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they have not even thought about this at all, and do not have a 'line' that they will draw that cannot be crossed

Yes, they do: the home. As in, "an Englishman's". As in, "his castle". I'll grant that restaurants etc are a grey area, but I don't believe people will accept governmental surveillance inside the home. It triggers a territorial instinct which I suspect is rooted pretty deeply in human psychology, and is not as malleable as you seem to think.

The technological capability of universal surveillance may be inevitable, however socially and politically it is most certainly not an inevitability.

I can't think of many cases where the two haven't gone together. Your assertion feels awfully like the MPAA/RIAA's belief that they can stop filesharing, or the Catholic church's belief that they could stop printed lay-language Bibles. Even if you could prevent governments using the tech, that wouldn't stop less-than-ethical private interests (e.g. credit rating agencies), or flagrantly criminal organizations like the CIA. If the tech is useful and readily available, it will be used.

Found the Brin stuff I mentioned, by the way; his views sound much like mine. Here's the first chapter of his book 'The Transparent Society'.

interesting point.

However, the danger is that a devide is being created between those who have access to massive amounts of personal information, and those who do not.

This creates an enormous political, financial, and fundementaly social advantage for those who have this access. Corporations with this kind of access, can easilty spy on other corprations, steal there intellectual assets. A quick example: the stock market. By google or whoever, could very easily modify there investmetn stratagies by data mining for buseness realted discusions in personal gmails of there most successful clients.

With this web accelorator, google is putting themself in a prime position for all sorts of juicy man in the middle attacks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_in_the_middle_att ack

Unless of course, people just shared all there information openly, the, the situation would be equalized.

Some guy named David Brin wrote about something this in a book "The Tranparent Society" But I haven't read it yet, so Im not sure how good it is. Fantastic topic though.
http://www.davidbrin.com/tschp1.html

Just to clarify for those who haven't read the uplift universe, here is a quote taken from a chapter (avaiable at http://www.davidbrin.com/sundiversample2.html) of Sundiver, the first book written in that universe.

"... They went to great efforts to convince the populace," Jeremey said in a low rumbling voice, "that the laws would cut down on crime. And they did have that effect. Individuals with radio transmitters in their rumps often think twice about causing trouble to their neighbors.

"Then, as now, the Citizens loved the Probation Laws. They had no trouble forgetting the fact that they cut through every traditional Constitutional guarantee of due process. Most of them lived in countries that had never had such niceties anyway.

I could scribble a 3-paragraph outline that would save Lucas. It would explain every awful inconsistency/paradox in his universe. It would make the #!#*& coincidences all work out... including the totally predictable lunacy of having Obi-Wan grab baby Luke and hide him from his darkside father... on Darth Vader's home planet, in his old home town! This is the core scenario that we know will happen in "Episode Three" and it is the most towering of three dozen real plot horrors. But the amazing thing is that I see a simple way for Lucas to climb out of this hell.

In fact, a scenario is possible, if Vader and Obi-Wan conspire together against BOTH Emperor and Yoda. Go on, follow all the movies with this possibility in mind.

Why else would Obi-Wan 'hide' Vader's son in Vader's home town? Their final 'deathfight' distracts the guards to let Luke/Han/Leia get away. How else do you explain that Vader grabs/interrogates Leia, yet never detects her force? Watch carefully... Vader's 'chase' of Luke in the first film clears all the other Imperial fighters off his son's back and halts the antiaircraft guns, giving the kid a clear shot! And guess who's the only Imperial survivor?

Empire Strikes Back was the best of the three original Star Wars films principally because it was dark and did not have Ewoks or (Exsqueeze me?) Jar Jar and the acting was much better

As for showing it during The O.C., who cares, or expected differently? Fox is just trying to marry its hot properties. That's the other problem: Fox sees Star Wars and The O.C. as pretty much the same thing. Star Wars will bring in x dollars over y weeks--there's no sense of the non-monetary aspect of the saga. It's just a franchise. The people that grew up with the first set of movies want it to be more.

I think we could all stand a glance at Brin's essays again, just to revel in this Lucas-bashing.

I definitely see problems with this one. I firmly believe that if you are in public, you are fair game.

That is why I don't have problems with the use of video cameras by the police, etc., in public spaces to monitor activities there.

I firmly agree with David Brin http://www.davidbrin.com/, who said in The Transparent Society http://www.davidbrin.com/privacyarticles.html#ts that we face stark choices about privacy and transparency.

He takes a position, quite contrary to what is popular on Slashdot, concerning how we should embrace and use these technologies.

