Code Wars: ConnectU vs FaceBook
7/27/2007Yesterday I was thinking about the contradiction between Freedom and Government, and I came to the conclusion that the nut of the issue revolves around our understanding of the word “contract.” Today there is a news report that ConnectU is suing FaceBook, the details of which could hardly provide for a better example to demonstrate my observation.
First, let’s review (part of) what I wrote last night in a letter I called The Libertarian Contradiction:
“A contract is something that is freely agreed upon by two parties. No government need be involved. But if someone feels that the contract has been broken, then he goes running to the government. Pretty quickly, the government is spending much of its time enforcing contracts that private citizens agreed to, rather than issues that effect everyone equally."
"The original agreement between the two citizens had an element of risk involved, for both sides. They have to trust each other, and in practice the vast majority of contracts work on a gentlemen's agreement. But, once a dispute arises, all the risk of unfulfilled expectations is transferred to the government to decide, and thus all the people bear the weight of honoring that contract, even though they were not a party to the original agreement. It would be far better for the government to refuse to judge any breach of contract, than for it to be judge of all of them."
"Of course, many Libertarians would complain that they want this "protection" of the government, but it is that very act of transferring risk and creating a government "as protector" that has destroyed our freedoms and created Big Brother. Taxes become a reflection of the costs of all contracts, since even the government is "under contract" to its own employees. And, most businesses are selling to the government, either directly or indirectly, as well. The IRS keeps us all under contract to the government, with the threat of jail and seizure of property, even though as an individual we have never agreed to their contract."
"Libertarian is more than just a political idea, it is also the idea of economic liberty. For there to be liberty, there must also be personal risk. Most Libertarians, I suspect, want the rule of law (ie, the force of law) on their side. Libertarians tend to be self-employed, ambitious and entrepreneurial. If they are willing to pay for “protection" from the government, then they need to admit to themselves that the rest of the apparatus must come along with it.”
Now, let’s review the news report that was published at MacWorld.com:
“The ConnectU founders claimed that on Jan. 8, 2004 Zuckerberg sent them an e-mail saying he would deliver the completed Harvard Connection code and a functioning Web site. However, they said three days later he registered the domain name TheFaceBook.com and launched Facebook on Feb. 4, 2004, using information gleaned from them. However, they said Zuckerberg never gave them the promised code. ConnectU was launched on May 21, 2004, the lawsuit said.”
The battle between ConnectU and FaceBook is over what is commonly called “Intellectual Property.” It is based on the notion that people can own an idea. I think this idea is the greatest intellectual farce currently at work in the modern world, and is the natural outgrowth of the eighteenth-century absurdities of copyright and patent protection and slavery.
In the case of Facebook vs ConnectU, the absurdity goes one step further. The person who had the skill to write the code (Zuckerberg of FaceBook, according to ConnectU’s own claim) is not allowed to use his own labors for his own benefit because he “stole” their idea while under contract to them. This claim is made quite often by corporations against employees, and by universities against researchers, and even by the government against the universities. In an Orwellian twist, all thought is deemed to be the property of the State, or at least of the person who paid you, while you were thinking.
Does the principle being claimed by ConnectU sound eerily familiar to you? It is what is known as Indentured Servitude. It isn’t quite Slavery, where the master rules with the brutal force of a whip and chains, but it is a kissing cousin of Slavery. Servitude requires that an individual do his master’s bidding. There are no “rights” for the individual, and the individual is certainly not an “equal” to his master. The contract, and the financial exchange, is seen as the ultimate authority, regardless of how fairly or unfairly the contract was written originally.
It does not take much to imagine that those with wealth could quickly and easily succumb to the temptation of being a “Money Bully.” Since they are “paying” for the services of someone else, then they have a right to “demand” that their expectations be satisfied. Like a John beating a prostitute, the payment was for what pleased him. Who is she to claim that he broke their contract? Isn’t the customer always right?
“Expectations” is a critical element in this battle of contract fulfillment. Trust is based on both sides fulfilling expectations, one as buyer and the other as seller. The stories of Steve Jobs berating vendors and employees clearly indicates that he is a Money Bully. (This is typical for autocratic personalities.) As a business owner, I have received the whip from a Money Bully many times. And, I must sheepishly admit, I too have acted like a Money Bully on occasion as well.
Bullying is the one thing everybody “pays forward.” The American System, like the rest of the world, and all throughout history, is not new legally, despite well-known claims to the contrary. The mentality of the Money Bully has been at work for centuries, and it is a basic principle of thinking in all societies. Every political party is a union of like-minded Money Bullies who want to enforce or rewrite contracts to their personal advantage. As such, every contract is a farce, and not worth the paper it is written on. It is only the moral compass of the person that agrees to it that binds any contract.
None of this non-sense needs to involve the state, but the state is involved because it has a monopoly on the creation of money that everyone needs. There is an assumption that the government best understands money, although I have seen no evidence to support this assumption. The government has been in debt since its inception. Hundreds of years of leaders and legal reforms and interpretations has not made an iota of an improvement. Maybe the problem with the law is the laws, and the problem with money is the money. Both errors spring from the same source.
Getting back to our understanding of contracts. Let’s take copyright protection as an example. If I buy a CD I am under contract to the artist and the record company. How did this come to be? It's totally nuts that the concept of contract has grown to include “consent by purchase.” While people are no longer considered property, the application of private contracts is still seriously out of whack, and is only possible because of the government's role in enforcing them.
Liberals, Libertarians and Conservatives all go running to the government for protection of their contracts, when the better strategy would be to limit the government's power to decide certain issues. All contracts begin on a strictly voluntary basis, and that is how they should stay enforced: voluntarily.
The fact that this battle is between FaceBook and ConnectU makes the irony all the more rich, because it is the Mirror that we refuse to face, either individually or collectively, despite all the time we spend looking at ourselves.
The Libertarian Contradiction is that people would rather hide behind the comfort of a contract than than to actually be free and assume the risk that liberty requires, even Libertarians. They are just another intellectually bankrupt political party.
The rich will never have a need to sue the poor. They already have the advantage of writing the contracts and laws to benefit themselves. The ability of the poor to sue the rich will always be an an inadequate solution. The only way to limit power is to limit its reach. Nobody can be free in a system that promotes greed and revenge simultaneously. People can help one another better than the government can help anyone. Civil government is an unnecessary burden. We would all be more free and wealthy, and peace would be more easily attained and maintained, without it.
Perhaps these two programmers are not as clever as they think themselves to be, and I hope that the people who use Facebook will take up the challenge of serious discussions. I doubt that anything said in court will be the whole truth.
Source: MacWorld.com