[discuss] shifts in IANA/accountability discussion: your thoughts?

Barry Shein bzs at world.std.com
Thu Jun 19 18:03:52 UTC 2014


From: Seun Ojedeji <seun.ojedeji at gmail.com>

>Yay! You will have one more supporter once you give me an example of a man
>made invention that is free to all.

Is this a trick question where you get to say but those are paid for
by taxes or similar?

Most roads, bridges, sidewalks, public parks, police, firefighting,
internet surveillance (you may not want it but you don't get a bill at
least :-), in many countries libraries, ...

But of course this will reduce to "someone is paying for it!".

Which is still very different from whether, for example, the poorest
person can utilize the resource (sidewalks, parks, etc) or not.

So we need different terminology because this is just a semantic trick
revolving around what the word "free" means.

Worse, is that free as in "beer" or as in "speech" as FSF says?

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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