For example, he argues - quite convinceingly - that we should embrace monitoring cameras in public spaces. But that in doing so, we should give everyone in our society access to the feeds and that the inside of the monitoring center should be subject to public monitoring.

Having seen how privacy laws are being used in the public square to frustrate transparency and good goverance, I find myself powerfully attracted by Brin's arguments.

Examples of abuse of privacy laws I have seen that stick in my craw are:

1. When a public agency - prison, foster care, etc. - is challenged on its conduct, and the person whose privacy is supposedely being protected has gone public, we will hear, "We can't discuss that due to privacy protections."

This action closes off any meaningful debate of the practices in place.

2. Here in California, a number of challenges are underway to the practice of not releasing public employees compensation or contracts due to privacy laws.

Yours,

Jordan

I definitely see problems with this one. I firmly believe that if you are in public, you are fair game.

That is why I don't have problems with the use of video cameras by the police, etc., in public spaces to monitor activities there.

I firmly agree with David Brin http://www.davidbrin.com/, who said in The Transparent Society http://www.davidbrin.com/privacyarticles.html#ts that we face stark choices about privacy and transparency.

He takes a position, quite contrary to what is popular on Slashdot, concerning how we should embrace and use these technologies.

For example, he argues - quite convinceingly - that we should embrace monitoring cameras in public spaces. But that in doing so, we should give everyone in our society access to the feeds and that the inside of the monitoring center should be subject to public monitoring.

Having seen how privacy laws are being used in the public square to frustrate transparency and good goverance, I find myself powerfully attracted by Brin's arguments.

Examples of abuse of privacy laws I have seen that stick in my craw are:

1. When a public agency - prison, foster care, etc. - is challenged on its conduct, and the person whose privacy is supposedely being protected has gone public, we will hear, "We can't discuss that due to privacy protections."

This action closes off any meaningful debate of the practices in place.

2. Here in California, a number of challenges are underway to the practice of not releasing public employees compensation or contracts due to privacy laws.

Yours,

Jordan

The other AC is correct. We simply ARE, and there are an awful lot of us. More girl lovers than boy lovers, though the boy lovers are better organized.

Note that in the original story, the man was NOT a pedophile. He didn't become interested in his step-daughter until she was physically entering womanhood. Such attraction is very common, and does not constitute pedophilia. It is also symptomatic of something else. Every study shows that the vast majority of child molesters are NOT pedophiles, and the vast majority of pedophiles are NOT child molesters.

But the common ideas about this subject are flawed top to bottom. Rind et al discovered that CONSENTUAL adult-child sex has consequences ranging from slightly negative to slightly positive - and there is reason to believe that most of the negativity comes not from the sex itself, but from growing up hearing the antisexual views of society, and internalizing them.

Looking at the issue historically, and in sex-positive cultures, there do not seem to be negative psychological effects from CONSENTUAL adult-child sexuality. Naturally, one has to consider STDs and physical harm, but considering that the vast majority of such contact between pedophiles and children has historically not involved penetration, this is not generally a problem.

However, we should distinguish this from the case with "situational offenders". Absurdly enough, the professionals consider "situational offenders" (like Roy in the article) less of a threat than child lovers, despite the fact that these situational offenders tend to have less empathy for children and generally became offenders because of a fundamental lack of self control.

Anyway, I encourage all of you to learn more about this subject. Here's a few links to start you on your way:

Encyclopedia links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rind_et_al.

A paper on Antisexuality

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~under006/Library/Antisexual ity.html

Y'all might enjoy this - a theory that might explain the evolutionary origins of pedophilia - AND human intelligence.

http://www.davidbrin.com/neotenyarticle1.html

and a support forum - Girl Chat:

http://www.annabelleigh.net/

I'll go ahead and post the two Wikipedia articles here as replies to this message.

Baldur

As David Brin frames it - I've stolen his opinion for this post, the key issues are transparency and egalitarianism.
The fact that we can look is not the problem. The problem with surveillance cameras is when people can look at us, but we can't look back.

Wouldn't it be better if a women going to her car can look at surveillance cameras up the block to make sure she will arrive safely? Or a citizen's watch groups can virtually patrol it's own neighbourhood?

The key problem is when a select few can control and abuse the technology and possibly enforce the law selectively. For example, corrupt cops losing video evidence of them beating someone to death.

