Surface detail reflections on the virtualisation of punishment

Surface detail – reflections on the virtualisation of punishment

In memoriam Iain M Banks

• Self plug: Burkhard Schafer, Zenon Bankowski 'Mistaken identities: the integrative force of private law' in (eds) The Harmonisation of European Private Law (Hart Publishing, 2000) pp 21 -47

„I believe it's meant to be, darling I watch you when you are sleeping“

Lededje told her, “I might even have told them: I was running away to the Culture, because I’d heard they’d escaped the tyranny of money and individual power, and that all people were equal here, men and women alike, with no riches or poverty to put one person above or beneath another. ”

Surface detail

Hell are other avatars

In Hell, the seed of demons burned like acid and generally brought with it parasites, worms, gangrene and tumours, as well as the possibility of the conception of something that would eat its way out when the time came to be born. That conception could equally well take place in a male; a womb was not required and the demons were not fussy.

Virtualisation of punishment • What happens in cyberspace stays in cyberspace

Whipping boy

Ta-ta-ta-taaaaaa

Justifications for punishment • • retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, incapacitations.

Parameters • Simulation of time served • Knowledge of being a brain in a vat? • Experiences made and training given – do they stay • Right to forget?

Knowledge of being a brain in a vat • “It could always all be unreal - how could you ever tell otherwise? You took it on trust, in part because what would be the point of doing anything else? When the fake behaved exactly like the real, why treat it as anything different? You gave it the benefit of the doubt, until something proved otherwise. ” • ― Iain M. Banks, Surface Detail

Right to forget, right to remember II

Right to forget, right to remember II

Lex talionis

A word form our sponsors

• How much harm would you experience for copyright violations? • Whio would own the copyright in the „punishment script“ that you and your jailors co-created?