Slashdot Mirror
Publisher Speaks Out Against Amazon Patents
andy@petdance.com writes, "In a
recent Ask Tim article on the O'Reilly Web site, Tim O'Reilly takes Jeff Bezos to task for his attempts at patenting 1-click and the associates program. An Open Letter to Amazon is provided for adding your voice to Jeff & co." O'Reilly has a very thoughtful letter about how Amazon's attitude would have killed the Web in its infancy. He also submitted a letter to the IP mailing list which explains his thoughts a bit more. See also NoWebPatents.Org which is running their own anti-Amazon boycott, and our previous story about RMS's call for a boycott.
The way slashdot has been going the last two years or so, does this suprise you?
What are all you crazy people talking about?
Amazon runs in the red, it makes losses from nearly everything it sells. This patent furor is a calculated measure to get them back into the black and please their investors.
Don't be realed in! Buy their stuff, get a heap of bargain priced stuff and watch them grind into the ground.
Arkwright and Granville
I entered my addition to the site at around 9:00PM at 10:30, it was gone. (Not buried under the hundreds of other, gone!) I also then noticed that there is a formating error (italics turned on but not off), for the second half of the page. I followed it up and roughly in the middle is a munged pair of entries. The CGI appears to be buckling under the load. I would suggest sending email directly to tim or support@oreilly.com to add your signature. I don't think the CGI is reliable enough.
Trollin' for Yu Suzuki
-=United Coalition of NINJAS for te Abolition of Moderation=-
Yeah, I guess the four+ years I've spent working on my GPL'ed project is just, sheer, rank laziness.
No, in general one would indeed say that taking four years over a simple metadirectory is lazy, but in your case I'm willing to concede that you may be honestly stupid.
(different AC from above)
Trollin' for Yu Suzuki
-=United Coalition of NINJAS for te Abolition of Moderation=-
Trollin' for Yu Suzuki
-=United Coalition of NINJAS for te Abolition of Moderation=-
I await your list of unpatented business process innovations without baited breath.
How the hell can they pattent that? 1-click? seems that they got something up their asses How is it that large companies are allowed to get pattents like that? What about companies that have done it before but never thought about pattenting it? could they file a claim against ammazon requesting payments?
This incessant, random trolling bullshit amounts to a DOS attack against Slashdot. It is becoming impossible to find reasonable, insightful posts among the pointless noise you people throw out.
And no, I do not want to set my threshold to +1. Not all anonymous posters abuse the system the way you do, and I'd like to hear what they have to say.
I wish the Slashdot administrators cared enough about their site to fight back against the trolls, but I guess if wishes were horses, we'd all have to walk around wearing hip boots.
US9000666: Method and system for placing a half-wit on the cover of Time Magazine via the Internet
Inventor(s):
Belzebub; Tempestua , Seattle, WA
Bezos; Jeffrey P. , Seattle, WA
Milton: John , Seattle, WA
Applicant(s):
Amazon.com, Inc., Seattle, WA
Issued/Filed Dates:
Sept. 28, 1999 / Sept. 12, 1997
Application Number:
US1997000000666
IPC Class:
G06F 017/60;
Class:
Current: 705/026; 345/962; 705/027;
Original: 705/026; 705/027; 345/962;
Field of Search:
705/26,27 380/24,25 235/2,375,378,381 395/188.01 345/962
Abstract:
A method and system for placing a half-wit on the cover of Time Magazine via the Internet. A company is formed on the naicent internet. Undercutting the price of local stores, the company loses money to gain market share. A multi-level ivestment strategy utilizing a series of small investors who purchase stocks are use to capitalize said company. Large investments are make to increase awarness of company. A half-wit attends industry events and makes large sweeping pronouncemnets of the future of the internet. This is repeated until the journalistic community declares the internet to be the next big thing. At this point, the company will move into all aspects of online commerce. This move coupled with the media pronouncment result in the half-wit being displayed on the cover of Time Magazine.
Attorney, Agent, or Firm:
Mesastopholes LLP;
Primary/Assistant Examiners:
Trammell, Jack; Smith, Joan
Tim's attack on Amazon is as typically hypicritical as the rest of the fucking morons chanting the Open Sores mantra
Vive la France! Vive le Roi!
Oh, I can see now... it's all clear. I been on the wrong path all the time!! Sorry, MS! Sorry Amazon!! Sorry Apple!! The net would never have been if it wasn't for You! Sincerest appologies,
Ever been over to sweden, or north europe in general? or europe in general? Go figure... Been quite a few successful socialist goverments over here - mind you, democratic ones.. Believe you're just a little, little confused over the diff. between socialism and communism... just a tad bit... Fred
80md, right?
Guess again.
VA owns Andover who own Slashdot who own Malda who 's up Roblimo's ass. Result; usual facist piss poor moderation of any comment that does not meet VA LINUX, no Larry Augustin's latest doktrine.
Unless its McCain Vs Gore this fall. Bradly is ok. and bush and gore can suck my fat cock.
...without IP protection, the GPL would be worthless!
The above statement is absolutely correct. The GPL itself relies on copyright for enforcement. Without patent protection, no one would have bothered to invent the computer. And thus, the GPL would have never existed."without IP protection or profit potential who would invent anything" well, I think you are discounting the whole military/terrorist side of things. who cares if it will be profitable, as long as it can be used to kill a fuck ton of people, lets build it.
"Lauded" means applauded, you mindless moron. To "laud" something is to approve of it, cretin.
FOAD.
"Hit 'em where it hurts -- silver and gold" (U2)
The US patent system now *encourages* the filing of such frivolous patents because they are so useful! - A frivolous patent such as the Amazon patent is a very useful weapon against existing or potential competitors. It reduces their chances to get capital (who wants to invest in a lawsuit?). The weapon relies on the possibility that a court would misjudge the case and award damages for willful infringement. Even if the probability of such an event is low, it is high enough to create a lot of pressure on any company. - Filing more frivolous patents is the best defense against other patents (frivolous or not). It gives you chips to trade in the event of a patent attack... - There is no downside on filing frivolous patents. It is very unlikely that you will get a significant fine for filing a frivolous patent. Proving that you did so knowingly is close to impossible. Just to let you know ... - L. B.
That doesn't make the One-Click patent any less wrong.
.. that is, until they decide to do something that Linux users consider "good", like open-sourcing the XFS filesystem. Then the Linux users fawn over SGI and its policies for a period of about 2.3 nanoseconds, after which they go back on the attack.
Why is it "wrong?" Heaven forbid that people should be able to protect the ideas that they come up with! If I expend some intellectual capital and come up with a useful technique or bit of technology, shouldn't I have the right to protect it? Shouldn't I, as the originator, have the right to own my idea and control how it is distributed and/or applied? A reasonable person would answer "yes" to this question. A Slashdot zealot would answer "no", because they are accustomed to taking ideas, techniques, and technologies developed by other people and using them for themselves, without giving one damned bit of credit to the proper people. Most times, they demand that it be "open-sourced" as well.
Linux is a prime example, being based almost entirely off of the Windows NT operating system. This doesn't stop Linux users from constantly unleashing barrage after barrage of juvenile attacks on Microsoft and its products. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! Linux users childishly chide companies like SGI for being "closed" and "proprietary"
You people are going to have to learn that in our capitalistic society, the laws exist to protect the innovator and to allow people to claim ownership of their ideas. The socialist utopia espoused by most Linux kiddies would do away with ownership of ideas and instead make them a community pool which can be freely "dipped into" and "extracted from" without paying a whit of homage or attention to the originator of the idea. Nope. Not the way it works, kiddies. When you grow up and learn how the Real World works, you'll see I'm right.
Sooner or later, someone will consider how little effort it takes to create or modify a cookie.
Don't try this at home kids.
you might mean Hipocrisy Man, that saying about spelling flames always containing errors is so funny 'cos it's true! P.S. It's hypocrisy
The Internet and Democracy Nearly 70 years ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first president to take advantage of the radio to connect directly and instantly with millions of American citizens across the country. In the 1960s, John F. Kennedy was the first president to effectively employ the power of television as a visual communications medium. Today, candidates and elected officials of every political persuasion are tapping the power of the Internet to interact with citizens in ways that one day may rival the impact of radio and television combined. In 1999, Steve Forbes became the first presidential candidate to announce his bid for office over the Internet. Since last April, more than 200,000 questions and comments have been submitted to Vice President Al Goreâ(TM)s "Interactive Town Hall," a location on his campaignâ(TM)s Web site, where he and his staff provide answers on a variety of subjects. In the 48 hours after winning the New Hampshire GOP primary earlier this month, Senator John McCain raised more than $1 million in contributions over the Internet. George W. Bush was the first presidential candidate to publish a complete list of his campaign contributors online. Bill Bradley, like many other candidates, has used the Web to detail his political agenda and substantive policy announcements. Jesse Ventura organized a long shot and ultimately successful independent bid for the Minnesota statehouse in 1998, with a campaign that demonstrated the grass- roots power and fundraising capabilities of the Net. But itâ(TM)s not only candidates who are taking advantage of the power of the Web to reach out to citizens. In January, the Presidentâ(TM)s State of the Union Address and the Republican response were the first to be broadcast live over Microsoftâ(TM)s Web TV, enabling thousands of viewers to learn more about Administration and GOP policies and initiatives instantly, simply by clicking on an Internet link. Meanwhile, public agencies are making access to government resources more convenient. Today, in certain jurisdictions, you can download an application for a business license, search for a government job, track the status of a building permit, or file a tax return, all online. Increasingly, the Internet also is being used as a vehicle for citizens to organize and express their views. When the City of Seattle recently considered a controversial ordinance to prohibit the display of exotic animals in circus performances, thousands of e-mails flew back and forth between voters and their elected officials. Parents are using the Internet to organize Web sites where information about school meetings can be posted, and where vibrant forums exist to bat around ideas regarding new academic programs, school test results and grading standards. Meanwhile, political Web "portals" like those hosted by USAdemocracy.com, vote-smart.org, Issues2000.org, grassroots.com, MSN.com and others are providing interested citizens with up-to-the-minute information that is fundamentally changing the way citizens learn about and get involved in important issues. Technologies are emerging on Web sites like selectsmart.com that match a voterâ(TM)s views on issues with the positions of candidates. This kind of "comparison shopping" will empower voters by allowing them to obtain substantive and current information about candidatesâ(TM) positions, and to make informed decisions at election time. In the near future, the Internet may also serve as a medium for voter registration and online voting. Several test projects to facilitate online voting are in progress. Ensuring equitable access, security, privacy and reliability are concerns that will need to be addressed before voters are able to cast their ballots from the convenience of their home or a nearby public facility. The neighborhood polling booth wonâ(TM)t go away, but with voter participation at historic lows â" particularly among young people â" online voting offers the potential to encourage easier and greater involvement in our electoral process. At Microsoft, weâ(TM)re enthusiastic about the Internet for many reasons, not the least of which is the promise it holds to create a more informed electorate and to encourage the participation of more people â" especially young people â" in our democratic process.
