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I had to put on my tinfoil hat for this one, but "Orkut" is really, REALLY old news. The funny thing was, all mention of it has been virtually stripped from Google. "Orkut" is the revival of "Club Nexus", something Orkut built while at Stanford University. You can see a more complete description of Orkut/Club Nexus here.

Also, Stanford mentions it here. It's also been live for quite sometime as Stanford's inCircle. The oldest mentions I can find in Google are from 1991, but then again, Google's been pretty well stripped of information on the subject.

The oddest part, of course, is that http://www.clubnexus.com/ is gone, and purged from the Google cache. Same thing is true of http://clubnexus.stanford.edu/. *sigh*

Anyway, here's Club Nexus/Orkut in a nutshell: "Some people were upset because they're not sexy," says Buyokkokten.

Cheers.

It's economically more efficient to have differential pricing so that you can suck as much as possible out of the people who are willing to pay the most, then suck as much as possible out of the people who are willing to pay less, and so forth. It's cheaper to create and maintain only one codebase, but if the product were the same, nobody would pay more than the minimum. Thus, differential pricing by artificial limiters!, since corporations will always do what is cheapest and maximizes profitability. See this article by Hal Varian for more information.

Clearly, then, if we take Gore literally at his word, he could not have "taken the initiative in creating the Internet." As the ARPANET moved from research to deployment, Gore was finishing college and serving in the Army in Vietnam. From 1976 to 1985, Gore served in the House of Representatives. From 1985 to 1992, he served in the Senate. The record shows that his interest in national computer networking issues became acute during his years in the Senate - when the Internet clearly was fully in operation.

Richard, I agree with your pitch on free software to some extent, but how exactly are we in the IT business going to make a living if all (or most) of the software is free in the future?

If all software becomes free, the need for software will vanish? Of course not.

The first important point: most software written is written for internal company use only. Most programmers write software that is never sold, just used by the company that hired them. Great, the custom billing software I wrote for MegaCorp is open source. Does it change anything? Nope. Their jobs aren't going to change, open source doesn't change anything.

There will still be demand for software. Someone will figure out a way to charge for it. I suspect a combination of methods of various forms. Perhaps donations will work. Perhaps they'll use a variant on the Street Performer Protocol. Perhaps users desiring features will pledge money to contracts for developers (on a small level a web site might collect small pledges from end users and the first developer to finish gets the money. On a large level, a group of companies requiring software might pool the money they're willing to spend and simply contract someone to write the software.) A wealthy individual might front a large amount of money on a product or feature they want.

Finally some software can be tied to non-free content. For example, maybe the DoomQuake 47 engine is free, but the actual game content (the level design, monsters, etc) will cost you money.

Ultimately I have faith in the market, and it's that faith that leaves me confident that there will be jobs for programmers. People want software and are willing to pay for it. Programmers want money and can write software. Something will be worked out. It may be new and different. It may, regrettably, shrink the market, but that's the nature of many mature markets. Things will work themselves out.

And that's where a lot of people, including "real" artists, disagree with you. They don't have a selfish control-freak mentality, or hold The Law up as holy scripture set in stone, but they still manage to make a nice living without trying to enforce artificial scarcity or restrict people from standing on their shoulders.

The fact is that "intellectual property" is only something that can be owned as long as you NEVER let it out of its cage to infect other minds and culture. If it does get out, then the creation will only be respected in so far as society respects you and/or the old social contract (perpetual copyright).

IMNSHO, progress won't slow one bit just because it's no longer possible to enforce artificial scarcity.

"The economy of the future will be based on relationship rather than possession. It will be continuous rather than sequential." -- John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the EFF

--

Eric Raymond breaks this topic down in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", and excellent read. the opensource model is proven. the number of successful real-world projects built on the model have been belabored enough. it is the metrics you follow to adapt your particular project to it that matter, and those ,ultimately, lie with you.

And the point remains, he didn't claim to have 'created the Internet.' Congress did. Vint Cerf et al did their research with money approved by Congress. Al Gore was the major legislative backer for NSFnet, which is the basis for our modern Internet.

