[Buddha-l] Library.nu

[Joy Vriens]

Richard Hayes :
> If what you are getting online is for free, you are not the customer, you are the product. -Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet law (b. 1969)
Sitting on the beach of Saint-Cyr and looking at the sunset is still 
free. One day, the municipality may be forced to sell the beach, someone 
may buy it and become its « legal owner ». In which case, the sun and 
its setting will still be free, but technically speaking, it will be 
impossible to watch it without having access to the beach and paying the 
owner « his due ». The owner may add some crappy deckchairs, open a bar, 
with topless waitresses, add some live music, pole dancers and increase 
the access fee. But all I wanted to see is the sunset, which is still 
free, but not accessible unless one pays the fee that includes all the 
extras.

What I like and look for on the Internet are ideas. Ideas are the salt 
of the earth, the real stuff. But the access to ideas requires a media, 
some material form in which they can be contained or transmitted. I have 
been told once that Microsoft was planning to buy the legal rights to 
all digital representations of art. I don't know whether that actually 
happened. Google started scanning all books without copyright in public 
libraries and making them available on the Internet. These services are 
paid for through advertising and in case that ever stopped, in other 
ways. But be convinced that a toll will be levyed somehow and that art 
and literature will have their publicans, whereas this access, culture 
(not commercial commodities), ought to be a public service. And that is 
the real issue here.

Jonathan Zittrain is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law Schooland a 
co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Stanford Law 
School. CIS donors include: Bosch Corporation California I.S.P. 
Association, Inc.*Google, Inc*. KamberLaw, LLC (result of a cy pres 
settlement) Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robins LLP (result of 
a cy pres settlement) *Microsoft *National Internet Alliance Nissan 
Motor Co., Ltd. Perkins Cole LLP (result of a cy pres settlement) State 
Farm Companies The Rose Foundation Toyota Motor Engineering & 
Manufacturing North America, Inc. Volkswagen Group of America Electronic 
Research Lab (source : http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about-us)

Buddhist content : we, professor Zittrain, you, me, are the product of 
many forces interacting (pratîtyasamutpada)
Joy