It may be possible to wring consistency from the “open” manifesto Google SVP of Product Management Jonathan Rosenberg published earlier this week, but I can’t.
He correctly extols the virtues of openness in technology and data for its pro-competitive effects. Closed systems may be profitable in the short run, but they are weak innovation engines:
[A] well-managed closed system can deliver plenty of profits. They can also deliver well-designed products in the short run — the iPod and iPhone being the obvious examples — but eventually innovation in a closed system tends towards being incremental at best (is a four blade razor really that much better than a three blade one?) because the whole point is to preserve the status quo. Complacency is the hallmark of any closed system. If you don’t have to work that hard to keep your customers, you won’t.
But his paean to openness draws a tight line around Google’s profitable products: Continue reading →
… could be illegal under a proposed Massachusetts (per Boing Boing) law that would make it a crime to “photograph with ‘lascivious intent’ a person over the age of 60 or a person with a disability who has been declared mentally incompetent.” Like the recent prosections of teens for sending nude pictures of themselves on Myspace under child pornography laws, the Massachusetts proposal would criminalize the sharing of “lascivious” photos regardless of the consent of the person being photographed.
Arthur would be turning in her (recently-dug) grave. Dorothy Zbornak (her most famous character) might not have been much of a libertarian—it seems safe to assume she, like most progressive Catholics (however fictional) voted for Mondale—but one can easily imagine how her withering sarcasm would lay bare (no pun intended) the noxious paternalism underlying this proposal: It’s bad enough that the government treats adults like children, assuming we’re all not smart enough to make good decisions for ourselves, but must the State really draw a line in the sand beyond which age (60, in this case) Americans officially lose their status as adults and revert to a second childhood in the eyes of the law?
Dorothy and the other Golden Girls would never stand for it. One can only imagine the rage of aging beauty Blanche Devereaux at the crimp this law would have put in her (previously thriving) sex life.
Those who don’t get the title’s reference to the 1994 classic
Airheads, or who just plain don’t care for the Golden Girls’ geriatric charms, might nonetheless be crestfallen to realize that the bill could also deny the world naughty pics of developmentally disabled sex kittens like Susan Boyle, the surprise star of Britain’s “Got Talent” (essentially American Idol with worse teeth). (Of course, the bill would apply only if Susan were declared mentally incompetent).
Ah, Susan, be still my beating heart!
http://www.youtube.com/v/9lp0IWv8QZY
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.