#The team was advised to put it up for auction with the proceeds benefiting a bear rescue charity (bearity)
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the team had fun making some silly beart last night
based on this delightful photo
#Functional beart#Since it’s a drink coaster#The team was advised to put it up for auction with the proceeds benefiting a bear rescue charity (bearity)#We don’t think it’s good enough for anyone to actually want to pay money for it#But it’s a funny idea
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What Is An RFP And Why Is It Important To Digitalize It?
What is an RFP?
A Request for Proposal (RFP) represents a document or a sourcing stage where proposals are solicited from suppliers or solution providers.
The Buyer uses the RFP to state the requirements of the goods or service being procured, the terms and conditions of the engagement, the vendor evaluation criteria, and most importantly the bidding sheet. This bid sheet outlines the quantum of goods or services and suppliers need to quote the price for the same.
RFPs apply to all types of spend – indirect, direct and capex. Every sourcing process needs an RFP in some form or other; with varying complexity depending on the nature of the item being sourced.
3 key aspects of an RFP that underline its importance1. RFPs precede the ‘negotiate & award’ stage and hence need to be managed from that perspective
An RFP is followed by a negotiation process after which the business is usually awarded to the most competitive supplier in terms of price, capability and service.
In an online eSourcing platform scenario, RFPs precede auctions and hence set the basis for the starting price for every supplier. If multiple suppliers have responded within a narrow price range, the chances of a successful auction are high. Note that If prices are high, it is not advisable to rush into an auction without understanding the reasons behind high pricing received from the suppliers.
In addition, negotiation happens with qualified suppliers only. Hence the RFP must solicit all kinds of information for buying teams to achieve that.
2. Supplier Management is critical once RFPs are floated
Supplier responses to an RFP are the initial indicators of the supplier interest and eventual success of the sourcing project. While the buyer may think the business is exciting for every supplier, it may not be the case. A large steel furniture company put out a bid for USD 30M worth of fabricated steel. While this seemed a phenomenal business for any new vendor, it required many of them to invest significantly to meet this demand. The terms & conditions didn’t address this aspect and hence the RFP received a lukewarm response.
Supplier participation is key. If an RFP is floated to 15 vendors and only 2 of them respond, it’s a cause for concern. Either the specs are wrong or over-designed or the suppliers have misunderstood certain aspects of the RFP. Reaching out to them proactively and addressing their concerns is vital.
3. Standardization of RFPs helps to lower cycle times
Studies show that companies spend 30% of their sourcing cycle time in drafting RFPs. Many times, sourcing teams tend to recreate RFP content rather than reusing content from previous RFPs.
In addition, standardization helps in reducing time-to-publish and also allows teams to proceed with greater clarity.
Standardization of pricing bid sheets (computation of activity costs or landed costs), terms and conditions, qualifying questions, etc. help a great deal in speeding up the process.
What are the benefits of digitalizing RFPs?
It is common for many sourcing teams to only adopt online auctions as part of an esourcing initiative. RFIs and RFPs continue to be manual though. At Krinati, we believe this is a sub-optimal approach and greater value could be realized if RFPs are digitized and executed online too.
Online RFPs help sourcing teams achieve the below.
1. Reduced time to create and publish RFPs
Templates help in creating and publishing RFPs in minutes.
Say there is a qualifying questionnaire used to purchase chairs for a new office. This questionnaire can be saved as a template and reused for the next sourcing event. Let’s assume that the team made some omissions in the previous sourcing cycle – they forgot to ask for after-sales support for the chairs and the time for resolution. Since questionnaire templates can be modified on-the-fly, the event content remains updated and available at the time of publishing the sourcing event.
2. Improved supplier management and collaboration
Supplier bids should be analyzed as soon as they are submitted online. How does one supplier fare vs the others? Have suppliers responded to all the line items? Are there any line items that haven’t received any response? It is critical to evaluate the RFP when it is still live because all the analysis done post the response due date does not serve the same purpose.
3. Greater Savings
Suppliers tend to trust a system more than the words spoken by a buyer. Competitive RFPs display the rank and/or leading bid to suppliers as soon as they submit their response. As a result, this sets in some competition and suppliers submit several bids while the RFP is live.
