I did read the article. Economically, consuming resources is just the same thing as spending cash. For a brief moment, spamming activity will stop coming from small time operations, and will come from more sophisticated outfits that buy tons of resources optimized for generating the spam.
Regardless, it is easier to talk about money than resources. Which is what the article itself chooses to do.
So, I will rephrase the message. The idea behind this and other techniques is to increase the marginal value of the spam by artificially increasing the resources consumed in sending the spam. The winners will be the people who sell the resources that get consumed. The economics is still the same.
I do admit. Saying resources rather than money, the project becomes more appealing. Spam will come from everyone according to their ability (resources) and to everyone according to their need...or something like that.
I suspect the goal of a program like this really is not to stop spam. The goal would be to increase the marginal return from the spam that gets sent and for the network to grab a piece of the action.
When someone is paying you, it is extremely difficult to make judgments on quality of the mail. I've seen lots of email lists and newsletters start with good intentions then devolve into a garbage fountain.
In the end the pay to send networks will take money from anyone.
The real goal of such schemes is simply to increase the marginal returns from the spam. As the amount of spam sent to open email accounts reaches astronomical proportions, I can't help but think that the amount of cash the spammers get per email is dropping. I can't help but think that the end goal of pay for spam is that by throwing a rich third party into the equation, they will increase their return.
I am staunchly opposed to spyware. I was disappointed with the article however. The article seemed to place dropping a cookie on the same level as using a Trojan to install a program that pop ups ads left and right.
From the article:
No program or cookie or any other form of tracking device is to be installed on any computer without the user of that computer being given clear information as to the purpose of the program or tracking device
Come on! The easiest way to do session management is to drop a cookie. The article in question suddenly classifies the majority of interactive web sites (forums, online stores) as spyware because they drop cookies for session management. To have an online store, you have to be able to track the user as they place things in their shopping cart, then procede to checkout. To keep a shopping cart between sessions or to keep user information available for the next forum discussion...you drop cookies that extend beyond the session.
Yes, there are privacy concerns with third party cookies from large entities like doubleclick and valueclick. These companies already have privacy statements, and have big legal departments and contribute to PACs to assure whatever they do is legal.
Laws that get passed from ill informed groups like the one quoted in the article simply create hassles for legitimate firms trying to do legitimate business. It will not affect the large ad firms like doubleclick and valueclick. Nor will they have any affect on the people willing to work on the fringes of society.
I am all for efforts to define and regulate adware. Such companies actually have code downloaded installed and running on people's computers. Unfortunately, I doubt legislatures will have the tech savvy to make such definitions. Especially in a world where privacy rights advocates are as befuddled by session management with cookies as they are with a trojan that includes code that tries punching holes through firewalls.
I think it is great that different newspapers try different things. It gives us a chance to see what works and what fails.
It seems to me that newspapers lose more for requiring registration than they get from that little bit of demographic information.
Newspapers that require registration end up losing boat loads of traffic from search engines and they tend to lose the valuable backward links for article citations in blogs and what not.
In the long run, of course, the most successful format for online news would be the hybrid model that gives some features for paying, others for free registration and has a good amount of info available for free to build and maintain casual web traffic.
Blogs and Interaction v Authoritative Sources
on
Meet Joe Blog
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The power of the blog comes from the acknowledgement that blogs are openly biased, unedited sources. This invites more interaction and thought than newspapers which try to pose as authoritative sources.
When you look at the way people behave in life, they really don't imbibe a piece of news until they start discussing it. The human infallabiliy of blogs invites such interaction, while the supposed objectivity of journalists repels open interaction.
Of course, we still need quality authoritative sources that produce just facts. Blogs need to co-evolve with unbiased, dry sources of information such as county records, meeting minutes or other dry sources of information.
For the last several decades I've been sticking TODO items in code written in PL/SQL and Advanced Revelation. Both programs store code in relational tables. A SQL statement finds the TODOs and displays them in a box next to what ever silly text editor I am using at the time.
