8 ms·
My daughter was first sued in the womb
- spoon16 15y agoTLDR?
- nicksergeant 15y agoI read the entire thing and still don't know the context of which it was written. (fiction?)
- karamazov 15y agoNear-future sci-fi, it appears, with a (large) hint of social commentary.
- nicksergeant 15y agoGotcha. Figured as much, but wasn't sure.
- alanh 15y agoI like to say it isn’t sci-fi it doesn’t have social commentary or at least a warning from a possible future.
- NickDouglas 15y agoWithin the next generation or so too, since the first notices were sent by postal mail.
- akeck 15y agoIt seems to be about a typical morning in a world where the capability to sue has been commoditized and automated to the point where everyone sues everyone else for every little rights violation all day long (nanolaw). This makes everyone a "lawyer." Tablet software makes settling the suits that matter trivial - just a tap a box to settle for a few cents or a few dollars. The father experiences this world as somewhat surreal, while it's normal for the daughter.
- geekzgalore 15y agoYes
- rfrey 15y agoNear-future fiction where copyright trolls run the asylum.
- cperciva 15y agoIs this any more of an asylum than what we have today? I'd much rather see a world where $BIGMUSICCOMPANY sues ten million people for $5 each for stealing (oops, I mean violating the copyright on) music rather than a world where an effectively random set of 50 people each get sued for a million dollars. The big problem with legal processes right now is that they have a high frictional cost. If that cost can be brought down -- on both sides, so that suits can be filed more widely for smaller amounts AND people have a reason to defend against frivolous suits -- then I'd say we would be better off, not worse.
- yohui 15y agoThere are some appealing aspects of the future portrayed (an apparently efficient legal system), but taking a step back this does not quite look like where we want to head (the death of privacy and fair-use). It makes the scenario scarier, in some ways, than a clearly dystopian future, as one could see society falling into just such a suboptimal trap, where the gains in one area allow apathy to to shrug off the concerns in another. I hope it's not too much to ask for both legal efficiency and fair copyright laws, not to mention privacy. As for frivolous suits, I think you're right that leveling the playing field will also let the victims retaliate more easily. I'd hope they prove less stubborn than spammers, at any rate; I don't like the idea of spam that carries legal weight.
- brazzy 15y agoWhat makes this scenario extremely scary to me is the proposition that every single person alive would have to spend even 15 minutes dismissing/paying off frivolous lawsuits every single day. Having the overhead of a parasitic legal system spread thin over the entire population doesn't make it any less of a monstrous sink of lifetime.
- jordan0day 15y agoNear-future speculative fiction on the increasing sources of interesting data and data mining. I enjoyed the read.
- protomyth 15y agoA fictional story that IMHO illustrates a future where micro-sueing is established and done in such a manner that the friction of the lawsuits is very low.
- jerf 15y agoNo, it is not too long, and I did read it. Thanks for your kind interest in this matter.
- pbhjpbhj 15y agoWas it really necessary to downvote spoon16's request for a synopsis?
- pbhjpbhj 15y agoCould someone then explain why?
- jerrya 15y agoI'm not a good judge of these things, but it reminds me of Bradbury -- I wonder if he could be sued for that? /seriously, it does remind me of Bradbury
- burgerbrain 15y agoSeemed almost like a concept out of a Charles Stross novel to me.
- michaelbuckbee 15y agoAccellerando had some similarly interesting riffs on the future of torts and patent law (IIRC the main character had patentend the practice of patenting a group of patents into a larger patent portfolio).
- IsaacL 15y agoIt was smarter than that, he'd patented the practice of using genetic algorithms to automatically patent all solutions within a given problem set. Interesting book!
- lukejduncan 15y agoI had the same thought
- dclowd9901 15y agoBradbury's approach was always a social message, even social commentary veiled through token "sci-fi", which was really never that far-fetched, and very central to the characters themselves. Great observation.
- hugh3 15y agoRequest: change the title by appending "fiction" so that folks like me don't start reading to try and figure out how the hell a person can be sued while in the womb.
- lukejduncan 15y agoThat's why I liked it. Made you think and put it all together. IMHO
- burgerbrain 15y agoAgreed. I think a key aspect of this sort of fiction is that you are not quite sure at first if it's real or not. It is interesting to see just how crazy a message can be communicated before you realize that it's not real.
- Qz 15y ago...yet.
