Placing Scrypnosis in the Public Domain

David Ian Brager ID#1146728

For

MC 555 Professor Teresa Brosnan, Atty.

City University, Richland, WA

© 2005 David Ian Brager.

4 December 2005

All Rights Reserved.

With the recent changes in copyright laws, the protection of the public domain has come into question (2003, Samuelson). The Anti-Circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it so that the instant anything is posted to digital media, it essentially earns an immediate copyright (2005, Madison). The right to place concepts directly into the public domain must be protected.

A computer hacker from back when the hackers were the good guys, David Ian Brager (a.k.a. this paper's author), did private research for over twenty years. By doing strictly volunteer work as an experimental hypnotist, Mr. Brager set out to map the human mind as if it were a computer and establish a concise programming method in plain language (Brager, 2004), for a new field he called Human Computational Communications, being at the intersection of two existing fields of study - Human Communications and Computational Communications (Brager, 2004).

While doing experiments with hypnosis using computer logic, Mr. Brager was also doing work with neural interfaces (Brager, 2005). He was the very first person (in 1985) to develop a commercial application so a person may type, hands-free, with an electromyograph interface (Brager, 2004) called The Relax System (Pappas, 1984). The interface was developed by Ihor Wolosenko for a company that Mr. Wolosenko owned in the mid-1980's called Synapse Software (DeWitt, 1983).

Synapse signed contracts with Mr. Brager for the production of three programs he developed, those being Headwords, Headlines, and Headbands, which would type, draw, and make music, respectively, with no hand controls (Brager, 2005). This new software would have advanced the computer world, but two weeks later, the software giant, Brøderbund (developers of The Print Shop software), bought Synapse Software (Powell, 1985), and terminated the division. At that moment, Mr. Brager became what Peter Drucker refers to as a "Monomaniac on a Mission (Peters, 1990)."

Mr. Brager kept at his research, waiting for the technology to return, which began to appear in the media in 1994 when David Edell, a research scientist with MIT's Department of Health Sciences, began developing neural prosthesis interfacing (Ridley, 1994). By 2005, the First International Conference on Neural Interface and Control was held in Wuhan, China (Huazhoung, 2004), proving that the market had fully arrived.

According to Mr. Brager's research, neural interface technology had one major flaw. The only way to get maximal throughput (with highly intuitive and accurate responses using these interfaces), the user had to sustain a comprehensive subconscious state (Brager, 2005). To accomplish this, there had to be a systematic use of elements of hypnosis (Brager, 2005). However, hypnosis was consistently met with scorn, fear, and disarming levels of misunderstanding (Holiday, 1983).

Mr. Brager took on the challenge to develop a consistent method to the logic of hypnosis so that it could be integrated with computers for higher throughput levels between humans and computers (Brager, 2005). From his research, he discovered that the human mind was able to process data at over 3600 times faster than when awake, thus allowing computers to transmit and receive data from humans faster (Brager, 2005).

What Mr. Brager discovered became the basis for a development of the first method to hypnosis that was safe, that could be integrated with computers, was contractual, and eliminated the need for hypnotists to be involved at all (Brager, 2005). However, the best benefit was that such tools gave absolute beginners a way to utilize these innate abilities with relative ease, so long as a secondary entity was involved to orate, or text-to-speech transmit, a contracted script of logical process using normal human language that the intended listener comprehended (Brager, 2005).

When Mr. Brager coined the term scrypnosis, he defined this word to be a five-stage contractual process for hypnosis (Brager, 2003) . By being contractual, it was done so that the intended listener is expected to have read the entire contract prior to agreeing to it (Brager, 2003) while finally allowing world governments to get involved in the protection of their citizenry from the common hypnosis environment, for, without scrypnosis, people's lives have been disrupted and abused by unscrupulous and conniving hypnotists (Zambo, 2005).

By developing a new communications field from which he could then do business, Mr. Brager set forth to place scrypnosis into the international public domain, so that the terminology would become a generic term, contrary to the typical wishes of business (Hinton, 2002). To this end, Mr. Brager published an everyday workingman's reference book, entitled The Future's Toolkit  (Brager, 2005).

