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Facebook, Google, and Intellectual Property
Scott Jaschik sends us to Inside Higher Ed, where a librarian explains why the tradeoffs we're facing with social networking sites — e.g. privacy vs. a space to build one's personal "brand" — echo issues faced years ago by academics who publish in journals that their institutions' libraries can not then afford. The author argues that, as the Open Access movement is busily restructuring academic publishing, we need to find a way of retaining the personal value to the individual of social networking and Web 2.0 sites, and not allow that value to be eclipsed by the commercial worth of the data the sites obtain about us. In the author's view, the tension is in "...the fundamental relationship between the individual's desire to share their thoughts and experiences with others and the commercial entities that provide the distribution channel for that act of sharing."
Synergy is when something NEW and greater than the sum of its parts is created.
I fail to see how targeted ads based on the user's preferences is synergistic when
it only serves to enrich ONE side of the equation - the seller.
If perhaps they offered exclusive offers with such (lets face it, spam) marketing,
THAT might be synergy. As is, it's marketing targeted at one's privacy ignorance.
The user stands to gain nothing more than carefully selected spam. It's still spam.
But there's another gravy train pulling up right behind: reputation management companies that clean up the messes left behind by data breaches. Maybet hat's the real "synergy" the grandparent was talking about?
Intelectual property itself is worthless, it is everything around it that has at least some worth. Think of IP as being in a big container, surrounded by things like 'costs to create' and 'man hours spent'
-nick
The former is about combining inputs, the latter is about dividing the output.
At the bottom of the
Obligatory marketing blurb follow: OSN is a shiny new open source open protocol distributed social network. From a user perspective all the individual sites in the OSN federation appear as one. Users can search, browse profiles, send messages, and link to each other without regard to which sites other users are using. S/MIME public key cryptography is used to unambiguously identify senders and is combined with the social network to make the system resilient to spam. Spammers get voted off the island. User profiles are based on the FOAF XML file format and users can migrate their profile from one site to another. OsnLive.com is the first site running OSN.
Do phone companies get a cut of any business deals made over the phone?
No.
Do UPS and FedEx get a share of the goods they ship?
No.
Do ISPs and carriers have a claim on the value of web content?
No.
Moving bits around entitles network providers to their monthly fee and that's all. People have been carrying, packing and storing other people's things for centuries. The fact that it's the Internet doesn't add any new complicated twists. The plumber has never had the right to use your bathtub.
Sorry, there is no such thing as a 'basic human right' - every right afforded to you is artificial, otherwise the only rights you would have are those you can protect yourself. Your right to property ownership (physical or otherwise) is artificial, you right to free speech is artificial, your right to life is artificial - all artificial limitations that society has placed on themselves in order to attempt to better the over all experience.
The fact that governments are able to make IP or other laws does not make those laws just, fair, or correct. I can think of a few laws in America's history that are generally considered unjust.
Its = possessive. It's = "it is"
Christianity tries to coerce people into submission, by threatening them with eternal suffering. Christianity is thus not the "inspiration" for modern human rights, but the very opposite.
I think, for some rights, you can--or at least the universality of those rights. Often a tribe would recognize its members right to life or liberty, but a conquered people were not afforded those same dignities. Monotheistic religion generally makes absolute statements about the equality of all people. That's what makes the Cyrus Cylinder so impressive: in it, Cyrus declares that all people, regardless of race, creed, or even gender (women's rights were remarkably progressive during the Achaemenids), have the right to live freely (not be enslaved), choose their ruler, and worship as they please. Now it's doubtful that Cyrus is promoting absolute democracy in this case, but he did allow his subjects considerable autonomy in determining their own governments. He collected a tribute, but in exchange he provided a great deal of protection (and ultimately prosperity, thanks to his organization of the empire).