Of course the technologies were already invented, but the original ARPANET didn't become the "Internet" (using TCP/IP) until 1983. That was pretty much a government/academic network, not a commercial one, and the "old" Internet was subsumed by NSFNet in 1990. Thanks, in large part, to Gore.

He sort of fumbled his comment, I'll grant you. But he was talking about his congressional record at the time, and his statement was mostly on-target.

Here's the story if you have the desire to read the whole thing.

Actually, there is a middle ground, but there's not enough pressure for it to viably emerge, yet. Between 100% FREE and 100% totalitarian DRM control, there's the Street Performer Protocol.

Respect for perpetual copyright is nil these days, and it CANNOT be enforced without resorting to global police state control.

Millions, and soon billions of people will be sharing copies of old files regardless of ineffectual law. Without a copy monopoly, artificial scarcity no longer works, so what's scarce now? UNIQUE CREATION of NEW content IS! THAT is what will become worth paying for in the future, IMO. People will choose to pool their money up front for what they want, with the knowledge that the end result will be free to freeloaders. (A return to patronage in other words).

This is just a variation of the Street Performer Protocol: People pool their money to fund the scarce CREATION of a unique work they want put into the public domain (rather than paying for artificially scarce COPIES of data).

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I can't believe that the First Monday peer review process accepted that article without pointing out another piece they published a couple of years ago, entitled The Wall Street Performer Protocol: Using Software Completion Bonds to Fund Open Source Software Development.

There are also some additional references to related market-forms here. Google Answers also works on a somewhat related principle.

In real life you often get to personally meet those starving artists when you buy their wares or pay for performances; there's a real emotional connection there - not so online (usually). In Real Life you get a feelgood for supporting local artists, and you get a more meaningful "Thank You" when handing over your cash - online it's more antiseptic.

I would be 100 times more likely to pay for really great online content if:

1. I was recognized as more than a number (or a /. '*') for my contribution.
2. I had some idea of the artist's bottom line so I knew how badly they needed it vs. some other artist who's just as worthy but not as arbitrarily popular/rich. Call it an OpenBottomline, kind of like this. I don't like sending my money down paypal blackholes.
3. The content was released under a more open license that allows everyone to stand on others' shoulders, rather than the default Disney "AllMineMineMine!" copyright.
4. If there was some easy mechanism to pool my money with others to finance the creation of works we want.

--

What happens when Free software conquers all and all the software companies are put out of business, letting their programmers go?

Open source software doesn't feed the family so what do all those out of work developers do? It seems to me that OSS is like a virus that eventually consumes its host, thus ending its own life.

The short answer is that the market will figure it out.

First, it's important to note that the vast majority of software engineers don't write products that are sold. They write software for in-house use in a business, on on a contract for another business. Nothing will change. Those businesses still need specialized software and will pay for them. So even if Free Software destroys the market for off-the-shelf software, the majority of programming jobs will continue to exist.

Second, someone still needs the software. If there is damand, someone will figure out how to charge for it. Perhaps companies will pool their money to fund projects that they can all use. Perhaps individual companies will hire someone to add a feature or set of features that they need. Some enterprising person or company might try the Street Performer Protocol. Companies might develop the software to support non-free data set (The Doom VIII source is free, but the game levels cost money. Movie studios might fund video encoders and players so that they can distribute trailers.) Companies might sell support and use the revenue to keep the authors of the Free Software around (who better to provide the support). Many of these ideas are already in place and work just fine. I expect we'd see some combination of all of the above, plus some more ideas I haven't thought of.

Ultimately I don't know. It's possible (maybe even likely) that the market for software engineers will shrink. I do worry about that. But the industry won't be destroyed. There is a market for the product and the market will figure something out. The replacement might not be as profitable, it might not support as many developers, but something will appear. There is no risk of software development ending forever.

Oh yeah, I already know that I am an idiot and most likely a facist, capitalist, bozo, insertyourlabelhere so save those type of comments for your high school classmates and please seek to address the question.

A bit defensive, aren't we? It's Slashdot. Just mellow out and ignore the stupid people.

Hey, what happened to Moore's law ??

