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If spectrum licensing is predicated on the basis of a need to prevent / minimise interference, if such a technology is developed, the requirement to license spectrum (and for governments to print money carrying out such licensing) would seem to fall away.

Yochai Benkler has already made a persuasive case (I don't know if this was officially published) around this and, if it was possible to deploy widely technology that worked irrespective of interference, we'd seem to be one step closer.

The cynic in me thinks it might fail as a result, since I doubt many governments would want to lose the money, or incumbent operators a means of excluding others from the market.

violators? If so, it's not so bad. I wouldn't mind some government goons busting down the doors of Verizon and the like. These days GPL software and CC music (and some books) are better than stuff controlled by restrictive copyright terms anyway. Hell last night I was listening to some Mongolian punk music with lyrics on the topic of Dragon Ball Z, then some Australian-Indian Hare Krishna techno. Where would you ever find that in the aisles of Virgin records? Lots of good books these days are being released under one or the other of the CC licenses, and there's plenty of interesting public domain stuff from last century and before. Put down that trashy war novel and go read some real military history. Books not out of copyright, especially technical books, can often be found at your local university engineering library. The only media that's hard to find for free without of course pirating are movies and TV, but the content of most modern televisual entertainment means you aren't really losing anything by skipping it.

Here are some links for the interested:

Music and books
http://questioncopyright.com/

Patents
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/again st.htm

Network economy
http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.ph p/Main_Page

Collection p2p politics
http://www.p2pfoundation.net/

Software
http://www.riehle.org/computer-science/research/20 07/computer-2007-article.html

IP economics
http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/

How are you, gentlemen?

From the article:

It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

This is exactly what people like Lawrence Lessig ( Free Culture ) and Yochai Benkler ( The Wealth of Networks ) have been saying all the time.

The magic and fascinating thing about the Internet isn't that it makes it more convenient to purchase pre-packaged content from big media corporations (although that is good too), but that it makes new forms of cooperation between people possible, on a scale never seen before.

The examples used by Benkler in The Wealth of Networks include the ones listed in the article, but he also mentions Slashdot as another example of the same phenomenon.

So, yes, I do feel that we all have reason to feel just a tiny bit proud about having received this award. The award has gone to the internet culture that we have all taken part in fostering and promoting, and it is great to see that being recognized by the mainstream media in this way.

i am basically for stronger enforcement of copyright laws.. does this make me 'anti-tech' or 'pro-tech' in this survey view?

anti-tech, you douche.

http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1763
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market
http://forum.wgbh.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=01 97

http://jorge.cortell.net/
http://www.benkler.org/
http://www.dklevine.com/
http://www.stephankinsella.com/ip/
http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books.htm

http://swpat.ffii.org/
http://creativecommons.org/
http://www.piratbyran.org/
http://www.stealthisfilm.com/
http://www.cambia.org/
http://www.plos.org/
http://www.fsf.org/

This happens to be the topic of my PhD research in organization theory. I have written considerably about the various theoretical foundations of a new theory of organization, most of which is posted, or linked to, on my blog under this category. As well, I have published an article in the latest edition (Summer 2006, vol. 24 no. 2) of the Organization Development Journal entitled "The Penguinist Discourse: A Critical Application of Open Source Software Project Management to Organization Development," that extends the well-known work of Yochai Benkler ("Coase's Penguin") to apply open source principles and motivational factors to general management.

I would be happy to correspond with anyone who might be interested in my work relative to their own workplaces (and I also do OD consulting, btw).

The guy is way overpaid, with a salary more than 200 times that of the average worker in his firm, not even including his unwarranted pension, benefits, protection from lawsuits for criminal actions, and stock options he backdates for the best strike price.

Who are you talking about here? Certainly not about me, as my compensation package is not publicly reported (and you have it totally wrong). Your biases are showing rather too clearly here. If you meant me you should remember you are libelling a real person who hangs out on Slashdot, not a corporate concept that can be whipped forever without bleeding.

