Comment by danaris
11 days ago
The problem with this is that people who want to make money will always be highly motivated to either find loopholes to abuse the system, outright lie about their intentions, buy and resell the data for less (making profit on volume), or just break in.
"Ah, it's free for research? Well, that's what I'm doing! I'm conducting research! Ignore the fact that once I have the data, I'm going to turn around and give it to this company that is coincidentally also owned by me to sell it!"
Literally this. It’s why I advocate for regulations over technological solutions nowadays.
We have all the technology we need to solve today’s ills (or support the R&D needed to solve today’s ills). The problem is that this technology isn’t being used to make life better, just more extractive of resources from those without towards those who have too much. The solution to that isn’t more technology (France already PoC’ed the Guillotine, after all), but more regulations that eliminate loopholes and punish bad actors while preserving the interests of the general public/commons.
Bad actors can’t be innovated away with new technological innovations; the only response to them has always been rules and punishments.
You can tell the difference between the two by checking if the Evil bit is set in the corresponding IP packet - RFC 3514 already standardised this.
If that doesn't work, you can also add rate limiting by enforcing compliance with RFC 1149.
The commons are not destined to become a tragedy and they can become a long-term resource everyone can enjoy[1]. You need clear boundaries, reliable monitoring of shared resource, reasonable balance between costs and benefits, etc.
> I'm conducting research! Ignore the fact that once I have the data, I'm going to turn around and give it to this company
Or weasel out of being a non-profit.
[1] https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false...
Hm. I hadn't understood the Tragedy of the Commons to be an inevitability, merely a phenomenon—something that does happen sometimes, not something that must happen all the time.
And unfortunately, in our current culture, at least in the US, it's much more likely than not when the circumstances allow it. We will need generations' worth of work firmly demonstrating that things can be better for everyone when we all agree to share in things equally, rather than allowing individuals to take what's meant for everyone.