Good point, skin would have massive peaks and valleys to scale. Perhaps a fluid medium then, streamed over a sufficiently long, inclined surface.

Very low level abrasive... I wonder if and how that might serve as a soap.

Well that just seems like it would shut the warehouse down in a hurry.

First, one guy talks. "Man my legs are killing me!"
"You're fired!" says his supervisor... who is now going to get fired for talking on the job.
"You there, talking supervisor, you're fired for talking when you fired that guy!" And now *that* guy is next, and up it goes until Jeff Bezos finds himself out of a job.

I'm surprised it hasn't happened already.

Interesting, I'd never even heard of the 3DO before.

but it seems to have reached a nice, rich environment by now. Handheld gaming platforms seem to cycle a lot more slowly than other handheld devices.

When it comes to transactions of currency, it seems like one never has to look too far back to find some egregious level of fraud. I'm still convinced that the essential reason that gold is worth so much, and probably will as long as humans exist within proximity to gold, is because gold is shiny.

Purchasing $150,000 for $400 (vary currency as necessary) would seem to be a loophole that would quickly undermine the world economy. Perhaps "price" of a stolen identity isn't a proper measure of "value".

You must realize that these things you've listed are also Obama's fault.

That's a very interesting and selfless approach. I did not mean to suggest that commercial development of space be halted until we figure out some utopian approach to justice and equality. Rather, I hope that the idea of lunar real estate heralds a broader reexamination of the its own underlying, bizarre assumptions, assumptions that are usually just taken for granted.

If we ever do get off earth in a sustainable manner, I suppose a lot of the problems with an arbitrary systems of property rights will naturally disappear -- after all, for-profit enterprise seems like it would make little sense to explorers whose intention is to venture only further outwards.

I'm afraid you're taking my position to an extreme I did not intend. I'm not proposing that homesteading is a bad idea, rather that it is a arbitrary one. We seem to agree on this point. I also agree that space *development* is in the best interest of humanity, and possibly all other forms of life on earth.

Where we part ways, I think, is on our opinions of the desirability of the *commercial* development of space --that is, profit-generating activities. I will gladly grant you that, in practical terms, that is how things work right now, it's how things have worked for quite a long time now, it probably won't dramatically change any time soon, and it is probably one of the more realistic approaches we can take to actually get humans off of this one rock and out into the rest of the universe.

What I am unwilling to grant you is the idea that applying concepts of property rights, as we have come to understand them, is the right approach simply because it will spur a certain type of development. There are other reasons for extraterrestrial human development besides turning a profit: survival of the species, expanding our knowledge, that sort of thing.

My concern is that if we just unthinkingly apply an arbitrary system as we expand, we will also expand the injustices and inequalities that this arbitrary system brings us. If commercial activities indeed turn out to be the primary motivation behind developments on the moon and elsewhere, it will simply serve to increase the unequal distribution of wealth and power that we're currently facing, and the myriad injustices that come about because of it.

In terms of legitimacy, homesteading makes as much sense for the basis of a property claim as would "first post!" So someone got to the resource first. Regardless of whether they are capable of defending their claim or not, why *should* they be able to prevent everyone else who subsequently comes along from having the same access to the land and resources that they did when they first arrived? IOW, let me turn this question back on the underlying assumption:

To understand my perspective, try apply this same question to everyone else besides you. Why should the first person who can afford to get there and work resources have a claim of ownership? Why should they be able to prevent others from getting there and working the same resources? When you get down to it, property rights are based on an odd bit of reasoning: it's mine because I say it's mine, and/or because I got here before anyone else did. It might very well be how things are, but it is a bizarre bit of recursive mental bootstrapping.

That's a good theory, but I don't believe it accurately describes how things came to be as they currently are. Some examples include: the ongoing conflicting claims of ownership rights in the middle east (particularly the so-called "Holy Land"), and also the entirety of the continents of South, Central, and North America.

Both are examples of massive tracts of land of which the original appropriators (whoever they were) have long since been displaced from "their" lands in the face of invading military forces.

Bigelow's move sounds like a bald attempt at a money/power grab, but hopefully it will help trigger some long-needed reflection on the concept of property rights. We just kind of accept how it works and get on with our lives, but there is a very strange bit of reasoning at the root of property ownership. If someone wants to "own" a bit of the moon, who should they pay, if anyone? Should it be enough that they get there first, AND can afford the weapons required to defend it from subsequent travelers? And what about real estate on Mars, Europa, and habitable planets beyond our solar system?

When a person or organization owns a bit of land, they have the right to keep (mostly) everyone else off of that property. Does that mean that anyone who owns property has in effect taken that property from everyone else? Well, sort of. The systems we've come to accept tend to ensure inequality, as property = capital, capital gains create massive wealth, and that wealth is subsequently kept from everyone else in the world, because... someone was lucky enough to be born to a property owner. It's not a particularly fair system.

Well there is little use debating what is a matter of speculation of some possible future use. Sounds like we disagree on our perception of relative importance of parts of the decision. What detailed design guidelines do you think will be more instructive?

Here's why I think the summary will be more applicable for future projects. The technical specifics of google books that Chin addresses seem like they'd be limited, basically, to copycats of google books. OTOH, the summary section could be directly applied to systems designed to enhance public access to various types of media, not just text.

It almost reads like the mission statement of a nonprofit organization, and *hat* is the scope and level of project design I'm talking about here. I was not talking about operational specifics, such as obscuring a certain percentage of a given book. If you're talking about such operational specifics of a hypothetical system, then yes I'd agree with you that Chin's summary is too vague to be of much direct use.

Afraid I'm going to have to value the words of my law professors over yours on this particular point. It is not a four prong "argument", that is considerably understating things. Four factor analysis is THE LAW here, it's not an argument. The four factors/prongs in fair use analysis are explicitly stated in the statute. They can be found at 17 USC section 107. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107 . "Benefit to society" is not one of the four factors. Chin's discussion of the benefit to society is not in the context of one of the four factors. Rather it is in the "Overall Analysis" section immediately following his detailed four factor analysis..

This is all in the actual decision. It might help you to (re?)read the decision, and pay close attention to the subheadings. http://beckermanlegal.com/Lawyer_Copyright_Internet_Law/authorsguild_google_131114Decision.pdf

Chin's discussion of fair use (beginning on page 16) could serve as an excellent introduction to what fair use really is, and how it is applied in US copyright law.