About the DMCA
Charles Carreon
If you've followed the drift of my suggestions, you've built a solid ship, given her a good corporate name, nailed down the agreements among the partners in the venture, and trademarked your cargo. You plan to sail for the nearest port where your goods will fetch the highest price. You knew that before we met. Now, the question is, how do we get there, and what kind of adventures might we meet along the way?
Well pull up that spool of rope, sonny, and take a seat right here, 'cause a sailor's life can be a difficult one, and a pinch of philosophy can help put everything into perspective. First of all, it's worth remembering that you're doing this because you love it. You want an adventure, and you're going to get it. What I mean is, don't be so mundane as to think that your online business is just another way of making a living. It's all the difference in the world being hunched over the keyboard of your own business from being a corporate drone — with no disrespect to drones, who can be delightful people and consummate artists of their craft.
Let me quote Tom Wolf to give you the idea of what I mean, talking about the meaning of the “right stuff,” from his 1979 book of that name: “The right stuff was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life ... [rather it was] the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull back at the last yawning moment.” Those pilots knew what it was to be alone, completely responsible for their command, and certain to immediately harvest the consequences of their own decisions. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I compare online commerce with flying supersonic aircraft. Quite the contrary. You have the solitude, the frenetic pace with which events can unfold, both positively and negatively. Those who succeed in online commerce do so precisely because they have “the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness.”
Just like the era of high aerospace engineering had a golden age that has now passed, so the age of being able to pilot small Internet businesses to success will not continue forever. The hopes of cyberpunks and open-source fanatics notwithstanding, it seems likely that cyberspace will ultimately fall under the domination of large corporate structures that will absorb online entrepreneurial activities much as Walmart absorbed the functions of the entire small-town business sector.
Nevertheless, there is a frontier here to be explored, acquired, and developed. And, if you've put your business package together solidly, when cyber Walmart shows up to buy your company, you'll have something substantial to sell. Then, if your conscience is bothering you, you can make a big donation to a good cause, which is more than you could have done if cyber Walmart just came in and demolished you with a few well placed legal attacks, directed at your lack of corporate status, your failure to brand your property, and your failure to secure it with trademarks, copyrights or other forms of intellectual property protection.
Which is my final point. The high seas of Internet commerce are not for the faint-hearted, or those unwilling to gird for battle. Legal combat is the norm in the Internet environment, and in my experience successful Internet entrepreneurs develop a functional familiarity with the laws affecting their area of Internet commerce, or they suffer for it. But it can be a helluva lot of fun out here, if you've got the right stuff. Our first port of call will be DMCA-land, surrounded by myriads of ISPs operating out of safe harbors, and numberless hackers and pirates, plying unregistered wares.
If you've followed the drift of my suggestions, you've built a solid ship, given her a good corporate name, nailed down the agreements among the partners in the venture, and trademarked your cargo. You plan to sail for the nearest port where your goods will fetch the highest price. You knew that before we met. Now, the question is, how do we get there, and what kind of adventures might we meet along the way?
Well pull up that spool of rope, sonny, and take a seat right here, 'cause a sailor's life can be a difficult one, and a pinch of philosophy can help put everything into perspective. First of all, it's worth remembering that you're doing this because you love it. You want an adventure, and you're going to get it. What I mean is, don't be so mundane as to think that your online business is just another way of making a living. It's all the difference in the world being hunched over the keyboard of your own business from being a corporate drone — with no disrespect to drones, who can be delightful people and consummate artists of their craft.
Let me quote Tom Wolf to give you the idea of what I mean, talking about the meaning of the “right stuff,” from his 1979 book of that name: “The right stuff was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life ... [rather it was] the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull back at the last yawning moment.” Those pilots knew what it was to be alone, completely responsible for their command, and certain to immediately harvest the consequences of their own decisions. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I compare online commerce with flying supersonic aircraft. Quite the contrary. You have the solitude, the frenetic pace with which events can unfold, both positively and negatively. Those who succeed in online commerce do so precisely because they have “the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness.”
Just like the era of high aerospace engineering had a golden age that has now passed, so the age of being able to pilot small Internet businesses to success will not continue forever. The hopes of cyberpunks and open-source fanatics notwithstanding, it seems likely that cyberspace will ultimately fall under the domination of large corporate structures that will absorb online entrepreneurial activities much as Walmart absorbed the functions of the entire small-town business sector.
Nevertheless, there is a frontier here to be explored, acquired, and developed. And, if you've put your business package together solidly, when cyber Walmart shows up to buy your company, you'll have something substantial to sell. Then, if your conscience is bothering you, you can make a big donation to a good cause, which is more than you could have done if cyber Walmart just came in and demolished you with a few well placed legal attacks, directed at your lack of corporate status, your failure to brand your property, and your failure to secure it with trademarks, copyrights or other forms of intellectual property protection.
Which is my final point. The high seas of Internet commerce are not for the faint-hearted, or those unwilling to gird for battle. Legal combat is the norm in the Internet environment, and in my experience successful Internet entrepreneurs develop a functional familiarity with the laws affecting their area of Internet commerce, or they suffer for it. But it can be a helluva lot of fun out here, if you've got the right stuff. Our first port of call will be DMCA-land, surrounded by myriads of ISPs operating out of safe harbors, and numberless hackers and pirates, plying unregistered wares.