To be clear, and as Dana Blankenhorn was written, the actual words I said in the keynote were describing how F/OSS works, using a model remarkably like Benkler's, and the reference to capitalism was a dig at Microsoft. Like so many posters here, you have joined an instinctive pile-on against Sun rather than asking whether the report-of-a-report is actually accurate.

While in a theoretical world, this makes sense, in reality this isn't what's happened. When you look at the distribution of wealth (or knowledge, or access, or whatever), you find that since the internet these gaps have grown bigger, and while the big players may be new, the truth is out of the billions of sites online, the top thousand sites get 99.99% of the traffic. How's the democracy? How's that "power to the people"?

Yochai Benkler makes a few excellent counterarguments to what you're saying in his new book. Check out chapters 6 and 7 here.

Perhaps some introduction to the theory of Peer Production would be beneficial for understanding the economic foundation of Open Source. Some links: Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm, The Economics of Peer Production

In this paper I explain that while free software is highly visible, it is in fact only one example of a much broader social-economic phenomenon. I suggest that we are seeing is the broad and deep emergence of a new, third mode of production in the digitally networked environment. I call this mode "commons-based peer-production," to distinguish it from the property- and contract-based models of firms and markets. Its central characteristic is that groups of individuals successfully collaborate on large-scale projects following a diverse cluster of motivational drives and social signals, rather than either market prices or managerial commands.

The truth that political extremes find hard to grasp is that our motivations differ wildly. They differ sufficiently to make open source software work, and "enlightened self interest" isn't enough to explain what's going on.

I feel that in part your comment is intended to bring peace through recognition of common drives; I would venture that this intension is not wholly rooted in self-interest. Maybe others can act beyond their self-interests also.

I would like to draw your attention to the work of Yochai Benkler http://www.benkler.org/.

He argues that there is no scarcity in the radio spectrum, and government regulation or market allocation is essentially outdated by the arrival of smart radios.
"The current legal framework for radio transmission relies on administrative licensing of broadcasters. The emerging regulatory alternative replaces licensing with an exhaustive system of property rights in the radio frequency spectrum. This article analyzes a third alternative: egulating wireless transmissions as a public commons, as we today regulate our highway system and our computer networks. The choice we make among these alternatives will determine the path of development of our wireless communications infrastructure.
Its social, political, and cultural implications are likely to be profound."

the article quoted is Overcoming Agoraphobia: Building the Commons of the Digitally Networked Environment http://www.benkler.org/agoraphobia.pdf

in that article he argues for treating the spectrum as a commons: "Our capacity to think about the truly central questions concerning regulation of wireless communications is obscured by the language we use to discuss the problem. When we speak of regulating wireless communications, we speak of managing a resource, the spectrum. Generally, we use market-based solutions for resource management, and therefore when posed with such a problem look for something to which we can affix property rights to be traded in the market. But there is no such thing as spectrum. There is no ether out there, no finite physical resource that needs to be allocated. There are simply people communicating with each other, transmitting and receiving messages with equipment that uses electromagnetic waves to encode meaningful communications and send them over varying distances without using a wire. Spectrum management means regulating how these people use their equipment. Spectrum allocation, whether it be done by licensing or auctioning, is the practice whereby government solves this coordination problem by threatening most people in society that it will tear down their antennas and confiscate their transmitters if they try to communicate with each other using wireless communications equipment without permission."

As for assigning private rights to commons there is a big problem. Once You start to dismantle the commons, You bump into BIG problems, like in the case of any cultural expression.

another very good article an that question: Michael F. Brown: Can Culture Be Copyrighted? http://www.williams.edu/AnthSoc/brown-ca98.pdf

or to put it in an other way: just because all images in this picture are private property, should we think this form of expression (by Banksy) is illegal without the IP owners consent: http://mokk.bme.hu/~bodo/banksy/banksy3.jpg?

I would like to draw your attention to the work of Yochai Benkler http://www.benkler.org/.

