"Reasonable person" varying with the times is actually kind of the point though.
Laws exist to inform the actions of people, not computers. I think that's lost on people of our expertise sometimes when we start to seriously envision a world where there is no ambiguity whatsoever for a given action.
But we've already seen a world like that: It's called 'zero tolerance' just as we see at schools in the U.S. and it's been, on the whole, a disaster.
Anything other than zero tolerance or full tolerance leaves room for interpretation, no matter how much you try to pin it down. At least with 'reasonable person' tests we know that ahead of time.
While 'zero tolerance' is a disaster, I really don't like the law being too open-ended, because then I can never be certain how my actions will be interpreted in light of the law.
You're right, but unless you're both a lawyer and a genius then the cold hard facts are that you really can't ever be certain how your actions will be interpreted in light of the entire law.
I used to think this was an issue with the law, that we need to take out loopholes and corner cases. But in the process of specifying allowable and unallowable behavior you make the law so expansive that it can never be grokked.
By making the law simple, you make it fuzzy and now we're back into your problem.
I would blame the lawyers and legislators, but honestly I have extremely simple programs that I can't actually predict the behavior of, and the computer does exactly what I tell it to.
I don't say this to say that we shouldn't fix the law, only that I think at some point you (the royal you) have to come to grips with "c'est la vie" and just not worry as much. Either way you can't completely win, so why fret over what you can't control?
Laws exist to inform the actions of people, not computers. I think that's lost on people of our expertise sometimes when we start to seriously envision a world where there is no ambiguity whatsoever for a given action.
But we've already seen a world like that: It's called 'zero tolerance' just as we see at schools in the U.S. and it's been, on the whole, a disaster.
Anything other than zero tolerance or full tolerance leaves room for interpretation, no matter how much you try to pin it down. At least with 'reasonable person' tests we know that ahead of time.