This works great when items are bought for the first time or when there is an auction procurement to follow. RFP responses tend to be in a narrow range which sets up an auction very well.
4. Compliance and audit-friendliness
We all agree that this is one of the most audited processes in any organization. Auditors need to know — Were 3 bids were sought? Which suppliers did not participate? Why did they decline? Who approved the award? Who qualified the supplier (evaluation scores)?
Online RFPs provide this much-needed compliance that keeps the internal audit team happy!
Original Source: RFP eSourcing Platform
#RFP esourcing platform#auction procurement#esourcing services#e sourcing solution#esourcing platform
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Danielle Bunten Berry (February 19, 1949 – July 3, 1998), formerly known as Dan Bunten, was an American game designer and programmer, known for the 1983 game M.U.L.E., one of the first influential multiplayer video games, and 1984's The Seven Cities of Gold.
In 1998, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Computer Game Developers Association. In 2007, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences chose Bunten as the 10th inductee into its Hall of Fame.
Bunten was born in St. Louis, Missouri and moved to Little Rock, Arkansas as a junior in high school. She was the oldest of six siblings. While growing up in Little Rock, Bunten's family didn't always have enough money to make ends meet, so Bunten took a job at a pharmacy. She also held a leadership role with the Boy Scouts.
According to Bunten, one of her fondest childhood memories involved playing games with her family. She was quoted saying, “When I was a kid, the only times my family spent together that weren’t totally dysfunctional were when we were playing games. Consequently, I believe games are a wonderful way to socialize.”
While attending the University of Arkansas, she opened up her own bike shop called Highroller Cyclerie. Bunten acquired a degree in industrial engineering in 1974 and started programming text-based video games as a hobby. After she graduated from college, she was employed by the National Science Foundation, where she created urban models before starting a job at a video game company.
In 1978, Bunten sold a real-time auction game for the Apple II titled Wheeler Dealers to a Canadian software company, Speakeasy Software. This early multiplayer game required a custom controller, raising its price to USD$35 in an era of $15 games sold in plastic bags. It sold only 50 copies.
After producing three titles for SSI, Bunten, who by then had founded a software company called Ozark Softscape, caught the attention of Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins. M.U.L.E. was Bunten's first game for EA, originally published for the Atari 8-bit family because the Atari 800 had four controller ports. Bunten later ported it to the Commodore 64. While its sales - 30,000 units - were not high, the game developed a cult following and was widely pirated. The game setting was inspired by the novel Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein.
Along with the success of M.U.L.E., Berry also had close ties with the games Robot Rascals, Heart of Africa, and Cartels & Cutthroat$. Throughout her career, she was involved in the creation of 12 games, 10 of which revolved around multiplayer compatibility. The only two which didn't have a multiplayer focus were Seven Cities of Gold and Heart of Africa.
Bunten wanted to follow up M.U.L.E. with a game that would have been similar to the later game Civilization, but after fellow Ozark Softscape partners balked at the idea, Bunten followed with The Seven Cities of Gold, which proved popular because of its simplicity. By the time the continent data were stored in the computer's memory, there was little left for fancy graphics or complex gameplay - the game had only five resources. It was a hit, selling more than 150,000 copies.
The follow-up game, Heart of Africa, appeared in 1985 and was followed by Robot Rascals, a combination computer/card game that had no single-player mode and sold only 9,000 copies, and 1988's Modem Wars, one of the early games played by two players over a dial-up modem. Modem Wars was ahead of its time, as few people in the late 1980s had modems in their homes.
Bunten departed EA for MicroProse. Allegedly, Trip Hawkins, CEO of EA, did not feel that pushing production of games onto a cartridge based system was a good idea. The shift was important to Bunten, as computer games had previously been distributed on floppy discs, and a changeover to a cartridge system would allow games to be played on Nintendo systems. This was a significant factor in her decision to leave. She then developed a computer version of the board game Axis and Allies, which became 1990's Command HQ, a modem/network grand strategy wargame. Bunten's second and last game for MicroProse was 1992's Global Conquest, a 4-player network/modem war game. It was the first 4-player network game from a major publisher. Bunten was a strong advocate of multi-player online games, observing that, "No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had spent more time alone with my computer.'"
