Re: [-empyre-] cybernetic liki

[ben syverson <ben@bensyverson.com>]

On May 3, 2004, at 12:13 AM, John Hopkins wrote:

> And also, isn't a UA  just simply an application of one of the tired 
> forms of top-down relation (setting up a power-relation dialectic 
> between criticalware and user)?

Sorry, but no. A user agreement is a necessity in our litigious world 
of intellectual property squabbles. Without a UA, users can send us 
cease-and-desist letters whenever they feel like it, and we'd be forced 
to somehow remove or erase portions of liken.

Which may not seem like a big deal until you realize that everything in 
liken is interconnected. We allow users to save paths ("savegames") of 
their journey through liken. If you start removing nodes, you start 
breaking paths and savegames.

I don't know what the climate is like in Finland, but in the United 
States, if you don't have defensive measures set up, you're *actively* 
hurting yourself. Our UA is just a very fair way of letting everyone 
keep the rights to their own work, while allowing criticalartware to 
exhibit, compile or remix it.

- ben