And despite scanning my post for mistakes of my own, I did not close a tag properly and now look like an idiot as well. Ho-hum!
Tim's arguments are unfortunately too complex to be understood by Jeff Bezos. He needs to receive more complaints like: You sux d000de. Fuck u.
"What Amazon has done?" What have they done? Taken advantage of the law as it's currently applied? Did you expect anything else from Amazon? Do you expect anything else from any corporation?
The solution is to correct the law and its application, not to prevent one single company from abusing a bad law.
I didn't realize you could patent "concepts". What is to keep anyone from designing their own One-Click system?
If the patent is a bad one in the first place, then the problem is in the patent having been granted in the first place, not with its sale to your company. On the other hand, if the patent is a valid one, why shouldn't the originating company sell the rights for what it thinks is a fair price?
Also consider a pharmacutical company that considersing researching a simple safe cure that it can't patent or a dangerous concoction with lots of side effects that it can.
Hmm, perhaps we should have some sort of "Food and Drug Administration" which would evaluate the safety of new drugs before allowing "dangerous concoctions" on the market.
PS did you know that freon became environmentally illegal to use on the same month that DOWs patent exipred, and the only close replacement of which there is no reason believe is safer is also patented by DOW and hasn't exipred yet??
That's a very good argument that the people who decide whether a chemical should be illegal are corrupt, but it's hardly an indictment of the patent system.
The most effective way to boycot Amazon and to force them to come down with this silly stupid patent issue, is to buy your books online elsewhere, for example at Barnes and Nobles, the very same company that Amazon attacked in fist place.
Unbelievable! I can't think of any suitable answer except maybe you DON'T have the opinions you expressed and wrote that just to stir things up a little. "There is not a single recorded instance of Linux being successfully used anywhere." Do you REALLY believe that? Unless you mean specific areas like the non-techie home market. Otherwise it's just right-wing rabid denial of reality. I'll admit one thing: the whole Linux/Free-Software/GNU thing smells left-wing, tastes left-wing and looks left-wing. Heck, it really IS left-wing. And I have some news for you... IT IS LEFT-WING AND IT WORKS!!!!! This truth hurts some people SO much they'll try to keep it out of their brains any way they can. And anything capable of doing some damage to it (like the patent nonsense or silly encryption restrictions) will be hailed as work from the Hand of God.
NCSA turned commercial development over to Spyglass in 1994. However, point taken.
Quick, someones infringing your Associates patent, ....
They are called Amway, seesm they have been using this very method since 1954 or something..
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahah!!!!!!!
(omigod, Slashdot is governing the speed with which you post. Don't try to post 2 messages in under 70 seconds, or you'll be told to "Slow Down, Cowboy!", I'm not making this up, apparently there were 61 seconds between the last message I posted and the first time I tried to post this one!!)
...but I ain't gonna spoon feed you ;-) The adaptive subspace SOM is a fairly automatic approach. You kinda have to be more specific. You don't even have to use neural nets for what you prolly want. Though, it is cool to tell peeps you are using NNs. Uhhhh... another cool classification technique, that some people consider to be neural net like, is the Latent Semantic Analysis. This is usually used for text, but it can be modified to be used for pictures or other data sets. ...if I had the server beef, I would make a web search engine based on Latent Semantic Analysis.
How the fuck is this 'Insightful'. Its typical Open Source and /. propaganda of the sort that is so loved by Tim O'Reilly and VA Linux, the real farce behind /.
The parent post is not flamebait. Get a sense of humor.
It has the fucking GDI in the kernel! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! What bozo thought of that?!?
true, but we know this will not stand the test. so when they lose the patent, will their investors lose confidence
While it is patented out the butt, all MP3 coding technology is fully disclosed in the ISO specification. Granted, it costs a few hundred bucks to get them to run off a copy of the specification, but you can get the same basic knowledge from examining the freely-available ISO reference codec source. See www.mpeg.org (and www.mp3.com for that matter) for links.
That doesn't make their IP policy any more reasonable, but spreading random FUD and BS doesn't either.
Hate to be pedantic, but it is scream, not sceam. Fucking dickheads are a pet peeve of mine.
Karma whoring used to be (and may still be, I don't really pay attention any more) a problem on Slashdot.
Now we see the new phenomenon of Controversy Whores. It's almost an anti-karma-whoring situation: "everybody sucks, and here's why. I'm more intelligent than all you sheep." And the moderators believe this, and up they go! This is, of course, because moderators will moderate up absolutely anything controversial no matter how stupid it is just because it's another person bucking the mainstream trend.
Lame lame lame.
Jeff Bezos, naked and petrified, in the shower: Imagine the power and control over my competition if I could patent 1-click shopping! I would be God of e-commerce! ** Maniacal Laughter **
Bill Gates, naked and petrified, in the shower: Imagine the power and control over my competition if I could patent the OS/business-productivity applications! I would be God of the consumer/business desktop! ** Maniacal Laughter **
Anonymous Coward, naked and petrified, in the shower: Imagine the power and control over my competition if I could patent the use of "naked and petrified"! I would be God of Slashdot! ** Maniacal Laughter **
Me, naked and petrified, in the shower: Imagine the power and control over my competition if I could patent the processes of breathing, eating, hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and sexual intercourse! I would be God! ** Maniacal Laughter **
Let's face it, this is the only way Amazon will
ever make money anytime soon. They must be getting desperate. Think of the revenues they can generate with these patents. Without this, who knows how long before they are in the black.
Amazon.com isn't really that bad, except it is run by a bunch of profiteering buffoons.
At least (Score +1, Amusing)
I'll admit one thing: the whole Linux/Free-Software/GNU thing smells left-wing, tastes left-wing and looks left-wing. Heck, it really IS left-wing. And I have some news for you... IT IS LEFT-WING AND IT WORKS!!!!!
.45. What about Cuba? That was a great country until the leftists took it over. Now it's a fetid sewer, infested with squalor as far as the eye can see.
You are a cretin. You fail to grasp what history has taught us time after time after time: "left-wing" and "works" are oxymoronic! They do not belong in the same sentence as each other. Take a look at some of the great left-wing "accomplishments" of history. The Berlin Wall, for example. I've got a chunk of that failed symbol of leftist policy sitting on my fireplace mantle, nestled between my King James Bible and my Colt
The fact of the matter is that there has never been a left-wing, non-conservative, non-Christian government or institution that has produced favorable results. All of these experiments have turned out to be complete and total failures. Linux may look attractive now, but that's only for now. It will eventually crumble just as the rest of this world's Communist institutions have. You can either get off the train gently now, or be thrown from it when it barrels into the brick wall of freedom.
Amazon's dying a slow death anyway. Their site's gettin' more bloated every day and it's getting hard for me to find anyone around here who even uses it anymore. If they want to continue to screw themselves over... I'm up for a boycott but I guess I started over a year ago. Amazon sucks!
I'm a free-loving hippie, and I happen to make a comfortable living, but I can't stand Macs and would never purchase an iMac. Besides, I was under the impression that Apple is moving toward a unix-like kernel and even introducing a shell. I think it is Apple who is converting, not Linux users.
Ha, with my patent, you don't even have to move your mouse. Basically, we just send you random items and bill you for them. If you don't pay up, then we send the collector after you. I call this "no-mouse" shopping. Hell, you don't even need a computer. I'll be sure to add all of you to my mailing list.
Informative for copying the entire article and posting it?
Too bad I burned off the last of my moderator points yesterday, this one is REDUNDANT.
I can't speak for the software industry, but this would be a very bad thing for certain other industries.
Consider the pharmaceutical industy: a major pharma company may file a hundred or more patent applications a year for new drugs. They need to file them in the very early stages of development, usually before they've even begun animal studies. They have no way of knowing, at that point, which ones will be successful.
Now, of those hundred, one may be a major, billion-dollar-a-year blockbuster. (Actually, a pharma company is lucky if it can get a blockbuster every 3-4 years.) A few others will turn a lesser profit. Most will turn out to be worthless.
A coin flip as you describe might put the very survival of a major pharma company on the result of one or a few flips.
You ave violated Yu Suzuki's Golden Rule by inserting the devil's letter (commonly known as 'H') into your post. Fortunately, Yu Suzuki is forgiving and will overlook tis sin if you truly repent. In te future, please try to exercise more caution when typing Sashdot posts. For your convenience, a purified version of your post appears below.
Shhhhh! Those dummies sue for "trademark" infringment on the drop of a hat. Dummies for dummies!
Hey I'm not not a liberal, and Rush L. irritates me. Something about me being a Republican with a brain, I guess. Call me a crazy.
Why do you consider Jeff Bezos "a true business innovator" and not Tim O'Reilly?
.. let's see. What software patents does Tim O'Reilly hold? What's that, you say? None? Oh, my. Now how many software patents does Jeff Bezos hold? Oh my.
.. fish in a barrel.
Well, gee
Fish in a barrel, my friend
I think what sickens me most is the fact that you people are so dead-set against the very processes that can prolong your own existence (or, at least, the existence of free software, the software paradigm de jour.) As I mentioned above, the presence of Amazon has been critical to the development of the Linux operating system. Without Amazon, you wouldn't have KDE or GNOME, and you wouldn't have all of these little applications you use on a daily basis. Amazon is protected by U.S. patent law. You are assailing the same law that protects your benefactor. Don't you see that this is inherently illogical?
