[cap-talk] "ambient authority" on wiki.erights.org

[Rob Meijer]

On Wed, June 17, 2009 19:34, Karp, Alan H wrote:
> Rob Meijer wrote:
>> >
>> > I have read and write permission to two files, A and B.  Nobody else
>> has
>> > permission to read or write these files.  When I say copy(A,B), I am
>> not
>> > designating which of my rights to use for each argument.  The rights
>> are
>> > not shared, implicitly or otherwise, but they are ambient.
>>
>> If A and B are names, than your rights will need to shared implicitly
>> between you and copy in order for copy to succeed, you use a name as
>> only
>> way to designate the objects to what you and copy share authority, that
>> is
>> therefore ambient.
>>
> Even if copy is a method running in the program that invoked it, the
> authorities are ambient.

Sure, granularity is irrelevant, the only facts that are relevant to it
being ambient authority is that:

a) authority is shared implicitly between the caller and the copy method.
b) a name is used as designation for the objects involved.