A port of M.U.L.E. to the Mega Drive/Genesis was cancelled after Bunten refused to put guns and bombs in the game, feeling it would alter the game too much from its original concept. In 1997, Bunten shifted focus to multiplayer games over the Internet with Warsport, a remake of Modem Wars that debuted on the MPlayer.com game network.
Less than a year after the release of Warsport, Bunten was diagnosed with lung cancer presumably related to years of heavy smoking. She died on July 3, 1998. At the time, she was working on the design of an Internet version of M.U.L.E..
The game's primary premise consisted of players playing with and against one another to establish total control over a planet. The name of the game stands for Multiple Use Labor Element. The game was originally made for the Atari 400 and Atari 800 but was later developed to be compatible with the Commodore 64, NES, and IBM pcjr. The game has a maximum of four players. Players are given different options and choices, and are allowed to create their colony the way they see fit. This can be done by changing races and giving respective colonies different advantages that will impact the way the game is played and determined later on down the line.
Ultimately there are two ways in which players can win the game. The first way is by having the most amount of money out of all four players, and the second way is by being able to survive the colony itself. The game focuses heavily on going out and retrieving resources that can be used to benefit their character. Items such as food, energy, and crystite are some of a number of in-game items that players are able to retrieve and use to better themselves. In order for a player to be able to access these items, they will first have to have access to a M.U.L.E. The acquisition of these items has a direct reflection on what the player will be allowed to do. For example, if a player doesn't have enough food, they will have less time during their turn.
The Seven Cities of Gold was originally intended to be another multiplayer game. It was originally a single player format, focused heavily on having the players travel around the map and collect items to help them strengthen their colony. Once they felt as though they had a solid colony, the players could battle each other to see who could overtake who After much consideration, Ozark Software came to the conclusion that this would not be doable. Instead, they went with a formula that had the game focus solely on developing a colony.
Ozark Softscape was a computer game development team consisting initially of Danielle Bunten, her brother Bill Bunten, Jim Rushing, and Alan Watson. Ozark was run out of Bunten's basement. The company was based out of Little Rock, Arkansas and had profound success with a few of their early titles. Ozark Softscape had a publishing deal with Electronic Arts for several of its groundbreaking games. In the early 1990s, Ozark Softscape left its partnership with Electronic Arts over a dispute to port some games to cartridge format for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It began a partnership with MicroProse to produce two more titles: Command HQ and Global Conquest. A dispute occurred over creating a follow-up to M.U.L.E. with Sega in 1993, and the company dissolved. The employees of Ozark Softscape moved to different areas of the software industry.
Bunten was married three times. Bunten had three children, one daughter and two sons. After a third divorce, Bunten, who had until then been living as male, transitioned to living as a woman. Bunten underwent sex reassignment surgery in November 1992 and afterward kept a lower profile in the games industry. Bunten later regretted having surgery, finding that for her, the drawbacks of surgical transition outweighed the benefits, and wishing she had considered alternative approaches. She joked that the surgery was to improve the video game industry's male/female ratio and aesthetics, but advised others considering a sex change not to proceed unless there was no alternative and warned them of the cost, saying "Being my 'real self' could have included having a penis and including more femininity in whatever forms made sense. I didn't know that until too late and now I have to make the best of the life I've stumbled into. I just wish I would have tried more options before I jumped off the precipice."
After her transition in fall 1992, Bunten stayed out of the video game spotlight, mostly keeping to herself. She felt as though that after transitioning she was not as good at video game development as she had previously been, stating "So, I'm a little more than three years into my new life role as Ms. Danielle Berry, and her career looks to be somewhat different from old Mr. Dan Bunten's. For one thing, I'm not as good a programmer as he was." On July 3, 1998, Berry died of lung cancer.
Wheeler Dealers (1978)
Cartels & Cutthroats (1981)
Computer Quarterback (1981)
Cytron Masters (1982)
M.U.L.E. (1983)
The Seven Cities of Gold (1984)
Heart of Africa (1985)
Robot Rascals (1986)
Modem Wars (1988)
Command HQ (1990)
Global Conquest (1992)
Warsport (1997)
Although many of Bunten's titles were not commercially successful, they were widely recognized by the industry as being ahead of their time. On May 7, 1998, less than two months before her death, Berry was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Computer Game Developers Association.