It's called The Street Performer Protocol. Basically, if copyright can't be enforced -- and it can't -- then the scarce act of creating valuable NEW works will be what people pay for, rather than paying the piper forever+70 for past work which costs nothing to duplicate. The social contract is altered regardless of law, and a new kind of market emerges...

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If you had any clue what Gore actually said, you would see that he was obviously referring to his service in congress, not technical inventions. He did take initiative in opening the university/military/government network to create what we now know as the Internet. If not for Gore, you wouldn't be able to flaunt your ignorance on Slashdot the way you just did.

Im not getting defesnive of nascar or anything.

Infact I dont find it very interesting. However I still found this article rather informing and quite fun
It covers the basics of Nascar that a outsider would never spot..

nascar basics

good read if your into motorsports.
Rally for me too..

Mandatory link on why nothing short of checking everyone will work

That system will probably be a mixture of voluntary payment for previous work, Street Performer Protocol, and maybe a bit of Return On Investment as incentive for smart/lucky patrons who "invest" in the right art production, as per the parent posts suggestion.

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Content is Not King is a another interesting First Monday article by Andrew Odlyzko. He suggests that Internet use will pan out like the telephone, where the users generate the data transmitted, not some "content" providing mega-corporation. Asymmetical internet connections throttle this development.

As for hampering those evil file-sharing applications. They are most probably the reason why the customer signed up for broadband service in the first place. If all ISPs blocked them, take up rates would probably plummet. Thus, an ISP that allows download but not upload is, in effect, a leech.

for-the-people.org

If you set cynicism aside for a second, it doesn't take too much effort to imagine a better future where the would-be Intellectual Property lords are defeated by public and private funding of new works. Rather than perpetually paying rent for artificially scarce content, people would instead pay organizations (like the BBC) and individuals for what's actually scarce: the creation of new content.

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The 'human' mind and it's creativity is it's defense and survival mechanism, just like any other animal.

The problem is that this "mine!" survival instinct only evolved because resources were historically scarce, but this innate greed doesn't translate well to economies of abundance.

Taking Ogg The Caveman's prize spear deprives him of its use, and he may go hungry - that is immoral. "Taking" Ogg's campfire song to another campfire deprives him of nothing; however, if I really like Ogg's song, I might decide to trade him a piece of flint in exchange for a unique (i.e. scarce) campfire performance, or I/we might decide to patronize him to create an original (i.e. scarce) work.

an artist or coder who wants to earn their bread and butter from their art

And how would you feel when (not if) in the future the molecules that compose bread and butter are almost as cheap and easy to assemble as are the digital bits that compose information? Would you object to people making and distributing illegal molecular copies of food, because then, well, the farmers (er, agribiz actually) would starve? Oh, wait, they wouldn't starve.

Focus on what's really scarce rather than cheering for artificial scarcity just because it fits the old world.

--

Question 1: Is there any awareness in the industry that artists are waking up to a better deal with a new business model?

Question 2: Have you ever looked into the Street Performer Protocol?

It's pseudofascist morons like you that are ruining this country, not the kid in his basement. So, I must ask you, if you don't like the laws of this country, such as the first ammendment, why don't you move to a country that has a legal system more to your liking? I hear that Iran doesn't allow any of that pesky questioning of authority, I'm sure you'd fit right in.

And I believe that you're right - unless a global police state emerges (hey, you never know), copyright will remain effectively unenforcable. The content itself isn't scarce, but the resources to create certain NEW works IS, and therefore systems like The Street Performer Protocol will allow for them to be funded; a modern day "distributed patronage."

I also believe that just a little further down the road - only two to three decades further - "intellectual property" will become even more meaningless as we gain the ability to molecularly manufacture any object, including food. Nanotechnology will allow us to manipulate matter almost as easily and cheaply as digital bits - and when the necessities and many of the luxuries of life are THIS abundant, the incentive to be greedy for an idea monopoly dissapears (because you don't have to trade for much).

IMO, open source and the gift economy will eventually carry over into the Real World(tm), but the transition will be hell.

