Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!ames!lll-lcc!pyramid!hplabs!hplabsz!taylor
From: HANLY@UOFMCC.BITNET (Ken Hanly)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Private Agreements to Restrict Information
Message-ID: <1501@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: 29 Jan 88 07:28:28 GMT
Sender: taylor@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM
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Approved: taylor@hplabs

In a recent edition of "Computers & Society Digest" Guthery notes
that access to information is quite rightfully restricted
by blacklisting unions and others who might use this information
against the interests of the corporations that have agreed
to have this information listed.  However, there are limitations
upon the rights of individuals to make agreements both moral
and legal.  

The Mafia might agree to provide an agent with a list of hitmen 
and would of course demand that the publication of the list should 
be quite restrictive!  It is not at all clear that in such a case 
the police have not a moral and probably a legal right as well to 
access to this information, in spite of an agreement between Mafia 
and agent.  

Where agreements between individuals may not be in the public good 
or may involve serious injustice to others, it is not at all evident 
that agreement between individuals even if freely arrived should 
take precedence over other moral concerns.

Presumably D & B sell this information to approved customers,
so in fact they are putting a certain product -information-
on the market.  Is it OK to have any restrictions people might
agree to put on sales?  What if the providers of information had
agreed that it would not be distributed to blacks, or women?

There may be stronger reasons on the side of restriction than
on availability but Guthery's appeal to the freedom of people
to contract with one another over what they 'own' does not
seem to settle with matter; rather, it is one consideration
along with many others.

Ken Hanly