I'm not completely sold on the idea, but it's an opinion worth considering.
Transparent Society

In any case, I have to admit that one of my guilty pleasures used to be (before the slashdotting) this fun link to... 137 java-controllable webcams around the world: http://www.google.com/search?q=intitle%3Aliveapple t+inurl%3ALvAppl

A certain japanese construction site has made a lot progress lately. :)

Slightly off topic (mod me down... whatever)

David Brin (author or the Uplift Series, The Postman, etc...) has put together an interesting review of episode II. Particularly noteworthy are his ideas regarding how to save the whole storyline from its current debacle.

I disagree. Prequels give a talented writer an opportunity to do incredible things with the story, like actually changing the meaning of what you've already seen. For example, if Lucas (who, sadly, is not a talented writer) had done something like what David Brin suggested, the prequels could have been spectacular, completely changing the storyline of the existing movies. The movie Memento is an excellent example of doing the same idea within a single movie. The movie shows the ending first, then works its way back to the beginning, slowly revealing to the viewers that what they've already seen isn't quite what they thought it was.

Prequels give talented writers this kind of power. Lucas is just not that talented.

It's not an issue of power.... It's an issue of propellant.

Damping torsional vibrations is relatively easy; you've got a magnetic field you can torque against, and passive coils will damp out rotation just fine (they're used to de-spin some passively-stabilized LEO satellites). East-west vibrations can be damped using current through the tether (additional plasma contactors will be required to allow the current to vary in different segments). Not sure how you'd handle north-south vibrations, but I have neither given it thought nor done research.

If you need to provide make-up thrust of 1 N through the segment between 120 km and 400 km, which is moving at an average forward velocity of ~1400 m/sec (figuring 10 m/sec/km), that is 1400 watts plus losses. Compared to the tens or hundreds of KW you'll need to reboost in compensation for net upward traffic, drag comp is nothing.

Even the relatively tiny tethers we've tried in space have had big problems with severing, accumulating currents, the works.

1e-5 tesla field times 1400 m/sec is 14 millivolts per meter; over the 280 km segment that dips below 400 km, that's only about 4 kV. I doubt that this is going to be a big headache, especially if the tether is segmented and charge pumps used to keep each segment at close to the ambient voltage level (each charge pump would be in an insulated segment). For each difficulty there are probably several ways to address it; we should be flying a few so that we can get engineering experience.

And if you're doing nothing illegal, the police and/or government won't care either, and they'll keep on listening for others.

Unfortunately, the police and/or government are also responsible for defining which activities are illegal, and are increasingly oriented toward keeping their own actions secret in the name of 'security'. There is quite literally no public accountability for much of the security apparatus closing into place right before our eyes, and when even a congresswoman is unable to obtain the federal regulations authorizing someone to search them, something is really fucking wrong.

Additionally, individual members of the police and/or government are uniquely vulnerable to corruption, hiding their betrayal behind the shield of 'security' and 'need to know'.

The tired old 'Law-abiding people have nothing to hide' argument needs to roll over and die already. The only workable safeguard against government hypersurveillance is ensuring that the system is constructed in a completely transparent and publicly-accountable manner.

The idea I've mostly seen tossed around isn't to use the ET as a debris shield, but to actually turn it into a (very large) space station module.

In the 80s David Brin wrote a great short story, "Tank Farm Dynamo" (available online), which talks about a near-future space station using the technologies of external tank modules and electrodynamic tether propulsion. He assumed that electrodynamic tethers were a pretty "out there" idea and that external tank modules were a straight-forward no-brainer. Ironically, we've flown prototypes of the tethers on the space station and absolutely no development has been done towards external tank modules.

Unless your name is David Brin, give credit where due.

Here is one of his latest starwars articles.

For instance the UK is banning fox hunting, while my state (MN) consideres hunting a legal right that is now part of the constitution. UK bans many more guns than the US. The UK has more cameras watching their streets than any other country.

Certainly in his anthology "The River of Time" there was a story called " The Crystal Spheres"

Actually, go read David Brin's excellent essay "Star Wars despots vs. Star Trek populists". Really quite an interesting take on the two. Also available are follow-up comments.

Actually, go read David Brin's excellent essay "Star Wars despots vs. Star Trek populists". Really quite an interesting take on the two. Also available are follow-up comments.

How will these cameras affect our freedom?
For some good ideas, read some David Brin:
The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?

At the moment I feel that I trust the British government enough that this is an acceptable

I'll go with David Brin on this one: we must be able to watch the watchers. I read in one article that several of those cams (the ones in the downtown London area) *are* monitored 24/7. There must be a publically available "watch the cam crew" cam. How will we know they aren't being racist, using the cams for inappropriate purposes, whatever? Easy, we can watch them. After all, if the cams are supposed to keep us safe from crime, shouldn't the same principle be applied to keeping us safe from the cam crews?

