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Greets, jwz.

I've actually read this article before. It was pretty intriguing. As in all things, the evolution of the notion of a corporation as a legal person is inextricably tied to the historical processes at work at the time. It was also en vogue in Europe, then, to declare corporations as legal persons.

Mainly, a corporation is the result of the separation of ownership from management for the purpose of efficiency. Shareholders do not necessarily have a clue about running a particular business but they can see a deal based on what they do understand: financials. The Schizm allowed them to invest and have rights in a corporation without having to participate in its everyday functions.

Legally, it was a new idea. There was no precedent for this idea. However, the Courts said, by judicial fiat, that they ought to be treated as persons. The main intuitions seem to be A) the concept of limited liability which means the individuals making up a corporation cannot be held responsibile for the actions or debts of the corporation and B) that a corporation "lives on," so to speak, regardless of the individuals making up the company. It "owns" property, etc. all to its inked paper "self."

My conclusion: The corporation was a good, but ultimately flawed experiment. While the level of efficiency available with not having a particular person attached to a piece of property is intriguing, it leaves too much to question in terms of personal responsibility for action. I.e., your name isn't on the life support software so you aren't responsible for it. ACME LifeSupport, Inc. is responsible. That seems like crap to me. (Yeah, there's a whole discussion on UCITA, Open Source, and warrantification attched to this).

Furthermore, if property is attached to real people only, then you won't ever have a problem with, say, Mickey Mouse and copyright extension. All the artists will die, unlike Disney, which keeps going and going and going...

Nice little Encyclopedic entry: http://www.comptons.com/encyclopedia/ARTICLES/0025 /00471296_A.html

Op-Ed piece in our very own Daily Texan: http://www.dailytexanonline.com/01-30-01/PF2001013 004_s06_Criminals.html

In order to grow hemp you have to grow marijuana. Marijuana is in the female hemp plant.

Hydrogen, does not let off some kind of devastating explosion

I'm going to be captain obvious again and point out the following three images. No I'm not goatsexing any of these...
1,2,3



This has been another useless post from....

Lesson for today ... just as in the past, the market gorillas (AOL-Time/MSNBC/Yahoo) are defining gated communities (cough*portals*cough) and declaring they "own" the customer (actually the life-time stream of transactions of which they hope to gain a not-so-insignificant slice) and will legislate/lobby/lock-out anyone who says otherwise. Reality of life ... the world is not a closed domain and anyone who thinks that declaring a domainname/map/portal is then in the automatic position of granting titles (and not-so-coincidentally levying a tax) is going to be sadly mistaken. Yes, there is a vapor-rush as all the clueless dweebs (dot-cons) try to capture a slice of the perceived pie by staking out a trademark/site/authority. My observation is that people should think like privaters and ignore the silly rules when they make no logical, technical or practical sense. Domain names are *NOT* a scarce resource except for those with limited memories, afterall, if all non-persistent pages are generated by databases+scripts, does it really matter if you link to nfs://130.205.10.50/inode5397935#0x80.txt;uid=2314 ;access=456sdg rather than an easy to recall memnomic? Given a world of near infinite possiblities (noosphere), why should existing entities claim all the action?

However what is needed is recognition of the basic fact in that if you spend time, love and energy on a site (whether open-source or otherwise), it should be protected from misappropriation, misdirection or misuse (whoever writes the code/API/page gets to choose the license). Unfortunately, the juristidctions out there which are not under the thumb of big corporate lobbies interested in the status-quo yet are advanced enough to grant defensive legal protection/arbitration to entering new players not as yet established. There are some intriguing possiblities though, technically if you register a ship under a country and abide by those rules, you should be able to anchor offshore and provide a cache/proxy server that offers the services without being subject to silly restrictions (I believe some people are thinking of using this for the Dutch euthenasia law). Yes, the established commercial interests may consider this "piracy" but if you can demonstrate a need, and offer lower-cost alternatives (cough*Napster = not overpriced CDs*cough) then people will respond.

As someone once said, its easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. There used to be several alternative root domains (AURSC?) ... whatever happened to that concept? If you belive in something strongly enough and are wiling to stick to your priciples (RMS and GPL) then you will always find a way to ultimately voyage to a brave GNU world.

LL

Wasn't Wagner's (sp?) "Ring Cycle" (I think I have that right) written (and performed) during the Nazi regime?

It was very important in the late 1800's that everyone had the right to be heard, and communicate that the "Redcoats were coming"... etc.

Actually, the main reason countries tend to have a state-run postal service is that virtually every nation is a signatory to international treaties requiring certain standards of mail delivery.

If you're interested, you can read more about it here