An IDE is basically a friggin' little text editor. With the TODOs displayed in a SQL query screen and a text editor that brings up the line in question...I am now in serious violation of a Microsoft's patent. Damn.
This means that by doing the obvious, I am violating a trivial patent. I am ticked at trivial and obvious patents because they block us from being able to write code in the obvious way to write the code.
On the bright side, I am now morally excused from ever having to complete any of the TODOs marked in past code since I would have to get a license from Microsoft to be allowed to query the database for said items.
Sounds like a great business model that would suit a large number of tourist locations. With a few thousand bucks invested, you could live in a vacation paradise assuming that paradise has large sidewalks, and not a lot of n'ere-do-wells who hope to fund their luxurious life by knocking down tourists and taking their Segway.
Third, why did some one buy a Segway?
I can't see a reason to buy one...but it would be a fun thing to try. Which, I guess means people buying the things to rent 'em.
The main reason professors cite themself is for wee little bit of self advertisement (ahem, ahem). Actually, it is a good way to show how your ideas build upon each other. To an extent, writing is like a computer program, you build dependencies upon your earlier works.
Writers should build and refine ideas through their careers. As a person develops a voice and a style, they are likely to inject a framework of basic ideas in all of their work.
The idea that each work must be a unique idea developed unto itself is absurd. Now that we have the ability to copy, paste and link, we should take advantage of the existing new mediums.
Whether he wins or loses that case, you have to ask yourself, would you want to HIRE him to work for you?
I am not sure about the paying him type of hiring...but he has shown initiative and would have a great deal to contribute to open source development (especially, if he wings a job in a company with a good repository of juicy proprietory code.)
Actually, the poor guy is falling into one of the great dilemmas of the modern world. While there is still a need for people creating new content, there is also need for people who excel at taking constructed pieces and putting them together.
The problem with technologies like the RFID tags is that we really cannot regulate it until we know what "it" is. We have to have the list of abuses of the technology before regulators have a track record that they can act upon.
It seems to me that pre-emptive regulations generally do not acheive their goals. Often the regulations are influenced by the industry to be regulated. Generally, the regulations block a small firms from entering an industry and end up feeding the monopolies.
Preemptive regulation generally has the effect of rewarding those companies on the inside track of the regulations (the politically connected) whild disenfranchising those who do not have the political connections to the regulators. As such it is best to put off regulation until the industry has matured a little.
Preemptive regulations might be inspired by consumer fears. Lacking an actual history of abuses, the actual process of preemptive regulation tends to be controlled by the industry being regulated. As such, the regulation limits the number of players in a market and often comes up favorable to the companies being regulated.
For example, you might recall several years ago when the House of Representatives considered a spam regulation bill. Without being passed into law, spammers slapped the House Bill number on their ads because the regulation was giving them legitimacy.
Look at Internet porn. There was a great desire among legislators to find a way to block porn from kids. Without serious debates. The preemptive regulators listened to the porn dealers. The porn industry suggested that having a valid credit card number verified a person's age. Getting a credit card number is the first 90% of the battle to actually putting a charge on the credit card. While online news sources do not have a viable funding mechanism, the attempt to regulate an industry gave the porn industry the internet on a silver platter.
Trying to regulate RFID tags in their infancy is likely to simply give an market advantage to the politically connected companies that draft the legislation.
I wouldn't go for it.
Unfortunately, since RFID tags are tags purchased by businesses for internal business use, the consumer really won't have that much choice about where and when they get used.
Skipping the Linux v. Windows v. Sun debates. The main gist of the article is that there are more servers being thrown up at a significantly less cost.
To a very large extent, this is just the gradual realization of productivity increases. The scary side of the equation is the extent to which companies are pushing people out of the equations. The ever dropping margins means a tougher job market for slashdotters. Or, how should I say it. More work for lower pay.
Word to the wise: Don't believe the hype and TEST THE SETUP WITH COMPETENT ENGINEERS!