He argues that there is no scarcity in the radio spectrum, and government regulation or market allocation is essentially outdated by the arrival of smart radios.
"The current legal framework for radio transmission relies on administrative licensing of broadcasters. The emerging regulatory alternative replaces licensing with an exhaustive system of property rights in the radio frequency spectrum. This article analyzes a third alternative: egulating wireless transmissions as a public commons, as we today regulate our highway system and our computer networks. The choice we make among these alternatives will determine the path of development of our wireless communications infrastructure.
Its social, political, and cultural implications are likely to be profound."

the article quoted is Overcoming Agoraphobia: Building the Commons of the Digitally Networked Environment http://www.benkler.org/agoraphobia.pdf

in that article he argues for treating the spectrum as a commons: "Our capacity to think about the truly central questions concerning regulation of wireless communications is obscured by the language we use to discuss the problem. When we speak of regulating wireless communications, we speak of managing a resource, the spectrum. Generally, we use market-based solutions for resource management, and therefore when posed with such a problem look for something to which we can affix property rights to be traded in the market. But there is no such thing as spectrum. There is no ether out there, no finite physical resource that needs to be allocated. There are simply people communicating with each other, transmitting and receiving messages with equipment that uses electromagnetic waves to encode meaningful communications and send them over varying distances without using a wire. Spectrum management means regulating how these people use their equipment. Spectrum allocation, whether it be done by licensing or auctioning, is the practice whereby government solves this coordination problem by threatening most people in society that it will tear down their antennas and confiscate their transmitters if they try to communicate with each other using wireless communications equipment without permission."

As for assigning private rights to commons there is a big problem. Once You start to dismantle the commons, You bump into BIG problems, like in the case of any cultural expression.

another very good article an that question: Michael F. Brown: Can Culture Be Copyrighted? http://www.williams.edu/AnthSoc/brown-ca98.pdf

or to put it in an other way: just because all images in this picture are private property, should we think this form of expression (by Banksy) is illegal without the IP owners consent: http://mokk.bme.hu/~bodo/banksy/banksy3.jpg?

http://www.benkler.org/
http://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.html

http://www.benkler.org/
http://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.html

Coase's analysis is still very relevant today.

There's a great paper applying Coase's framework to explain the sucess of Open Source software.

It's available here.

Anyone who wants to understand why open source works should read it.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the OS community. What happens is that the author didn't understand the dynamics of OS.

This is not a firm writing a software product and trying to minimize its cost. It is a huge self-organizing community where everyone does what he likes best, whatever that might be, and there is no central coordinating power to keep costs low or to keep redundancy out.

The beauty of it all is that it *works* and it does work surprisingly well. Most of the "objections" of the author are characteristics which make the community work better and more rationally if you admit the basic organizational axioms for this productive method, called by Benkler the "commons-based-peer-production".

I recommend everyone to read Benkler's paper

Coase's Pinguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm.

to understand better the intriguing nature of the OS Community.

For an in-depth economic treatment of the open source phenomenon I would refer you to this very interesting article "Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and the Nature of the Firm" by Yochai Benkler, a professor of Law, New York University School of Law.
In a nutshell Professor Benkler argues that this mode of production, i.e. OSS, is in fact more economical than the contract-based models (You write code: I pay you) in use in the corporate world today.
It is a bit dense in places but well worth the read.

For an in-depth economic treatment of the open source phenomenon I would refer you to this very interesting article "Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and the Nature of the Firm" by Yochai Benkler, a professor of Law, New York University School of Law.
In a nutshell Professor Benkler argues that this mode of production, i.e. OSS, is in fact more economical than the contract-based models (You write code: I pay you) in use in the corporate world today.
It is a bit dense in places but well worth the read.

There was a paper, Coase's Penguin. The author considered "open source" a subset of what he labled commens-based peer-production. Other examples he included in the paper are the NASA clickworkers, wikipedia, ODP, and even slashdot.

It is an interesting read. However, it is not light reading. It is a 70+ page article that was written for the Yale Law Journal by an economist.