Tag Archives: law

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Teenager granted the right to “die with dignity”

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Over here in the UK the current big front-page story is Hannah Jones, a thirteen-year-old girl who has a hole in her heart as a result of childhood leukaemia medication. The actual news is the about-face made by her local healthcare authority, which was planning to force her to have a heart transplant against her own wishes; intervention by a child protection officer encouraged them to drop their court case and let Hannah stay with her family as she wished.

The “right to die” is still a very contentious issue (and will doubtless remain one for some time to come) but Hannah’s case is complicated by her age; I think it’s a safe assumption that had her parents not agreed with her decision, things might have gone very differently. Which brings us to the perennial question – at what age should the law permit you to make life-changing decisions like this for yourself? And to what degree should the religious beliefs of your family be taken into account, if at all?

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Offshore abortion boat defies Spanish laws

In a world that is increasingly flattened by technology and transportation, it’s getting harder for nation-states to impose restrictions on their citizens. Spain’s abortion laws are the latest to be challenged by Holland’s “Women on Waves” ship, which anchors in international waters offshore from countries with prohibitive stances on abortion to allow women the right of choice without fear of legal repercussions. [via Pharyngula]

When climate change turns entire nations into refugees and/or migrants, will geography cease to determine which legal system constrains you? Or will the notion of physical territory simply become atomised to the micro-scale, like the turf demarcations of London teenagers?

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Cannabis is less harmful than alcohol and tobacco

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Prohibiting the use of heroin and crack is stupid. Prohibition of cannabis is stupid and hypocritical, as further confirmed by a report (link is to background to the report) from the Beckley Foundation:

“Although cannabis can have a negative impact on health, including mental health, in terms of relative harms it is considerably less harmful than alcohol or tobacco,”

…

The Beckley Foundation, a charitable trust, claimed only two deaths worldwide have been attributed to cannabis, while alcohol and tobacco use together kill an estimated 150,000 people in Britain alone.

…

“Many of the harms associated with cannabis use are the result of prohibition itself, particularly the social harms arising from arrest and imprisonment,”

Ending prohibition isn’t like ending climate change – it’s a comparatively straightforward way of solving Mexico’s drugs problems, our drugs problems, and generally making the world a better place.

What does this have to do with science fiction? I hope that prohibition will seem like the product of a dystopian science-fiction novel someday, and join slavery and the divine right of kings on the trash-heap of history.

[via Physorg][image from aforero on flickr]

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Pay attention, J K Rowling – fan-created content can work in your favour

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J K Rowling might be interested to see that suing people who make derivative works based on your own creations isn’t necessarily the best option. YA author Stephanie Myers Meyer took the opposite approach by encouraging her fans to produce a Lexicon of her Twilight Vampire books, and as a result has engendered a hard core of people who evangelise the books on her behalf. [via TechDirt]

Word-of-mouth is the best form of marketing there is, so they say – and getting someone else to do the hard work for you seems like a smart move in a networked world. As I’ve mentioned before, I think the importance of fan-fic in building an author’s career is set to increase over time, and it is in author attitudes to fan-created works that we’ll start seeing the split between writers who have embraced the internet and those who cling to the old paradigms of print.

Future Imperfect

Second Life, 3D dildos and the intellectual property mindset inversion

Sven Johnson reports on intellectual property wranglings in Second Life for the latest instalment of Future Imperfect.

Future Imperfect - Sven Johnson

Second Life’s unique content creation tools have been its strongest unique selling point, resulting in a vigorous virtual economy. But there, just as in real life, intellectual property rights are a thorny issue – and there are signs that the social media masses are starting to change their attitude to content theft.
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