80md, right?
Oh, OK. I didn't realize the originating company still gets paid if the government wins the coin toss. Objection withdrawn.
Well, Linux just happens to be one of the best forking kernels out there.
.. out-and-out lies meant to deceive people and lead them away from preferable OSes like Windows 2000. Don't be fooled.
Claims of Linux's quality are generally suspect because more often than not, they are made up. Linux is the operating system of choice of the left-wing hippie establishment. They use it primarily because it's free. If they had any money, these cappucino-swilling flower children would be using the citrus-colored chamber pots known as the "iMac".
There is not a single recorded instance of Linux being successfully used anywhere. The "success stories" that you see on the Web are nothing more than fantastic fabrications
Just because (s)he disagrees with you doesn't mean he's a trool.
I'm virtually certain I'm not a trool.
SO FUCKING LIGHTEN UP!
Moderators with points to burn should follow this psycho around and moderate all of his posts into the negatives.
Take a chill pill, Skippy.
a topical analogy would be his company hemorrages money like a Sceam [123] victim. Hate to be pedantic but out-dated references are a pet peeve of mind.
Fatbrain has shitty service. Hope you've had better luck with them that I did. They tried to sell me a used book, after I returned a damaged one. No response from customer service to my complaint. No refund of shipping cost.
It only takes one little thing, or mabye two in this case to piss off the /. crowd.
/. had the click through when they were dirt poor. Then they got big and rich (IPO), and the worship changed to resentment, even hate, despite the fact that Amazon will wipe your ass and wash your car if you ask them too they have such good service. Then they did the stupid 1-click crap and it turned to hatred.
You guys used to worship Amazon.
The "I hate em for 1-click" is fine with me (understandible, the hate), its the stupid "I hate em cause their sucessful" part that pissed me off to no end.
why did you leave? how are the stock options doing?
if you are trying to be helpful then you should state your intentions. Otherwise you do look like a karma whore.
Bigot.
read the above post.
You ave violated Yu Suzuki's Golden Rule by inserting the devil's letter (commonly known as 'H') into your post. Fortunately, Yu Suzuki is forgiving and will overlook tis sin if you truly repent. In te future, please try to exercise more caution wen typing Sashdot posts. For your convenience, a purified version of your post appears below.
You ave violated Yu Suzuki's Golden Rule by inserting the devil's letter (commonly known as 'H') into your post. Fortunately, Yu Suzuki is forgiving and will overlook tis sin if you truly repent. In te future, please try to exercise more caution wen typing Sashdot posts. For your convenience, a purified version of your post appears below.
Just in case you slept through high school English class also.
Patents such as yours are the first step in vitiating the web, in raising the barriers to entry not just for your competitors,...
YEAH BABY!
These are a little different. Trademarks are, literally, marks of trade. ORA came up with the PERL Camel. It was their idea. The way that trademarks work, if you don't defend it, you lose it. So if ORA didn't defend its camel, some other book publisher could put a camel on the front.
Try writing a novel, and write "rum and coke" in it. You'll get a polite letter from Coca Cola, explaining that Coke is capitalized. Seriously.
You ave violated Yu Suzuki's Golden Rule by inserting the devil's letter (commonly known as 'H') into your post. Fortunately, Yu Suzuki is forgiving and will overlook tis sin if you truly repent. In te future, please try to exercise more caution wen typing Sashdot posts. For your convenience, a purified version of your post appears below.
Very insigtful post. Yu Suzuki approves.
Scream is a movie, Freddy Krueger is a character. Movies don't kill people, characters do. dipstick.
Unless he backs up his words with actions, though, then that is all they are ... words. I think O'Reilly should take their buisness to Barnes and Noble or perhaps a smaller company.
h ttp://www.worldforge.org/website/servers/notpatent ed/ - you left an h in, just so you know. H ard to use h ttp wit h out t h em, isn't it?
Hee hee... we've now had a moderate up and moderate down comment...
Ok, what if slashdot patented the "reader feedback for news stories" or something?
Stupid patents deserved to be lauded. Some are good, but are you saying that One Click is really a novel invention?
Of course O'Reilly is against patents. They prevent him from piggybacking on the work of others, as he's so successfully done in the area of free software. Where would he be if those authors hadn't been dumb enough to give their software away, but with no documentation? He needs handouts and will continue to demand them from all comers, Amazon included.
.
see above. A gratuituis excerpt from an Adam Sandler movie.
god bill, why do you come here and post this lame BS? shouldn't you be trying to get rid of some of the 65,000 bugs in your overhyped OS? fuck corporations. and fuck fascism.
ALL their book purchase links go to Amazon.
There are a lot of folks out there who sell nerdy books, and almost all of them charge less than Amazon.
Some of them even have a shred or two of dignity left.
How about an accompanying boycott of linux.com?
Just don't go there!
Ain't that cool? We're hoping that since they're obviously greedy bastards, that this will hit 'em where it hurts!
What other numbers should we compute? We're going to put a simple graph showing boycott growth.
All this web and software patent crap is insanely short-sighted, selfish, and makes me wanna kick some ass; hence, some of us maniacs at jGuru.com built NoWebPatents.org on Saturday.
Keep you're damn patent lawyers off the freakin' web!
jesus, i wonder why some people complain about slashdot moderators? why did romco get raped on moderation? fucking sad state of affairs.
Reality: Windows NT 4.0 Outperforms Linux On Common Customer Workloads The Linux community claims to have improved performance and scalability in the latest versions of the Linux Kernel (2.2), however it's clear that Linux remains inferior to the Windows NT® 4.0 operating system.
- For File and Print services, according to independent tests conducted by PC Week Labs, the Windows NT 4.0 operating system delivers 52 percent better performance on a single processor system and 110 percent better performance on a 4-way system than similarly configured single processor and 4-way Linux/SAMBA systems.
- For Web servers, the same PC Week tests showed Windows NT 4.0 with Internet Information Server 4.0 delivers 41 percent better performance on a single processor system and 125 percent better performance on a 4-way system than Linux and Apache.
- For e-commerce workloads using secure sockets (SSL), recent PC Magazine tests showed Windows NT 4.0 with Internet Information Server 4.0 delivers approximately five times the performance provided by Linux and Stronghold.
- For transaction-orientated Line of Business applications, Windows NT 4.0 has achieved a result of 40,368 tpmC at a cost of $18.46 per transaction on a Compaq 8-Way Pentium III XEON processor-based system. This industry leading price/performance result from the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) clearly shows how Windows NT can deliver world-class performance for heavy duty transaction processing. It's interesting to note that there is not a single TPC result on any database running on Linux, and therefore Linux has yet to demonstrate their capabilities as a database server.
- Linux performance and scalability is architecturally limited in the 2.2 Kernel. Linux only supports 2 gigabytes (GB) of RAM on the x86 architecture,1 compared to 4 GB for Windows NT 4.0. The largest file size Linux supports is 2 GB versus 16 terabytes (TB) for Windows NT 4.0. The Linux SWAP file is limited to 128 MB. In addition, Linux does not support many of the modern operating system features that Windows NT 4.0 has pioneered such as asynchronous I/O, completion ports, and fine-grained kernel locks. These architecture constraints limit the ability of Linux to scale well past two processors.
- The Linux community continues to promise major SMP and performance improvements. They have been promising these since the development of the 2.0 Kernel in 1996. Delivering a scalable system is a complex task and it's not clear that the Linux community can solve these issues easily or quickly. As D. H. Brown Associates noted in a recent technical report,2 the Linux 2.2 Kernel remains in the early stages of providing a tuned SMP kernel.
Myth: Linux is more reliable than Windows NTReality: Linux Needs Real World Proof Points Rather than Anecdotal Stories The Linux community likes to talk about Linux as a stable and reliable operating system, yet there are no real world data or metrics and very limited customer evidence to back up these claims.
- Windows NT 4.0 has been proven in demanding customer environments to be a reliable operating system. Customers such as Barnes and Noble, The Boeing Company, Chicago Stock Exchange, Dell Computer, Nasdaq and many others run mission-critical applications on Windows NT 4.0.
- Linux lacks a commercial quality Journaling File System. This means that in the event of a system failure (such as a power outage) data loss or corruption is possible. In any event, the system must check the integrity of the file system during system restart, a process that will likely consume an extended amount of time, especially on large volumes and may require manual intervention to reconstruct the file system.
- There are no commercially proven clustering technologies to provide High Availability for Linux. The Linux community may point to numerous projects and small companies that are aiming to deliver High Availability functionality. D. H. Brown recently noted that these offerings remain immature and largely unproven in the demanding business world.
- There are no OEMs that provide uptime guarantees for Linux, unlike Windows NT where Compaq, Data General, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Unisys provide 99.9 percent system-level uptime guarantees for Windows NT-based servers.
Myth: Linux is FreeReality: Free Operating System Does Not Mean Low Total Cost of Ownership The Linux community will talk about the free or low-cost nature of Linux. It's important to understand that licensing cost is only a small part of the overall decision-making process for customers.
- The cost of the operating system is only a small percentage of the overall total cost of ownership (TCO). In general Windows NT has proven to have a lower cost of ownership than UNIX. Previous studies have shown that Windows NT has 37 percent lower TCO than UNIX. There is no reason to believe that Linux is significantly different than other versions of UNIX when it comes to TCO.
- The very definition of Linux as an Open Software effort means that commercial companies like Red Hat will make money by charging for services. Therefore, commercial support services for Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium. These costs have to be factored into the total cost model.
- Linux is a UNIX-like operating system and is therefore complex to configure and manage. Existing UNIX users may find the transition to Linux easier but administrators for existing Windows®-based or Novell environments will find it more difficult to handle the complexity of Linux. This retraining will add significant costs to Linux deployments.
- Linux is a higher risk option than Windows NT. For example how many certified engineers are there for Linux? How easy is it to find skilled development and support people for Linux? Who performs end-to-end testing for Linux-based solutions? These factors and more need to be taken into account when choosing a platform for your business.
Myth: Linux is more secure than Windows NTReality: Linux Security Model Is Weak All systems are vulnerable to security issues, however it's important to note that Linux uses the same security model as the original UNIX implementations--a model that was not designed from the ground up to be secure.
