Bad Boys, Bad Boys Whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you? Bad Boys, Bad Boys repeat endlessly. We did 3) last Wednesday. Here are some more points. 4) There must be a you. In order for the Bad Boys to come for you, you have to exist in a form that can be "come for." This is tricky in a world in which "processes" can be spawned more cheaply and easily than guppies. Students of military tactics know that the basic tactical reality is the force ratio. This can be looked at in two parts: 1) the ratio of attackers to defenders (or rulers to ruled in the civilian world) and 2) the ratio of soldiers/law enforcement personnel to space. The lower the ratio, the less effective the force will be. As the Bad Boys confront cyberspace, they find both types of force ratios turned against them. As we discuss here, there are more "defenders" to attack and as we shall see under point 5) below, there is much more space to try to rule. Before there was cyberspace, there were front companies. In the wondrous Anglo Saxon legal system; people, sole proprietorships, partnerships, trusts, and corporations all have somewhat equal and independent legal existence. People, sole proprietorships, partnerships, and trusts can all be created without securing permission from any authority. They come into existence by simple act of will. In times past however, the creation and maintenance of these entities took a bit of time. In a practical sense, a person could only create an maintain a limited number of such "legal persons." The wonder of automation is that the creation of entities becomes much easier and cheaper. Software agents are just one of the new sorts of entities that we are capable of creating. There are also the effects of applying automation to traditional entities. "Let a thousand trusts bloom." In addition to entities created for business purposes, the authorities will have to deal with entities created for entertainment and charitable purposes. This leads to a vast increase in the number of entities who act and who may violate laws and who must, therefore, be subject to control by the Bad Boys if they are to control things. But it is much cheaper and easier to create "legal persons" these days than it is to unravel them "pierce the corporate veil(s)" and bring them under the control of "law." If the permissions aren't set right, it will be very difficult for the authorities to pierce the corporate veil of net-based legal persons. Software processes are hard to arrest and harder to coerce. Remember, as long as an entity pays its bills and meets its commercial obligations, it can find a home and continue its "life." Markets don't care much what your nature is as long as they can buy from or sell to you. Official status is not required. In addition to the proliferation of entities, telecommunications lets each of the traditional human actors do more of everything including those things that regulators wish to regulate. And by letting residents from everywhere on earth into everyone's "home" market, telecoms multiplies the number of potential law enforcement targets within popular jurisdiction. As long as jurisdictions are geographically bound, popular jurisdictions (like the US) will find out that they have gained millions of new virtual citizens/residents who must be ruled by US authorities (if that can be done). But with more natural persons "entering" the jurisdiction, with the previous natural residents doing lots more, and a swarm of new artificial persons, the Bad Boys' resources are strained. The more entities to "rule," the less each entity (including natural persons) can be ruled. [If you believe that the control technologies can be scaled up at the same rate as the entity creation technologies, see my later piece in this series: "8) They must have something to do to you when they 'come for you.'"] <More Tomorrow> DCF