In 2000, Will Wright dedicated his blockbuster hit The Sims to Bunten's memory. In 2007, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences chose Bunten to be inducted into its Hall of Fame. Sid Meier, the mastermind behind the video game series Civilization, inducted her at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas.
Bunten was a true pioneer for the video game industry, especially its multiplayer aspect of it. She is regarded by many as one of the best designers to ever grace the video game industry. Her success has even led people to make the claim that the work she did with games like M.U.L.E and Seven Cities of Gold was the inspiration behind highly successful modern multiplayer games like World of Warcraft.
Bunten was known as someone who was very easy to talk to. If someone recognized her in public, she would be more than delighted to have a conversation with them.
#transgender#transition#postop transwomen#transwoman#transwomenmatter#computer programmer#mtf vaginoplasy#mtf breast implants#srs#rest in peace
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On Sports and SPACs A sporting chance Professional athletes can sell almost anything, from soda to sneakers to car insurance. But lately they’ve used their star power to sell SPACs, the blank-check acquisition vehicles that have raised more than $90 billion this year. Amid frenzied competition for merger deals, about a fifth of SPACs launched since last year have brought athletes on board in hopes of standing out when pitching to start-ups they hope to take public, Matthew Goldstein and DealBook’s Lauren Hirsch report. Alex Rodriguez is one of the highest-profile athletes in the SPAC business, and he stands out because unlike many of his peers merely adding their names to someone else’s SPAC, he founded his own. Slam Corp, established by the former baseball slugger and the hedge fund manager Himanshu Gulati, has met with more than 70 potential targets since it raised $500 million in a February I.P.O. Mr. Rodriguez could sit on the board of whatever company it acquires. He and his business partner spoke with Lauren about their plans — below are exclusive excerpts from their conversation. On running a public company … Mr. Rodriguez formed the investment firm A-Rod Corp in 1996, but a listed company brings a new set of responsibilities. Is he ready? “I think you do it collectively, you do it with the team,” said Mr. Rodriguez, pointing to his frequent communication with Mr. Gulati. And when it comes to understanding the fiduciary duties involved, he said that his long career at the Yankees brought him experience at “the ultimate public company,” where the shareholders, so to speak, were the outspoken fans of the storied franchise. On the ups and downs of investing … Last year, Mr. Rodriguez’s $1.7 billion bid for the Mets lost out to Steve Cohen’s $2.4 billion offer. “The silver lining for me is the trust that people put on us, and that doesn’t go to waste just because you didn’t win,” Mr. Rodriguez said, referring to himself and the pop star Jennifer Lopez, who joined him on the bid. “I think that’s something that brings tremendous credibility.” On the S.E.C.’s warning about SPACs pitched by celebrities … The U.S. securities regulator recently told investors not to buy shares of a SPAC simply because boldface names are attached to it. Many SPACs bring celebrities on as directors or advisers, Mr. Gulati said, and “they’re just there to kind of help them raise capital.” At Slam Corp, he said, “Alex is the C.E.O. — what he’s done at A-Rod Corp should not be understated.” “I just want to stand up for the athlete community, because there’s so many smart young men and women. I would be lucky to have them as partners,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “We have a reach, and it’s not just domestic, it’s global,” he said, in reference to himself and Ms. Lopez. HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING WeWork is going public via a SPAC. The office sharing company agreed to a deal with the blank-check company BowX Acquisition that values WeWork at $9 billion. That’s less than a quarter of its valuation in 2019. The venture firm behind the SPAC counts Shaquille O’Neal as an adviser. It may take weeks to unblock the Suez Canal. Salvagers are struggling to free the container ship that has been wedged in the vital waterway since Tuesday, creating a huge, costly traffic jam that exposes the world economy’s reliance on just-in-time supply chains. Lawmakers get few direct answers when grilling tech C.E.O.s. At the five-hour hearing on disinformation, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey acknowledged that his platform bore some responsibility for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, while Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai disagreed on whether regulatory changes were needed. Lawmakers were unimpressed: “There’s a lot of smugness among you,” said one. Chinese consumers boycott several foreign brands. H&M, Nike, Adidas and others face retaliation from shoppers — egged on by the Communist Party — after they joined calls to avoid using cotton produced in the Xinjiang region, where Beijing has waged a