The expectation of lower costs leads to scenarios like the one described where the company is trying to get by on one subpar admin, or they push their support staff to the brink with more servers than the staff can handle...without a good plan for installing or using the servers.
Ever borrowed a book from a friend? You horrible copyright infringing thief you.
Could you please show me the part of the law that says borrowing, selling or giving away books is an infringement of a copyright? Or is this something going on in a fantasy land?
Yes, I borrow, give and sell used books all the time. No, I am not a copyright violator.
I've gave an ebook to a friend. Nope, I didn't violate a copyright there either since I gave the full copy and did not keep one for myself.
I've given ebooks to friends. I no longer have the ebook. They do. I am comfortable with the decision of having my cake or eating it. Had I kept license for the ebook, it wouldn't have been much of a gift, now, would it? I see people selling ebooks on ebay. I have not checked in to seeing if they are really seeing the books or are selling copies. The first is legitimate (assuming there was not a single use contract to the ebook). The second is a copyright violation.
I have an aquaintance who brags that he buys CDs, makes his personal copy, then gives the CD away (by giving away, I mean he tries to pay for sex with gifts). I argue that he is a crappy gift giver.
I am all for changing the laws. It seems to me, however, that we will never get legal reform as long as their is a general perception that the online crowd has any intention of ever obeying any law.
Likewise, there's more than just the/. crowd that cares about the publishing industry. The publishing industry (all the writers, musicians and content providers) will reject any law that essentially destroys their ability to make a living from their work.
My experience with the P2P crowd is that they copy music because they love the ego boost, or because they have a second means for making cash (for example including adware with the P2P program).
I am upset by the excessive length of copyrights, and the way that big publishers have corralled large segments of the market. The fact that big business is able to suppress the market by building dependencies into products is a major problem. In my opinion, the secret to reform is to emphasize those elements of copyright reform that will help small content providers against large providers, and ignore these arguments that publishing the collected works of the Beattles to a P2P server is just like sending an email or making a single backup copy of a work.
Where do we draw lines between manslaughter and murder?
There are no perfectly clean lines in life. Trying to demand that we have perfectly clean laws before we can exist is absurd. To a large extent, everything depends on intent.
If I dropped a piano from a fifth floor window and if falls on a passerby, that is manslaughter. If I wait for the ex to walk by, aim and cut the cord...it is murder. The difference between the two has very little to do with either the shape of the piano or the laws of gravity. The difference is intent, and we need courts to decide on intent. Generally intent is clear. Pointing a gun at a person and pulling a trigger is generally a good sign of intent of murder (but it could just mean stupidity). Under cooking eggs benedict and causing a person to die from food poisoning is more indicative of manslaughter, but if the courts find out I purposefully cultured salmonella for the eggs...then I am a murderer.
Emailing copies of an ebook to friends (so they won't have to pay for the book), there is clear intent on doing the copyright holder wrong.
Including information in a lawsuit is not a form of publishing. When you wish to expose wrong doing in the press, you can do so by writing your own copy with citations and references.
Those found guilty of the unauthorised distribution
P2P is a form of publishing. When you publish information, you really should play by the rules of the publishing industry.
You are correct in that the short blurb does not drawing a clean line on the difference between private communications and publishing. If Italy failed to draw this line then they have a flawed law.
It seems to me that the aim of such measures is to draw a distinction between private communications and publishing. Forwarding to an email to a friend is just communication. Forwarding an email to a mailing list or posting it online is a form of publishing.
calling P2P private communications to the world does not change the fact that it is a form of publishing.
where people have secluded themselves to have an expectation of privacy (their bathroom)
I think this only applies to occupied bathrooms. So, if you wanted to make a book of the bus station bathrooms of America. You probably could...so long as the stalls weren't occupied.
Information like this would be great for following architectural trends. Unfortunately, groups with the cash to do things like this generally aren't interested in the fuzzy cultural notions of idealists.
