Interesting, I've never seen this presented as an issue of ethics before. I
think I can see your point, but I'd suggest that there's an interplay of
ethical obligations between a user and the host / creator of an application
in which perhaps the user should or in many cases has to accept a
de-prioritised ethical consideration.

For example, I would guess that a user doesn't have the right to expect an
application to perform exactly to his or her expectations, regardless of
what they might be. So, I wouldn't consider myself ethically obligated to
work out how to accept 3gb of text from a POSTed form without truncating /
modifying that text due to practical limitations of my application. (not
suggesting this is a possible real-world example).

But still, an interesting observation!

M is for Murray


On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 6:36 AM, Daniel Brown <danbr...@php.net> wrote:

>    Well, of course you have the _right_ to do it --- as long as it's
> legal, and it's not something that *requires* the data to remain
> unaltered, you have the right to do manipulate it however you want.
> The question comes down to ethics and in predicting the preferences of
> the user.
>

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