repression campaign against ethnic minorities. Shares in Chinese apparel brands with ties to Xinjiang have rallied. Banks can resume buybacks and raise dividends this summer. After the Fed’s next round of stress tests ends in June, most institutions will be allowed to resume share repurchases and increase dividends that were frozen during the pandemic, assuming they have sufficient capital. A TV debut (on the public markets) Over its nearly 20-year history, Vizio has become one of the biggest names in flat-screen TVs. But as it began life as a publicly listed company yesterday, its founder and C.E.O., William Wang, was eager to convince investors that its biggest business is in streaming on its smart TVs. Lockdowns were good for Vizio. With people stuck at home and movie theaters closed, TVs have been in high demand: The company shipped 7.1 million units last year, up 20 percent from 2019. More important from Vizio’s perspective, it saw a 60 percent increase in accounts for SmartCast, its platform for connecting to streaming services like Apple+ and Netflix. “I think the biggest impact of the pandemic is forcing people to look at home entertainment again,” Mr. Wang told DealBook. Why streaming is important for the company. TVs are a low-margin commodity, particularly as prices continue to fall. But Vizio is betting that its popularity — it is the second-biggest TV brand in North America by market share — can help it tap into the boom in online video services. SmartCast made up 7 percent of the company’s revenue last year, reaching 12.2 million accounts. Becoming a smart-TV player has been challenging. In 2017, Vizio paid $2.2 million to settle charges that it collected and sold users’ data without their knowledge or consent. It doesn’t offer every streaming service — it’s missing HBO Max, for example — and faces competition from Roku, Apple TV and other smart TV makers. The time was right for an I.P.O. Vizio tried to go public in 2015, but called it off after agreeing to sell itself to a Chinese rival (only for that deal to fall apart). Now that it makes money from both TV sales and streaming, Mr. Wang said, Vizio is more attractive to public-market investors. That said, the I.P.O. priced at the low end of its expected range, and fell 9 percent in the first day of trading. The C.E.O. put a positive spin on it: “We’re probably the leader in the space in consumer electronics. I believe sooner or later people will appreciate that.” In the papers Some of the academic research that caught our eye this week, summarized in one sentence: Weekend reading: How can I help you? A few years ago, Susan McPherson, the founder of the P.R. firm McPherson Strategies, identified a growing problem. Technology was helping more people connect, yet the ties seemed superficial: Instead of seeking meaningful bonds, people appeared to be transacting, simply trading likes and follows. As a “serial connector” since before the internet, she decided to write “The Lost Art of Connecting: The Gather, Ask, Do Method for Building Meaningful Business Relationships,” which was published by McGraw-Hill Education this week. Ms. McPherson spoke to DealBook about making connections during a pandemic that has physically estranged so many. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. DealBook: Has your view of technology changed? Ms. McPherson: The past year helped us all understand how much we miss human connection when we don’t have it. Some days I‘ve showed up at a team meeting and a part of me just felt like crying. So I’ve learned to expose more of that vulnerability and how to be more empathetic and compassionate online, which freed up my team, too. Now, I think we can be better stewards of technology and make those deep connections if we’re intentional about it. Do you still see a problem with quantifying social networks? If we’re using the numbers to measure our value but we’re not having deep, meaningful relationships then we don’t get the real benefits. There is data in my book that shows deep ties help people live longer and be more professionally successful. Introverts will be happy to know that it isn’t about quantity — it’s about the quality of ties. And for businesses, connectedness fosters productivity. How do people truly connect if they’re still physically apart? Be direct. Be intentional. Don’t think of what you’ll get. Just offer help. Indirectness is time-consuming. We’re in a state of collective grief after this difficult year. There’s no time to waste. Reach out and ask, “How can I help?” Take time to listen and follow through on what you say you’ll do. Dependability and trustworthiness are critical to meaningful connection. Don’t assume that you don’t have anything to offer someone, whoever they are, at your company or beyond. THE SPEED READ Deals Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp bought Investor’s Business Daily for $275 million, a return to acquisitions after years of sales and streamlining. (NYT) Britain’s competition watchdog is worried about the “supply of GIFs” after Facebook’s acquisition of the animated-image site Giphy. (Reuters) Are the bond vigilantes back? (NYT) Politics and policy The S.E.C. has opened an inquiry into the SPAC