However, by placing scrypnosis into the public domain, such is going to undermine, and possibly eliminate, the need for commercial and stage hypnotists. This then raises one issue that has two competing positions.

Position #1:

By placing works into the international public domain, one is creating antitrust by making commercial competition impossible, for no one can compete with free.

Position #2:

By placing works into the international public domain, one is seeding a fair market by opening new opportunities for free enterprise and, furthermore, is anti-monopoly.

Antitrust is defined as unfair business practices (Wikipedia, 2005) and there is a very profitable, but sometimes questionable, way to do business using what is called Loss Leaders strategy (Wikipedia, 2005). Having the ability to give away an inexpensive component (razor) to later sell a long-term relationship in support (blades) in the aftermarket, such is of very proficient business sense (Wikipedia, 2005). In current terms, one can get a free cellular phone in exchange for a minimum service agreement (About.com, 2005).

However, some people use a variant of Loss Leader called Predatory Pricing (Wikipedia, 2005), in which one, such as in the Microsoft Antitrust case, gives away things to put their competition out of business while utilizing the logic to control the market (Brager, 1997). In Microsoft's case, they stayed the course long enough to come back into a commercial business on these same platforms they had, for a time, given away for free (France, 1998). In exterminating their competition by giving away what their competition sold for its livelihood, Microsoft managed to outlast the competition, yet created an artificial veil of trust over consumers, who were then forced to purchase better operating systems (Windows 98, XP, etc.) so that they could continue to upgrade and use the software once all the competition had been virtually eliminated (France, 1998).

Such predatory pricing is illegal in some countries. For example, in Ireland, there is a law against below-cost selling (Garvey, 2005). Based on that definition's logic, there is no more disjointed income-to-expense ratio than that found when one gives away something for free. Therefore, it is arguable that Mr. Brager's actions, to place his works into the public domain, may have been a basis of antitrust.

There are times in modern civilization where it is necessary to wrestle the controls away from specialists so as to flood such market with tools that allow new businesses to participate in such markets themselves without paying royalties (Sullivan, 1994), as it has been used as an antitrust remedy (Schlam, 1998). Such moves help fuel the free enterprise system to open new markets, such as acting.

Constantine Staislavski developed a method to acting. Up to his point in history, only one apprentice would learn acting at a time from each actor (Proudfit, 2001). After studying acting under Tortsov, a director in his day, Stanislavski developed a method to acting so that anyone who wanted to become an actor could get into this field, and in publishing his book, An Actor Prepares, he placed these tools into the hands of the world, giving birth to the field of acting as a professional career for millions (Proudfit, 2001).

There is a dividing difference between open source and public domain, for one can make changes to public domain works and charge all one wants without paying any royalties or giving any notice, whatsoever, to the original author (Towle, 2004). Conversely, open source, which utilizes a General Public License (GPL), requires that all software modifications to the original work must have their source code openly available to others and must allow all enhancements or improvements, that are made to the original source code, to be equally availed of their computer source code so that a growing pool of integrated platforms can thus be developed to co-exist and integrate (Towle, 2004).

In recent history, Tim Berners-Lee invented a process wherein the internet transformed from being a highly structured, difficult to use, technical textual environment to being one that could be utilized by anyone who wanted to use it while transporting graphic (and other embedded media) rapidly using complex browser interfaces (Wikipedia, 2005). With Linus Torvalis' work to create software, from which others can build their software, came Linux, a Unix-like operating system, that was open source (Towle, 2004).

By creating the World Wide Web and placing Sir Berners-Lee's tools into the open source public domain, people could utilize web technology, royalty-free, which fueled the growth of the entire world economy through the growth of the internet (Wikipedia, 2005). This, in turn, earned him a well deserved Nobel Prize (Wikipedia, 2005). Thus, public domain is anti-monopoly at its core (Rose, 2003). Also, in comparison to intrusive advertising like unsolicited email, by placing methodologies and software into the public domain, such provides free, unintrusive advertising for the developer (Sullivan, 1994).