Similarly, I'd argue that the street cams should be available to the public; after all their taxes paid for 'em. You wanna see what's going on at 93rd and Main, check the cam.

What with cameras getting smaller and smaller it seems inevitable that they will, soon, be everywhere. Even if they were outlawed that hasn't stopped governments in the past, it'd just ensure that the cam network is hard to spot and kept a tight secret. Best to produce accountability, and transparency. Don't let access to the cams be a thing held only by the elite, make it available to everyone. And never forget to watch the watchers, naturally they'll scream that a public cam in the cam control room is wrong. Kinda interesting how they act when *we* want to watch *them*, isn't it?

I was once one of the "cams are evil, and I'll join the cam destruction teams" crowd. Then I read Brin's The Transparent Society. I'm still not comfortable with the idea of cams everywhere, but I can see the inescapiable conclusion that with cameras getting smaller and cheaper it will be possible for the government to put them out in secret. I'd rather have transparency and accountability on a known cam network than the false believe that I've got privacy because I don't know about the secret cam network. Let's have even more cameras. Cop cams (pubically accessable) mounted on every police officer's shoulder when they're on duty. My own private cam that I can put on *my* shoulder when a cop stops me. Kinda makes for amore polite discussion when we both know the world can watch, ne? Etc...

Brin says it better than I do (which is to be expected I suppose, considering that he is a published author while I'm just a geek on slashdot). I'd recommend The Transparent Society to everyone here.

Have you read "The Transparent Society" by David Brin? You might enjoy it. Chapter one, which is enough for you to get the general idea of the problem of privacy versus. security, is online.

http://www.davidbrin.com/tschp1.html

Basically, the problem is asymmetries in information availability. Surveillance networks, if implemented, should be public-access, to avoid the creation of dangerous elites. Note that this Brin takes it that the surveillance networks are going to be implemented (he is NOT advocating charging headlong into implementing them!), and is aksing how can we best preserve freedom in their presence.

Except that, hmmm, would we forgive, say, Hienrich Himmler if he picked killing the Fuhrer over killing his own offspring?

I'm not sure where I originally read this analogy--some of David Brin's readers pointed out that Vader-Himmler is a better analogy than Vader-Hitler. Of course, most fans take the Vader's actual attainment of (a deathbed) redemption as an article of faith, though rather than admit that Lucas duped them into that sort of absurd moral reasoning they'll leap to defend Vader with poorly contrived arguments, rather than sticking with Occam's Razor and the sort of rules we apply to normal people. (See Brin's Salon article

Oh, and harbor, gentle reader, no doubts regarding my undying, albeit ambivalent, affection for the original trilogy. :-)

And I do believe redemption is possible for even some of the gravest sins--there's still hope for Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, even if George Lucas is too far gone...

Actually, of those three only Benford is actually employed as a scientist. Brin quit science for full-time writing a couple of decades ago (although he still seems to dabble a bit in various fields), and Reynolds recently did the same.

• Predicting how people will react to one or more significant changes to society, either in the future (most SF) or the past (the subgenre of Alternate History. Start with these 1,600+ stories.) The Handmaid's Tale wasn't predicting a fundie future for the US. It did capture the feel of what happened in Afghanistan after the fundie Taliban took over.
• Predicting interesting uses for new technologies. Networks hadn't been out for that long when Brunner, and even before that Brin (or Benford? one of the 'killer B's') wrote about possibilities for worms and viruses in cyberspace.
• Extrapolating / having fun with an exponential growth or decay of an important resource. What if our population booms or crashes? What if the planet freezes or goes greenhouse? What if a person or computer gets vastly more intelligent than before?
• And the most important part of SF-- Sensawunda. The sense of wonder when you're pulled out of your own time and space and get to gaze (for the length of a book) through the eyes of other humans at a deep future, wide universe, and wide range of societies.
• and as part of Sensawunda-- inspiring the future... all the scientists inspired by Heinlein or LeGuin or Gibson ("Neuromancer didn't predict the future. Neuromancer *created* the future. If you would understand the past twenty years' technological advance and retreat, this book is required reading..."- C. Doctorow.) to go into the sciences or computing...