craze, asking underwriters about their risk-management processes. (Reuters) Georgia Republicans passed sweeping voting restrictions, drawing the ire of President Biden. (NYT) The Supreme Court made it easier for consumers to sue companies, ruling that it doesn’t matter if a manufacturer has a substantial presence in the state where an injury happened. (NYT) Tech The crypto token linked to a Times column sold at auction for $560,000, with the proceeds going to charity. (NYT) A labor board said Tesla illegally fired a worker involved in union organizing and ordered Elon Musk to delete a threatening tweet. (NYT) Best of the rest “Using Shame, Lending Apps in India Squeeze Billions Out of the Desperate” (NYT) The actress Jessica Walter, who played Lucille Bluth, the martini-swilling matriarch of a dysfunctional business family on “Arrested Development,” died at 80 in Manhattan. (NYT) Will the popularity of five-star meal kits from fine-dining establishments persist after the pandemic? (Bloomberg Opinion) We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected]. Source link Orbem News #SPACs #sports
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Legal Disputes of the Future
Who owns food? Who pays for this accident? Who owns my face? Who owns the Arctic? Who owns the Pacific Ocean? Who owns the sky? These sound like some ridiculous questions at first glance but let's take a second look at the future through the Great Karnak's trusty crystal ball.
Who owns food?
Let's start with this one, since it has, more or less, already taken place. A small landowner in Nebraska named Bill parks his tractor in the shed after a long day of work in the fields. He wipes sixteen hours worth of sweat off his brow while he opens his mail. All bills. Two men in dark suits approach him at the front door and hand him a subpoena. The farmer opens the subpoena, quite surprised to learn he's being sued by a major U.S. corporation for copyright infringement. It's a huge settlement they're after - in the millions. He doesn't have one tenth of what they're asking in damages. Since he sits on a tractor most days, he hasn't got the faintest notion how he could be named in a suit for copyright infringement. He's certain they've got a case of mistaken identity and places the document at the bottom of a pile of correspondence, making a mental note to consult his lawyer about what to do with the nuisance suit.
Rest assured, it's no mistake. The large U.S. corporation spent millions in developing a strand of DNA for corn that is resistant to a pesticide they also own. When you buy their corn seeds and use their pesticide for your crops, you'll get excellent results. They copyright the strand of corn DNA they worked to develop. To protect the investment in DNA research they hire over seventy-five corporate lawyers to aggressively prosecute copyright 'thieves'. They have to establish a legal precedent that attracts a lot of publicity; they intend to branch out into other food stuffs, such as eggs that last longer on the shelf, wheat that produces heavier grain, chickens that add weight quickly, beef that responds to their brand of steroids in cattle foods. The list is endless, and it's all going to be done by protecting copyrighted DNA strands.
Bill consults his country lawyer about the suit, explaining that he has stolen nothing in his life from anyone. The lawyer does a bit of researching and discovers he's opposed on the brief by some of the best legal minds in history, paid for by a Dow Jones multinational. He first explains to the multinational that his client doesn't know how the patented corn seed got into his fields. Possibly the seed cleaning company that strips seeds off Bill's corn for next year's crop has intermingled patented seeds with his. He tries to offer a settlement but this is not what the corporation wants. They want a trial. They wish to establish for the record that they're prepared to sue if anyone grows their corn without paying them for the seeds.
Bill and the country lawyer lose the case which costs him more than he can pay in damages and legal costs. He appeals. The appeal also loses right up to the Supreme Court since copyright law is sacrosanct in the U.S. Intellectual property, in this case a section of DNA, is property protected by the highest court in the land. Bill's house, farm and equipment are sold at auction to the highest bidder, and the proceeds given to a multinational worth more than a quarter trillion in market cap. The proceeds don't cover the cost of one of the lawyers for one year, but they've earned an important victory - they own food.
Who pays for this accident?
Late June, 2016. A new electric car with one occupant is proceeding along a Florida highway within the speed limit. Up ahead, a tractor trailer crossing the pavement at an intersection blocks the way. The driver, who has the vehicle on 'auto-pilot' is reading work-related files and doesn't see the upcoming collision; he trusts his car will react properly and put on the brakes, as advertized. The software or hardware on the car malfunctions, the result is that the car smashes at full speed into the trailer blocking the road, disintegrating the car and killing its occupant.
