Lynn Winebarger writes: > I know there's plenty of laws that might "interfere with [X's] best > judgement", but if X's best judgement were to, say, sell defective > products, I'm not too likely to care about his not being able to > legally make such a desicion. People sell defective products all the time. I try to open a can of beans with a screwdriver, and cut a gash in my countertop. Whose fault is that? A compiler bug in gcc causes my X-ray machine to over-radiate and kill a patient. Whose fault is that? The person who wrote the bug? The person who made gcc into a binary? Me, for using it? The patient for trusting me? It's not obvious, and any decision you come to is going to be specific to that case. These a serious, serious issues for a free software business. Who do you want making these decisions? You, or some legislator who's never made a business decision in his life, who has no money at risk, and no stake in the outcome other than getting re-elected? It's better to let people contract the liability among themselves. It would be interesting to hear if anyone has had or has chosen to face that issue. Perhaps if we can establish a standard contract for free software liability, we can avoid having one forced down our throats. > A lot of his argument is pointing out that such legislation is already > being made. Because most people seemed to think "cyberspace" is > unregulated (though you, and everyone else on the list may be more savvy > than that). No, it's that cyberspace has greatly reduced the cost of doing business between jurisdictions. Everyone lives on a border now, and can go jurisdiction-shopping. Don't like the Internic's rules for domain names? Go get yours from the King of Tonga. You want to keep your money in a gold-backed currency? Put your money in www.egold.com -- they only charge 1% to transfer egold from one account to another, and they're happy to transfer pennies at a time. The only bad thing about egold is that you must transfer currency or gold, and they charge an exchange fee. Deposits via a credit card are not acceptable. However, if you've got a long-term relationship with a customer, egold could be a very nice way to accept money from them. > > Some people justify government because it solves public goods > > problems. All you have to do is create a good law and the market no > > longer fails. But it just moves the public good problem to that of > > making good law. > > Like it or not, we live in a society. As a society, we make choices > about how we want our society to work. Government is the tool through > which such choices are made. While I'll agree it doesn't always work in > an ideal (or near-ideal) manner, it's still closer than just giving up. I agree that we need to make choices. I prefer to make my choices known effectively -- every day if possible. By buying and selling, I reshape society with every purchase or sale I make. By buying carefully I get all the benefit of my purchase. This has an externality effect of supporting good sellers and punishing bad sellers. So someone who chooses less carefully than I has a better choice. On the other hand, if I try to get a good law enacted, I pay all the cost and very only a tiny fraction of that value back in the law. If I fail to get the law enacted, I have lost my investment. -- -russ nelson <sig@russnelson.com> http://russnelson.com Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok | "Ask not what your country 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | can force other people to Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX | do for you..." -Perry M.