Whenever I am on the road, I end up taking photos of town I pass through. Of course, since 9/11, when I show up in a town and take a picture of their bridge anymore, I get a bunch of heavily armed yahoos thinking I am some type of ter'ist plotting an attack on the heart of the homeland.
In short, there should be no burden of proof on Linux's part to prove that the source was not stolen; the burden of proof must be on the accuser to prove that the source was stolen!
It might sound strange to folks with a modern education, but the notion of innocent until proven guilty was really designed to protect the innocent. It was not designed as a clever way to secure title to the things one steals. Filing the VIN off the engine block doesn't give you title to the Porsche. Nor should it be used as justification for "conveniently losing" the paper trail.
There is no justification for people who destroy or manipulate historical documentation. The innocent until proven guilty framework provides as much if not more need for quality records than the guilty until proven innocent methodology.
If we take your idea to the logical conclusion, then I would say that all Linux documentation should be printed on flash paper; so that we can destroy any incriminating evidence when the real owners of the work come to call.
As it is likely that people will leak code they do not own into open source projects, I think good documentation is extremely critical as it aids in removing the tainted source materials.
One could argue that sending toys late in May is simply a matter of wanting to get the toys on the field before the end of the game. In other words, it is impossible to conclude anything from people playing with toys other than boys love toys.
Part of the way governments enforce the local monopolies is with strict regulations on who can string fiber...when and where. I worked with a mining company that could not network two buildings on their property because the bureaucracy considered the dirt road between the buildings a public access.
why lay the infrastructure if you aren't going to own it?
One solution to the last mile problem is to let individuals own it. Having individuals owning the wire to a neighborhood NOC and being able to rent services from anyone providing services to the NOC would distribute ownership of the last mile. It also gets over number 3...individuals are not happy paying a high rent for the last mile, but would be willing to fork out bucks when they own the resource outright.
If the people (i.e. the government) owned the data infrastructure that telecoms do business on, it would allow for more competition because smaller companies could compete over the same lines without biased interferance from the owners of the lines.
The problem with this analogy is that it is the actually building of the lines where we need to concentrate our economic resources. So, if the government owns the lines, then we put an inefficient bureaucracy in charge of the area where we need the work.
When a government or single monopoly completely defines one layer of the puzzle, we create an artificial bottleneck based on the government regulation or the inner mechanizations of the monopoly. Personally, I think we need a maleable structure that allows different companies to compete at different layers.
Slashdot Mirror
I did read the article. Economically, consuming resources is just the same thing as spending cash. For a brief moment, spamming activity will stop coming from small time operations, and will come from more sophisticated outfits that buy tons of resources optimized for generating the spam.
Regardless, it is easier to talk about money than resources. Which is what the article itself chooses to do.
So, I will rephrase the message. The idea behind this and other techniques is to increase the marginal value of the spam by artificially increasing the resources consumed in sending the spam. The winners will be the people who sell the resources that get consumed. The economics is still the same.
I do admit. Saying resources rather than money, the project becomes more appealing. Spam will come from everyone according to their ability (resources) and to everyone according to their need...or something like that.
I suspect the goal of a program like this really is not to stop spam. The goal would be to increase the marginal return from the spam that gets sent and for the network to grab a piece of the action.
When someone is paying you, it is extremely difficult to make judgments on quality of the mail. I've seen lots of email lists and newsletters start with good intentions then devolve into a garbage fountain.
In the end the pay to send networks will take money from anyone.
The real goal of such schemes is simply to increase the marginal returns from the spam. As the amount of spam sent to open email accounts reaches astronomical proportions, I can't help but think that the amount of cash the spammers get per email is dropping. I can't help but think that the end goal of pay for spam is that by throwing a rich third party into the equation, they will increase their return.
I am staunchly opposed to spyware. I was disappointed with the article however. The article seemed to place dropping a cookie on the same level as using a Trojan to install a program that pop ups ads left and right.