Within hours of learning of the crash, the vehicle manufacturer issues a statement: 'Neither the auto-pilot nor the driver saw the tractor trailer in the blinding sun', trying to diminish responsibility by including the driver's inattention to the road. A sharp lawyer advises the family of the deceased to sue, since, by definition, he was not the driver; the car company's software was driving. The driver of the tractor trailer is found blameless because it was possible to avoid the accident, just as every other vehicle did in this situation.
The impending lawsuit sends shivers down the corporate world's spine. Will they be forced to halt production of their cars? Offer compensation in the billions as GM or Ford experienced? Will it affect future car sales? Will there be expensive recalls? Their very survival hangs in the balance on the outcome of this legal battle. The car company uses as its indemnity the disclaimer every software user accepts before they can switch on the 'auto-pilot'. Use at your own risk, they say, just like all software. If a calculator gives you the wrong answer, is the calculator manufacturer to blame if you make a wrong bid on a billion dollar tower construction and lose your shirt because of it? No, it's the user's responsibility to check all calculations.
Not so fast, says the family's lawyer. I present to you as evidence sales material from the car company showing people in these cars on 'auto-pilot' busily reading files related to work, texting on their phones, eating sandwiches and coffee, streaming movies. The company has promoted the auto-pilot as reliable, in fact more reliable than humans. The manufacturer, in order to sell the product, has accepted the responsibility for the safety of its passengers, or users, by heavily implying that users can relax while the software guides them safely to their destinations. It's the car company that killed their client, no one else, by encouraging the car buyers to trust the software to the extent that they don't have to pay attention to the road ahead. Why else would you buy it?
Insurance companies are prepared to fund the legal challenge to a successful outcome. They want a clear definition of who's at fault before they begin underwriting any more policies. Driverless car manufacturers are rushing headlong into the intersection of Lawyer and Technology Streets with their eyes closed. Keep watching this space, you'll never see a bigger smash-up.
Who owns my face?
Brad Pratt is a famous movie star. His wife Angie Groaner is too. They're fed up to the teeth with being filmed by paparazzi. Brad is filmed in public toilets. Angie is filmed at the doctor's office. What gets them most upset is they're captured on film with their kids. They don't have a moment to themselves, not even after they move from the U.S. to the outskirts of London, England. Every time they walk past a newsstand they look the other way so they don't have to read headlines about themselves in stories they didn't sanction. Angie especially deplores the stories depicting her children as alien babies. Paparazzi invade their lives every waking, sometimes not waking, moment.
That's the price of fame say the news organizations. Bullpoop, says Brad, and I'm going to come up with a way to stop it. Unbeknownst to the so-called 'news' media, Brad and Angie consult with the best legal minds and come up with a solution: trademark their faces.
A trademark is the copyright of an image related to the conduct of business, and since Brad and Angie's faces are their business (worth millions), they're well within their rights to trademark their mugs. They take a 360° view of their faces and deposit them with all the necessary paperwork at every major trademark registration office throughout the world.
They can't wait for their first lawsuit to prove the concept. Soon, a tabloid prints the story, 'Brad and Angie Have Alien Twins'. The photographer and Celebrity Ogler are served with an invitation to attend court in every country in which they publish.
The photog is a nobody with a camera. He's paid up to a quarter of a million dollars for candid shots depicting Brad on the toilet or Angie in a dress shop changing room. He explains that Celebrity Ogler paid him to take these pictures on a spec basis. The more revealing and damaging the photo, the more they get paid, so anything goes, regardless of the rules of common courtesy or decency.
The publisher, Celebrity Ogler, claims that the two famous people made their millions by being in the public eye, and if it weren't for news and tabloids, the couple would be living in anonymity. They benefited from free publicity for their rise to stardom and now it's simply inconvenient to them. They also argue in most countries, it's their constitutional right to publish news stories related to anyone, regardless of their position in society. What if they were guilty of murder, could we be prevented from displaying their pictures on newspapers?
