In what ways does regulation, interdiction, surveillance and retrospective analysis or definition actually and inadvertently (re)produce the problems it seeks to diminish? Distinctions between legal and illegal are clearly and self-evidently important but in terms of comprehensive analysis and aspirations towards effective problem resolution they may also be a foundational misdirection.
It is becoming clear that the primary purpose of information and communication systems is not the production of truth (or falsity). The primary purpose is the self-propagation of those information systems themselves and the confusion and chaos through which assertions of truth and falsity are currently thrown around like so much confetti at a wedding is merely another (autonomous) method by which this whole communications system creates dissonance, novelty and entropy in order to reproduce itself. Law and order versus crime and disorder? Sure, but it is a limited (and ultimately – limiting) distinction.
Complex systems seek their own continuity and the unified whole is a single system that optimally self-propagates through the dissonance and difference of it’s binary antitheses. (Hyper-partisan politics, similarly so.)
Daedelus Kite 