From the article:
Come on! The easiest way to do session management is to drop a cookie. The article in question suddenly classifies the majority of interactive web sites (forums, online stores) as spyware because they drop cookies for session management. To have an online store, you have to be able to track the user as they place things in their shopping cart, then procede to checkout. To keep a shopping cart between sessions or to keep user information available for the next forum discussion...you drop cookies that extend beyond the session.
Yes, there are privacy concerns with third party cookies from large entities like doubleclick and valueclick. These companies already have privacy statements, and have big legal departments and contribute to PACs to assure whatever they do is legal.
Laws that get passed from ill informed groups like the one quoted in the article simply create hassles for legitimate firms trying to do legitimate business. It will not affect the large ad firms like doubleclick and valueclick. Nor will they have any affect on the people willing to work on the fringes of society.
I am all for efforts to define and regulate adware. Such companies actually have code downloaded installed and running on people's computers. Unfortunately, I doubt legislatures will have the tech savvy to make such definitions. Especially in a world where privacy rights advocates are as befuddled by session management with cookies as they are with a trojan that includes code that tries punching holes through firewalls.
I think it is great that different newspapers try different things. It gives us a chance to see what works and what fails.
It seems to me that newspapers lose more for requiring registration than they get from that little bit of demographic information.
Newspapers that require registration end up losing boat loads of traffic from search engines and they tend to lose the valuable backward links for article citations in blogs and what not.
In the long run, of course, the most successful format for online news would be the hybrid model that gives some features for paying, others for free registration and has a good amount of info available for free to build and maintain casual web traffic.
The power of the blog comes from the acknowledgement that blogs are openly biased, unedited sources. This invites more interaction and thought than newspapers which try to pose as authoritative sources.
When you look at the way people behave in life, they really don't imbibe a piece of news until they start discussing it. The human infallabiliy of blogs invites such interaction, while the supposed objectivity of journalists repels open interaction.
Of course, we still need quality authoritative sources that produce just facts. Blogs need to co-evolve with unbiased, dry sources of information such as county records, meeting minutes or other dry sources of information.
For the last several decades I've been sticking TODO items in code written in PL/SQL and Advanced Revelation. Both programs store code in relational tables. A SQL statement finds the TODOs and displays them in a box next to what ever silly text editor I am using at the time.
An IDE is basically a friggin' little text editor. With the TODOs displayed in a SQL query screen and a text editor that brings up the line in question...I am now in serious violation of a Microsoft's patent. Damn.
This means that by doing the obvious, I am violating a trivial patent. I am ticked at trivial and obvious patents because they block us from being able to write code in the obvious way to write the code.
On the bright side, I am now morally excused from ever having to complete any of the TODOs marked in past code since I would have to get a license from Microsoft to be allowed to query the database for said items.
Sounds like a great business model that would suit a large number of tourist locations. With a few thousand bucks invested, you could live in a vacation paradise assuming that paradise has large sidewalks, and not a lot of n'ere-do-wells who hope to fund their luxurious life by knocking down tourists and taking their Segway.
I can't see a reason to buy one...but it would be a fun thing to try. Which, I guess means people buying the things to rent 'em.
The main reason professors cite themself is for wee little bit of self advertisement (ahem, ahem). Actually, it is a good way to show how your ideas build upon each other. To an extent, writing is like a computer program, you build dependencies upon your earlier works.
Writers should build and refine ideas through their careers. As a person develops a voice and a style, they are likely to inject a framework of basic ideas in all of their work.
The idea that each work must be a unique idea developed unto itself is absurd. Now that we have the ability to copy, paste and link, we should take advantage of the existing new mediums.
I am not sure about the paying him type of hiring...but he has shown initiative and would have a great deal to contribute to open source development (especially, if he wings a job in a company with a good repository of juicy proprietory code.)
Actually, the poor guy is falling into one of the great dilemmas of the modern world. While there is still a need for people creating new content, there is also need for people who excel at taking constructed pieces and putting them together.
