What we're used to
Whitfield Diffie (via Electrolite) is interesting:
What people think of as fundamental is what we're used to. The argument about Caller ID a decade ago is an example. Where did the idea come from that you have the God-given right to make an anonymous telephone call? It's an accident of the technology. Yet people were indignant about the fact that they were going to be identified.
What happens if person A is used to X, and person B is used to Y, and X and Y are compatible until a certain time, after which they're increasingly often in conflict?
I feel like this may have happened in copyright law, for example. If we just focus on a particular technology like the audio compact disc (which comes to mind because I'm wearing my NTK "corrupt disc" t-shirt as I write this), computer users are used to being able to get the raw PCM audio bits in CDDA format when they buy music, and sound recording publishers are used to being able to publish discs which the average person can't copy digitally.
But in the past five years, "being able to get the raw PCM audio bits in CDDA format" has begun to imply "the average person being able to copy discs digitally". That, in turn, means that someone's prior experience will change in a way which that person might find upsetting or consider wrong.
What's interesting is that the aspects of prior experience which people focus on are very different. I had another example come to mind in connection with the broadcast flag (to say nothing of ReplayTV). Device manufacturers, at least since Sony, are used to being able to build generally what they choose. Broadcasters are used to being able to broadcast with the assumption that certain activities are inconvenient for the average viewer. If devices become more sophisticated, someone's assumption may break down.
You can interpret the Sony case itself as just such a collision. Sony was used to being able to manufacture useful and innovative products which consumers wanted. Broadcasters and studios were used to home recording capabilities being basically nonexistent. Now what if a useful and innovative product enables home recording? The answer twenty years ago was that the studios sue, basically arguing that home recording didn't exist before and so it shouldn't exist now.
Diffie's suggestion that we believe that what we're used to is right seems to account for the strong faith we have in precedent. It's not just judges and not just lawyers who have such a faith. It's really almost everyone. Our reliance on precedent may be partly a matter of a desire not to appear to be arbitrary. So, for example, consider a parent who worries about setting a precedent about something with a child. The parent and child are both working with the assumption that the parent's responses in similar situation will follow fairly consistent rules and not be totally capricious.
