Law and compliance (2 Viewers)

[Edwin SIEW]

..... IMHO... I think there should be a category for subjects and threads related to law, compliance and financial matters. Besides the issues of property ownership, there would often be matters of taxation, depreciation, and so on, which we should get advice from the professionals rightfully, but until one has a matter well defined enough to approach a professional of these matters, the grapevine is probably somewhere anyone's research starts.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I am going to move your question to "Site Suggestions."

 

[Gasman]

Aren't there sites already dedicated to those topics?

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Taking off the moderator hat...

The problem with having a "law" section is that this is a multi-national forum. Besides the USA's multi-layered sovereignty of 50 states with 50 sets of state laws that independently and separately address computer crimes and specific details of business law, we have to also determine how many different nations are active here. (And NO, I don't want to try to count them all by examining everyone's profile.) I'm guessing not less than 20 countries with active members and maybe at least 25 of the 50 USA states. Getting any legal consensus here is questionable at best and a potential nightmare at worst.

 

[Edwin SIEW]

There's also economics. One source of law is based on economical view point, and a good example is communism which does not believe in provide property. I am not very much well read in economics and software but I do know there has been criticism when real-world tangible benefit seems to have reach a limit while we are forever downloading and upgrading apps as demanded. We are approaching the perfect Keynesian society where all people do is repetitive digging and filling the same hole just to keep the GDP up. the more well read and astute ones in this forum might have a word or two to enlighten us with on software and economics, I hope.

 

[Edwin SIEW]

Taking off the moderator hat...

The problem with having a "law" section is that this is a multi-national forum. Besides the USA's multi-layered sovereignty of 50 states with 50 sets of state laws that independently and separately address computer crimes and specific details of business law, we have to also determine how many different nations are active here. (And NO, I don't want to try to count them all by examining everyone's profile.) I'm guessing not less than 20 countries with active members and maybe at least 25 of the 50 USA states. Getting any legal consensus here is questionable at best and a potential nightmare at worst.

You would be pleased to know it is easier than it seems. There only two major law systems, despite various political constitutions, the Common Law and the Roman Law. All communists and socialist countries prefer the Roman Law system, also called the Civil Law system, which believes in telling everyone what to do from top down. The Common Law, now attacked and weakened, was less structured but could come from down up, with fearless judges chipping away at emerging injustice and finally reaching the elected body to codify the body of cases into good law. Many of the IT and Computer laws were developed from common law decisions. Significantly, copyright law is one of these, which protects the codes. Anyway, we are dealing with these software laws all the time, just unknowingly.

 

[sonic8]

Taking off the moderator hat...

Put it back on!
This thread is already taking a bad turn ...

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Put it back on!
This thread is already taking a bad turn ...

Since at this time I see no incivility, much less visceral disagreement, I don't know that the thread needs shutting down or some other form of moderation (beyond the fact that I moved it to the Suggestions header). Do you have a more specific complaint?

You would be pleased to know it is easier than it seems. There only two major law systems, despite various political constitutions

It doesn't matter if there are only two systems or two hundred. Most of us are not lawyers and only deal tangentially with legal issues. The closest most of us EVER get to legalities is the End User Licensing Agreement. We only have a couple of people here who interact more intimately with the law and even then, they rarely get involved in business law. The only issues in law that I have had to manage were based on government training classes on the USA HIPAA law (Health Information Protection), data exposure security regulations (National Secrets Act), and records management (Federal Records Management act.) And that was three seminars, once each year.

I am actually indifferent on whether such a forum topic is established, as I probably would not refer to it. However, your suggestion was certainly worthy of discussion, which is why I moved it as I did. So far, the thread exhibits a singular lack of enthusiasm.

 

[Edwin SIEW]

Since at this time I see no incivility, much less visceral disagreement, I don't know that the thread needs shutting down or some other form of moderation (beyond the fact that I moved it to the Suggestions header). Do you have a more specific complaint?



It doesn't matter if there are only two systems or two hundred. Most of us are not lawyers and only deal tangentially with legal issues. The closest most of us EVER get to legalities is the End User Licensing Agreement. We only have a couple of people here who interact more intimately with the law and even then, they rarely get involved in business law. The only issues in law that I have had to manage were based on government training classes on the USA HIPAA law (Health Information Protection), data exposure security regulations (National Secrets Act), and records management (Federal Records Management act.) And that was three seminars, once each year.

I am actually indifferent on whether such a forum topic is established, as I probably would not refer to it. However, your suggestion was certainly worthy of discussion, which is why I moved it as I did. So far, the thread exhibits a singular lack of enthusiasm.

Well, thanks for that!

Before anyone start thinking that I might have a burning topic to bring to everyone's attention, well, I don't.
at this moment,

But I am sure it every now and then, someone would have something to say.

 

[Joan Wild]

But I am sure it every now and then, someone would have something to say.

There you have it. An 'every now and then' type of thing doesn't warrant a separate subforum

 

[sonic8]

Do you have a more specific complaint?

Not yet.
I just noticed that the thread quickly developed a bit of a watercooler/politics flavor as some statements can be read as invitation to heated debate.

I don't feel inclined to pursue that type of debate.
Nonetheless, I can't refrain from pointing out that while Edwin claims that it is all easier than you suggested, he, at the same time, proves it actually is not.

Many of the IT and Computer laws were developed from common law decisions. Significantly, copyright law is one of these, which protects the codes.

Well, German copyright law had its origins in the Printer's Privilege of late medieval times (second half of 15th century), when the Holy Roman Empire's law system already had strong civil law traits, which particularly show in that privilege. So, in its universal wording, the above statement is plain wrong.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

@Edwin SIEW - by historical precedent, our members have asked for and gotten quite a few specific topic forums added to the list of available forums. However, in each case that I can recall (and I've been a member for 25 years), the suggestions that succeeded had immediate agreement among our veteran and newer members. In this case, I'm not seeing such support and our site owner Jon has not stepped in either. He would make the final decision in any case, but at the moment I don't see a lot of support for the idea. If I can't see it, Jon probably wouldn't see it either.

If there is any good news for you, it is not our precedent to remove a suggestion. Here's a legal term for you - we don't have a statute of limitation for unaccepted suggestions. I will leave your suggestion where it is and thank you for participating by offering a reasonable suggestion.