- Dylan16807 15y agoI don't know. The conversation at the start doesn't have enough context to mean anything by itself, and then the first full paragraph is enough to show that it's fiction. The illusion doesn't last long enough to be useful; all I got out of it was wasteful confusion on the first 30 seconds..
- pontifier 15y agoPerhaps you haven't been involved with as much legal action as I have, but I was about half way through before I realised that it wasn't real. Of course I feel like I have to go to court at least once a week for something or other (sued ~= suing). In fact I have to go start legal action against someone today.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- josephcooney 15y agoReminded me a lot of 'the right to read' http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
- mechanical_fish 15y agoThough the topic is broadly similar, this is a better work of fiction than The Right to Read. For example, the characters in The Right to Read are props in the author's morality play. Whereas these characters are characters, and while you can still see the author moving around behind the scenes he's done his best to let the characters speak for themselves. I'm not sure they fully agree with him. Nice work.
- karamazov 15y agoThat's a really great essay.
- rmc 15y agoIt's amazing how closer the real world is to this fiction with DRM ebooks.
- mechanical_fish 15y agoOn the one hand, I should technically complain that the title given here is not the title of the story. On the other hand, I think this title is a better one, so please disregard the previous sentence. ;)
- fr0sty 15y agoThe title here is both a direct quote from the essay as well as the title given to the essay by the author when he shared it on twitter: http://twitter.com/ftrain/status/69952439767404544 http://twitter.com/ftrain/status/69952439767404544
- sunir 15y agoVery interesting story. I am reminded that tax software made it feasible for governments to make much more complicated tax codes. Legal software combined with the increasing acceptance of arbitration for civil suits could create this future.
- vshlos 15y agoThis is future! The proof is that "biggest bit torrent case" targeting 23000 defendants. (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/biggest-bittorrent-case/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/biggest-bittorrent-...)
- jjcm 15y agoThis is a single case out of many. A single data point does not create a trend - whether or not this case wins is mainly what will decide if these types of cases are feasible. Even this article mentions that the last time someone did this, the judge threw out the case (Brian William Dott vs Does).
- edanm 15y agoGreat story. Interestingly, I don't think the "privacy" issue is the big change in the future described, but rather the fact that lawsuits are so much more automated. That's the real change that makes the story "possible".
- bwlang 15y agoironic... i just logged in to upvote that
- simpleH 15y agoread like something Richard Powers would write
- contrast 15y agoSorry to be a hater, but what a brilliant example of how America's lawsuit addiction is a deeply unhealthy cultural trait.
- jamesaguilar 15y agoIt is fiction. It is not an example of anything, because it did not really happen.
- inoop 15y ago"What happened is, a long time ago, the country Belgium took over this country Congo and killed a lot of people and made everyone slaves." No, that's actually not what happened. First of all, they did not take over Congo because Congo never existed before Leopold drew it up on a map on a rainy Saturday afternoon together with Stanley. Also, the country of Belgium did not take over Congo, it was a private enterprise by king Leopold II, although the government later took it over from him after reports of atrocities started to trickle through to western Europe. Third, they didn't make people slaves. The slave traders operating in Congo were mostly African-Arabic. The Belgians levied taxes on the population. This was first collected in rubber, and the colonist but also the Congolese army committed atrocities such as the cutting off of hands, murder of village elders, and so on to maximize production. Many more lives were claimed by the sleeping disease. Later on they switched to taxing in money which meant that many young men had to work in the mines to earn money for their village, often under really bad conditions. The wars, dictatorships, and genocides started after the independence. Don't get me wrong, I'm not making excuses here or anything, but it irks me when people reduce the complex history of a beautiful country to an overly simplified and plainly false representation of the facts.
- fleitz 15y agoGreat points, this misrepresentation of fact reminds me of a history class in which we discussed the British tactics against the Zulus and a girl actually claimed that "Africa had no war before white people came". I laughed really hard and eventually she was corrected that Africans knew how to and did conduct wars long before white people arrived.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- bmm6o 15y agoYes, but I think you'd agree that replacing the sentence in the story - a bit of dialog spoken to a 10 year old - with your paragraph would not be an improvement.
- inoop 15y ago
- evan_ 15y agoWouldn't the doctor or nurse who operated the ultrasound machine hold the copyright to the ultrasound image, not the manufacturer of the ultrasound machine? And furthermore, why would the daughter be named in the suit?