- Linux only provides access controls for files and directories. In contrast, every object in Windows NT, from files to operating system data structures, has an access control list and its use can be regulated as appropriate.
- Linux security is all-or-nothing. Administrators cannot delegate administrative privileges: a user who needs any administrative capability must be made a full administrator, which compromises best security practices. In contrast, Windows NT allows an administrator to delegate privileges at an exceptionally fine-grained level.
- Linux has not supported key security accreditation standards. Every member of the Windows NT family since Windows NT 3.5 has been evaluated at either a C2 level under the U.S. Government's evaluation process or at a C2-equivalent level under the British Government's ITSEC process. In contrast, no Linux products are listed on the U.S. Government's evaluated product list.
- Linux system administrators must spend huge amounts of time understanding the latest Linux bugs and determining what to do about them. This is made complex due to the fact that there isn't a central location for security issues to be reported and fixed. In contrast Microsoft provides a single security repository for notification and fixes of security related issues.
- Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact. Misconfigure any part of the operating system and the system could be vulnerable to attack. Windows NT security is easy to set up and administer with tools such as the Security Configuration Editor.
Myth: Linux can replace Windows on the desktopReality: Linux Makes No Sense at the Desktop Linux as a desktop operating system makes no sense. A user would end up with a system that has fewer applications, is more complex to use and manage, and is less intuitive.
- Linux does not provide support for the broad range of hardware in use today; Windows NT 4.0 currently supports over 39,000 systems and devices on the Hardware Compatibility List. Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management
- The complexity of the Linux operating system and cumbersome nature of the existing GUIs would make retraining end-users a huge undertaking and would add significant cost
- Linux application support is very limited, meaning that customers end up having to build their own horizontal and vertical applications. A recent report from Forrester Research highlighted the fact that today 93 percent of enterprise ISVs develop applications for Windows NT, while only 13 percent develop for Linux.3
SummaryThe Linux operating system is not suitable for mainstream usage by business or home users. Today with Windows NT 4.0, customers can be confident in delivering applications that are scalable, secure, and reliable--yet cost effective to deploy and manage. Linux clearly has a long way to go to be competitive with Windows NT 4.0. With the release of the Windows 2000 operating system, Microsoft extends the technical superiority of the platform even further ensuring that customers can deliver the next generation applications to solve their business challenges. More information
Customer Testimonials
See how these leading companies and organizations have deployed Windows NT Server 4.0:
- Nasdaq
- Barnes & Noble
- Dell Computer Corp
- The Boeing Company
- Chicago Stock Exchange
Gartner Group ReportsNew reports from Gartner raise important questions about the future role of Linux.
- Will Linux Be Viable Competition for Windows Desktops?
- 1999 OS Forecast: The Linux Face-Off
- Red Hat's Future: Boxed In
--> Performance Data"While we do not view Linux as a serious competitor for Microsoft at the desktop, Linux will not disappear from the computing landscape through 2004."
"While Linux will have important niche roles, it will not gain broad acceptance as a substitute for Unix and Windows in the enterprise in the near term."
"We examine Red Hat's prospects for success in the Linux market and why its future success is not a foregone conclusion, despite the successful IPO."
See Industry Benchmarks Show Windows NT Server 4.0 Outperforms Linux Footnotes
1. Siemens & SuSE announced a patch in September 1999 to extend to 4 GB, although this is not part of the 2.2 Kernel or major distributions. 2. Linux: How Good Is It? D. H. Brown Associates Inc. April 1999 3. Forrester Research, Software Vendors Crown Server OS Kings, Aug. 31, 1999 Last Updated: Monday, November 01, 1999
 
Fucking lighten up. All he did was copy and paste the article. In the end it doesn't matter what the hell his intentions were. The worst part is someone is moderating all his posts into oblivion. Assholes.
You ave violated Yu Suzuki's Golden Rule by inserting the devil's letter (commonly known as 'H') into your post. Fortunately, Yu Suzuki is forgiving and will overlook tis sin if you truly repent. In te future, please try to exercise more caution wen typing Sashdot posts. For your convenience, a purified version of your post appears below.
I Caesar, hero of Gaul, call upon my my fellow Romans to stand against the unholy triumvirate of software patents: coporate, government, law.
Bezos of Amazon has invoked the patheon of the netherworld to secure his place in this world. You see the politicians and the barristers circling around him, scampering after his discarded gold, eating his feces. Indeed, they are the corporial form of the unholiest of demons. By serving him, they seek to serve themselves. By serving themselves they too act against Rome.
In Gaul, we unleashed a thousand horrors upon the world to serve Rome. Today we must do so again. Those who are not with us, are against us. Those who serve our enemy become our enemy.
Today, Romans, we march on Amazon.
[Ed: from here the tale decends into a distasteful story that is quite offensive to our modern sensibilities. It is quite politically incorrect and has been deleted. Please see any generic pre-modern account of barbarous acts unleased upon the enemies of Rome. Keywords: pikes, mount, salt, earth, <deleted>, <deleted>]
---
"and the peasants rejoiced."
Trollin' for Yu Suzuki
-=United Coalition of NINJAS for the Abolition of Moderation
...because if I did, I couldn't be a Toys 'R Us kid!
From: Richard Caley
To: ask_tim@oreilly.com
Subject: Open Source, Patents and O'Reilly
A quick topical question.
You are probably aware of RMS' [Richard Stallman's] recent call for a boycott
of Amazon.com for their persuit of a software patent claim against a rival.
As a company with close connections with both Amamzon and the Open Source
community, O'Reilly's position on this issue would be very interesting. To me
and I'm sure to many others.
--Richard
Richard,
I have struggled with this issue since RMS first approached me to sign on to his
campaign. I've declined to urge a boycott because I do think that Amazon
provides an incredible service, and one that many of our customers find valuable.
At the same time, I completely agree with RMS that the Amazon 1-Click Patent
is one more example of an "intellectual property" milieu gone mad.
In the first place, this patent should have never been allowed. It's a completely
trivial application of cookies, a technology that was introduced several years
before Amazon filed for their patent. It's even more ironic that in private
conversation, one of the authors of the "cookies" spec mentioned to me that
they considered the idea "too trivial to patent." To characterize "1-Click" as an
"invention" is a parody. Like so many software patents, it is a land grab, an
attempt to hoodwink a patent system that has not gotten up to speed on the
state of the art in computer science. I'm not completely opposed to software
patents, since there are some things that do in fact qualify as legitimate
"inventions", but when I see people patenting obvious ideas, ideas that are
already in wide use, it makes my blood boil.
I also want to say that a patent on something like "1-Click ordering" is a slap in
the face of Tim Berners-Lee and all of the other pioneers who created the
opportunity that Amazon has done such a good job of exploiting. Amazon
wouldn't have existed without the generosity of people like Tim, who made
legitimate, far-reaching inventions, and put them out into the public domain for
all to build upon. Anyone who puts a small gloss on this fundamental
technology, calls it proprietary, and then tries to keep others from building
further on it, is a thief. The gift was given to all of us, and anyone who tries to
make it their own is stealing our patrimony.
Patents like this are also incredibly short-sighted! The web has exploded because
it was an open platform that sparked countless innovations by users. Fence in
that platform, and who knows what opportunities will never come to light?
I urge Amazon to give up on this patent. I am confident that it will eventually be
overturned in any case. And in the meantime, Amazon will not only reap a
harvest of ill will, they will erode the soil of innovation on the web. What's more,
they are a fierce competitor who has already established a dominant market
position. They can win without resorting to cheap tricks.
I'm sorry to have taken so long to respond to your question. I thought it best to
give Amazon a chance to respond to a private letter before going public with my
response. Here's the email I sent to Jeff Bezos on January 5:
Subject: Amazon 1-Click patent
Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2000 10:03:59 -0800
From: Tim O'Reilly
To: jeff@amazon.com
I wanted to give you guys the heads up that I'm getting a lot of
pressure from my customers (via my Ask Tim column on our
website and direct customer e-mail) to comment publically on the
Amazon 1-Click patent. I was also approached by Richard
Stallman to help him publicize his Amazon boycott, and I declined,
but I do want to let you know that I agree with his message
although not with his methods. I will be forced to make some kind
of public comment shortly, and I wanted to let you know what the
substance of it will be before it goes out to the world.
First off, I think that you are reaping a harvest of ill-will with the
technical community. While I know you are setting your sights on
a wider consumer audience, the serious technical community
represents the core of your early adopters and many of your best
customers, especially in the book market. You have only to look at
the presence of O'Reilly books on your bestseller lists vs. those at
your competitors to realize how much of your computer book
sales are driven by the hard core technical community that is
O'Reilly's customer base. And I can tell you that those customers
are solidly against software patents.
Second (and this is the point most important to me), the web has
grown so rapidly because it has been an open platform for
experimentation and innovation. It broke us loose from the
single-vendor stranglehold that Microsoft has had on much of the
software industry, and created a new paradigm with opportunities
for countless new players, including Amazon. The technologies
that you have used to launch your amazing success would never
have become widespread if the early web players, from Tim
Berners-Lee on, had acted as you have acted in filing and
enforcing this patent. Because, of course, you are not the only
one who can play the patent game. And once the web becomes
fenced in by competing patents and other attempts to make this
glorious open playing field into a proprietary wasteland, the
springs of further innovation will dry up. In short, I think you're
pissing in the well.
Patents such as yours are the first step in vitiating the web, in
raising the barriers to entry not just for your competitors, but for
the technological innovators who might otherwise come up with
great new ideas that you could put to use in your own business.
It's a well known technology truism that all of the smart people
don't work for you, and that one of the surest ways to success is
to get more ideas and more work out of people outside your own
fences. This is one of the key insights that brought us the
internet, and is the key to the success of open source projects like
Linux, Perl, and Apache.
There are more than a few similarities between sustainable farming
(versus resource exploitation) and technological innovation that
are worth meditating upon. You may gain short-term advantage
by taking as much as you can from the soil without regard to
building it up again, but eventually, your soil quality will decline,
and you'll find yourselves having to spend more and more on
added fertilizer.
