[10078] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Matthew Bender, com-priv, ANS, et al
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (thosstew@aol.com)
Sun Feb 6 10:13:51 1994
From: thosstew@aol.com
To: com-priv@psi.com
Date: Sun, 06 Feb 94 10:18:56 EST
Stuart Cohnen wrote: "Who cares? What's this got to do with the com-priv
list?
We're too busy knocking ANS to worry about a few sharks (I mean
lawyers) and what they are doing!"
I trust that was tongue-in-cheek :-J
It's all too easy for those in academe, or those of us who follow business in
the sense that people usually take the word, to forget what a vast amount of
commerce is at stake in professions like the law--billions and billions of
bills &c. (Not to mention the copyright issues that affect anyone who does or
hopes to make a living from written expression.) The breakup of West's
economic power here inolves an indeterminable amount of money--indeterminable
because West is (I understand) a partnership, as are the law firms of this
world, and no one seems to know what their financial innards look like.
(Anyone know?) But the bucks involved have got to be substantial.
If I remember correctly, too, the law was one of the first fields to
experiment with computerized databases of any kind--my father, a retired
lawyer, talk to me sabout them about 25 years ago. Interesting that the law
seems to be out in front again on what happens to this kind of research tool
in a commercial environment in a universal-access medium. And if that isn't a
subject for a list that deals with commercialization of the net, what is?
Tom Stewart