Enough has been written about The Singularity that any SF writer writing about 50+ years into the future should at least explain why if one isn't in their universe. Doesn't have to be a long explanation: put it in and go on with the story. Good SF writing hasn't been stopped by actual advances in science. Discovering that Venus is 700 degrees, going to the moon, or widespread PCs outdated some earlier SF stories' technology. But those events inspired many more new writers and new stories. The possibility of a singularity in a few decades should have less of an effect than those actual advances.

And if a singularity does happen, there could be a second golden age of SF. You don't just write about universes, you create them. Certainly Alternate History will be filled with that, like "what would happen if Reagan *won* the 1980 election?" versions of earth being run within the trillions of ongoing simulations (and no, the Matrix wasn't original- SF movies are usually far behind the SF literature.)

SF writers who are particularly good at sensawunda in a post singularity (and/or humans dealing with beings larger than ourselves) universe include Greg Benford, the 'can make you empathize with loss in the life of regular deathless people' Greg Egan, the 'pulls off multiple believable economic systems in one novel' Ken Macleod, the recently reviewed Richard Morgan, Ian Banks, and of course Cory Doctorow and the early Slashdot adoptor (and I worry that he's going to hit an Algernon moment soon- how can he keep writing so well?) Charlie Stross.

Many are scientists, but you don't have to be a scientist to be a good SF writer. You do have t

we didn't really have much else going for us. We weren't fast enough to catch prey

My favorite book about this kind of thing is Heart of the Comet, by David Brin & Gregory Benford. Post-ecocollapse, the surviving humans blame the scientists, and send them on a one-way mission to test outgas diversion of Halley's comet. The story puts all these issues into (fictional) perspective.

Brin is a particularly appropriate suggestion here, as his recent work has been influenced by precisely this issue, which he calls the Transparent Society. Several of his short stories (sorry, names have slipped my mind), Kiln People, and even Earth (in which one of the subplots involves elderly people who have become busybodies, spending all their time doing surveillance on anybody whom they suspect of being up to no good).

Yes, it could be saved. Fire lucas, hire David Brin. His misguided/evil Yoda plot line is brilliant. He's correct when he says, "Almost the entire list of awful coincidences and silly paradoxes can be eliminated...It could even go down in history as something profoundly moral and clever."

I already told several people that I will not be seeing Ep III because Brin's conclusion to the series is so much better than anything Lucas could come up with.

The only way that he could make a compelling third film is if he(Lucas) said "fuck it" and made a few interesting plot twists that may completely clash with Eps 4-6. At least, IMO. I don't think there's really any "hope"(haha) left in the franchise as far as the new movies.
It would also be nice to see an "original cut" of Eps 4-6. (han shooting first, no jabba in Ep4, etc.) Just clean up the images, maybe touch up the blaster effects, and leave it at that.

David Brin wrote an article about what would help the series Its rather old, but it still is an interesting read.

The Transparent Society

I'm not thrilled about this, but if it has to exist, I'd rather we all have access to the information than just a select few.

On a somewhat related subject, David Brin publicly offered help to Lucas to save Episode Three (in Salon Magazine)- goes without saying, Lucas did not take the offer...

On a somewhat related subject, David Brin publicly offered help to Lucas to save Episode Three (in Salon Magazine)- goes without saying, Lucas did not take the offer...

It was David Brin.

Science fiction author David Brin put sleep machines on board the earthling's space ship in his award winning novel Startide Rising. I immediately thought, "What a great idea!"

I am an ultra-light sleeper. The slightest variation in noise will rouse me. And I'm a parent of a 3 year old. As you can imagine, I don't sleep very much at all. I'm sick a lot, have migraines, and suffer all the other usual complications of sleep deprivation.

A sleep machine would be ideal. I'd lay down, set the timer, turn it on, and get a guaranteed uninterruptable rest.

That'd be version 1. Version 2 would give you accelerated sleep: set the timer for 8 minutes, and get the equivalent of 8 hours of sleep, complete with REM, long-term memory refiling, new connection formation, the works.

*yawn*. Oh, excuse me.

If it hasn't been mentioned yet... David Brin's Uplift Saga, particularly Startide Rising and The Uplift War, are excellent books that discuss a lot of the most interesting ramifications of non-human sentience. Definitely worth a read if you haven't had the chance.

... can be found courtesey of David Brin, science fiction writer and one of the more unusual and thoughtful pundits out there. This series of articles began with an article in Salon following the release of TPM: beginning with the original article, "Star Wars Despots vs. Star Trek Populists" and its side article, an addendum in response to the emails, and a later AOTC update.