--

The article lists several more sources for information:

• Warschauer, Mark. Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide. Boston: MIT Press. 2003.
• Becker, Henry J. Who's Wired and Who's not? The Future of Children Vol 10 No 2; 2000.
• Warschauer, Mark. Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide. First Monday Vol 7 no 7; 2002.
• Athena Alliance
• Center for Scoial Informatics
• Community Informatics Research and Applications Unit
• Community Technology Centers Network
• Digital Divide Network

better plan

Create a pile of domains with company A

Find companies B, C & D and offer to spam 500,000 valid mail addresses for 1c each about their products.

That's what makes spam profitable cos you never need to see B, C, or D again. They already think "gee, I get so much spam it *must* work for someone".

I used to make web sites thinking being a webmaster would lead to a life of luxury.

Then I read Content is not King by Andrew Odlyzko

Now I'm an opt-in marketer and I make my money from selling access to the opt-ins. I rub shoulders with spammers and "fast and loose" is the attitude to personal information in these circles. The Euro opt-in legislation won't really affect them too much either, everybody opts-in to to something at somepoint, especially with a compelling carrot on the other side of the "Click here to activate your account" emails.

As you long as you get paid up front. :)

The Street Performer Protocol is a great idea, really.

--

They went apeshit even with cassette tapes; I still remember the ads they took out in the backs of magazines trying to convince people that taping records was theft. The US Congress Office of Technology Assessment actually studied the effect of home taping on the recording industry in 1989 and concluded that it actually benefited the industry to let people tape records. Here's the study. It actually dealt with and answered most of the arguments the RIAA raised again with regard to P2P. (If you're interested, this study of the future of copyright and the music industry is a must read too).

Is that the right-wing spin of the day? That Gore just "rode the wave" and that 400+ other legislators would have done the same thing?

Check this out. You might learn something.

Al Gore and the Creation of the Internet"

As you'll see, Gore made his first proposal to fund a universal version of the internet in 1986. How many other politicians, people not usually known for being up to date with technology, were pushing the internet in 1986? Were you?

This article puts 1986 into perspective:

"That Gore wrote about a national "data highway" as far back as 1986 is extremely significant. It is important to make clear the context of the state of computing at that time. The IBM PC was only four years old. The Apple II computer was still in widespread use. The number of hosts on the Internet numbered, as counted by Mark Lottor's Internet Domain Survey, was 5,089. Entire universities (such as Michigan State University) made their initial connection to the Internet in 1986. In order for Gore to make this kind of speech in 1986, he had to have been conversant with the thinking of computer scientists and Internet pioneers. Such pioneers included such as Vint Cerf, Steven Wolf, and Larry Smarr - then director of the National Center for Supercomputer Applications at the University of Illinois (NCSA), where Mosaic would be born some seven years later."

Did you get that, bunky? Seven years before Mosaic. Is that what you call "riding the wave"?

Speaking of Vinton Cerf, who might be trusted to have an informed opinion on this, this is what he had to say about Gore:

Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.

No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.

Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective.

As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial concept. Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was based on even earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s. But the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises.

As a Senator in the 1980s Gore urged government agencies t

This has really become as distorted as the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit. Please read this for the lowdown behind the wisecracks.

I know that the core infrastructure might not be something you or your company would like to give to your competitors, but a large percentage of inhouse software is not really part of the company's core business. This means that they would probably be better off sharing it -- even with their competitors, as both of them will gain equally. In all probability, the originators will retain the advantage simply because they had it first.

This is what I gleaned from the cathedral and the bazaar.

Besides showing MS your middle finger (which I think you should do) or charging everyone money. Why not just ask interested people to donate money until you have enough to pay the fee? You are only interested in not having to pay the fee yourself, I believe this is a fair plan.

If you want to make money of the deal, the Street Performer Protocol may work for you. This will be less risky because you don't have to front the £500 yourself. Another guy has one called The Rational Street Performer Protocol if it suits your tastes better.

Well, if copyrights eventually do become effectively unenforcable (which they will be without a totalitarian world government), how would artists eat, and how would media execs be able to pay for their 4th vacation house? Would civilization as we know it collapse (heh), or would a new balance emerge on its own? Yeah, the latter.

