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''Another possible reason is that it is sheer blinding idiocy. It couldn’t possibly be ''that'' could it?''” | ''Another possible reason is that it is sheer blinding idiocy. It couldn’t possibly be ''that'' could it?''” | ||
:— Douglas Adams}} | :— Douglas Adams (1994)}} | ||
“[[Gizmo pelmanism]]” is such a beautiful concept. It could describe much of modern legal practice. | “[[Gizmo pelmanism]]” is such a beautiful concept. It could describe much of modern legal practice. | ||
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To be sure, ''trying'' to impose a toll gate can be a self-imposed stockade anyway (remember Betamax?) — but not always: for {{strike|Apple|vendors who dominate their markets}}, proprietary formats survive, even those which wilfully interpose friction (DVD region encoding!) and thrive. At ''all'' of our costs. ''Even the dominant vendors’''. | To be sure, ''trying'' to impose a toll gate can be a self-imposed stockade anyway (remember Betamax?) — but not always: for {{strike|Apple|vendors who dominate their markets}}, proprietary formats survive, even those which wilfully interpose friction (DVD region encoding!) and thrive. At ''all'' of our costs. ''Even the dominant vendors’''. | ||
===[[Emergent]] standardisation?=== | ===[[Emergent]] standardisation?=== | ||
But shouldn’t the unmediated forces of competition work so that common standards emerge by themselves? If not, ''why not''? What incentives are at play that prevent it? | |||
But shouldn’t the unmediated forces of competition work so that common standards emerge by themselves? If not, ''why not''? What incentives are at play that prevent it? Our nascent view: the modern notion that “utility text” has commercial value as [[intellectual property]] leaves us all — including the owner — poorer, as we spend our days playing Gizmo pelmanism with each other and not listening to each other’s Walkmans. Walkmen. Walkpersons. And, really — are you really charging £900 an hour for your ''superior [[boilerplate]]''? | |||
Where commerce has worked this way, helped by the enlightened unselfishness of people like Tim Berners-Lee<ref>The World Wide Internet.</ref> and Jimmy Wales<ref>WikiMedia.</ref> ''staggering'' things have come about. Where it has not — and we are bound to note legal practice as being such a place — everyone remains mired in complication, chaos, cost, delay and, above all, ''[[tedium]]''. ''Imagine if a contract were a universal API for all commerce''. This is what it ''should'' be: a contract ''is'' a transfer: it is a connection point between two nodes on a network. Why are we so far from the [[end-to-end principle]]? | Where commerce has worked this way, helped by the enlightened unselfishness of people like Tim Berners-Lee<ref>The World Wide Internet.</ref> and Jimmy Wales<ref>WikiMedia.</ref> ''staggering'' things have come about. Where it has not — and we are bound to note legal practice as being such a place — everyone remains mired in complication, chaos, cost, delay and, above all, ''[[tedium]]''. ''Imagine if a contract were a universal API for all commerce''. This is what it ''should'' be: a contract ''is'' a transfer: it is a connection point between two nodes on a network. Why are we so far from the [[end-to-end principle]]? | ||
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The information revolution has enabled our “drift to [[Complicated|complicatedness]]” — with that drift, a view has congealed in the collective that the resulting “legal technology” that we can now so easily generate somehow has intrinsic value — is proprietary, deserving of commercial protection. but is it not better to see good market-standard contractual terms as a common interface between market participants: a ''public utility'' that enables business to get done with minimal friction? Contract ''technology'' should not ''proprietary''; rather contracts — agreements ''made out of'' contract technology — may be ''confidential''. To confuse a contractual ''confidence'' with a proprietary right in [[intellectual property]] comprising the contract is to make a category error. | The information revolution has enabled our “drift to [[Complicated|complicatedness]]” — with that drift, a view has congealed in the collective that the resulting “legal technology” that we can now so easily generate somehow has intrinsic value — is proprietary, deserving of commercial protection. but is it not better to see good market-standard contractual terms as a common interface between market participants: a ''public utility'' that enables business to get done with minimal friction? Contract ''technology'' should not ''proprietary''; rather contracts — agreements ''made out of'' contract technology — may be ''confidential''. To confuse a contractual ''confidence'' with a proprietary right in [[intellectual property]] comprising the contract is to make a category error. | ||
This is our challenge: to overcome our ingrained instinct to regard the quotidian tools of our trade assomehow [[Secret sauce|special]]. For we do not add value with our [[boilerplate]]. | This is our challenge: to overcome our ingrained instinct to regard the quotidian tools of our trade assomehow [[Secret sauce|special]]. For we do not add value with our [[boilerplate]]. So here is our wishful prayer of hearty success to the [[OneNDA]] project. A standardised NDA might seem a small step for an open-source start up but, in spirit, a giant leap for [[legal eagle|eagle-kind]]? | ||
Set your loved ones free, [[legal eagle]]s: contributing to a common fund allows the wisdom of the crowd to winnow down and fitness-select the best terms for everyone: ''stop claiming false propriety over common public standards. | Set your loved ones free, [[legal eagle]]s: contributing to a common fund allows the wisdom of the crowd to winnow down and fitness-select the best terms for everyone: ''stop claiming false propriety over common public standards. | ||
No more | No more gizmo pelmanism. | ||
{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||
*[[OneNDA]] | |||
*[[ClauseHub]] | *[[ClauseHub]] | ||
*[[Secret sauce]] | *[[Secret sauce]] | ||