[PLUG-TALK] Fair Use, etc.
Dylan Reinhardt
dylan at dylanreinhardt.com
Fri Mar 29 05:45:24 UTC 2002
> At any rate, it should not be this hard to answer a
> simple question. Laws should be in black and white.
> The courts have taken power that they should not have
> in my opinion.
Several times in the arcane legal discussion of the last few days the assertion
has been made that laws should, by their very nature, be simple and easy
to read. A corrollary opinion seems to be that laws which are insufficiently
simple are invalid.
As far as advocating for simpler laws goes, I'm all for it. My philosophy
of law could be expressed most simply as "fewer laws, clearer laws, stricter
enforcement" but I don't get where the case can be made that complexity
or obscurity actually invalidates a law. Am I reading in here?
I'd like, for example, to see us move to a tax code that was simple enough
that any person could calculate their tax burden with a calculator. But
we, the people have demanded a system that acts to prod, push, and punish
certain forms of behavior, so that's what we've got. It sucks, but is anyone
seriously arguing that this somehow isn't the law?
The fact that the law is complex and arcane may reveal little besides the
fact that the subject matter or domain of influence is complex and intricately
nuanced. Indeed, Linux users should find this point particularly easy to
appreciate.
Many people crave operating systems with cartoon-driven, knowledge-optional
user interfaces. Most people I encounter have little interest in the subtler
points of mail transport, httpd tuning, ethernet configuration, kernel optimization
or journaling filesystems. For the layperson, computers should simply *work*
and not demand so much of the user.
Those of us who feel otherwise see tremendous benefit to actually understanding
the intricate details. After all, knowledge is power. Being able to recognize
the difference between the requirements of a decent word processing system
and a high-availability web server may be obvious to us... but the fact
that it is not obvious to the lay person does not suggest that we have simply
*made up* terminology to lock all the non-believers out of our nifty secular
priesthood.
I realize that OS design has no bearing on the law. But as we shake our
fists at a legal system too complex to describe in simple terms, isn't it
possible that we're really reacting to the natural result of a system that
deals with a large number of diverse and complecated interests and goals?
Federal law encompasses matters ranging from forestry to fuel economy, labor
relations to drug manufacturing. We can certainly have opinions about when
and how Federal law should be applied... but there are bound to be serious
complexities in even the most stripped-down and modest attempt at governance.
Dylan
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