... can be found courtesey of David Brin, science fiction writer and one of the more unusual and thoughtful pundits out there. This series of articles began with an article in Salon following the release of TPM: beginning with the original article, "Star Wars Despots vs. Star Trek Populists" and its side article, an addendum in response to the emails, and a later AOTC update.

This is interesting in the light of speculation about life-forms living on the surface of suns. (As described, for example, in David Brin's Sundiver.)

Considering that a the surface of a sun itself consists of plasma, it's not improbable that spheres like in the experiment get formed there all the time. The question is whether there is any way those spheres could attain a more complex form of internal organisation, or if they remain stuck at that basic level.

If you want an ending to beat all endings read David Brin's "Earth". You will need at least 6 book marks to keep track of the plot threads. I usually wasn't done with a thread when he switched so I'd stick a book mark in (those tiny postit notes were ideal) and skip ahead to where he resumed, put another bookmark in and commence reading. When I got to what I thought was a good place to stop (usually the middle of the chapter - I got wise to you Brin), I'd put another bookmark in and skip back to the first one...

Another good standalone Brin is "the practice effect". I haven't seen any concept like it anywhere else. That book didn't require so many postits. If any.

If you want an ending to beat all endings read David Brin's "Earth". You will need at least 6 book marks to keep track of the plot threads. I usually wasn't done with a thread when he switched so I'd stick a book mark in (those tiny postit notes were ideal) and skip ahead to where he resumed, put another bookmark in and commence reading. When I got to what I thought was a good place to stop (usually the middle of the chapter - I got wise to you Brin), I'd put another bookmark in and skip back to the first one...

Another good standalone Brin is "the practice effect". I haven't seen any concept like it anywhere else. That book didn't require so many postits. If any.

Sounds more like David Brin's Transparent Society. The difference is that here you are potentially watched by anyone at all, in 1984 you are potentially watched by a small group of people who control the cameras.

This actually makes me think of my grandfather's old farm. Don't mark me offtopic yet. Wait for me to tie it back in. Some of my grandfather's farm, as he explains it, was taken and given to a railroad company for a right-of-way. The rules were simple, if that rail line did not handle a certain capacity, then the land reverted to my grandfather's ownership--eminent domain. So, forty or fifty years later, once a quarter the rail company would drive a very small train, very, very slowly over nearly unusable tracks--just to keep it. Unfortunately, the rail company's stall tactics outlived my grandfather.

How does this tie in? Perhaps we are vainly trying to use an old system (copyright) to apply to a new medium (software). I agree that generations long copyrights (ala Disney) are invalid, but the rights should be of sufficient duration to prevent the media giants from outlasting an author's rights to his work. I mean, if I write the "Great American Novel," with a short copyright term (7 to 14 years), a corporation would just refuse publication until I lost rights--and then publish without having to grant royalties. After all, David Brin's The Postman was published in 1986 and the movie The Postman based on the book came out in 1997. If the copyrights were only seven years long--the original length, then he would not have had any say in the movie--or been able to profit. So, overly long "Disney" copyrights are bad for the public, and overly short ones are bad for the author. Still, this does not speak to my point on software and copyrights.

We seem to agree that when a company, or an owner of software, ceases to maintain said software (i.e., Abandonware), that this software should be released to the public domain. Thus, Windows 3.1 would be public domain simply because Microsoft has abandoned it--as would all the VIC-20 games in our current discusion. This does not fit into our copyright model--I doubt this fits anywhere in Intellectual Property law. However, as my early rail tie-in (pardon the pun) suggests, there is presidence elsewhere. So, I propose that software adopt a new model of Intellectual Eminent Domain.

This model should establish reasonable guidelines for when software is deemed abandoned by its original author. When the software is deemed suitably abandoned, then it becomes public domain. Perhaps age of software could reasonably be part of the criteria used, or perhaps a certain number of years since the software was abandoned or last publically supported. What should also be considered valid is when the software's author or company publically ceases to support that code--such as Microsoft and Windows 3.1.

I believe the product being made public, as opposed to allowing a different private party claim absolute ownership, is better for the public for prevents large software houses (e.g. Microsoft) from gobbling up all the abandoned software and then 'maintaining' it to prevent another from invoking eminent domain. It also allows abandonware sites to make available the software; and allows individuals and organizations the chance to maintain or improve the software. I suppose the question then would be, "at what point does maintenance/enhancement of abandoned code constitute a new product protected by IP rights?"

