crunchpatty
Old Shoe
|
Nov-17-2006 00:16
I'm very glad people have returned to the question of what constitutes "control" here, and I would agree with these recent posts from S.A.L2, roamie, RAn and BadAss -my own personal understanding of control relates to personal use, rather than agency use. In other words, irrespective of subscription status, I understand a person to be controlling a detective if that detective's cases are put towards personal, rather than collective advancement. What I mean is, in MY personal definition:
a) It's not at all problematic for a given agency to retain a detective provided that that detective is retained for collective reasons - e.g., a particular PE contact that is useful to others, used for treasure hunts, etc. - it's entirely possible for a person to use an 'in-house' detective to advance agency goals without taking credit for the cases they solve while using that detective.
b) Payment does NOT constitute control.
c) (and this is a slight departure, yeah) it might be the case that there is a third option here in the form of a house detective, who is understood as formally 'uncontrolled', or collectively controlled, by members of that detectives' agency up until a point at which it is clear that that detective is being used for individual, rather than collective advancement.
So, having said that, I find myself returning to the question of enforcement. And again, it seems to me that the only way to control whether a given detective is being used for personal rather than collective goals is to limit the number of cases an individual detective can solve in a day or to reduce the value of cases solved by an individual detective after some threshold.
|
