I don't think Facebook is going to stand for this. Obviously, I don't have access to Yahoo's patent portfolios, but it just seems frivolous. If they actually had a case it seems they would've sued a long time ago.

And Google did bite. I read they gave up some 2.7 million shares to Yahoo. It worked once for them, so it looks like they're trying it again.

1. Copying someone is intelligent. If they've done the work already, and you're building beyond what the other person did, then it saves you time and money to copy the code. By copying it, you allow yourself to devote your energies toward providing a higher-quality product, which in itself is a worthy goal, but at what cost?

2. Copying someone is wrong. Because they did the work, I feel that they earned the right to control where that work is used and who it is used by. Obviously, code that is open source is fair game, but to straight up copy somebody else's source code is unethical.

The way I see it, if you're going to copy someone, just ask them for permission! Most of the programmers I've met are pretty down-to-earth, friendly people who would be happy to help as long as they get some kind of credit for the work they did.

I just think it's a shame that companies are so willing to sell out for short-term profit without thinking about the long-term consequences of their action. I believe that if the US wants to sit on its' moral high horse and play world police that we should at least hold ourselves to the standards we expect the world to follow.

Using the expression "what you fundamentally value" is not the right way to put it. In real life, what you fundamentally value changes on a minute-by-minute basis. If you were able to ask a rat what he valued, he would probably say food and water, aka survival. However, as soon as they put this rat into a Skinner box, it literally pleases itself until it dies of exhaustion, even though food and water were available to it.

I agree with you that the best way to run an AI/VI like this would be to skip the idea of "pleasure" entirely and simply make productivity its' fundamental value. You would also set it up so that while it could modify its' own source code, it could not change what it valued. It seems like it would be relatively easy to set it up so that it would "hide" parts of its' code from itself and make it off-limits from modification.

Has anyone actually read a EULA all the way through? I know this is slightly off-topic, I'm just following my train of thought.

In my eyes, the beauty of the internet is that it literally makes the sum of all human knowledge to date available to anyone with a connection. To restrict the internet is to restrict knowledge, and restricting knowledge/information is one of the most dangerous things that any government or organization can do. Once you start, where do you stop?