Why MTP Can Never Feel at Peace
The MTP site is open to the whole world, yet MTP has no way of fully knowing the laws of every country. Seen in that light, running a website means MTP can never feel entirely sure of himself. This unease comes from situations such as the following, though not only these.
1. How can MTP avoid being suspected of practising medicine without a licence?
The idea of unlicensed practice reaches almost without limit.
MTP cannot be sure whether some law, somewhere in the world, would count “asking how long you have been feeling unwell” as part of making a diagnosis.
In the United States, Texas law treats a diagnosis made “by any system or method” as practising medicine. Is asking questions a method, then? And is asking someone how long they have felt unwell a kind of questioning?
Ohio law also covers examinations and diagnoses carried out through written communication online. So is asking someone online how long they have felt unwell a method of examination?
Yet, as we all know, asking how long someone has felt unwell can come up in a conversation between any two people.
Some laws make charging a fee, directly or indirectly, a condition of unlicensed practice. But whether something amounts to an indirect fee is not always a matter of plain common sense. The conversations between MTP and users are not tied to any payment — yet someone could argue that they promote the site, that this passes along a benefit, and that it therefore amounts to an indirect fee. Couldn’t they?
Some may reply that courts do not decide cases of unlicensed practice in such a crude and simple way. But the point is that a legal provision may not reflect the full detail of how a case is actually tried — and the law will not usually say so, because no provision can carry all the detail of real court proceedings. A provision may be written very simply, while an actual trial may be highly complex. So no one can judge with complete certainty, from the wording of the law alone, whether they might be suspected of practising medicine without a licence.
So the surest way to avoid trouble is not to run a website at all — or to stop speaking altogether, since speaking itself might be seen as a method.
2. How can MTP avoid exposing anyone’s privacy?
The site’s registration card, for example, asks for a good deal of information that may touch on privacy. Is a personal web link private? Are the university courses someone has taken private? Is whether they passed a particular course private? Is a personal email address private? If a user enters someone else’s legal name on their own registration card, does that infringe that person’s privacy — and does the site then share the liability?
Some countries’ laws give only a broad principle: for example, that any “information that can be linked to a particular person” is personal information. But who has the authority to decide what can be linked to a particular person? The law does not say. MTP’s view is that wherever the law does not say who holds that authority, it belongs to the courts. In other words, until a court has ruled, the site cannot decide for itself whether it has infringed anyone’s privacy.
3. How can MTP keep data secure?
Security can never be complete: you can never say that anything is absolutely secure. For example, the site uses people’s Google email addresses and account names. It promises never to publish them, and it has taken every technical measure within its means to protect the site’s information — yet it cannot claim that this information is beyond all risk. In theory, any information can leak, just as any object can be lost.
In other words, the very idea of security takes away a person’s right to judge for themselves, because no one has the absolute ability, or the absolute authority, to declare that anything is absolutely safe.
MTP believes that being deprived of a power of judgment may feel like losing a part of one’s body, or a part of one’s soul.
4. Is MTP simply overthinking all this?
No. As an adult, anything MTP does may affect his own and his family’s interests and peace of mind for the rest of their lives. In essence, the same is true for everyone. Everyone, MTP included, should never stop observing and thinking about the world.
5. MTP does not believe he is the only person in the world who faces these situations.
He believes, in fact, that every person, and their children and grandchildren after them, will face them too. We now live in the age of the internet and of AI, and it is quite possible that, in future, everyone will need to build one or more websites of their own. That is what the words “find each other” in this site’s name are meant to say: that we should remind, help and protect one another.