You've gained enormous competitive advantage by making use of
technologies that were freely given to the world. If players like
yourselves succeed in replacing that gift economy with a
dog-eat-dog world in which everyone tries to keep their advances
to themselves, and worse, tries to keep others from replicating
them, you'll soon find yourself either spending a larger and larger
part of your budget on developing your own technology, or, more
likely, you'll find yourself hostage again to commercial software
vendors whose interests may not be aligned with your own.
If you see yourselves primarily as a technology company, you
might want to play the Microsoft game of trying to corner the
technology market with proprietary APIs, file formats, and
patents, but if you see yourself as a great customer service and
marketing company, you want other people inventing technology
platforms that you can build on. That's been a key part of your
success so far: You've been able to take a great open platform,
and build vertical applications that provide a fabulous service to
your customers. Filing frivolous patents will only retard the
growth of the platform.
And that's a third point: The patent is very unlikely to be upheld
in the long run. It's a classic example of the kind of software
patent that would never be granted if the patent office had even
the slightest clue about software: A trivial application of cookies.
I'd be very surprised if there isn't a fair amount of prior art even in
using cookies in conjunction with saved credit card information.
But even if there isn't, the basic method of saving state
information about prior visitors is so fundamental that there's
nothing new in what you did.
Finally, I want to say that I admire you guys tremendously. I
speak and write constantly about Amazon as the paradigmatic
example of "the next generation of computer applications." I think
that you're a terrific competitor, delivering a terrific service, and I
don't think you need to use tools like this patent to keep
yourselves on top. You can win without it, and I firmly believe
that in the long run, it will do you more harm than good.
I realize that having come out so strongly behind this patent, it
would be very difficult for you to do an about-face and back off
from it. However, I urge you to do so, and would be glad to help
you craft a PR strategy that would make it a net win for you in
terms of public perception. In fact, I'd love to see this as part of a
wider effort by Amazon to embrace and support the open
standards of the Web and the power of open source software,
both of which have been foundations of your success.
As I've suggested publically on more than one occasion, I believe
that the companies that have profited most from the web have an
obligation to give something back. This is more than a "thank
you" to the developers who made your success possible; it's also
an act of self-interest, to keep the innovations coming.
I hope these comments have given you food for thought. I'd love
to hear back from you, and to find a way to work with you to
support the open standards of the web.
Jeff replied via email on January 27. While I don't have permission to quote his
message, I can give you the substance of it, namely that he shares my concern
for both customers and innovation, but that while he believes the patent process
can sometimes be abused, he believes that this is not the case with Amazon's
1-Click patent.
Given this response, I've decided that I need to speak out on this issue. While
the Amazon 1-Click patent is far from the most obvious abuse of the patent
system, it is one that affects the competitive landscape of my own business, and
one where, as a publishing industry spokesperson, I most feel obliged to make a
statement.
What's more, since you sent in your question, the situation has gotten worse.
The patent office has also granted Amazon a patent on their Associates program.
They haven't yet tried to enforce this patent against their competitors, but if what
they've done with 1-Click is any sign of their intentions, I imagine that it's only a
matter of time unless their customers and suppliers speak out about their reckless
behavior.
I'm also publishing an "open letter to amazon" that I invite customers to sign. I
hope to give Amazon an idea of just how many of their customers share the
feelings that this patent is anti-competitive and that it is having a chilling effect
on the growth of e-commerce applications.
What's more, we've put together a patent web site on the O'Reilly Network for
breaking news on this and other software patent issues. We'll develop this site
as the issue unfolds.
Those of you who want to review the actual Amazon 1-click patent filing can
obtain it from the IBM patent server via www.patents.ibm.com. There are a
number of other Amazon e-commerce patents available there for your scrutiny,
including the Associates patent.
--Tim
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INSIGHTFUL!?!?!!? is this moderator smoking crack?Please moderate this obnoxious AC post down!
The Amazon patent is not business incvation. This guy's critique of slashdot lacks both inforamtion and insight. Some
> Without intellectual property protection, who
> would bother innovating anything?
Are you really understanding what you are saying ?
Did Gutenberg needed IP ?
You should also understand that now IP almost always credit the wrong individual. Most 'innovations' are developped concurently by dozen of people that don't know each other. And most of those innovations are generally backed up by prior art. The fact that a sucker somewhere patent it is just disgusting.
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
> I have struggled with this issue since RMS first > approached me to sign on to his campaign. > I've declined to urge a boycott I'm always amazed how RMS is straight on target. The FSFS calls for a boycott of amazon. Everybody laught: "I won't last", "It is stupid", "Nobody cares". But RMS don't mind. And things are slowly moving. Tim clearly admit that he wouldn't move if RMS didn't boycott. Few people remember, but the FSF boycotted apple for years. It was not allowed (by the license) to port GNU software on the macintosh. And now, Apple is (more or less) open-sourcing Darwin, the OS behind MOSX. There may be a correlation between those facts or there may not. > I'm not completely opposed to software patents, > since there are some things that do in fact > qualify as legitimate "inventions", but when I > see people patenting obvious ideas, ideas that > are already in wide use, it makes my blood boil. Well, looks like his blood take some time to boil. And need a little help to do so. (he admited that he waited for rms to start to struggle) > [The patent] is a slap in the face of Tim > Berners-Lee Slippery argument. Would things be better is amazon gave a large amount of money to tbl ? Or isn't the simple fact that people are making much money with the web is a 'slap' on his face ? > Fence in that platform, and who knows what > opportunities will never come to light? This is exactly what amazon wants. They have brand recognition. They have market share. Now they need to lock the thing and start making money. > I urge Amazon to give up on this patent. Sure. But the other amazon patents are good. He admited a few line before, that he is a 'not completely opposed' (which means that he is okay with the concept). I must congratulate him to stand on such strong position. And sure, he doesn't support the boycott. Mmm. Summary (with a childish voice): "Oh, amazon, it is not fair to all those nice people that give me thier money. My friend rms is upset. I love you as you sell many of my books, but this is a little too much. I'd like to publically ask you to recognize that it is not good and to promise me you won't do it again (but well, you do as you want anyway)." Cheers, --fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
patents should be given only to individuals and not corporations.
Thank You,
Troll King
Thank You,
Troll King
Subscribe
[1] The history of all hitherto existing society [2] is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master [3] and
journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one
another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time
ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of
the contending classes.
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of
society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have
patricians, knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals,
guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again,
subordinate gradations.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not
done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of
oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has
simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two
great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and
proletariat.
>From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns.
From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.
The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the
rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America,
trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities
generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known,
and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid
development.
The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolized by closed
guilds, now no longer suffices for the growing wants of the new markets. The
manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed aside by the
manufacturing middle class; division of labor between the different corporate guilds
vanished in the face of division of labor in each single workshop.
Meantime, the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturers
no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionized industrial production.
The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, MODERN INDUSTRY; the place of
the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial
armies, the modern bourgeois.
Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America
paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to
navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in turn, reacted on the
extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways
extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and
pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of
development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding
political advance in that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility,
an armed and self-governing association of medieval commune [4]: here independent
urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable "third estate" of the monarchy (as
in France); afterward, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the
semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact,
cornerstone of the great monarchies in general -- the bourgeoisie has at last, since the
establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the
modern representative state, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state
is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal,
patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound
man to his "natural superiors", and has left no other nexus between man and man than
naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned out the most heavenly
ecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the
icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value,
and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single,
unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious
and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up
to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the
man of science, into its paid wage laborers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the
family relation into a mere money relation.
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigor in the
Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the
most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about.
It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and
Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former exoduses of nations and crusades.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of
production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form,
was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of
production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the
bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices
and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into
air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his
relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It
must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and
consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the
national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being
destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized
nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones;
industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants,
satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands
and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction,
universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of
individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more
impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of
communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of commodities are the
heavy artillery with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all
nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls
civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased
the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the
idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian
countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.
The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production,
and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralized the means of production, and has concentrated property in a
few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralization. Independent, or but loosely connected
provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation,
with one government, one code of laws, one national class interest, one frontier, and one customs tariff.
The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive
forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature's forces to man, machinery, application of
chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for
cultivation, canalization or rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground -- what earlier century had even a
presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?
We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were
generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the
conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of agriculture and manufacturing
industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed
productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.
Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the
economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of
exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the
sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many
a decade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against
modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois
and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that, by their periodical return, put the existence of the entire
bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products,
but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an
epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity -- the epidemic of over-production. Society
suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of
devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And
why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce.
The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois
property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon
as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of
bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And
how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? One the one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of productive
forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to
say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are
prevented.
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men
who are to wield those weapons -- the modern working class -- the proletarians.
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working
class, developed -- a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their
labor increases capital. These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of
commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.
Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labor, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual
character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the
most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of
a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the
propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labor, is equal to its cost of production. In
proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. What is more, in proportion as the
use of machinery and division of labor increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by
prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time, or by increased speed of
machinery, etc.
Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial
capitalist. Masses of laborers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army,
they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the
bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois state; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and,
above all, in the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end
and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.
The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labor, in other words, the more modern industry becomes
developed, the more is the labor of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any
distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labor, more or less expensive to use, according to
their age and sex.
No sooner is the exploitation of the laborer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than
he is set upon by the other portion of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.
The lower strata of the middle class -- the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the
handicraftsmen and peasants -- all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does
not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large
capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus, the
proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.
The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first,
the contest is carried on by individual laborers, then by the work of people of a factory, then by the operative of one
trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the
bourgeois condition of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares
that compete with their labor, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the
vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.
At this stage, the laborers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual
competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active
union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the
whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do
not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the
non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the
bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.
But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater
masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of
the proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labor, and nearly
everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting
commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever
more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen
and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers
begin to form combinations (trade unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of
wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and
there, the contest breaks out into riots.
Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lie not in the immediate result,
but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that
are created by Modern Industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just
this contact that was needed to centralize the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national
struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of
the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in
a few years.
This organization of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently, into a political party, is continually being upset again
by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels
legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie
itself. Thus, the Ten-Hours Bill in England was carried.
