Re: [projectvrm] Our new ToS - comments welcome

[Renee Lloyd < >]

Did you receive any feedback?  

Renee Lloyd

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On Jul 25, 2014, at 6:14 PM, StJ < "> > wrote:

Just realised that I hadn't changed the subject line..  any comments welcome!

StJ 

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On 25 Jul 2014, at 19:56, StJ < "> > wrote:

Hi all, 

We'd love to hear your thoughts and comments on our new Terms of Service.

Citizenme is a service designed to put digital citizens back in control of their own data. As the service progresses, this will include the ability to share data (including intent) for reward (VRM).

We just posted the new draft ToS on the our blog for a review/feedback period. They are reciprocal and have been reviewed by a specialist law firm. 

http://www.citizenme.com/blog/new-proposed-terms-service-citizenme/

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Cheers

StJ 

 

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On 25 Jul 2014, at 16:59, Devon M T Loffreto < "> > wrote:

Seems the different perspective is centered around "administered reality" versus "personally actionable reality". Correct?

Anyone may exercise property rights without complying with administered Rights. That is the basis of the est $2 Trillion dark economy many articles are written about. But from perspective of Society, that $2 Trillion economy is administratively "illegal".

That doesn't stop it from existing of course. Laws are only as good as they are enforceable.

Crosbie, seems to me, is a constant reminder of what comes first and is an inherent Right structurally vested in the living by existence itself... versus that which is imagined to be true and always comes after the Right to express natural Rights, even if at risk of being viewed counter to the imagined Rights of Society and its administered context.

Silence and non-action are natural Rights that could be construed to produce "privacy"...but "privacy" is not a natural Right in Society.

The Right to produce "property" is a natural Right, but the administration of that Right is contextual to any Society, and thus not inherently availed as a "legal Right" without due process.

The "Right to Invent" is thus contextual to both the Individuals personal Sovereign origin, and the administration systems notion of Sovereign National Law... and these can be wildly out of step at any time and in any place.

In fact, the more precise and rigid the administration of Rights becomes, the greater the likelihood that Individual Rights will be dissipated. And if the source of Sovereign authority has been mis-construed, the greater the likelihood this dissipation will empower the administration system over Individual Rights.

On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 11:26 AM, Phil Windley < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

On Jul 25, 2014, at 2:20, "Crosbie Fitch" < "> > wrote:

>> From: Phil Windley
>> This is only half of the story.  People and companies earn
>> money for either labor or rents. Rents happen because someone
>> has exclusive control over capital or rights of some kind
>> (i.e. the right to publish a particular work, manufacturer a
>> specific product, drive a car for hire in a specific city,
>> run a hotel, etc.)
>
> Most of the 'rents' you indicate have only become possible with the power of
> the state, via privileges such as copyright and patent, and other
> licensing/zoning laws (permitting otherwise proscribed acts).
>
> On The Internet some of these privileges are rather ineffective, e.g.
> copyright.

I disagree. Property and exclusivity have existed as long as there was one person more powerful than another. What the state did was to create a monopoly on violence so that property, exclusivity, and other rights could be enforced in a way that everyone thought was fair (theoretically). Along the way it also made all these activities legible so that it could tax them.  :)

>> To ignore the role capital and exclusive rights have played
>> through time is to significantly slant the story.
>
> It is also important to understand the difference between natural rights and
> state granted 'rights' (a natural right annulled in the majority, to be
> left, by exclusion, in the hands of a few), e.g. the difference between
> being naturally able to exclude others from the manuscript in your desk
> drawer, and being unnaturally able to exclude others from the manuscripts in
> their desk drawers.
>
> If you know what power people really have (vs that which they imagine they
> have), then you can engineer systems that really work (vs those that don't,
> except in our imagination).

Agreed, a useful distinction.

>> You may not like that this model exists and has existed, but
>> cannot simply wish it away by ignoring it.
>
> Indeed.
>
> Similarly, you cannot wish that which is ineffective into effectiveness,
> however effective you believe it once was, or should be.
>
> Either publishers of eBooks have the power to prevent people copying them,
> or they don't.

Turns out they do. The block chain has proven that it's possible to make dataions behave like fermions. That is, it's possible to create data that can only appear to exists (for practical purposes) in one place at any given time. I belief that means that we could also make digital books behave like physical books.

Turns out we were quite wrong in years past when we said there was no way to prevent copying on the Internet. There is and Satoshi proved it.

Whether it's a good model for society to support or not is a different question, of course, but from an engineering perspective, it's completely possible.

>> Readers of a book aren't really paying an author for her
>> work, even if they pay her directly. That is, unless they are
>> paying her for her labor directly and then gaining ownership
>> of end product it is not labor.
>
> They may not be today, but payment contingent upon labour is the fundamental
> exchange they must revert to when a state granted privilege is ineffective
> in extracting 'rents'.

So you're saying that property rights are a state granted privilege and not a natural right? Like I said above, I disagree. Property rights existed long before states and continue to exist after state authority breaks down.

>> I similarly fear attempts to cast VRM as "about privacy" or
>> "taking back control" since they have similar messages.
>
> I don't think VRM is about privacy (though some do), or even about
> discretion (that some mistake for privacy).
>
> What control have people lost that they can take back?
>
> People may well lack facilities, and there may be an effective imbalance in
> terms of bargaining ability, and VRM should greatly help rectify that
> imbalance.
>

We are agreed on these points I think.

We need to focus on balancing power and other goods will flow from that.