Subject: Ideas about Trademarks

From: David Whitten <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 05:34:55 -0800

I was reading one of the news postings about someone who wreaked havoc
on a MU* by writing a virus that added new verbs to a person which made
page, mail, emote, etc into silent verbs. (ie: the user saw the message,
but no-one else in the room did...)

Anyway, one of the criticisms mentioned was that someone should have
noticed that the version of each of these that was being used did not belong
to the 'proper' writer of the the code.

Now since I have just recently gotten involved in MOO (at LambdaMOO) I realize
I have no idea of who the 'proper' person is for the verbs I normally use...

One way of combatting this problem could be to have a central registry of
verbs, along with the 'official' writer.

Another way might be to have a 'Patent office' where people can register their
Trademarks, and have a system call that couldn't be overridden which would
keep track of which 'trademarks' I want to be used for verbs I use.
This is a subtle kind of permission scheme, and may need some work.
Ideas anyone?

Dave ([email-masked]) US:(619)535-7764 "I don't speak for SAIC"

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From: Judy Anderson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 14:05:00 -0800

On LambdaMOO we have taken the attitude that "if you don't trust the
parent's owner, don't chparent to it", and have given player class
owners, for example, rather a lot of power (they can change your name at
random, etc).  I think that a trademark office would become very quickly
unwieldy; the whole *point* of parenting objects is to easily modify
existing verbs.

But, *you* made the choice to chparent to some person's object, if you
don't trust them, don't do it.  You won't be affected by their verbs if
you don't have a child of their object.

Judy Anderson yclept yduJ    [email-masked]   'yduJ' rhymes with 'fudge'
    [ LambdaMOO is lambda.parc.xerox.com 8888 / 13.2.116.36 8888 ]
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