[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by PvK:
Jack Simth, sorry for not quoting, but it's too tedious.

It's okay - I usually remove quotes of me anyway when I am replying.

Originally posted by PvK:

For corporate charters, I was thinking of more recent US situations rather than British crown charters. In the 19th century, for example, corporations were formed to establish large companies for things like interstate railroad construction. They had to be approved by government to ensure they were doing something for the common good, and not forming an evil for-greed only monster like we have dominating today's economies. No doubt there was still plenty of corruption, but at least the power was theoretically in the hands of the public to deny the existence of large powerful organizations whose purpose is solely to maximize its own profit margin and power.

That's just government contracting, which the railroads needed to get the land to build the tracks on. If they'd had the money for it (and the land was for sale) they could have bought all the land they were building the tracks on and done it without a charter of any kind, which is why I figured that you meant the old European system. And actually, many types of buisness do require charters - in the form of licenses.

Originally posted by PvK:
You suggested "a significant slip up would cause, not a fine, but a total cease and desist order with frozen assets for five or ten years." for corporations - sounds good to me.

Which was exactly my point - if you make corporations count as people, then you need to adjust things slightly so that they are treated like people; a total cease and desist is very similar to a prison sentence; freezing their assests just prevents it from being a death sentence; apparently you just hadn't thought the implications of corps counting the same as private citizens through.

Originally posted by PvK:

"It isn't always corperations that have problems with others duplicating their work - I have read a fair number of Online rants from independant authors that were having the same problem, especially in cases where an upright character was put in compormising positions."
- You mean, taking someone else's fictional character, and creating fiction about it where it does perverse things or gets killed or whatever? That's an interesting question for society to decide if it wants to legislate against. I'd say it's pretty mean and insensitive to do so, but I'm not sure I'd want a law prohibiting it.

I agree there is an issue with people pretending other people's work is theirs. I just think the patent and copyright laws are unsatisfactory, and are abused by many lawyers and corporations. It's a tough question with a lot of grey areas, it seems to me. In the absence of a fair system, I'd rather freedom prevailed rather than unjust enforcement.

The modern copyright and patent system wouldn't be nearly as bad if there was a decent time cap on them. Of course, the only problem with "fair" or "decent" is that everyone has different definitions of them when it comes down to specific implementation.

Originally posted by PvK:

Regarding Alice's comic example,
...
It seems to me you are trying to enforce a certain unnatural market situation. It's up to Alice and her publisher to exploit her own commercial success. If Bruce's SE4 mod makes a lot of money for SE4, that's an unrelated market, and a natural success due to SE4's wonderful mod-ability, which it fully deserves, and is a natural product of the gaming market. It would be a real shame to say that generic modable game engines need to be outlawed, in order to protect an unnatural monopoly on the right of private citizens to generate free fan shipsets or mods for a generic game engine!

I didn't say anything about outlawing SEIV; present law and rulings dictate that an object is leagal, not if it has no illeagal purpose, but if it has some leagal purpose, except for those things which are expressly outlawed (like crack). This is a small portion of the reason it is leagal to have butcher-knives in your kitchen. I was just trying to point out how Bruce could unintentionally hurt Alice by using her characters without her permission, which you had seemed to be denying was possible.

Originally posted by PvK:

It's very similar to what Intel, Microsoft, and media megacorps are trying to foist onto the computer and media recorder industries! Humans have developed technology which could allow everyone to quickly and freely share all digital media, but these corporations are trying to criminalize, monitor, and prevent the simple act of copying digital information. Microprocessors that are hard-wired to check every data copy for "digital rights", etc. It's an amazing power grab, but I don't think it can Last forever.

No, that's someting different - they are trying very hard to reverse the above law+rulings on what makes an object leagal, changing it to "It must have no illegal purpose." Very different, and yes, an amazing power grab. It is actually quite leagle to make a backup copy of stuff you have a license to - you just aren't allowed to distribute them, modified or not, free or not, without totally transferring the license and all copies to a single recipient (many licenses prohibit trasfer).

Originally posted by PvK:
Through good education that teaches people to think for themselves and question trends rather than follow them.

Individually, by pointing stupid herd behavior out to the more intelligent and receptive members of the species, and resisting stupid herd behavior wherever possible.

There have been a lot of people trying to design an education system that will do that for a long time; so far, they have had only very limited success with individuals that would likely have no problems with that in the first place. The other problem is that such attempts usually require a surprisingly small class size, which isn't going to happen until the school system gets considerably more funding.

Originally posted by PvK:

How often are you entertained by American advertizing? How often is it mind-wrenching, moronic, inane, insulting, illiterate, vice-promoting, annoying-as-hell garbage?

I find it depends on which shows I'm watching, which channel I am watching them on, and what time of day it is. Try it during a good documentary (and note: I said good documentary).

Originally posted by PvK:
Hmm, how about software corps like Microslop and Harborg securing monopolies on their markets by tactics such as buying up creative smaller companies and then laying off their staff and making crap Versions of their products?

That's what anti-trust laws are for; unfortunately, they aren't always enforced as diligently as they need to be.

Originally posted by PvK:
How about McDonald's? How about corporate media? All vile crimes against goodness, if you ask me.

The problem with corporate media is more a problem of a glut of channels; when there were only two or three channels available for any given area, there were only a few good show ideas a year, and so the bad ones tended to get thrown out. Now, you can pipe a few hundred channels into a household, but there are still only a few good show ideas a year. Unfortunately, it is surprisingly difficult to sort a good idea out from a bad idea beforehand, so the good ideas don't get the relative budget they desreve, and seldom get prime time. As for McDonalds, if people stop buying their food, they will eventually go away.

Originally posted by PvK:

PvK

Am I correct in assuming that we both agree that cutting down on the amount of time patents and copyrights Last would help (though still not be perfect)?