It seems to me that two things would happen: 1) The original and valuable act of creation can't be copied (there's no A.I. Van Gogh, yet), so variations on the Street Performer Protocol would gain prominence as a way to fund new projects, and 2) unfunded/unknown artists would simply have to accept that society had rewritten the social contract to say "we abhor artificial-scarcity in the face of so much real-scarcity, but if you're nice we'll still support your creative efforts." So artists'll have to continue working to continue earning like everyone else. Just as architects, sysadmins, and plumbers can't live off royalties from long past work, neither would artists.

And 15 to 30 years from now this debate will get much hotter (if people aren't any wiser) when mature nanotechnology enables anyone to make exact copies of any desired object (given that the chemical elements are available), from diamond to clothes to BK Whoppers. But if BurgerKing goes out of business, how will they eat?! And how will they clothe their kids?! ... Oh... wait a sec...

--

You may care to read through this article for what appears to be a careful and reasoned assessment of Al Gore's lifetime activities with respect to technology and nationwide data networks.

You might also want to read Vinton Cerf's email about Al Gore and the internet, which was prepared by Cerf and Kahn. Here's a quote: "Bob and I believe that the vice president deserves significant credit for his early recognition of the importance of what has become the Internet." This may not answer your question directly, but provides useful information all the same.

I'm not a Gore fan. These links come from a very quick search on google. I'm guessing that anyone not educated on this subject must not care very much.

-Paul Komarek

• http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_10/wiggins /
• http://www.politechbot.com/p-01394.html
• http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/0 2/20_internet.html

Bunk. As I've already pointed out, listener driven sampling is inherently more trustworthy and completely legal. I have anecdotal evidence, but it's too long winded for this forum, so I'll stand by the principle.

If you want to claim that user driven sampling is not more useful, prove to me that the RIAA members do not use deceptive and manipulative marketing practices to sell lower quality material for artificially high prices. Oh, they agreed to a settlement to avoid being labelled a price fixing monopoly in court, so good luck.

[File sharing networks] are not huge "listener driven sample" networks, and you are kidding yourself if you think otherwise.

When I was in college, I was a music fiend, as we all were. Everyone I know sampled everyone else's music - full cds in their entirety. As a result of that environment, I bought about 65 cds. I didn't purchase all those cds while I was at school because I was poor. However, those 65 cds represent artists I discovered through the massive file sharing social network that every college campus embodies. That comes out to about 15 cds a year because of college.

After college, I stopped discovering new artists for the most part, until Napster came along. I added 1 new artist to my repetoire in over a year and didn't buy much music.

However, in about a year of Napster's life, I discovered about 15 new artists and bought over 30 cds by those artists. I would not have discovered the music or bought the cds if Napster hadn't been around. So, I payed the recording industry about $300.00 for a years worth of Napster. I actually bought more music per year than when I was in college - astounding.

I also own about 15 cds by artists I already liked because I discovered they were "must have" cds by using Napster or Gnutella. That's another $150 or so in revenue for the recording industry because of file sharing.

Gnutella and such are far less effective for music discovery. Nonetheless, I have over 15 cds on my list to get because of file sharing. I'll get them as soon as my wife lets me ;) Many of those cds I would not buy except that I was able to listen to almost all of them and determine that they were cds I wanted to keep.

I don't keep music that isn't in my collection or on my buy list.

Say what you like, but for me, file sharing is a massive sampling network that lets me stay in touch with current music and delve into the roots of music history. My appreciation for music would be greatly diminished if I could not sample this way, as would the amount of money I spend on music.

I think I'm pretty representative of music sharers. Some steal. Some engage in civil disobedience and pay the artists directly because recording companies rip artists off. Most just want to figure out which cds they should buy.

Why do you think you are entitled to sample every track from every CD you might buy? How is music different from books or movies?

Almost all movies are easily available rent for a reasonable convenience fee. So, I can sample almost all movies in their entirety before buying. Note - the motion picture industry hated the rental market and tried to sue it out of existence when it first started.

Almost all books are available at a library I have access to, so I can sample almost all books in their entirety before buying. Note, book publishers hated circulating libraries when they first started and tried to legislate them out of existence.

Music audio CDs are not available for rent. A very small subset of cds are available at a library I have access to.

