Re: "xurl?

[Andrew Pam <avatar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> By the way, I am coming in late to the discussion, so please refer me
> to the FAQ if this has been handled before, but what is to stop someone
> from transcopyrighting A B C D E F G H I G K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X
> Y Z and demanding that their transcopyright be respected (i.e., all
> usage requires micropayments to the transcopyrightor)  Or for that
> matter, the bits 0 and 1?

There is nothing to stop anyone preparing a document containing all the
characters in the ASCII set and transcopyrighting it.  However, there
is no obligation on anyone to use these bytes - they can equally well
use the same characters from anywhere else.  This would not be a legally
enforceable breach of transcopyright for the same reason it would not
be a breach of copyright.  Check with a copyright lawyer for more details.

> This may seem like idle nonsense, but it raises the questions of "What
> are the limits of transcopyright?", and "Are all bits equally
> valuable?"

In the Xanadu system, the value of bits is assigned by their author.
It is then up to the readers to decide if they are willing to pay the
price!  The network may be a "perfect market", where it is always
possible to discover the price of all sources of the same or similar
merchandise.  (There is an interesting experiment along these lines
where a program consults all the CD retailers on the Internet and
gives you the lowest price for any CD of your choice.)

Share and enjoy,
		*** AVATAR ***
-- 
<mailto:avatar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>                  Andrew Pam
<http://www.aus.xanadu.com/xanadu/>             Coordinator, Xanadu Australia
<http://www.glasswings.com.au/GlassWings/>      Technical Editor, Glass Wings
<http://www.sericyb.com.au/sc/>                 Manager, Serious Cybernetics
P.O. Box 409, Canterbury VIC 3126 Australia     Phone +61 3 96511511