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Information is mostly free - since we are entering information age fast, legislation on information gets its own section.
Companies are transparent. Any interested person can request any information about the production, research, organization, financial or personnel issues concerning the company. The company has to yield that information if it has the information. The company cannot be forced to research the information, but the person requiring the information can do the research himself if he refunds any costs he causes to the company.
There is no copyright and only weak patents. I call the weak patents infotags. A company or person holding an infotag can collect a ``tax'' - infotax - from any company that uses the information or similar concepts for production of physical goods. The holder of the infotag can determine the height of the infotax in percent of the retail price of the product. That percentage is bound to the information, not the producing company.
Anybody can use the information. If tagged information is used in other more advanced infotags (i.e. research results building on existing infotags), the advanced infotag does not influence the basic infotag. Companies using the advanced information have to pay the sum of basic and advanced infotax.
A maximum percentage constituting the infotax is determined by the authorities granting the infotag and that maximum degrades over time. That time is relatively short (1 or two decades?). When the maximum hits zero the information becomes public domain. Companies using their own infotags for their products have to pay the infotax to the state. Holders of infotags can always lower the tax but never raise it.
Due to the nature of this arrangement, infotaxes only concern material goods not software or anything that can be digitized. Private use - one manufactures goods for oneself - and humanitarian uses are free of infotaxes since no price is payed in these cases and any percentage becomes zero. Information that is independent of a material goods - e.g. computer programs, texts, recorded media - cannot be taxed.
Propaganda is illegal. Free speech is not concerned. Anybody can say, write or broadcast anything they like including racist or other commonly illegal content.
This apparent contradiction is solved by defining propaganda as ``paying somebody to convince somebody else of something''. Thus you can say anything if you feel like it, but you must not pay anybody to sing your song.
This renders most forms of marketing (actually any I can think of) illegal.
As mentioned in the previous section there is no copyright. There is however no problem with charging for life performances or original work (paintings, sculptures ...). Writers are out of luck - there is no problem with selling printed paper, but writers are no printers - sorry folks.
Traditional media would probably not work in this setup, since they are mostly in the business of selling audience awareness to advertisers rather than content to their audience. Traditional media are an infamous propaganda machine under above definition. Media might however be able to survive with a different business model that relies on compiling information for their customers. I doubt that though.
Information flow is not publicly controlled.
There is no public protection of privacy. Anybody is free to encrypt electronic communication or try to scramble surveillance gear. Anybody is also free to try to tap anybody else.
Convicted felons can be forced to carry gear that enables others to remotely monitor them and the felons must not impede these monitoring capabilities.
Everybody has a publicly accessible electronic Xin.
In search of a catchy name I stumbled over the Chinese word Xin. I believe it to translate to something like: heart, soul, conscience, moral nature, intent, idea, ambition, kernel, center.
The Xin is a kind of electronic diary (like a blog, or weblog) that is not written by its owner but by other people. Everybody can write new entries in anybody else's Xin. Entries are rated by yet other people for relevance or personal taste or what ever matter to the rating person. Entries can be threaded and sorted by topics.
Any other personal data like financial records, medical records, criminal records, records of professional career are also available through the Xin.
People can assign Kama to other people. The notion Kama covers a special concept that is some kind of mixture between karma and competence. Kama is split up into several specialized areas. Your accountant will hopefully sport lots of accounting Kama, a doctor should be competent in medicine and should easily gain high medical Kama.
Kama also covers other areas as well though. Everybody can get moral Kama reflecting their moral integrity, religious Kama for their religiousness, Kama for being progressive or conservative and the like.
Kama areas are organized in a standardized hierarchy. Child doctors rated for their pediatric Kama get automatically rated for medicine as well.
Everybody can rate anybody else in any area. If somebody with high Kama in one area rates somebody in the same area his rating counts more than the same rating by people with no Kama in that area. This weighting of Kama rating influence is subject to limited spreading through the standardized Kama hierarchy. That means a child doctors rating of a pathologist weighs more than the same rating of somebody who has no medical Kama but less than the same rating from another pathologist.
Kama in all areas is accessible through the Xin. Xin comments (diary entries) may be associated to Kama categories. If so the comment rating is subject to Kama weighting as above. Comments might also be subjected to discussion digistion as explained in section 7.3.
Thorsten Roggendorf 2008-11-06