This kind of surprises me since it's been the DoJ's Antitrust Division that has consistently wanted to take this case to the Supreme Court (and bypass the hostile appeals court). This move might backfire for M$ because the Supreme Court's antitrust decisions during the Rhenquist years have not always been favorable to the defendant. In fact, there are actually some prominent pieces of Supreme Court antitrust case law that might play into the hand of the DoJ. Perhaps M$ will shoot themselves in the foot with this move.
A few days ago,/. had a story on how big-businesses wanted to get rid of the current *open* Internet for an allegedly better version: The Death of the Open Internet.
The problem with getting rid of the current Internet is that we would probably lose the advantage of having scale-free topology... something the PhysicsWeb article discusses at length. Scale-free topology is one of the key factors in keeping the current Internet stable and relatively fault tolerant even as the number of users have grown exponentially. I doubt that those who want to replace an open Internet would create a replacement that would incorporate this type of scale-free topology.
What I am disappointed by is that many people... both in the business world and outside that world... can't see the Internet as a social system. What do I mean by a *social system*? Towns are a social system. So are cities, regions, and nations. Families, schools, workplaces, etc., are social systems as well.
In social systems like cities, regions, etc., mechanisms that allow for commerce and profit-making are A PART of the larger social system. Ie, commerce is a subset of the larger (super-)set of society. Profit-making is one of many things that are a part of social systems. Friendship, education, conflict, cooperation, etc., are also parts that make of a social system.
The Internet AS IT IS can accomodate commerce. In fact, the freer (in the free speech and not the free beer sense) the exchange of information is... which you would get in a non-big-business dominated Internet... the better a social system like the Internet lives up to the idea of a marketplace... where there is free (again, in the sense of minimal restrictions and not free beer) exchange of goods and services.
But just as commerce is a subset of other social systems, commerce should be seen as a subset of the Internet as a social system. Commerce should not dominate and become the be all and end all of the Internet. You can't hope to have a vibrant and viable social system like the Internet if it was solely made up of commercial interests.
As the post suggests, there are probably a couple of potential solutions to something as sick as this: legal and/or technological.
Tech law, cyber law, or whatever one wants to call it is too early in its development to provide much help here. As CmdrTaco pointed out, the few times lawmakers get involved in this field, they really screw things up (eg, DMCA, patenting obivous things with lots of prior art, etc.). There aren't a lot of helpful precedents and/or laws on the books, so we are probably out of luck here.
There are some novel legal theories one could try from (NON-intellectual) property law concerning trespassing, personality, etc. But, again, things are too unsettled in this area for these types of legally novel theories to have a high probability of success as causes of action.
My thought is that the best possible solution to all of this is some combination of technological and legal solutions.
Technologically, there have been a lot of work done on blocking pop-up ads and maybe something like that can be used here.
Legally, it would be great if people could do something like what RMS has done with GNU GPL and give individuals A LOT of legal protections over their privacy and presence on the Internet and let them contract -- under their own informed free will -- with others on what terms individuals are willing to interact with businesses on the web.
This really sucks! A lot of the teachers when I was in high school / junior high, were really stupid and didn't understand computers.
I can see a lot of geeky kids who aren't popular with other students or their teachers getting punished... maybe as bad as what Skylarov is dealing with... for expressing themselves in a way that many of their dumb teachers don't understand.
(b) will be accessible (from middle school students to senior citizens) without dumbing down too much [I doubt a novice or a kid new to computer science will understand books by Knuth, et al., that have been posted by others],
(c) is well written,
(d) is written by one of the greatest hacker/engineer/computer scientist of all time,
and (e) may give even *experts* some insights,
then you can't beat Danny Hillis' excellent introduction and overview of computer science: The Pattern on the Stone.
Slashdot Mirror
This kind of surprises me since it's been the DoJ's Antitrust Division that has consistently wanted to take this case to the Supreme Court (and bypass the hostile appeals court). This move might backfire for M$ because the Supreme Court's antitrust decisions during the Rhenquist years have not always been favorable to the defendant. In fact, there are actually some prominent pieces of Supreme Court antitrust case law that might play into the hand of the DoJ. Perhaps M$ will shoot themselves in the foot with this move.
The problem with getting rid of the current Internet is that we would probably lose the advantage of having scale-free topology ... something the PhysicsWeb article discusses at length. Scale-free topology is one of the key factors in keeping the current Internet stable and relatively fault tolerant even as the number of users have grown exponentially. I doubt that those who want to replace an open Internet would create a replacement that would incorporate this type of scale-free topology.
In social systems like cities, regions, etc., mechanisms that allow for commerce and profit-making are A PART of the larger social system. Ie, commerce is a subset of the larger (super-)set of society. Profit-making is one of many things that are a part of social systems. Friendship, education, conflict, cooperation, etc., are also parts that make of a social system.
The Internet AS IT IS can accomodate commerce. In fact, the freer (in the free speech and not the free beer sense) the exchange of information is ... which you would get in a non-big-business dominated Internet ... the better a social system like the Internet lives up to the idea of a marketplace ... where there is free (again, in the sense of minimal restrictions and not free beer) exchange of goods and services.
But just as commerce is a subset of other social systems, commerce should be seen as a subset of the Internet as a social system. Commerce should not dominate and become the be all and end all of the Internet. You can't hope to have a vibrant and viable social system like the Internet if it was solely made up of commercial interests.
Tech law, cyber law, or whatever one wants to call it is too early in its development to provide much help here. As CmdrTaco pointed out, the few times lawmakers get involved in this field, they really screw things up (eg, DMCA, patenting obivous things with lots of prior art, etc.). There aren't a lot of helpful precedents and/or laws on the books, so we are probably out of luck here.
There are some novel legal theories one could try from (NON-intellectual) property law concerning trespassing, personality, etc. But, again, things are too unsettled in this area for these types of legally novel theories to have a high probability of success as causes of action.
My thought is that the best possible solution to all of this is some combination of technological and legal solutions.
Technologically, there have been a lot of work done on blocking pop-up ads and maybe something like that can be used here.
Legally, it would be great if people could do something like what RMS has done with GNU GPL and give individuals A LOT of legal protections over their privacy and presence on the Internet and let them contract -- under their own informed free will -- with others on what terms individuals are willing to interact with businesses on the web.
I can see a lot of geeky kids who aren't popular with other students or their teachers getting punished ... maybe as bad as what Skylarov is dealing with ... for expressing themselves in a way that many of their dumb teachers don't understand.
(a) will stand the test of time,
(b) will be accessible (from middle school students to senior citizens) without dumbing down too much [I doubt a novice or a kid new to computer science will understand books by Knuth, et al., that have been posted by others],
(c) is well written,
(d) is written by one of the greatest hacker/engineer/computer scientist of all time,
and (e) may give even *experts* some insights,
then you can't beat Danny Hillis' excellent introduction and overview of computer science: The Pattern on the Stone .