Entries Tagged 'Politics' ↓

Dear Honorable Representative Honda:

Silicon Valley needs an absolute immunity that limits damages for auto-driving cars to $10 million per death or injury.

Silicon Valley is looking for another trillion dollars worth of growth to fuel.  One great idea is limited by the absence of barely-controversial legal framework.   You could provide this framework, enable use to get back to work, make money, and make everyone happy.

Everyone includes the seed level start-ups based on Stanford’s historic win on the DARPA Grand Challenge auto-driving contest, the 40,000 Americans that die each year from accidents, and my six year old who is more danger from automobiles than any other source.   The primary hold-ups are legal, not technical.

Good legislation would specify maximum damages, perhaps indexed to COLA.  The maximum amount would need to include any payments for negligence, wrongful death, unsuitability, and fines among all possible parties from designers, software, manufacturers, and dealers.  Having some maximum liability amount, any amount, means that companies can go build in liability and proceed.  If the legislation only covered cars manufactured until 2030, that would be plenty.

One licensed driver in 5,000 currently dies from car accidents every year.   If an American company reduces that number to one in 50,000, it should not be destroyed by the variability of the court system.

Please sponsor such a bill, which would likely be debated in your Appropriations/Commerce subcommittee.

Charles Merriam

Problem: People Fail To Understand the Whole “Gays Can Marry” Thing

Solution: A T-Shirt!  It’s Always The Solution

FIRST THE COLOREDS…

THEN THE WOMEN…

NOW THE GAYS?

LIBERALS AND THEIR “RIGHTS”

Problem: Empty Mall Slots and No Libraries

Solution: Instant Temporary Libraries

Malls need full storefronts to attract traffic; too many empty storefronts leads to fewer shoppers browsing through the mall. The mall can cease to be a destination. On the other hand, a mall wants to charge a premium for its retail space, stores want long term leases to capitalize on their investments, and so temporary dead mall space is a normal part of life. Less innovate malls content themselves with renting out the space to a fly-by-night “Christmas Store”.

Turn the mall space into a temporary library.

Overnight, a branch library could exist. Many of the usual library and business rules could be relaxed for this civic minded venture, including rent. The library could pop into existence with nothing more than a couple hundred paperback books, a simplistic check out system or even an honor system, and a box for returns. It would slightly more challenging than a bookmobile. If Internet were available, the library could also put up their entire catalog with a “click here to have it ready for you next visit” functionality such as found at my library. People would return to the mall in order to return library books and to pick up ordered library books. As long as you are there, might as well have lunch or do a little shopping.

This type of approach has worked in the past. Red Ink Studios existed, rent free, in Santana Row for some time with a clear understanding that they would vacate within thirty days of paying tenant being found. This generated more foot traffic to the rest of the outdoor mall than would another empty store front.

The most contentious issue opposing adoption is simple: it’s different. Neither property management nor public libraries are particularly innovative. It would be a good for libraries, with increased visibility and a location with new patrons. It would be good for malls with increased traffic to the mall and new customers that may normally shy away from malls.

Libraries reel from the rapid changes of the Internet, digital media, and our changing patterns of connectiveness. Many libraries could rise to these challenges.

Problem: Some inventions still slip into obscurity

Solution: Publish all provisional and abandoned patents after 10 years.

General Background:

The patent system is a marvelous institution. It provides a contract between the inventor and the state that says “If you give me a state-enforced monopoly for a couple decades, I will give my invention to humanity from then on. Also, I’ll write up the idea in sufficient detail that others can replicate and improve upon it.” This replaces the secrets of manufacture of the ancient world where advanced nautical instruments, which has lost many inventions.

The patent system is used in almost every country in the world. This creates a “land-grab” of inventions that companies seek to exploit. The “land-grab” has been on-going for over a century. A long term effect is that many previously amazing ideas are in the public domain. Zippers, microwave ovens, LEDs, computer components, encryption schemes, and other advances march into the free public domain at a predictable rate. Everything that was manufactured twenty five years ago can be made without infringing on patents.

About Provisional and Abandoned Patents:

Inventions, the creations of humans, are still lost and forgotten when a patent fails to issue. Provisional patents are partially described patents used to save the date of invention, and are destroyed unless a full patent is written within a year. Abandoned patents are patents where a patent is requested (filed), but never issued. Abandoned patents fail to issue when the company does not wish to pay the issue fees or has gone bankrupt; where the company loses interest; where the patent examiner raises sustainable rejections; and where the company has decided to keep the technology as a trade secret. The last case is rare: companies can evaluate if a trade secret is the best protection.

Unless the pending patent is made public, which is common for international patents, the information and invention are lost to the public interest forever. We should publish these provisional and abandoned patents to improve the public welfare. The publication does constitute a small tax on the inventors: one could not file a provisional patent and later decide to make the item a Trade Secret. This tax goes near zero if the provisional and abandoned patents are only made public after a decade. Even a delay of 17 years, the term of most patents, would enhance the public.

This is too long term a fix for most politicians to consider.

Problem: Every editor, video game, and drawing program has a hard to learn short-cut system.

Solution: Make a generic system for printing out the keyboard shortcuts.

Every program has keyboard shortcuts, and usually a keyboard diagram is a good way to describe them. The VI Cheat Sheet shows commands using a stylized keyboard and color groupings of commands, resulting in a high information density. Putting together this cheat-sheet took appreciable effort; while Emacs is about the same age as VI, Emacs has no such diagram online.

There have been dozens of commercial companies selling preprinted keyboard templates. This shareware claims to generate keyboard templates, though it is old and limited. What is needed is a good open source program that will grow to accommodate an increasing number of needs.