Altogether, collisions between the classes of the old society further in many ways the course of development of the
proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those
portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with
the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for
help, and thus to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own
elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the
bourgeoisie.
Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the
proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements
of enlightenment and progress.
Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling
class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the
ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore,
at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over
to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of
comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.
Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a genuinely revolutionary
class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and
essential product.
The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the
bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary,
but conservative. Nay, more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If, by chance, they are
revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present,
but their future interests; they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.
The "dangerous class", the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society,
may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it
far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.
In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without
property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations;
modern industry labor, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has
stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices,
behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.
All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at
large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society,
except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of
appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities
for, and insurances of, individual property.
All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian
movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.
The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole
superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.
Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The
proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.
In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war,
raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent
overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.
Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and
oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least,
continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as
the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer,
on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence
of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it
becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of
existence upon society as an overriding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave
within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by
him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.
The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of
capital; the condition for capital is wage labor. Wage labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The
advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to
competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts
from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the
bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally
inevitable.
Thank You,
Troll King
Thank You,
Troll King
Subscribe
As I watch the slobbering zealots here at Slashdot incessantly whine about Amazon's supposed "abuses" of the patent system, I cannot help but be darkly amused. It is a typical trait of Linux users to lash out and rail against The Man, where The Man is usually Large Corporations like Microsoft, and in the case, Amazon. Of course, when said corporations do something like open-source their NetBEUI stack (ProCom) or give away their C++ compiler for free (Borland), then all of a sudden, the Large Corporations are Linux's best friend!
Reality check: Linux (and for that matter, the Internet itself) would not be in its current state if it were not for these Large Corporations! Hell, I'll do you one better: Linux would not be in its current state if it weren't for Amazon! How many Linux developers do you think used Amazon to purchase books such as Command-Line Crap in 21 Days by Dennis Ritchie or Go Fork Yourself: A Complete Guide To UNIX Process Control by W. Richard Stevens? How many of these same developers used 1-Click Ordering (TM) to purchase these books? Fuckloads of them, that's how many. Fuckloads.
So stop whining, zealots. Your high-pitched objections to the legitimate actions of a true business innovator grate harshly against my very soul.
"1-Click Ordering" is a registered trademark of Amazon.com. Patent pending.
You have only to look at the presence of O'Reilly books on your bestseller lists vs. those at your competitors to realize how much of your computer book sales are driven by the hard core technical community that is O'Reilly's customer base. And I can tell you that those customers are solidly against software patents.
How DARE he assume that we are against software patents?? Without intellectual property protection, who would bother innovating anything? Not all of us are willing to work for free. For those who are, without IP protection, the GPL would be worthless!
Do you really think that bn.com or etoys.com or any other online retailer you care to name would behave any differently, if they had the chance?
What would be achieved by convincing Amazon not to pursue frivolous patents? Even if you succeeded, someone else would get the stupid patents instead and enforce them against Amazon. Is Amazon really to be blamed for trying to avoid that?
Boycotting Amazon only treats the symptom, not the underlying problem that patents like these are granted by the USPTO. Convincing Amazon not to pursue stupid patents wouldn't change the fact that stupid patents are granted--it would just then be other companies getting stupid patents. What are you going to do, keep playing whack-a-mole-with-boycotts indefinitely, as other companies get stupid patents?
Even if you could somehow get all companies to agree not to file stupid patent applications, without addressing the underlying problem that such patents are being granted, it would only take one bad company to start filing them to ruin the agreement for everyone.
So the problem lies with the USPTO, not with Amazon. In fact, I believe that often the best way to get a bad law fixed is to abuse the law. This draws attention to the problem and promotes reform. But that's an argument I'll save for some other time.
What's to be done, then? I don't have a quick solution. I would like to point out, however, that I believe the problem lies more with the USPTO management, rather than rank-and-file patent examiners, who I believe do the best job they can with limited resources. There's a number of things which point to this:
1. Subject expertise. I've heard it said by others that the USPTO lumps software patents in with electrical engineering--thus you have examiners whose subject specialty is EE trying to evaluate software patents. (This is what I've heard--I don't know it for a fact.) I know that in general, patent examiners usually have at least a master's degree in their field. So examination of software patents may be worse than other fields.
2. Time allowed for examination. I understand that examiners' quotas are such that they have about an hour or two to examine each patent application. This is an order of magnitude or so below what is necessary to do a thorough job. I know, because I am a patent searcher at a major corporation--that is, I basically do some of what patent examiners do, except that I have the time and budget to do a proper job. A thorough search for prior art takes me anywhere from 2 to 20 hours of work, depending on the complexity of the subject--the average is probably around 4 hours. Keep in mind that this is only conducting the search, and not actually evaluating the documents I've identified as possible prior art to see if they really would invalidate a patent application--I turn my search results over to the attorneys and let them handle that. Patent examiners have to both conduct the search and evaluate the documents found.
3. Search system. The USPTO management recently installed a new search system for examiners--one which is very slow and inefficient, and is largely hated by examiners. For more details, look at the PIUG-L archives (Patent Information Users' Group), and scroll down to the posts by Gregory Aharonian, who has posted repeatedly on the topic. Be sure to look in particular at a petition submitted to Congress by a number of examiners fed up with the new search system.
Sorry to ramble on, but it's one of my peeves when I see people blame patent examiners for granting stupid patents, when in fact I believe the fault lies with USPTO management.
He *DOES* have to do it for the shareholders, because once Amazon loses public support, all they will have to keep the corpse of their business squirming will be their patents.
Every day, I see more and more "geek" agitation here on Slashdot, rallying against the evils of the U.S. patent system. Instead, we are told, all ideas should be "open sourced" so to speak; anyone should be allowed to use them.
Patents were designed to stimulate progress, and that is what they have done. Much in the same way as software licenses. Slashdotters are perfectly willing to violate patent laws, but if you dare to violate the satus quo of their "community" (like LinuxOne did), you better watch out. They did nothing illegal. *Nothing*.
So who are you to judge? Instead of patents and software licenses (and of course, if anyone were to violate the GPL, we'd hear about it immediatly, but the warez trading on Slashdot sids goes unmentioned). Your hypocrisy is what's holding you back. You scoff at patents which *you* don't own, but try anything new with Linux and you're denounced as a scam artist by software and music pirates. How typical of the Linux scene: moralizing, holier-than-thou teenagers who've probably never held a job in their whole life, and are too lazy to actually *buy* software or music, thus providing *incentive* to the creator (or am I being to reactionary here, comrades?)
In short, while you condem others, your behavior is both unethical (as defined by the Bible) and illegal, while that of Amazon or other patent holders, is not.
The only way to fight this is through litigation. A boycott has no meaning to a company that has not yet made any money.
When amazon begins enforcement of their new patent. I truely hope that their victim has the guts to viciously attack Amazon, the USPTO, as well as the patent examiner by name.
Typically, I hate to see the little guy trampled by big corporations, but the USPTO is a farm system into the high-priced patent attorney ranks. A tour of duty can bring immense wealth to a cunning young lawyer.
S/He must lose his house, his/her savings, and her/his future earnings. S/He must stand as an example to all examiners who come after that the job can have serious, life-altering consequences.
Someone will argue that they know a bright young lawyer who is just trying to make his way in this big, complicated world. Well, thats fine, but let's see him earn that future. The paperwork two-step currently performed in regard to software patents is unacceptable.
Software only needs copyright, trademarks, and trade secret protections. Those are enough to balance the low capital cost of computer science with the needs of industry. A piece of software only becomes a device when viewed through the paper veil of too many lawyers.
Actually it seems to me that the new plague on /. is whining, also known as 'bitching and moaning'. This is the fact that as I follow an interesting thread, inevitably somebody comments about moderation instead of the topic, an evil which this message is guilty of as well. If you have problems with moderation, then log in and sometimes you'll be a moderator.
Storal of the mory, whining gets you nowhere, so take 3 minutes, make yourself an account, and enjoy the ability to (meta)moderate. In the meantime I'll just be glad that I normally browse at +1.
----------------------------
Given that ORA have siezed control of the camel as a trademark when associated with Perl. Which seems pretty patently absurd to me.
Or is it simply that Tim opposes poor use of intellectual property laws when the offender is not ORA.
The GPL forbids you from preventing any person, organization, or field of endeavor from using the covered software. This notion is also covered in the Open Source Definition, clauses 5 and 6.
Me, I agree with him. I am solidly against software patents, and moderately against patents in general. This is not as an abstract concept, it's very much in line with how they are actually functioning in practice- if the world was different I might have a different opinion, but in the Real World (tm) 'solidly against software patents' describes me quite accurately.
That said, I am Chris Johnson. If you are determined to be seen publically opposing this perception, who exactly are you, and is it any of your business? You might be an Amazon stockholder who never invented anything in your life :)
I know next to nothing about how businesses operate, but surely there's a simple way of putting something like this up for a shareholder vote?
Plus I don't believe refusing to ship through Amazon would hurt them. Their product is technical, and most technical people would only gain more respect for the company as they are more likely to know the issues with the patent. O'Reilly purchasers are also more likely than most to know where to find the on-line competition.
Came across this link at www.noamazon.com
C.
I sometimes write stuff
Please ask Tim that, since this is the case, does that THEN justify selling them to Amazon?
I mean, his statement seems to imply to me that, since making a moral statement would lose me money and not change anything, I'm not going to do it.
That doesn't seem right?
Russ
I think Tim watches the Simpsons:
Then again, maybe your tongue was in your cheek a bit when you posted that. If so, then "never mind!" :)
-matty
-matty
I think the key here, Otis, is that Amazon.com very clearly didn't have a clever idea, they merely used a technique that has been used commonly by many online merchants. This should not have been allowed to be patented.
You'll notice that it's not just the Clamoring Slashdot Hordes that are speaking out against this, but also 2 (so far) very respected and oft-quoted nerd/guru/expert types. I challenge you to find someone of this stature who thinks that Amazon.com's 2 recent patents are a good idea.
-mattyt
Amazon.com's stock price is down 43% off its 52-week high of 9DEC1999. Could this be because they're not profitable yet and people are getting tired of waiting?