The problem with technologies like the RFID tags is that we really cannot regulate it until we know what "it" is. We have to have the list of abuses of the technology before regulators have a track record that they can act upon.
It seems to me that pre-emptive regulations generally do not acheive their goals. Often the regulations are influenced by the industry to be regulated. Generally, the regulations block a small firms from entering an industry and end up feeding the monopolies.
Preemptive regulation generally has the effect of rewarding those companies on the inside track of the regulations (the politically connected) whild disenfranchising those who do not have the political connections to the regulators. As such it is best to put off regulation until the industry has matured a little.
Preemptive regulations might be inspired by consumer fears. Lacking an actual history of abuses, the actual process of preemptive regulation tends to be controlled by the industry being regulated. As such, the regulation limits the number of players in a market and often comes up favorable to the companies being regulated.
For example, you might recall several years ago when the House of Representatives considered a spam regulation bill. Without being passed into law, spammers slapped the House Bill number on their ads because the regulation was giving them legitimacy.
Look at Internet porn. There was a great desire among legislators to find a way to block porn from kids. Without serious debates. The preemptive regulators listened to the porn dealers. The porn industry suggested that having a valid credit card number verified a person's age. Getting a credit card number is the first 90% of the battle to actually putting a charge on the credit card. While online news sources do not have a viable funding mechanism, the attempt to regulate an industry gave the porn industry the internet on a silver platter.
Trying to regulate RFID tags in their infancy is likely to simply give an market advantage to the politically connected companies that draft the legislation.
Unfortunately, since RFID tags are tags purchased by businesses for internal business use, the consumer really won't have that much choice about where and when they get used.
Skipping the Linux v. Windows v. Sun debates. The main gist of the article is that there are more servers being thrown up at a significantly less cost.
To a very large extent, this is just the gradual realization of productivity increases. The scary side of the equation is the extent to which companies are pushing people out of the equations. The ever dropping margins means a tougher job market for slashdotters. Or, how should I say it. More work for lower pay.
The expectation of lower costs leads to scenarios like the one described where the company is trying to get by on one subpar admin, or they push their support staff to the brink with more servers than the staff can handle...without a good plan for installing or using the servers.
Could you please show me the part of the law that says borrowing, selling or giving away books is an infringement of a copyright? Or is this something going on in a fantasy land?
Yes, I borrow, give and sell used books all the time. No, I am not a copyright violator.
I've gave an ebook to a friend. Nope, I didn't violate a copyright there either since I gave the full copy and did not keep one for myself.
I've given ebooks to friends. I no longer have the ebook. They do. I am comfortable with the decision of having my cake or eating it. Had I kept license for the ebook, it wouldn't have been much of a gift, now, would it? I see people selling ebooks on ebay. I have not checked in to seeing if they are really seeing the books or are selling copies. The first is legitimate (assuming there was not a single use contract to the ebook). The second is a copyright violation.
I have an aquaintance who brags that he buys CDs, makes his personal copy, then gives the CD away (by giving away, I mean he tries to pay for sex with gifts). I argue that he is a crappy gift giver.
I am all for changing the laws. It seems to me, however, that we will never get legal reform as long as their is a general perception that the online crowd has any intention of ever obeying any law.
/. crowd that cares about the publishing industry. The publishing industry (all the writers, musicians and content providers) will reject any law that essentially destroys their ability to make a living from their work.
Likewise, there's more than just the
My experience with the P2P crowd is that they copy music because they love the ego boost, or because they have a second means for making cash (for example including adware with the P2P program).
I am upset by the excessive length of copyrights, and the way that big publishers have corralled large segments of the market. The fact that big business is able to suppress the market by building dependencies into products is a major problem. In my opinion, the secret to reform is to emphasize those elements of copyright reform that will help small content providers against large providers, and ignore these arguments that publishing the collected works of the Beattles to a P2P server is just like sending an email or making a single backup copy of a work.
Where do we draw lines between manslaughter and murder?