By doing strictly volunteer work throughout this entire period, and then placing his tools into the international public domain, Mr. Brager has apparently avoided antitrust, for he has done deeds without personal fiscal gain and without being associated with any company that would benefit from his work putting other hypnotists out of business. However, by establishing and publicizing that he will be entering this field soon (Brager, 2004), having given these tools to the public domain (Brager, 2003), and published his book to make this field more accessible to the general public (Brager, 2005), such action establishes a highly ethical method to business which should be construed as honorable and, in the long run, profitable.

Based on the arguments made here, the gift of important intellectual property rights is significant to the public domain as it allows commercially equal gains by all others, including the person who places such works into the public domain, so that there is no chance for a monopoly nor for antitrust. By giving the tools to the public domain, it levels the playing field, allowing small businesses the opportunities to compete and, perhaps, become big business without an initial outlay of capital.

Therefore, the choices made by Mr. Brager to place scrypnosis into the public domain are valuable for business. Such actions should be seen as yet another reason why the public domain must be protected. As University of Chicago Professor of Law, Richard A. Epstein, put it, 'When authors and inventors place things in the public domain, it simplifies life for us all... (Epstein, 2005).'

Zambo, K. (2005, November 27). Rape by hypnosis? Plea deal leaves issue unresolved. Naples Daily News online. Retrieved from http://www.naplesnews.com/ npdn/news/article/0,2071,NPDN_14940_4269977,00.html

I needed a case to prove that people have been abused by hypnotists, thereby establishing a reason why scrypnosis needed to be in the public domain so as to protect the unknowing and unsuspecting public.

Tim Berners-Lee. (2005, November 30). Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee

I chose Wikipedia for the Tim Berners-Lee selection as it best reflected his whole being. From this, I then did all other "common knowledge" citing from this one source. Sir Berners-Lee has exchanged email with me in the past and I was most impressed by his compassion for the world.

Antitrust. (2005, December 1). Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust

Predatory Pricing. (2005, November 15). Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing

A common piece of knowledge cited from a known and valid source.

Open Source. (2005, November 30). Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

A common piece of knowledge cited from a known and valid source.

Loss Leader. (2005, November 29). Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader

A common piece of knowledge cited from a known and valid source.

Public Domain. (2005, November 29). Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain

A common piece of knowledge cited from a known and valid source.

Madison, M. J. (2005, June). The Legitimacy of Open Source and Other Software Licenses. Journal of Internet Law, v8 i12 p1(14), from INFOTRAC database.

This source was needed to substantiate issues of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Towle, H., McFarland, C. & Keppler, E. (2004, December). Open Source Issues in Business. Journal of Internet Law, v8 i6 p3(6), from INFOTRAC database.

This article clearly defined the difference in impact that Public Domain had over Open Source. Having once published a computer game that tapped the Commodore "PET Computer Public Domain" in the early 1980's, I was allowed to liberally take source code from this program without giving reference to the author and still charging for the final software (my game "Lazer Blazer"). However, as the source code was in the PET archives, the authors' names had been removed, so there was no way to know who the original author was in any way.

Samuelson, P. (2003). Mapping the Digital Public Domain: Threats and Opportunities. Duke University School of Law, Conference on Public Domain , from INFOTRAC database.

This paper reflects the issues surrounding the problems affecting the public domain, but as I got into this topic, this work did not venture where I wanted the arguments to go, so I utilized it in setting the scene.

Rose, M. (2003, Winter-Spring). Nine-tenths of the Law: the English Copyright Debates and the Rhetoric of the Public Domain. Duke University School of Law, Conference on Public Domain , from INFOTRAC database.

This paper establishes that the Public Domain is anti-monopoly.

Proudfit, S. (2001, April 5). An Actor Prepares. Back Stage West, v8 i14 p8, from INFOTRAC database.

I needed a recent source from which to cite Stanislavski. Mr. Proudfit does a reasonably accurate article about this book, which was published a long time ago, but this book has been reprinted, like the bible, for decades.

Hinton, C. (2002, September). When Good Marks Go Bad: The Evils of Genericide. American Journalism Review, v24 i7 p60(3), from INFOTRAC database.