-matty
No, he's not putting money anywhere than in his bank account at the moment. If he were putting his money where his mouth is he would be refusing to ship through Amazon.
Wrong. If he decided that O'Reilly (the company) would no longer ship through Amazon, his company loses money. He is not the company, and other people have an interest in that money. Can you say shareholder lawsuit? I thought so.
-30-
I just sent news.com a news tip (the link is there on the website). Just email: tips@news.com. I doubt one feed will get their attention but if a lot of us tell news.com, or cnet to talk about this letter from O'Reilly it will educate the non-technical people about what amazon is doing.
I've talked with people who use amazon.com but aren't technically savvy or keep upto date with all this news, their source of information is cnet, news.com, cnn.. not slashdot or oreilly.org.
It's these type of people that amazon is trying to cater to, it's because the number of people like them who don't know any better is higher than the technical community, that amazon doesn't feel any pressure at all. so they lose 1 million technical users.. they still have 20 million nontechnical users, buying books from them.. they're willing to take the loss.
Er, he does.
I'm most familiar with the Samba book, where he and all three authors accepted Andrew Tridgell's suggestion of making it available as open source, but he's published several Linux open source books.
He does require the permission of the authors, you understand: they're the folks who own the books.
--davedavecb@spamcop.net
By the way, I have yet to see a book listing on BBB where Amazon's name isn't all the way at the bottom of the lowest-to-highest price list.
--
Want to speak up against web patents? Join the League for Programming Freedom, fully endorsed by RMS and GNU.
Here are some excellent News links dealing with recent absurd patents, and essays on the subject.
- EraseMe
> Berners-Lee
Slippery argument. Would things be better is amazon gave a large amount of money to tbl ? Or isn't the simple fact that people are making much money with the web is a 'slap' on his face ?
I don't take O'Reilly's comment here to be referring to the money. It has more to do with the spirit in which Berners-Lee acted when he made his ideas and innovations open. Amazon is essentially thumbing their collective nose at Berners-Lee et al, by adding this one trivial bit...and then grabbing it for themselves. The notion of such behavior amounts to the slap in the face, not the lack of due payment, or whatever.
If I had moderator today, I'd moderate that post by Crush up one to take him all the way to 5. If you've got a spare moderator point and haven't commented in this discussion, please moderate that post up!
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
I use http://www.bookshop.co.uk/ for most
of my purchases. Mostly out of habit, I have
to admit.
I should check Heffers again at some stage...
I remember they had a "there'll be a page
here one day" site a few years back.
How come Amazon got to be so famous when
books.com had been around (via telnet) for
ages earlier?
-- You've got to get a hat if you want to get ahead.
this isn't in direct response to what Tim has said, but it is nevertheless on topic.
What if Amazon.com isn't evil? What if they are purposely setting a precident that you can't patent stuff like this on for web? As Tim said in his letter "you're not the only one who can play the patent game". What if by showing that "playing the patent game" makes you lose all around (customers hate you, you get boycotted, and eventually your patent will not hold up).
I think its a great thing that amazon is doing.
maybe I'm just an optimist, but I think in the end this is what their actions will show. I mean _really_, any basic web programming course you take will teach you how to do this "1-click shopping" deal, how the heck does Amazon think they invented it?
The basic sleazeware produced in a drunken fury by a bunch of UCBerkeley grad students was still the core of BIND. --PV
D-OH!
Of course, it's the only one of my links that I didn't check beforehand... All the others I verified. I even had to knock one off my list because it wasn't valid anymore. Oh well. That'll teach me to double check my links.
Bad Barnes and Noble, bad!
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
That's really a matter of tactics and given that it is relatively easy to get O'Reilly from other sources it would be useful to do so. Also, I don't just buy tech books, I buy a lot of fiction and history. I assume that others are also buying a large amount from them (or were). The O'Reilly business model is sort of irrelevant to the issue of bringing pressure to bear on Amazon to stop the patenting. I always hate it when people advocate something they call "pragmatism", yet I guess that's what I'm trying to do in this post. I see a boycott as more likely to happen and simpler for individuals to implement. Later we can turn our attention to O'Reilly
I like the idea. However that's a separate fight from the patents issue. Sometimes one thing at a time is more effective. Or do you see both stemming from the same source?
Also, I would quite like the idea of anyone being able to download and print for themselves, for personal use, a copy of a book. However I would not like it if some other company were able to take an author's work and repackage it with a different cover and undercut them - I can imagine one of the publishing giants doing this if O'Reilly GPL'ed their works. So, a sort of "Fair Use" access to the works would mean that if I were really in need of cheap refs I could get them. If I had money I could buy them nicely bound. Reading over that I'm not sure that I agree with myself, but I do think that stopping exploitation of authors would be essential. Any thoughts?
That's silly! Do you think he makes less of a profit if someone orders the Camel book form FatBrain? Does he get a deal from Amazon?
I think not. Affilate or not, it's all just selling product.
I used to work at Waldenbooks and at first I was in a dream... the "I love this book! I want everyone to buy it!" But that passed. It turned into, "This book is $9.95, but you can get 10% if you buy this $10 perfered reader card which will help my PR/transaction ratio which is the only thing this company cares about when dealing with me? So do you want this card or not?"
It's the same thing, really. Buy your shit from us and we'll make it worth your while. Ease of use it what's it about. I mean, I work Tech Support (for several national ISPs) and people compain when IE doesn't dial for them anymore. Clicking on the shortcut, then connect, then IE is just TOO DAMN HARD for these people.
Until Amazon stops with these silly patent claims, they should not be expecting to see any of my money. There are plenty of other vendors who provide a similar service for a similar price. They need to be aware that once we get used to purchasing from a different vendor, Amazon will no longer be the first place we look for books.
Quack
I hope you apreciate the irony of your position.
[ c h a d   o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Wrong. If he decided that O'Reilly (the company) would no longer ship through Amazon, his company loses money. He is not the company, and other people have an interest in that money. Can you say shareholder lawsuit?
Is O'Reilly a publicly traded company? Are you sure? I don't know, but I don't think it is. In that case, there would be no shareholders to sue.
Even if it were, if Amazon were to get a monopoly on bookselling, it could be damaging for the company in the end. So he could always claim that he was doing this for the good of the company. He has to do what's best for the company, but he gets to decide what the best thing for the company is
[ c h a d   o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
slashdot links to fatbrain.com, not Amazon. You should really try to have some clue before spouting off. They still link to Amazon for videos, but the books point to fatbrain, as they have since soon after RMS's call for a boycot.
[ c h a d   o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
and just so you know, Yu Suzuki is a guy. He's a game designer for Sega of japan, and the guy behind There A&M2 development team, who made daytona USA, among others. He may have had a hand in the creation of sonic the hedge hog, but I'm not sure.
[ c h a d   o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Someone did that to me once. I lost 5 karma points in the space of a few hours. It really pissed me off. Slashdot is going strait to hell...
[ c h a d   o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
It also has Options for patent-holders to license patents such that they can be used in products containing only similarly-licensed or more stringently-licensed patents and patent-like IPs.
I don't understand. Why do you think putting together such a patent portfolio is a bad idea?
Of course, I don't have any "teach them a lesson" thoughts here. It's just that since corporations get around the problem with cross-licensing, I don't see why we can't or shouldn't do the same. Not doing so leaves us defenseless in that realm--we still can use patent--busting prior art, etc, and perhaps lobby for reform, but I don't think that's as effective, as cheap, or as quick to an individual solution. I consider worldwide patent law reform a more longer-term solution.
So instead of worrying that Open Source code writers are continually at risk of >$40k lawsuits even given patent-busting prior art, I'd personally rather try to convince corporations to cross-license their patents under the Open Patent License, (still in development), to preserve the defensive value of their patents while giving the advantage of gaining rights to use more and more patents over time, which will also let the patents be used Open Source code.
I don't understand what would be so objectionable about such a license.
Hmmm... what would happen in the long run? Most probably, things would take shape as they should be. Trade secrets would be just that, and those can be reverse-engineered legally, if you can prove you didn't have any inside help.
Patenting stuff that either should be copyrighted or be trade / industrial secrets is the worst thing that can happen.
-gus
In the spirit of paulbd's closing remarks, I did what I can: I sent email to feedback@amazon.com telling them how much of my business they lost as a result of their patent tactics. Money is the biggest stick I know of in a situation like this, and I encourage everyone to use it.
The letter I wrote follows. Emulate what I have done if you wish. Just be sure to report dollars and cents accurately!
/* Begin letter */
To whom it may concern:
Due to devisive patent tactics, I refuse to purchase anything from Amazon.com. Barnesandnoble.com has received roughly $500 of my business over the last three months because, although I could save a bit on some books with Amazon.com, its disregard for the Web's wellbeing through pursuit and enforcement of patents sickens me.
The afforementioned figure only reflects personal purchases. As an IT director, I make decisions about software and IT book purchases for the insurance company with which I work. In the last four months alone, I have overseen the purchase of nearly $8000 in software: Beyond.com was the beneficiary! Amazon.com will never see a penny of the budget I oversee so long as its patent tactics continue.
Keep working hard to tighten your grip on the market with patents, Amazon.com. In response, many more people than you suspect will continue to throw more opportunity cost your way and give business to your competitors.
Sincerely,
Joseph J. Egan
/* End letter */
bEgan
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." -- Albert Einstein
Fatbrain spams.
No, really. We should, as a group, put our collective money where our collective mouth is and go somewhere else. Fatbrain, maybe. How about some recommendations?
Brazil has decided you're cute.
Amazon's policies and actions may be deplorable, but in all the time I've been ordering from them (this amounts to about 20 or 30 orders), I've gotten nothing but great customer service: low time on hold for telephone support, and next day replies to my e-mails. The only exception to this has been during the holiday season, when my gift arrived 2 weeks after I ordered it (it said 2-3 day shipping), missing Hannukah.
I still fully intend to boycott Amazon for what they've done so far with their frivolous patenting, but support is hardly a basis for criticism.
A price/earnings ratio is very good! It means that the shares cost nothing.
I think you probably meant something more like "a price/earnings ration of infinity".