This actually makes me think of my grandfather's old farm. Don't mark me offtopic yet. Wait for me to tie it back in. Some of my grandfather's farm, as he explains it, was taken and given to a railroad company for a right-of-way. The rules were simple, if that rail line did not handle a certain capacity, then the land reverted to my grandfather's ownership--eminent domain. So, forty or fifty years later, once a quarter the rail company would drive a very small train, very, very slowly over nearly unusable tracks--just to keep it. Unfortunately, the rail company's stall tactics outlived my grandfather.

How does this tie in? Perhaps we are vainly trying to use an old system (copyright) to apply to a new medium (software). I agree that generations long copyrights (ala Disney) are invalid, but the rights should be of sufficient duration to prevent the media giants from outlasting an author's rights to his work. I mean, if I write the "Great American Novel," with a short copyright term (7 to 14 years), a corporation would just refuse publication until I lost rights--and then publish without having to grant royalties. After all, David Brin's The Postman was published in 1986 and the movie The Postman based on the book came out in 1997. If the copyrights were only seven years long--the original length, then he would not have had any say in the movie--or been able to profit. So, overly long "Disney" copyrights are bad for the public, and overly short ones are bad for the author. Still, this does not speak to my point on software and copyrights.

We seem to agree that when a company, or an owner of software, ceases to maintain said software (i.e., Abandonware), that this software should be released to the public domain. Thus, Windows 3.1 would be public domain simply because Microsoft has abandoned it--as would all the VIC-20 games in our current discusion. This does not fit into our copyright model--I doubt this fits anywhere in Intellectual Property law. However, as my early rail tie-in (pardon the pun) suggests, there is presidence elsewhere. So, I propose that software adopt a new model of Intellectual Eminent Domain.

This model should establish reasonable guidelines for when software is deemed abandoned by its original author. When the software is deemed suitably abandoned, then it becomes public domain. Perhaps age of software could reasonably be part of the criteria used, or perhaps a certain number of years since the software was abandoned or last publically supported. What should also be considered valid is when the software's author or company publically ceases to support that code--such as Microsoft and Windows 3.1.

I believe the product being made public, as opposed to allowing a different private party claim absolute ownership, is better for the public for prevents large software houses (e.g. Microsoft) from gobbling up all the abandoned software and then 'maintaining' it to prevent another from invoking eminent domain. It also allows abandonware sites to make available the software; and allows individuals and organizations the chance to maintain or improve the software. I suppose the question then would be, "at what point does maintenance/enhancement of abandoned code constitute a new product protected by IP rights?"

Use of pervasive sensor networks by governmental and corporate organizations is inevitable (it's appearing in increments everyday in the US). The crucial difference between Big Brother and Transparency is who has access to the raw imagery / sensor data and the processed information. See David Brin's site for more information.

Of course, Brinn is just messing around. He thinks if Episode 3 is wrapped up in this fashion, with some kind of bargain between Obi-Wan and Vader against the Emperor (and Yoda, because Brin is a crusty ol' ninny and hates Yoda--I mean, come on now...), then basically, it would be really dope and clever. I personally feel that if they just use an artful combination of animatronics, costume design, and spectacular space and martial arts battles, it'll all fall into place. Take the first and last 20 minutes of Return of the Jedi. Make that into a 30-minute TV special, and you've got yourself the greatest half hour of film ever created. I attest.

I was worried about the European cyber crime convention in 2001 but there was nothing one could do about it. I was worried about echelon, the TIA, the department of homeland security, etc. But all I could really do was watching the freedom being taken away from the people.

My conclusion is, that our society will inevitably turn into the Orwellian nightmare. More or less this view of mine is shared by David Brin. In his book "The Transparent Society" he tries to answer the question if technology will force us to choose between privacy and freedom.

From an interview with amazon.com:

Amazon.com: Could you explain what you mean by a "transparent society"?

