Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes | Linux Journal

Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes | Linux Journal

Definitely one of the finest and most insightful essays I have seen in a long time. Doc Searls does an incredible job of explaining just why network carriers and content industries cannot ever be allowed to control the Internet and its content. Secondly, his characterization of the entire debate as a battle of competing metaphors is so utterly penetrating that I've been left completely speechless. Simply brilliant.

Why is it that legislators always respond to things by adding more laws? Most of the problems with the world's legal systems stem from the fact that there are too many laws, not too few. Government power should always be painfully limited. History shows that eventually they just end up interfering with every aspect of our lives, when it is we who should be breathing down their necks, watching them like hawks, just waiting for an opportunity to toss them out of office. Kill corruption by making it so tremendously difficult that they die of heart attacks for fear of being discovered. Natural selection at its best.

Sadly, no such system has ever been put into practice as far as I know. If it ever is, I recommend basing it on the following principle - aside from the fundamental rights, no law should be valid for more than 10 years. After that, it should be unceremoniously thrown out unless someone can make a clear case for its continued existence at that point in time, at which point it should be rewritten before being passed again.

Why is this good? Because the sheer pain of having to redo the same stuff over and over again will force the lawmakers to pare the law books down to a very small core set of laws that can be effectively dealt with. Naturally, this would require a total revamping of the judicial and legal systems, so I don't foresee it happening in any currently existing society. Perhaps in a post-Singularity society, something like this might be implemented from the time of conception. It might just take posthuman minds to pull it off.

And while they're at it, they might consider simplifying the tax code...