply expect them to stop broadcasting trade secrets in crowed rooms, regardless of how infeasible it might seem by today's standards?

Computer source code, should be allowed to be kept secret to allow for a competitive edge.

I can't disagree more. I've been a huge advocate of Free Software for a while. Let me also ask you... In absence of government copyright, how do you respect my (the user's) right to do WHATEVER I want with my property AND respect the "owner" of the software's right to control his property at the same time? The copy of XP that I have on some virtual machine I got from torrent sites and those versions are cracked so as I never contractually agreed to the Microsoft EULA. I have the software on my computer, having never entered into a contract with Microsoft, and I wish to decompile it. How then do you simultaneously protect my freedom to use my property as I see fit AND ensure their code stays secret?

The notion of "ideas as property" is infeasible without force. You can say "My thoughts are mine" and I might agree, except that copies of IMPLIMENTED thoughts are not attacks on thoughts themselves. If the mind reading machine DEPRIVED you of the thought itself, it would be aggression. But this idea that you, as creator of the thought, somehow retain control over different implimentation of that thought (say, as a scan from a mind reading machine) is not only logically suspect to me, practically speaking it's impossible to contain without coersion.

Relationships with people that you find valuable for certain things should be allowed to have secrets in unrelated affairs to not jeopardize those areas of commonality. (Someone should be able to choose whether or not to tell his very devout christian parents that he's an atheist).

My mind struggles to comprehend why someone would value a relationship that is predicated on dishonesty. Let's just assume my parents hated atheists. Them KNOWING I'm an atheist doesn't really change much to me. If them knowing I'm an atheist changes the relationship, fine. I don't want to associate with people who are so intolerant of people's belief systems.

[Ryan McGuire]

Business decisions should be allowed to be secret before they are fully implemented.

If thoughts are actually broadcast and a technology is made to capture them, would you still think this would be true.

No, I believe in homesteading. Broadcasting is the opposite of homesteading. If I'm broadcasting my thoughts, I need to find a way to stop broadcasting them (tin foil hat) or I forfeit my rights to them.

Computer source code, should be allowed to be kept secret to allow for a competitive edge.

I can't disagree more. I've been a huge advocate of Free Software for a while.

I've used Linux almost exclusively since 1995, have contributed to many open source projects and released several projects of my own on my website. I love free software. But giving software away for free is not an obligation, it is a labour of love and principle, but in no way is it immoral to not give away the source code. Do you agree with the GPL? That's actually one of the things that I have recently discovered is a problem. It's asserting copyright and shoves numerous conditions on software that is freely available (broadcast) on the internet. That's not freedom. I have recently released software with a BSD style license because of all the problems I have seen in the GPL, but I believe that from now on I will be releasing things in the public domain instead.

The copy of XP that I have on some virtual machine I got from torrent sites and those versions are cracked so as I never contractually agreed to the Microsoft EULA. I have the software on my computer, having never entered into a contract with Microsoft, and I wish to decompile it. How then do you simultaneously protect my freedom to use my property as I see fit AND ensure their code stays secret?

Anything that Microsoft has released without proper Non Disclosure Agreements is not properly homesteaded. I completely support the efforts of Wine and ReactOS. I use both of them. So go ahead, decompile it. It's not the same thing as their version control system @ Microsoft HQ. If they were to give you that, you would be under an NDA and you would not be in the right for copying that software to anyone, even though it would not deprive anyone of their copy of the source. So to reiterate, software that is properly homesteaded, never broadcast, and only released under a signed NDA, is real property. This scenario even solves the scarcity problem that Mike seems to think is required:

I don't think you can homestead something if there is an infinite supply of it; or rather, there's no point to homesteading it - if there are unlimited copies of something and every copy is identical, then if you "homestead" the one I wanted to "own," I could just homestead another.

In the above scenario there is NOT an infinite supply of Microsoft source code. There is exactly one supplier of that source code and they are very unwilling to make other copies available.

But this idea that you, as creator of the thought, somehow retain control over different implimentation of that thought (say, as a scan from a mind reading machine) is not only logically suspect to me, practically speaking it's impossible to contain without coersion.

Actually, it's just the opposite, until the advent of the mind reading device, it would be impossible for you to extract the idea from my head without coercion. I don't have any right to the idea once it's out, that would be improper homsteading. So if you create something based on a brain scan of mine you just happen to see laying around.. have at it. But if you forcefully scan my brain, you have absolutely no right to use those ideas. It's a bit like murder, if you murder someone, you can't make it right again, the damage is done. You can however approximate "making me whole again" by giving me lots of money. Obviously everyone else in the world that may have seen those ideas (because of your forceful actions against me), that did not use force against me would not be wrong for using those now un-homesteaded ideas.

[dalebert]

If this technology progresses - and of course it will - then surely there will be some device that will block other devices from reading your mind. A thought-containment device.

You mean like Magneto's helmet?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPIjVP3pJWg

[John Edward Mercier]

On the MicroSoft software issue... it would be the individual that broke the contract.

[Sam A. Robrin]

This may be a technicality (but maybe not): no one is entering your brain! And, although you dispute this argument, no one is taking your thoughts, either. They are knowing them, but not depriving you of them or their effects in reality (as far as you are able and willing to pursue).

The same argument could be made about your image with regard to spy cameras.

[Mike Barskey]

This may be a technicality (but maybe not): no one is entering your brain! And, although you dispute this argument, no one is taking your thoughts, either. They are knowing them, but not depriving you of them or their effects in reality (as far as you are able and willing to pursue).

The same argument could be made about your image with regard to spy cameras.

That makes sense to me. I don't think you have a right to your image, if someone else owns the image-capturing/printing equipment. I don't think I own the light that reflects off of me.

[Friday]

Reminds me of the Wim Wenders film "Until the End of the World". 

I'll wear tinfoil 24 hours a day if necessary.  Nobody is reading my thoughts unless I choose to express them.