Brin: Our world, our cities, even the countryside is about to be filled with cameras. There is not a single thing any of us can do to prevent it. Every year, the size of video pickups gets smaller by 30 to 40 percent. The U.S. Army is developing little flying drones that are already smaller than your hand, and in laboratories they're working on fingertip-size flying cameras. We will live in a society in which the average person is under view, at least out-of-doors. The only choice we have is who will control the cameras. If we ban them, if we outlaw them, if we try to protect our privacy through secrecy, all we'll manage to do is restrict their use to a secret elite. Perhaps an elite of government or of the rich, or corporations, or criminals, or a technological elite. We won't get rid of them. On the other hand, if we decide to make a virtue out of this inconvenience--if we all use the cameras--then no one will ever be able to conspire against us again. Knowledge is the only way that we can maintain our freedom. And if that means letting your enemies have some knowledge too, well, then so be it. I am not a fanatic on this issue. We will need some corners of modern life that can be secret. Battered wives will need to be able to go to secret locations for their shelters. Whistle blowers telling of disastrous schemes by governments or corporations will need to be anonymous. We all need a reserve of privacy in our homes allowing us to choose when and where to be intimate. All of these will be better protected in a society that is 95 percent open. For instance, in a restaurant you can have a private conversation because you can catch eavesdroppers and peeping Toms. The openness of a restaurant is better for defense than it is for offense. If instead a restaurant tried to shelter every booth with paper screens, who would this benefit? It would not increase privacy; it would enable peeping Toms. In fact, an open society is not only going to be more free, it's more likely to protect that special reserve of privacy that we all need.

What do you, dear /. reader, think about it?
Is the "Open Society" at the price of loosing most of our privacy our only way to escape the Orwellian nightmare?"

Read the interview with Brin here.
A Parable about Openness...
... followed by Some Thoughts on Privacy, Security and Surveillance in the Information Age

The David Brin Site

Go away, grammar nazis! My native language is not English.

I was worried about the European cyber crime convention in 2001 but there was nothing one could do about it. I was worried about echelon, the TIA, the department of homeland security, etc. But all I could really do was watching the freedom being taken away from the people.

My conclusion is, that our society will inevitably turn into the Orwellian nightmare. More or less this view of mine is shared by David Brin. In his book "The Transparent Society" he tries to answer the question if technology will force us to choose between privacy and freedom.

From an interview with amazon.com:

Amazon.com: Could you explain what you mean by a "transparent society"?

Brin: Our world, our cities, even the countryside is about to be filled with cameras. There is not a single thing any of us can do to prevent it. Every year, the size of video pickups gets smaller by 30 to 40 percent. The U.S. Army is developing little flying drones that are already smaller than your hand, and in laboratories they're working on fingertip-size flying cameras. We will live in a society in which the average person is under view, at least out-of-doors. The only choice we have is who will control the cameras. If we ban them, if we outlaw them, if we try to protect our privacy through secrecy, all we'll manage to do is restrict their use to a secret elite. Perhaps an elite of government or of the rich, or corporations, or criminals, or a technological elite. We won't get rid of them. On the other hand, if we decide to make a virtue out of this inconvenience--if we all use the cameras--then no one will ever be able to conspire against us again. Knowledge is the only way that we can maintain our freedom. And if that means letting your enemies have some knowledge too, well, then so be it. I am not a fanatic on this issue. We will need some corners of modern life that can be secret. Battered wives will need to be able to go to secret locations for their shelters. Whistle blowers telling of disastrous schemes by governments or corporations will need to be anonymous. We all need a reserve of privacy in our homes allowing us to choose when and where to be intimate. All of these will be better protected in a society that is 95 percent open. For instance, in a restaurant you can have a private conversation because you can catch eavesdroppers and peeping Toms. The openness of a restaurant is better for defense than it is for offense. If instead a restaurant tried to shelter every booth with paper screens, who would this benefit? It would not increase privacy; it would enable peeping Toms. In fact, an open society is not only going to be more free, it's more likely to protect that special reserve of privacy that we all need.

What do you, dear /. reader, think about it?
Is the "Open Society" at the price of loosing most of our privacy our only way to escape the Orwellian nightmare?"

Read the interview with Brin here.
A Parable about Openness...
... followed by Some Thoughts on Privacy, Security and Surveillance in the Information Age

The David Brin Site

Go away, grammar nazis! My native language is not English.

While this is in practice generally true, this is actually false. Some good reads on the subject: Simson Garfinkel's Database Nation, and The Transparent Society by David Brin.

From the former:
Many people today say that in order to enjoy the benefits of modern society, we must necessarily relinquish some degree of privacy. If we want the convenience of paying for a meal by credit card, or paying for a toll with an electronic tag mounted on our rear view mirror, then we must accept the routine collection of our purchases and driving habits in a large database over which we have no control. It's a simple bargain, albeit a Faustian one.

I think this tradeoff is both unnecessary and wrong. It reminds me of another crisis our society faced in the 1950s and 1960s -- the environmental crisis. Then, advocates of big business said that the poisoned rivers and lakes were the necessary costs of economic development, jobs, and an improved standard of living. Poison was progress: anybody who argued otherwise simply didn't understand the facts. Today we know better.