At a minimum the software would accommodate:

• Command sets would store the key information for an application. For example, the VI template worries about the entire keyboard, color modifiers by group, and multiple commands per key by understanding modifiers such as control, alt, or an internal mode. Icons could be attached to each command, and icon libraries could be managed.
• Print layouts would store information about printing out the commands. Some outputs are generic PDFs, such as a printed quick reference in order of key or by grouping, or a diagram of a keyboard like the above VI Cheat Sheet. Print layouts would also understand about printing template strips for function keys based on the specific type of keyboard, cutout strips for complex templates, or small labels to put on the keys.

This separates the commands for a particular program from the way it is printed. That is, once I add the keyboard commands for Emacs to a public site, I can then print various quick reference cards and a keyboard template that fits my specific keyboard. Also, I can add a new print layout for my spiffy new laptop and then print templates for my favorite programs. This pair of use cases would make development self-sustaining.

This would be fun.

Problem: Copyright law is absurd because of its scope and duration. People fail to understand how absurd copyright law has become, except for a few industry associations that are enforcing rigorously. People need to see the extent of the problem to be persuaded to change the law.
Solution: Some choice posters are always fun. A poster from the fictitious CIA (Comedic Industry Association) would explain the dire legal ramification of retelling a joke, or of forwarding one in email.

• Forwarding that joke you heard from the Daily Show could cost you your annual salary.
• Retelling a joke you heard on a nightly comedy show is no more legal than singing a copyrighted song in public.
• You wouldn’t rob a bank, so why would you retell that joke?
• Do you have a Clearance of Rights for that joke? Just because your grandfather taught it to you, doesn’t make it safe. Some jokes told back in 1920 are still in copyright.
• We need to enforce this because some comedians are starving in the street.

Like all good parodies, this one tells the truth. Once the joke has been written down or recorded,it is copyrighted. If the copyright is registered, then statutory damages apply. That is, just telling the could cost you a judgement of up to $150,000. On a practical matter, the joke can have its copyright registered just before a lawsuit, guaranteeing at last $750 per infringement, e.g., $75,000 for forwarding the joke to 100 people. Now what are the economics of this?

On one side, suing your viewers might net you fewer viewers. This may be powerful incentive to the currently syndicated shows like “The Daily Show”, “The Tonight Show”, or other valuable properties. On the other side, many comics were hot once and are no longer at the peak of stardom. Hunting down jokes from “I Love Lucy” shows would drawf the value of the lost DVD revenues. The same could be said for any show off the air for more than a year.

Some example of this practice in other areas include:

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) makes revenue by suing employers with pirated software. They operate a tip line, appealing mostly to disgruntled employees.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) makes revenue suing individuals suspected of piracy. Usually, the procure some revenue from the threat of the expense of litigation regardless of merits. The RIAA is being sued for extortion.

This comes back to an unfortunate truth about bad law: it makes what the public feels unethical to be legal and profitable. It is the responsibility of citizens to attempt to fix a bad law.

One small change in the law that would make sense and head of a few problems in HealthCare.

Problem: Electronic health records are stored in proprietary formats. In a dispute with the software provider, doctors may not be able to access existing records.

Solution: Require that records be turned over in a timely manner, much the same as the requirements for lawyers returning all client files. For electronic files, require that PDFs or equivalent printable information for each patient be turned over. At the worst, a hospital could fall back onto paper records.

While this would have small regulatory burden on the industry, it would relieve concerns about adopting electronic records and would serve the public good.

Problem: Court reporters own the transcripts to all the trails for which they are the transcriber. This denies public review of the trials, causes a loss of historical record, and generally increases litigation costs.

Solution: Court reporters should be paid the basic transcription cost, shared equally by the prosecution and defense. This guaranteed transcription cost should be slightly more than two transcripts, which is what court reporters make on almost all trials. Also, the court reporter would retain a limited copyright for ten business day, after which the transcript would be released into the public domain.

What Happens: Court reporters still earn a good living, perhaps a slightly better one. Court reporters still have the chance of a “lottery ticket” for drawing the court case that is a media circus. If the news media is interested in a case, they will still purchase a transcript before it goes into the public domain. On the other hand, all transcripts will go into the public domain for later analysis.

Short term copyrights are not new. For example, stock quotes are copyrighted for only a few minutes. This does require a federal law change. The only downside is that an impovished defendent may be required to pay for the transcript; a small amount compared to all other costs involved.

Update 10/10/2006: I checked with a few sites, notably the National Court Reporters Association, and found this white paper. It appears that copyright per se does not apply, but innumerable state rules and laws apply. The short version is that court reporters are still deprived of their guaranteed sale of two copies of a deposition, but the state and other attorneys are deprived of electronic copies. In California, an ascii-text elctronic copy may cost about $5,000 without rights to copy.

This is just a small idea, with low cost and low resistance.

Problem: Sneaky junk mailers try to make their envelopes look like official government mailings

Solution: Every piece of mail from the Federal or State government should have the same official seal.
Yes the Department of Obscure Services can have its own logo, but the government seal would be first. Even your lowly city government could place the seal first, as long it was followed by a logo that said “City of …”. A good seal might be something as simple as a square box with the words “GOVERNMENT MAIL”. Postal Service regulations could prohibit any mail with anything near this seal.

The details for the post office would need to spelled out:

• No private mail with a box or other enclosure in the corner.
• No boxes or enclosures anywhere on the envelope with the word “GOVERNMENT”, “MAIL” or “OFFICIAL”
• No boxes or enclosures anywhere on the envelope in light blue

This would need to be phased in over a few years. The primary cost would be those agencies that now need to print light blue onto their envelopes. Even these could just print in black and white if necessary.