I needed some way to substantiate that businesses fight to keep their product names as trademarks and do not like them to become generic.

Schlam, L. (1998, Winter). Compulsory royalty-free licensing as an antitrust remedy for patent fraud: law, policy and the patent-antitrust interface revisited. Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, v7 n2 p467-530, from INFOTRAC database.

The title of this paper substantiated the point I needed to make.

Epstein, R. (personal communications, 2005 May 26). Re: Making neural interfaces work better. Server Message-id: 4295E306.9070100@uchicago.edu

This blurb made a magnificent closing to the piece, and as the Professor actually wrote back to Mr. Brager, it was substantial as an irrefutable source from a nationally recognized leader. The initial contact was made reading an article in MIT Tech Review concerning the future of the public domain. The article was a point/counterpoint article, and so, an email was sent to both authors, but only Professor Epstein replied with a quotable quote, which needed a comma added, so said remark was noted with sub-quotes so as to allow the addition of said comma rather than the use of [sic] to denote an error.

Brosnan, T. (personal communication, 2005 November 14). "RE: MC55501-OL-FL06-D. Brager mods to thesis." City University of Bellevue email server, Server Message-id: 90B7D50DE3755C44B667722E63A6D22D01A075E7@cuexchange2.univ.ad. cityu.edu.

This quote perfectly framed the argument and thus needed to be included in this paper.

Brager, D. (2003, March 19). "scrypnosis" is now public domain. Google Groups USENET newsgroup archives. Retrieved from http://groups.google.com/group/alt.hypnosis/browse_thread/thread/424999035c58c6f6/e3e2f64119e30af9

This post in the USENET newsgroup archives, which was reached via Google Groups (groups.google.com), has the original posting of the Public Domain declaration by Mr. Brager.

Brager, D. (1997). Walking the Path to Microsoft Hell (The David Brager Column). LikeWise magazine, v1 n1 p15.

This article was written in 1997 and published in print some six months before the first whiff of antitrust Microsoft cases hit the open media. It was published in the premiere Issue of LikeWise magazine, out of Cardiff, South Wales, and the publisher/editor was Gavin Leigh. Unfortunately, the funding never arrived so that Mr. Brager's column, and the magazine, was cancelled before issue #3.

Brager, D. (2004, February 2). Replacing Video with Belief Systems. IGDA: International Game Developers Association forums. Retrieved from http://www.igda.org/Forums/printthread.php?s=76a12444130c2d38da9088b0fd7d95af&threadid=8616

This post to the IGDA forums substantiates Mr. Brager's statements of what he has attested to having said in public.

Brager, D. (2005, March 5). Innovating with David Brager: RELAX Biofeedback Interface. Retrieved from http://geocities.datacellar.net/dibragerowtcom/innovate.htm

This site has the source code so that anyone can build a hands-free typing device out of a neural interface which has an electromyograph as part of its design, so long as that portion of the interface outputs a sequential string of data so that it can be co-addressed to allow ease of input design. Please see note in Brager, 2005, City U Summer Term Paper annotated bibliography note, above, for time-date stamp reference reliability notation.

Tom Peters actually used the Monomaniac quote in his book, In Search of Excellence, but rather than cite the book, I went to the web to see if I could find any other source for the Peter Drucker quote, hoping for a newer one, but not finding one.

Holiday, N. (1983). Criminal law - admissibility of evidence - testimony refreshed by hypnosis fails to satisfy general acceptance in scientific community standard. Thurgood Marshall Law Review, Ann 1983 8 n2 p451-462, , from INFOTRAC database.

There existed a need to substantiate that people distrust hypnosis.

Pappas, L. (1984). New Products. ANALOG Computing, Digital ANALOG archive. Retrieved from http://www.cyberroach.com/analog/an19/new_prod.htm

As Mr. Brager had worked on the Relax System, a source needed to be found that would substantiate this interface, from over two decades ago, ever existed.

