> I completely agree, but I think we need to push society away from requiring for profit products into our life, or at least recognize that they have an association cost to the user. What is the reasonable expectation of a business to profit off a product that we’ve deemed “required”? Who would make or support a product they can’t profit on?
We kind of urgently need new models for certain things that start as for-profit and then fade towards more publicly owned utilities. This is the essence of the idea behind things like patents and copyright, and when we're talking about a service where the creators have been wildly successful the basic issues are mostly the same. Fair compensation, but not ownership in perpetuity. The thing about maps and similar is, it's not an idea to be protected because the idea is the easy part but the data is hard. Since google did some part of the actual mapping, they certainly deserve credit, but of course the whole thing could not exist if GPS wasn't essentially available as a public utility. Maybe if they want to be stingy with the map data forever, they should pay license fees for the GPS technology, since that's a piece of infrastructure they outsource to the public? Or for our individual data, since it's required to build their models?
Regardless of your stance on political/economic ideology, surely individuals can agree that it's not sustainable for society to be beholden to for-profit corporations forever for things like maps, the ability to use a flashlight or a toaster, the ability to open doors on houses or cars you own, or access to water/air. Maintenance is a real issue for most technology even after it's figured out, so probably the corporations should be forced towards spinning off actually separated co-ops/nonprofits/utilities in the fullness of time.
So basically wild profits and all the awful antisocial and anti-competitive behaviour you can get away with, but having some explicit expiration date for service-monopoly as well as idea-monopoly. And as for the question of motivation.. does it really disincentivize creative crooks to know that the next generation of crooks will need a new scam? I think not because the whole point is that this type of person is out for themselves.
> Since google did some part of the actual mapping, they certainly deserve credit, but of course the whole thing could not exist if GPS wasn't essentially available as a public utility. Maybe if they want to be stingy with the map data forever, they should pay license fees for the GPS technology, since that's a piece of infrastructure they outsource to the public? Or for our individual data, since it's required to build their models?
The problem with this is that it doesn’t really make sense in the context of the world we live in.
Google built the maps and the servers to host them. Google is entitled to monetize their property (in today’s world). Sure GPS is free to them, but that was a gift to society decades ago and it has spawned countless life-improving enterprises.
They already do pay for access to our data - by giving us maps which are not free to them to create and maintain. We all assume that these companies owe us money for the data but if you didn’t want to give Google data you should be paying a fee to access their maps. Companies used to charge - a lot- for maps and that’s why Google maps was amazing. Just look at how much they and others charge for map APIs.
Let's talk about a community that needs water, but doesn't have the capital to drill a deep enough well. Private company comes in, drills the well, and the people rejoice.
But then the price-gouging comes, and it's not exactly simple for anyone to "compete", because if another corporation has deep enough pockets to drill a well in the first place then a) they aren't likely to have gotten that way from generosity, and b) in terms of profit it's much easier to go dig another well elsewhere and just start squeezing a different community.
Exactly how much and for how long do we want to let the company squeeze people since they are "entitled to monetize their property"? What if they give the water away for free, but the "price" to the community is that they are subject to medical experiments without their knowledge or their informed consent, or just without any real ability to opt out? What if every well in every town looks like this, so that people can't vote with their feet?
This is clearly a problem in the limit.. anyone who thinks this general scenario is fine, or that it automatically works itself out somehow is not being serious.
Water just makes this a simple story to understand. There's more nuance and less urgency in a different setting, but most of the basic issues remain the same.
> they [google] should pay license fees for the GPS technology
but you yourself don't pay for your own access to GPS - so why should google foot a bill?
> access to water/air.
there's no universally free access to water. And i imagine in a future dystopian world, air could be metered out for which you have to pay, or breath polluted air.
> having some explicit expiration date for service-monopoly as well as idea-monopoly.
i think this is just another way of having the gov't authorities nationalize assets. If google maps is so useful, and you can't live without it, they are by definition generating value and they needs to be paid, in perpetuity as long as said value from the service is being produced. It's actually somewhat amazing that they're able to sustain this value production fueled by purely using advertising and private data extraction/exploitation.
I mean, if you use farms as a example of your idea of expiration dates, it will start to sound like communism!
We kind of urgently need new models for certain things that start as for-profit and then fade towards more publicly owned utilities. This is the essence of the idea behind things like patents and copyright, and when we're talking about a service where the creators have been wildly successful the basic issues are mostly the same. Fair compensation, but not ownership in perpetuity. The thing about maps and similar is, it's not an idea to be protected because the idea is the easy part but the data is hard. Since google did some part of the actual mapping, they certainly deserve credit, but of course the whole thing could not exist if GPS wasn't essentially available as a public utility. Maybe if they want to be stingy with the map data forever, they should pay license fees for the GPS technology, since that's a piece of infrastructure they outsource to the public? Or for our individual data, since it's required to build their models?
Regardless of your stance on political/economic ideology, surely individuals can agree that it's not sustainable for society to be beholden to for-profit corporations forever for things like maps, the ability to use a flashlight or a toaster, the ability to open doors on houses or cars you own, or access to water/air. Maintenance is a real issue for most technology even after it's figured out, so probably the corporations should be forced towards spinning off actually separated co-ops/nonprofits/utilities in the fullness of time.
So basically wild profits and all the awful antisocial and anti-competitive behaviour you can get away with, but having some explicit expiration date for service-monopoly as well as idea-monopoly. And as for the question of motivation.. does it really disincentivize creative crooks to know that the next generation of crooks will need a new scam? I think not because the whole point is that this type of person is out for themselves.