There are no perfectly clean lines in life. Trying to demand that we have perfectly clean laws before we can exist is absurd. To a large extent, everything depends on intent.
If I dropped a piano from a fifth floor window and if falls on a passerby, that is manslaughter. If I wait for the ex to walk by, aim and cut the cord...it is murder. The difference between the two has very little to do with either the shape of the piano or the laws of gravity. The difference is intent, and we need courts to decide on intent. Generally intent is clear. Pointing a gun at a person and pulling a trigger is generally a good sign of intent of murder (but it could just mean stupidity). Under cooking eggs benedict and causing a person to die from food poisoning is more indicative of manslaughter, but if the courts find out I purposefully cultured salmonella for the eggs...then I am a murderer.
Emailing copies of an ebook to friends (so they won't have to pay for the book), there is clear intent on doing the copyright holder wrong.
Including information in a lawsuit is not a form of publishing. When you wish to expose wrong doing in the press, you can do so by writing your own copy with citations and references.
P2P is a form of publishing. When you publish information, you really should play by the rules of the publishing industry.
You are correct in that the short blurb does not drawing a clean line on the difference between private communications and publishing. If Italy failed to draw this line then they have a flawed law.
It seems to me that the aim of such measures is to draw a distinction between private communications and publishing. Forwarding to an email to a friend is just communication. Forwarding an email to a mailing list or posting it online is a form of publishing.
calling P2P private communications to the world does not change the fact that it is a form of publishing.
If you don't want your house photographed, you simply have to buy all the land surrounding it.
Information like this would be great for following architectural trends. Unfortunately, groups with the cash to do things like this generally aren't interested in the fuzzy cultural notions of idealists.
Whenever I am on the road, I end up taking photos of town I pass through. Of course, since 9/11, when I show up in a town and take a picture of their bridge anymore, I get a bunch of heavily armed yahoos thinking I am some type of ter'ist plotting an attack on the heart of the homeland.
It might sound strange to folks with a modern education, but the notion of innocent until proven guilty was really designed to protect the innocent. It was not designed as a clever way to secure title to the things one steals. Filing the VIN off the engine block doesn't give you title to the Porsche. Nor should it be used as justification for "conveniently losing" the paper trail.
There is no justification for people who destroy or manipulate historical documentation. The innocent until proven guilty framework provides as much if not more need for quality records than the guilty until proven innocent methodology.
If we take your idea to the logical conclusion, then I would say that all Linux documentation should be printed on flash paper; so that we can destroy any incriminating evidence when the real owners of the work come to call.
As it is likely that people will leak code they do not own into open source projects, I think good documentation is extremely critical as it aids in removing the tainted source materials.
Personally, I don't know if sending more things that don't know "right side up" to Iraq is a good decision at this point.
One could argue that sending toys late in May is simply a matter of wanting to get the toys on the field before the end of the game. In other words, it is impossible to conclude anything from people playing with toys other than boys love toys.
There are some restrictions on published media, which is why the word alleged is awkwardly inserted into media reports.
In some places the word alleged works quite well. For example "the alleged software development firm SCO..."
Part of the way governments enforce the local monopolies is with strict regulations on who can string fiber...when and where. I worked with a mining company that could not network two buildings on their property because the bureaucracy considered the dirt road between the buildings a public access.
One solution to the last mile problem is to let individuals own it. Having individuals owning the wire to a neighborhood NOC and being able to rent services from anyone providing services to the NOC would distribute ownership of the last mile. It also gets over number 3...individuals are not happy paying a high rent for the last mile, but would be willing to fork out bucks when they own the resource outright.
The problem with this analogy is that it is the actually building of the lines where we need to concentrate our economic resources. So, if the government owns the lines, then we put an inefficient bureaucracy in charge of the area where we need the work.
When a government or single monopoly completely defines one layer of the puzzle, we create an artificial bottleneck based on the government regulation or the inner mechanizations of the monopoly. Personally, I think we need a maleable structure that allows different companies to compete at different layers.