DeWitt, R. (1983, April). INTERVIEW: Ihor Wolosenko (Synapse Software). Antic, v2 n1 p21. Retrieved from

To give rise to the fact that Synapse was owned by Ihor Wolosenko, and though no actual proof was found to substantiate that Mr. Wolosenko actually made the product himself, the fact that he owned the company that produced and sold the product was proof enough that he did have some part in it.

Powell, J. (1985, July). Eight New Synapse Games: Synapse Merges with Broderbund. Antic, v4 n3 p16-17, from INFOTRAC database.

For there to be a case in which a course of action is most rapidly terminated, such is common when one business buys another. Hence, it was absolutely necessary to find a source that could substantiate that Synapse was indeed bought by Brøderbund.

Brager, D. (2004, November). Douglas Adams' Hidden Message. The RPG Times, v9 i11. Retrieved from http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:OsvJaFDSDewJ:www.rpgtimes.net/rpgtimes/ article.php%3Farticle_id%3D517%26origin%3Dcurrent++%22Human+Computational+Communications%22&hl=en

It was necessary to prove that some third-party source had printed anything by Mr. Brager to say that he had indeed coined a phrase "Human Computational Communications." However, as the website (RPG Times) does not have accurate time-date stamping, the only way to ascertain the true date of publication, as when you view it today it always has a continuously updated date on the page, one had to use the cached copy at Google so that the copy linked, above, comes up with a more original publication date.

Brager, D. (2005, October). The Future's Toolkit. CafePress.com publishing, http://www.cafepress.com/scrypnosis.35615426

CafePress.com is a self-publishing site, allowing anyone to set up a free "company site," and then uploading graphic and such to create and sell print-on-demand clothes, mugs, and other stuff. They also allow a person to upload and sell one music CD and one book. Hence, as Mr. Brager's book does not have ISBN registry and is simply copyrighted, this was the only way to absolutely cite the existence of the book, for this is the link that allows someone to buy the book.

France, M. & Hamm, S. (1998, November 12). DOES PREDATORY PRICING MAKE MICROSOFT A PREDATOR? Business Week Archives. Retrieved from http://www.businessweek.com/1998/47/b3605129.htm

This article substantiated the concept that no one can compete with "free."

Huazhong University of Science and Technology. (2004, October 15). First International Conference on Neural Interface and Control. Retrieved from http://202.114.4.49/administration/r&d/docs/gjhy/

This site substantiates the existence of the first international symposium on neural interfaces.

Ridley, K. (1994, October). Artificial Sensations. Technology Review, v97 n7 p11(3), from INFOTRAC database.

This article was the first found after the termination of the Relax System project, by Brøderbund, referring to the return of neural interfaces to the market. My first whiff, in actual terms in living life, was when watching a TV Show called "Technology 2000," out of Australia, but for the purpose of this paper, this article substantiates that the market had begun to return many years later.

About.com. (2005). Free Phone and Pager Offers. Retrieved from http://cellphones.about.com/cs/freephonespagers/

I needed proof that people give away cellular phones in exchange for service plans or other features. All the phones on this web page are "Free" but also, this page has an explanation, warning of the dangers of such definitions of "free."

Sullivan, E. (1994, April 18). Sometimes the best things in life are free. PC Week, v11 n15 p77(2), from INFOTRAC database.

A source was needed to substantiate the concept of public domain as a form of advertising that is memorable, semi-permanent, and, in the long run, cheap. Every business should consider it, but most won't as they are very narrow focused on their returns, and do not realize that when they have a second product ready to sell, by giving a first concept to the public domain and then tooting one's own horn, for no one else will do it, one may obtain excellent publicity if the value of the gift is valid enough to warrant public interest.

Garvey, A. (2005, May 7). Ireland's Below-Cost Ban Could Still Be Abolished. Grocer, v228 i7700 p16(1), from INFOTRAC database.

This source allowed support for the concept that below-market selling was illegal somewhere in the world besides the United States.

Cowles, R. (1998, July). The magic of hypnosis: is it child's play? The Journal of Psychology, v132 n4 p357(10), from INFOTRAC database.

This source helps substantiate how people dismiss hypnosis as if it is magic.