Just fyi - there is a fascinating set of posts from RISKS (from 1986 no less -- what does this tell you?) about the exact same sort of problem. For some reason completely unbeknownst to me, a transcript of this has lived in/pub on rtfm.mit.edu (exactly at ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/reid.txt) for the past 13 years. Their conclusions? Policies will work if you don't have to cross organizational boundaries, but probably won't if you do.
I think the most interesting thing in the thread is the idea that we still lack a strong ethic regarding cracking. While I'd venture that it's better now then it was then - it's interesting to note that most universities (well, at least the one I went to) don't have to have people who go around and make sure that the libraries and offices and labs are locked up tight as a drum.
Creating social ethics that make computer breakins as infrquent as physical breakins are not a short-term solution though.
Read the file if you get a chance -- it's long, but well worth the time.
At the risk of asking an heretical question, why NOT tax e-commerce? Newt said "We should want the most rapid possible expansion of e-commerce. It's very important that we not allow e-commerce to be bogged down by a city-by-city, county-by-county tax program."
Do we *REALLY* want to give ecommerce an inherent tax advantage over local brick and mortar stores, and if so, why? I think the fact that we are making the choice (in the US) to give internet based stores an ADVANTAGE over locally based businesses is really ignored in this debate.
I also don't buy this hooey about taxation being too complicated for internet based companies - isn't the ability to automate data processing touted as one of the advantages of ecommerce?(Taxware has been doing this for years)
I'm not going to make a judgement on whether or not taxes have inherent value, but I think we should seriously consider and debate whether or not we want to put Amazon.com at a financial advantage over the bookstore around the corner from my house that pays local takes, provides local jobs, etc. They're not even on a level playing field as it is now.
If this is intended to be a critique of intellectual property, it is severely misaimed. While this is an interesting piece, it is really only making the case for how things already are.
The article is appropriately titled though, "Why ideas should not be property" - while "ideas" themselves are not considered property under current intellectual property laws.
IP laws such as copyright and patent do not attempt to reserve the "idea" to the creator, rather they reserve the right for the creator to have certain controls over physical manifestations of that idea (in the case of copyright, read duplication, distribution, derivative works) for some time period. IP applies only to the expression of an idea, not to the idea itself, or any facts underlying that idea.
We have intellectual property for reasons that are both related to the notion that someone has a certain ownership of something they create (philosophically this has a number of bases - including, but not exclusively Locke) as well as for utilitarian purposes (the US Constitution gives the Congress the right to make IP laws to "further the progress of the arts and sciences"). That is, the people who agreed upon those laws felt that for any number of reasons, including but not limited to profit - people would be more inclined to create intellectual property if there were protections provided for their rights.
IP laws do not attempt to control the flow of ideas - any law that tried to do such a thing would be foolish - but they do reserve rights concerning the manifestations of those ideas to the creators.
People here on/. seem to have a misaimed hatred for intellectual property. There is a big difference between the notion of intellectual property - and how particular IP laws are currently implemented. The GPL requires and supports the notion of intellectual property as much as any traditional copyright does - it's key difference lies only in how it views the distribution of the creators rights that come along with that intellectual property. Free software requires the notion of intellectual property.
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Just fyi - there is a fascinating set of posts from RISKS (from 1986 no less -- what does this tell you?) about the exact same sort of problem. For some reason completely unbeknownst to me, a transcript of this has lived in /pub on rtfm.mit.edu (exactly at ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/reid.txt) for the past 13 years. Their conclusions? Policies will work if you don't have to cross organizational boundaries, but probably won't if you do.
I think the most interesting thing in the thread is the idea that we still lack a strong ethic regarding cracking. While I'd venture that it's better now then it was then - it's interesting to note that most universities (well, at least the one I went to) don't have to have people who go around and make sure that the libraries and offices and labs are locked up tight as a drum.
Creating social ethics that make computer breakins as infrquent as physical breakins are not a short-term solution though.
Read the file if you get a chance -- it's long, but well worth the time.
At the risk of asking an heretical question, why NOT tax e-commerce? Newt said "We should want the most rapid possible expansion of e-commerce. It's very important that we not allow e-commerce to be bogged down by a city-by-city, county-by-county tax program."
Do we *REALLY* want to give ecommerce an inherent tax advantage over local brick and mortar stores, and if so, why? I think the fact that we are making the choice (in the US) to give internet based stores an ADVANTAGE over locally based businesses is really ignored in this debate.
I also don't buy this hooey about taxation being too complicated for internet based companies - isn't the ability to automate data processing touted as one of the advantages of ecommerce?(Taxware has been doing this for years)
I'm not going to make a judgement on whether or not taxes have inherent value, but I think we should seriously consider and debate whether or not we want to put Amazon.com at a financial advantage over the bookstore around the corner from my house that pays local takes, provides local jobs, etc. They're not even on a level playing field as it is now.
If this is intended to be a critique of intellectual property, it is severely misaimed. While this is an interesting piece, it is really only making the case for how things already are.
/. seem to have a misaimed hatred for intellectual property. There is a big difference between the notion of intellectual property - and how particular IP laws are currently implemented. The GPL requires and supports the notion of intellectual property as much as any traditional copyright does - it's key difference lies only in how it views the distribution of the creators rights that come along with that intellectual property. Free software requires the notion of intellectual property.
The article is appropriately titled though, "Why ideas should not be property" - while "ideas" themselves are not considered property under current intellectual property laws.
IP laws such as copyright and patent do not attempt to reserve the "idea" to the creator, rather they reserve the right for the creator to have certain controls over physical manifestations of that idea (in the case of copyright, read duplication, distribution, derivative works) for some time period. IP applies only to the expression of an idea, not to the idea itself, or any facts underlying that idea.
We have intellectual property for reasons that are both related to the notion that someone has a certain ownership of something they create (philosophically this has a number of bases - including, but not exclusively Locke) as well as for utilitarian purposes (the US Constitution gives the Congress the right to make IP laws to "further the progress of the arts and sciences"). That is, the people who agreed upon those laws felt that for any number of reasons, including but not limited to profit - people would be more inclined to create intellectual property if there were protections provided for their rights.
IP laws do not attempt to control the flow of ideas - any law that tried to do such a thing would be foolish - but they do reserve rights concerning the manifestations of those ideas to the creators.
People here on