information ethics

A layer of internal-community ethics that modulates the behavior of its members toward information provided by others can likely be justified on scientific grounds, if one recognizes that niche-network layer-multiplicity is an important part of a community's physical structure.  The precise form of this ethics, of course, is likely to differ from community to community and from one culture to the next.

This observation is inspired by the utility of a similar layer of ethics (as a complement to contractual non-disclosure agreements) when working with privileged information in the development of best-practice guidelines for analytical support.  Today's news-media, of course, has been tempted to ignore the ethics of information management altogether, in spite of its changing (and growing) relevance to everyday practice.

Look for more on this topic, hopefully soon...