Re: Owning a piece of my mind

[Eric Eldred <eldred@mediaone.net>]

Anders Andersson wrote:
> 

> I doubt the software developers would use this to tax the work of
> their individual customers in general, since collecting license
> fees would be an administrative nightmare even _with_ automated
> systems such as Ted Nelson's version of hypertext, and the users
> would rebel against such fees fairly quickly by switching to other
> software vendors.

I'm not sure this is not technically feasible or even easy.

The technology framework is moving from the WordStar-type
applications to the online-object-on-demand realm.  If you
go to www.biztalk.org you will see Microsoft's first foray
into the idea that business-to-business communication needs
to be standardized around XML schemas. They will help with
the standardization, and provide (for $) the tools to work
with the schemas.  When their objects are available online
(with SOAP) then using them would require a license, and
it might not be hard to arrange for each "hit" to their
web page for the software entail an automatic transfer of
funds from your personal or corporate Microsoft Wallet to
theirs.

One interesting implication of the GPL is that once it
is included in software, it "contaminates" other software.
In the same way, embroidering Microsoft software into the
online web (with objects on demand) would seem to involve
the same contamination via licenses of the copyrighted and
patented software.  But if the Microsoft method is invalid,
would not be the GPL process too?

I don't think you need start with the idea that anyone using
a word from a dictionary need license the word from its
inventor.  But with completely digital products the principle
that everything can be locked up as "intellectual property"
and then licensed is pretty much accepted.  Then moving from
that to the idea of digital books or music as indistinguishable
from software or other digital works is not hard.  The problem
will be in how to maintain the principles of law that have
been built up to protect the public domain (since these
principles were founded on increasingly obsolete print
technology, and are extended to the digital realm only by
analogy.)  

In that I am not hopeful.  The corporations with
their expensive lawyers are all in favor of strong protection,
and they have lobbied successfully the compliant polititians.
The public doesn't realize what is going on.  The technologists
who might inform them are too caught up in their value-free
technical work to be worried much about these problems. The
libertarians on the net seem to feel that the free market
will solve these problems automatically.  And many of us are
scared to death and will head for the hills when these dire
predictions prove true.

It's not just software, online music and books, and other
already obviously digital works.  It is also medicine, agriculture,
traditional knowledge, many other parts of our common culture
that are being propertized and made into cash flows for the
giant multinational corporations based in the rich countries,
that sell to the rich countries and deprive the poorest
countries of their livelihoods.  This is the important point
that the Seattle WTO event signifies:  intellectual property
law in a digital age is central to an increasingly globalized
economy, and its conflict with our human rights and protection
by constitutional law must be brought out into the open.  One
need not resort to speculation about something that might or
might not happen in the next millennium:  the next millennium
is already upon us!
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