So, that's how books, videos, and music differ. It's been easy to sample all of almost any book for a long time because of libraries. It became easy to sample all of a movie for a reasonable convenience fee when the MPAA failed to cripple the rental industry in the 80s. It became reasonably easy to sample all of a cd in the 90s with the advent of file sharing. For more info, see this site on the history of rental businesses, including circulating libraries.

http://www.orgnet.com/

http://www.anacubis.com/index.html

http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html

http://www.smartmobs.com/index.html

http://smg.media.mit.edu/projects/SocialNetworkFra gments/

http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue7_4/krebs/

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_camero n030703.asp

Because it leaks information, giving you an oracle you can test against.

This article, http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue7_10/chakrab arti/
demonstrates how:

"Abstract

Carnival Booth: An Algorithm for Defeating the Computer-Assisted Passenger Screening System by Samidh Chakrabarti and Aaron Strauss.

To improve the efficiency of airport security screening, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) deployed the Computer Assisted Passenger Screening system (CAPS) in 1999. CAPS attempts to identify potential terrorists through the use of profiles so that security personnel can focus the bulk of their attention on high-risk individuals. In this paper, we show that since CAPS uses profiles to select passengers for increased scrutiny, it is actually less secure than systems that employ random searches. In particular, we present an algorithm called Carnival Booth that demonstrates how a terrorist cell can defeat the CAPS system. Using a combination of statistical analysis and computer simulation, we evaluate the efficacy of Carnival Booth and illustrate that CAPS is an ineffective security measure. Based on these findings, we argue that CAPS should not be legally permissible since it does not satisfy court-interpreted exemptions to the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment. Finally, based both on our analysis of CAPS and historical case studies, we provide policy recommendations on how to improve air security."

No one will read this post (seeing as how it is so late in the game on /. - at the bottom of the page, with almost 400 other posts ahead of it), but I'd like to add my opinion to the mix all the same.

I just spent about an hour reading the paper that Slate reported on here. Likewise, I just spent fifteen minutes reading the +5 posts here. Almost nobody who got moderated up has anything worthwhile to say about the actual paper or topic. Posts are either "Nascar sux0rz" or "a primer in game thoery" (from a mouth breathing k5-er no doubt).

David Ronfeldt (the paper's author) appears to be a well read, and well researched writer on the topic of game theory. He also appears to be a knowledgeable fan of NASCAR racing. I just wish that he had put his modified prisoner's dilemma diagram at the front of his paper! This "main point" was a long time coming in the paper. Having read my fair share of Game Theory papers, I can vouch for the value that readers place on brevity. Likewise, it would have been helpful if the "draft-line" metaphor had been more thoroughly threshed out mathematically.

Looking at his diagram, it seems as though Ronfeldt may have found a metaphor sufficient for explaining the outcomes and impulses of actors in this modified Prisoner's Dilemma. I don't feel that there is much more value than that in this paper.

I am not a big racing fan and have never really understood the allure, but the section Basic Dynamics of Drafting is a fantastic read. It gives great insight into tactics used by these highly skilled drivers.

>I did NOT give them permission to access my network.

Hey everybody! WE FOUND AL GORE!

>If they logged into one of my devices I would do all I could to dig up a law they could be prosecuted under and I'd make sure all the proper Federal agencies got wind of it.

Mmmmm, fresh barratry. Hope you don't actually get an honest (haha) lawyer ensnared into this one.

Quote "BLITZER: I want to get to some of the substance of domestic and international issues in a minute, but let's just wrap up a little bit of the politics right now. Why should Democrats, looking at the Democratic nomination process, support you instead of Bill Bradley, a friend of yours, a former colleague in the Senate? What do you have to bring to this that he doesn't necessarily bring to this process? Clearly, Blitzer is asking Gore to offer an explanation of how he differs as a politician from other politicians in general, and his rival at the time, Bill Bradley, in particular. Here is Gore's entire response to Blitzer's question: GORE: Well, I will be offering - I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be. But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system. During a quarter century of public service, including most of it long before I came into my current job, I have worked to try to improve the quality of life in our country and in our world. And what I've seen during that experience is an emerging future that's very exciting, about which I'm very optimistic, and toward which I want to lead."

