A tool for readers and writers should not be a lever for copyright enforcement. I really think Nelson's insistence in being a publisher is what killed the tool he was trying to build.

the issue is not to support copyright enforcement but to prevent it from interfering with a necessary operation.

the issue is this: you build a system that connects pieces of text in a certain way, and then someone steps in and tells you: hey that connection over there, you have to pay for.

but since not everyone will be willing or able to pay, your system is now broken.

therefore it needs to be made explicit that linking is not a publishing action that could trigger copyright enforcement.

None of that belongs in a tool for readers and writers and it won't be part of Mimix.

What is Mimix in a nutshell? I found [1], but there is hardly a summary in this PDF.

[1] https://mimix.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/On-Mim...

Thanks for asking. A better summary is definitely needed. I short, Mimix is a tool for reading, writing, learning, and teaching which makes it easier to include and share factual information in you're writing.

You REALLY ought to learn about transcopyright:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3l7CpnpyGw

No, because that's not part of what we're building. It was Ted's dream to control a copyright and publishing empire. It is my dream to enable and empower individual creators and consumers of textual information. Mimix will not engage in copyright issues for the same reason that VS Code does not involve itself in the licensing aspects of the code you write. It's simply the wrong tool for the job. Our tool is focused on helping writers and readers to Think Better. It has no functions related to intellectual property enforcement.

I'll try to make my point via a completely different avenue:

Would you use Mimix to utilize transclusion to edit the code of Mimix & to distribute it?

i think what they are talking about is to provide technical means for the xanadu features, while leaving the legal questions to others.

so i suppose that mimix will support transclusion, but it's up to the user to figure out whether transcluding a certain document is a copyright violation or not.

interestingly, iframes in html are an example of transclusion, so this is not exactly a new feature, and there are discussions on copyright about it:

https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2009/04/07/is-the-diggbar-co...

https://policyreview.info/articles/news/eu-ruling-embedding-...

(funny how that seemingly contradicts the link-tax which started this branch of the discussion. i can transclude but i have to pay for a link?)

What about a tax for citations? Or a tax for reading! Why can't we pass some more copyright legislation?

"link tax" is not actually a tax but something to be paid to the copyright owner. just like we already pay them for reading.

i wonder if citations are covered too. i didn't check. would be quite ironic. when is a citation a link, and when is it not?

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