Pratt and Groaner's legal team argues that their trademark, central to their business of making films, has been used without their permission and that both the photographer and the publisher have profited using someone else's copyrighted image. These magazines are not reporting 'news'; they rely on sales of their tabloids based on the already established popularity of their subjects. Now that they have trademarked their faces, the defendants have profited off someone else's popularity and their image.
The court rules in favor of the plaintiffs. They're awarded damages and any further use of their trademarked images can only be done by permission. It will be a very long time before Pratt and Groaner give permission for strangers to take their picture. A new business for trade-marking faces is spawned.
Who owns the Arctic?
In the 1850's a British expedition to find the Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean goes missing for over a hundred years. Fast forward one hundred and fifty years. Due to global warming the ice pack has melted and it is now possible to sail year round through the Arctic Ocean.
Oil is discovered outside the new economic exclusion zone and Canada protests the invasion of oil drilling wells from the U.S., taking the case to the World Trade Organization and the United Nations. Canada claims sovereignty of the Artic to the North Pole. The U.S. says, 'See you in court. No one can own an international waterway.'
Who owns the Pacific Ocean?
In a mirror image incident in the Pacific Ocean in international waters off China, barges filled with earth drop millions of tons of rocks and slurry to create a small land mass. The Chinese fill enough of the ocean to create a tiny island in the Pacific large enough to plant their flag. They then declare an economic exclusion zone of two hundred miles in all directions and begin drilling for oil.
The American navy sails through the disputed waters. Certain of the rightness of their cause, China begins sending belligerent diplomatic notes of protest to the United States and the United Nations. The U.S. does not recognize their sovereignty in an international waterway by the artificial creation of a land mass. The Chinese are ready to start a war and take pot shots at the U.S. navy in what used to be international waters. Tensions come to a boil before the case can be heard in international courts. The Chinese threaten to begin a war with the U.S. over the issue.
The U.S. responds by entering trade agreements with India and setting up manufacturing facilities for a wide range of consumer items, directly competing with cheap Chinese labor. Twenty years after the shift to India, the U.S. and its allies block all further Chinese imports.
Who owns the sky?
Fred and Harriet are having dinner in their isolated country home. They're having Fred's favorite recipe - Mulligatawny soup. An object crashes through the roof and kills the couple outright. Upon investigation, the object belongs to Grooble, a technology firm developing driverless cars. One of their satellites, while repositioning itself to a new orbit, received an incorrect set of coordinates from the controller and crashed back to earth, landing on hapless Fred and Harriet, and the soup tureen. The pieces of wreckage found clearly indicate the ownership of the fallen satellite. Fred and Harriet's heirs file suit.
The ownership of a piece of land includes the space above and below it, with no defined limit. If you wish to build above the land five hundred stories high there can be no legal objection to it. The plaintiffs argue that their property rights are infringed at any altitude and Grooble was encroaching on the couple's right to ownership of their property, even though the satellite might have been hovering six thousand miles above them. Since the satellite owners accept the premise that the hardware might malfunction for any number of reasons and come crashing back to earth, they knowingly encroached on property they do not own.
The Grooble Corporation argues that international agreements have determined space (defined as 62.5 miles altitude) to be outside the purview of local property laws. The heirs of the property owners claim that once the satellite re-entered the atmosphere, it was no longer subject to the laws that govern space and are therefore seeking damages afforded them by local property rights, the same as they would if an airplane dropped on their house.
Looking back we find it hard to believe some of the cases that were heard to defend people's rights and property. The Scopes trial of the Twenties comes to mind, which defended an educator's right to discuss evolution. A divisive question for its time, a mere ninety years later, it's almost irrelevant, replaced by the new issues that arise with the advent of technological discovery. The conflicts these new challenges create will burn brightly in their time, setting one against the other in tumult and violent upheaval until, just like all issues, the unveiling of new eras and new civilizations will make them pass into irrelevance. But is mankind now changing too quickly to adapt to new situations? For instance, will we pollute and kill all marine life in the oceans before we can develop legal frameworks to stop it? Will a country poison the atmosphere for the rest of the world? Will nations figure out a solution to global warming before it's too late? Will DNA continue to be copyrighted preventing food from being grown by private citizens in times of starvation? Will space be cluttered with so much debris as to make it unusable? Legal disputes of the future are extremely difficult to predict but their outcomes greatly impact our societies.
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