There that settles that. He said he took the initiative in creating the internet. If you want to interpt that as inventing then yes he said he invented it. If you want to take it like exaggeration then yes you are right he just funded it.

Top Ten/Eleven Other Achievements Claimed By Al Gore:

11. Invented television

10. Was first human to grow an opposable thumb

9. Only man in world to sleep with someone named "Tipper"

8. Current Vice President - Moesha fan club

7. He invented the dog

6. While riding bicycle one day, accidentally invented the orgasm

5. Pulled U.S. out of early 90's recession by personally buying 6,000 T-shirts

4. Starred in CBS situation comedy with Juan Valdez, "Juan for Al, Al for Juan"

3. Was inspiration for Ozzy Osboune song "Crazy Train"

2. Came up with popular catchphrase "Don't go there, girlfriend"

1. Gave mankind fire

Both you and the poster you replied to are making some large assumptions yourselves, and some of those assumptions are clearly wrong.

You're assuming that most software is commericial software (that is, I write software, then offer it for sale). In practice the vast majority of programmers are writing software for internal use at various businesses. If proprietary software was outlawed, absolutely nothing would change for the vast majority of programmers. Companies would still need the internal software and hire people (or contract people) to write it. Because this code is internally used and exclusively written and used by employees of the corporation working on the company's time, it's easy enough to protect (if you feel the need) with existing trade secret law.

You're assuming that personal end users will stop buying software. Most users like the sense of security and support they get from buying from a reputable publisher. They like the ability to call the useless call center. There will still be demand for commercial software. The market may contract, but there will still be work.

Finally, you assume that the market will not adjust. Ultimately the software is desired. If the software wasn't desired, the market wouldn't be functioning now. End users have money and want software. Developers want money and can create software. Something will be worked out. It may involve selling support and warrantees ("Buy our support contract, we employ six of the operating system's developers, our competitors only employ two!") For business critical packages (like office suites) large companies may band together to develop it (because they need it themselves. Content heavy works (games particularly) may have Free Software, and Expensive Content (Sure, you're competitor can take your software and put his own content in, saving time, but your content will have been our first and you'll have better knowledge of how to integrate the content to the engine.) It may involve something radical like the Street Performer Protocol, or a tip system, or patronage, or something else entirely, but it will work out. The market will force it to. Companies like Red Hat, Cygnus, and Sleepycat show that it can work on a small scale. If the traditional route ceases to be possible, companies like Red Hat will have a chance to shine. It may be rough going while the system shakes itself out, but it eventually will. Again, the market may shrink and the number of programming position that society can support may contract, but there would still be jobs.

So thing might not be as great as they are now, but the world won't end. Now let's look at some possible (but wildly speculative) at good things that might happen. We might experience a golden age of software development. Developers would have access to phenominal amount of source to take advantage of, increasing productivity. Even if code isn't reused, ideas would be much more heavily reused, allowing software's power to grow much more quickly. (You can already see this in how quickly free operating systems borrow good ideas and hardware bugfixes from each other, often overnight.) Free software products are more likely to speak "open" file formats and protocols, making it easier for end users to switch software if their current software doesn't meet their needs, eliminating monopoly lock in and giving your little startup a fighting chance. The disappearance of licenses would eliminate huge amounts of effort wasted writing licenses, enforcing licenses, and general wasting peoples time. Because anyone can create a "clean" version of software, spyware is doomed.

I say this as a professial software engineer. I've shipped five distinct commerical products. I'm not whining as a user with nothing to risk, this is my own job on the line. My pay would probably take a hit, I'd definately need to remain flexible (but shouldn't I anyway?), but I trust in my to survive such an upheaval. That said, it's not going to happen. The reality is that Free Software is going to continue slowly growing for a long time. It may eventually hit a wall, it may not. You'll have lots of time to prepare, so don't worry about it. In the meantime, enjoy the low cost, high quality products that Free Software has provided you, and enjoy the benefits of competition now that Microsoft has a new competitor that they are afraid of.

What's the big deal with Free Software? Why can't he broaden his focus to other area's of engineering and intellectual property? Why is software the only profession that has a foundation (FSF) to make it free.

What doesn't the ACLU worry about rainforest decimation? Why doesn't the EFF broaden their focus to workers compensation?

An organziation needs a focus. If you broaden your focus too much, you dilute your message and risk alienating potential supporters who agree with part of your message but not all of it. And if you're a small organization (and compared to say the ACLU, the FSF is microscopic), you only have so much time and energy to spend. By focusing they increase their chances of doing good.

Furthermore, software has a certain special place in copyright law shared with few other areas. Software is both functional and expressive. Without the source, it's functionally impossible for an end user to modify it. I'd be hard pressed to modify my copy of Microsoft Office, but I can pretty easily modify my car or a book I've purchased.

My theory is that other professions have a much larger barrier of entry then software development. It's easy as a software developer to cheapen the value of the time it takes to write code, whereas with an airplane you can't cheapen the value of raw materials. It's sad to see that the most valuable aspect of any product - the time put in by people - is the least valued by RMS (from my perspective).

This has nothing to do with the cheapening of developer time. Remember that RMS comes from a developer background. Many Free Software supporters (like myself) are professional programmers. He highly values the time put in by people, and so do I. But the person who built my car also put in alot of time, but I'm free to modify it, install off-brand parts, and general do as I will with it. Why does the personal who wrote my software get to control how I use it?

Let's look at an idealized "perfect Stallman world" in which he gets everything he wants (as near as I can tell). It becomes hard to sell software, because once one copy is sold it will be copied and resold for increasingly smaller prices until it has a zero price. Does this mean no software will be written and software developers will starve? Certainly not. First, more software is written strictly for in-company use. There was never a goal to sell it. If the company is concerned that there are valuable secrets in their in-company software, they can use "trade secret" law to protect it from being spread just fine. This leaves the much smaller segment of software for sale. Will the market shrink? Perhaps. However, much of the value of purchased software has always been support and warrantee. (Well, that's the theory. In practice much commericial software has useless support and disclaims any warrantees, but anyway...). So there opens a market for selling support and warrantees, and who best can support and warrantee the product besides the authors? Also, if software is open, there opens a large market for developers who will assemble existing products to create customized solutions for particular clients. Ultimately, the software is needed. The people who write the software need to make money. Something will be worked out, be it the Street Performer Protocol, tips, sponsorship by a company providing support and warrantee (essentially what RedHat and many other distributors do now), or something else.

I'm a software engineer and I support Free Software, and I'm not worried in the slightest about Free Software destroying my career. I may need to remain flexible, especially when I take jobs writing software for sale, but the work will remain.

This article is from 1999.

The Street Performer Protocol and Digital Copyrights

There the idea is that the "author" promises to deliver his "work" (a novel, software, anything), as soon as he receives a certain amount of donations. Stephen King actually tried to publish a book like that, chapter by chapter, a few years ago, but I think he concluded that the time wasn't right for it yet.

Have you read Copyright in a frictionless world?

Could at least skirt some of your issues

A virtual economy, like any economy, must barter in scarcity. After all, it is scarcity which forces the choices of economics on people.

The most obvious object which a virtual economy could manage is time. You can't turn time into an encoded form on a computer which can be played back at any moment. By farming out your own time that you are willing to spend on some problem, you could get some credit that would be useful to negotiate time off of someone else's hands for a task you need completed by a certain time. It'll be the ultimate in specialization, where you need only know one thing well, because you can use that skill to aquire the credits that you use to buy the time of other people who specialize is some task you need completed.

If this sounds a lot like your day-to-day job life, it is. But it breaks down if you look at it from a non-time perspective. Things that are not direct people services aren't scarce in a digital world. You need to move to something else for the creation and release of digital knowledge, something like the street performer protocol. Then the goods (which, when released, are not scarce) can have the creators of those goods still benefit.

Traditional models of scarcity and resource utilization do not apply in a virtual economy. Once one copy of something is released, infinite copies may be made at any point. The only thing you, as a content producer, can do is set how much you want to release that product. This is the next step (IMO) in the evolution of economic theory because it'll allow people to make things on their own, without a big corporate body (RIAA, MPAA) taking a cut off of everything. Prices will go down, and creations will go up.