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
I don't think it will die that easy. I suspect that most people are like me: ignored the amazon.com thing at first but then canceled our account and switched to bn.com after people made enough noise. If we keep making noise we will get mopre people to switch.
What would be really nice is to see a coalition of publishers (i.e. not just O'Rielly) were to drop amazon.com for their buisness practices. Why wold they do this? Because it would allow them to use 1-click shopping on their own sites.
Personally, I think Tim should wait a while and if amazon dose nothing he should make a little fuss about tring to get such an activity together. This would kill amazon.com's stock, which is what they really care about.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Good point. I don't know if Tim would be so bold as to make that move, however. I think Tim's appeal to Jeff has been on a personal basis. I don't think Tim would jeopardize his business relationship over an issue that has nothing to do with the core Amazon-O'Reilly relationship.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
Amazon.com has an O'Reilly Bookstore
They even reprint selected Ask Tim columns (though not the one we're discussing obviously).
For all his genuine anguish over the issue, I don't see Tim O'Reilly dropping this joint marketing effort with Amazon. He can't afford to lose the revenue.
Barnes & Noble doesn't have clean hands either. Remember that on the eve of Amazon's IPO, they launched a frivolous lawsuit over Amazon's use of the phrase "world's biggest bookstore".
What's the solution? I don't know. No one has clean hands.
Principles are easy when there's no money at stake. Money changes everything.
What Amazon is doing simply can't be good for their bottom line. Clearly they will loose more customers over things like this they they will ever hope to gain. I used to shop there and will not do so anymore, and I suspect a lot of other people will do the same. In a situation where the compatition is only as far as pointing your browser at a new URL Amazon should be very carfull about their image with customers. The obvious question then is if this won't help their business then what is the point?
This is a little off topic, but important none the less. As we all know, Amazon has thus far made no money. That doesn't mean they won't in the future. In fact, Amazon stands to make a tremendous amount in the near (3-5yr) future, and here is why: Amazon is investing in market and mindshare right now. Their strategy is to lure customers to them with ease of use and heavy-duty personalization features. Currently, it costs Amazon somewhere in the $20-30 range to secure a customer. On the average it costs around $7-10 to get a customer to purchase something from you (note, these costs refer to the book-selling world). Amazon's plan is to implement the technologies to do personalization as well as gain the market share. Then they are going to dial back the amount of money they spend on getting people to purchase because they will have a sort of captive market.
All this being said, the reason they have such a great stock price is that the majority of stocks are not purchased by you or me. They are purchased by huge brokerages with smart guys and gals running them. They know the score and they know that Amazon will be profitable in the long run. So, you see maybe they aren't so dumb after all. Sure its a risk, but Amazon is in it for the long haul, not immediate profit.
Poo-Bah
Some additional links for Europe can be found at http://noamazon.com/.
--Carpe diem!
Use your own price-to-earnings ratio to predict how large the boycott will be in a few months, and then multiply that by amazon's price-to-earnings ratio, and you should get a nice round number
--
The shareholder is always right.
Jesse, you idiot, it says "Don't forget the http://" right there! Your comment should have been moderated down as flamebait, not up as insightful, you lame karma whore.
--
The shareholder is always right.
(The first three came from Daniel Gray, who looks like an expert on affiliate programs. The last came from Cuesta Technologies, which has been building affiliate programs for their clients since 1995. The letters are on Feb 28 and Feb 26 of the ejournal.)
We are living in an age that is overhyped and underrated:
Computers great for learning(underrated), let's give them MS Word(hype)
The fact is the invention of HTML and related web technologies have reduced something patentable in the case of hardware to 5-15 lines of code in software.
Until the shareholders realize that the web is in fact fully accessible to world on all levels (use, dev, hacking (as in unothodox building not breaking)) that HTML does not require a phd and that Debian producers are mostly under 17 yrs of age (relates to education and accessibility of the net) they won't know that the world's latest Gutenberg Award worthy product is being shanghaied
.
We need to go on the info offensive. we are always on the defensive. And I don't mean FUD.
My 1st contribution: Unix in vented in 1970, GUI invented in 1971. Unix is 70s tech, but Windows isn't? WTF!?
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
I have been silently hoping that Amazon.com would abandon thier patens under the presure of the boycots, but it seems that they have ignored that. My hesitation has been two-fold. 1) Great customer service, and 2) the fact that I'm an Amazon.com associate. Fortunately, switching my site over to B and N is only a matter of signing up, verifying all the titles and modifying a single script..... But I'd really rather not...
Don't you think it's time to start communicating?
It's clear to everyone that Amazon is willfully abusing the patent system. As such, they are showing their true colours and demonstrating their lack of business ethics and common sense.
In light of this, I can honestly say that I will not purchase anything else from Amazon now or in the future, no matter what the outcome of the patent situation. Even if they were to give up their patents, the damage has been done and Amazon has been exposed for what it truly is. I will always remain a former Amazon customer.
Amazon.com, I wish you everything you deserve.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Does anybody know an alternative?
Anyhow, we got to discussing the Amazon patents, and just at the moment he was saying that he thought they were OK the Cook, who was collecting crockery, dropped a cup of tea on him.
Poetic, don't you think?
threadeds blog
I know Amazon has been stupid about the whole patent thing -- but you have to give them credit for being early, and being good at e-Commerce. It only took them a couple years to become one of the biggest booksellers in the world -- that takes a lot of skill.
I am not saying that Amazaon should be forgiven for their patent abuses... or that it is "right" for a company to lose as much money as they do. But you have to admit that they have been successful so far.
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
It essentially patents off-line web browsing.
http://164.195 .100.11/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF &d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1& f=G&l=50&s1='5,978,807'.WKU.&OS=PN/5,978,807&RS=PN /5,978,807
Can't do that - too many web sites "deep links" amazon, like, directly onto their books.
Any site that searches books across different vendors, much like pricewatch?
After looking up the dictionary, the two words have identical meaning - stop. Why bother using them both?
This should NOT be -1. Just because (s)he disagrees with you doesn't mean he's a trool. Read the moderator guidelines.
There's no reason for a sig here.
-Legion
In addition to Barnes & Noble, from whom I have received adequate service, I have had great experiences with A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books and Powell's Bookstore (the largest used bookstore I've ever been to online and IRL located in Portland, OR) for non-technical books.
- tokengeekgrrl
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions
That should settle it.
PS: I dont mean to disminish the noble intent of the letter.
I agree with you on many levels. The problem is that you and any moderately technically competent person can judge the absurdity of Amazon's patent. But the courts cannot. There is clearly a need for the concept of Intellectual Property and for a system to ensure that ideas can be protected. But when the ideas are beyond the comprehension of the arbiters, we have a major problem. Why do you object to using the tools of the existing system to protect us from abuses while we build a replacement?
AFAIK, the one-click is a convenience feature that is only available to registered users who have already given Amazon their credit card number and preferred shipping address. So it requires many clicks and keypunches to set up, but after that, thanks to the "magic" of cookies, the customer can buy a book with one click.
IANAL, but wouldn't Amazon lose the right to enforce their patent if they choose not to sue a significant number of offenders for infringment? If enough people did it, it could pose a problem for Amazon's legal team.
Waterstones
Books Online
Proxis
Find funky gifts
Why not ask the guys at Yahoo! if they fancy having a pop at Amazon for using a database to generate web pages.
Or all the porn sites could gather together and sue them for ripping off their idea of taking credit card payments online.
Also, where the hell do they get the idea that renaming 'franchising' as 'affiliates' is worth a patent? If that's the case, I'm renaming 'www' as 'web' and charging for everyone who uses it.
Find funky gifts
"I was reading Dave Winer's article on this very subject when your e-mail arrived yesterday. This--along with the broader issue of current patent-granting standards--is a story we're following with considerable interest, and I do expect we'll have something on these topics in the near future.
Cheers,
Rob Pegoraro"
fatbrain for instance. I don't think it's such a big deal to boycott Amazon.com and still get your books for cheap
Upon notification of being awarded the patent Amazon.com filed lawsuits against other internet companies infringing on the patent.
Said company spokesperson Chip Schott, "We feel that patents are nessessary to encourage innovation by awarding creative genius. Amazon.com has lead the way in stockholder satisfaction and we have earned it. We feel that generating high stock value through negative earnings is not at all obvious, unlike our other patents. Other companies should not allowed to steal this scientific method from us without properly licensing it."
Ebay, one of the defendants named in the lawsuits, announced that they would investigate the profitability of making profits should the court decide in Amazon.com's favor.
Amazom.com stock rose $5 following the announcement.
What I don't get is why some ideas are considered 'ok, you are totally right to patent that by yourself!' and others are 'hey, you thief! you are not allowed to patent that! if you do I'll boycot you!'.
If a person has a clever idea, and patents that what's wrong with that? because in THIS case some people here are NOT agreeing with the US patent commission? And should issue a boycot?
Some clever Dutch student invented a harddisk head system that could handle much smaller disktracks, so harddisks could contain much more data. Do you think he got the patent? no. The company who payed for the research did. Wrong? perhaps, but I don't see anyone boycotting any harddiskmanufacturer because he suddenly has larger harddisks for sale and thus supports this patenting issue.
Remember: perhaps on some day YOU will have a clever idea, and will rush to the patentoffice and will perhaps receive a patent for that idea. What would you do if on a certain 'nerd' site (however... nerdsite, it's more a linuxpromo site nowadays, but that's another story) people are ranting to boycot you and your little company that works very hard to realize your clever idea??
You would join those ranting people? I guess not.
--
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
In the "Slashboxes"*: Amazon.com. BuyBooks at Linux.org: at Amazon.com.
Amazon.com was doing a good job on these sites before the patent issues started (which is prehistory now), but is doing so even up to today.
If this is meant to be a boycott, it's a *weak* one.
(* Can anybody tell me what "slashboxes" really are? I mean, they're in the Slashdot prefs, but I don't understand what they're supposed to be.)
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Without patent protection, no one would have bothered to invent the computer.
Yes they would. Was Collossus patented? If there was a need for a computer then it would have been invented eventually. Maybe the technological advance would be slower but it would have happened. Although most people have a problem with Software patents. Software is the only thing I can think of that is protected by Patent AND Copyright laws. Try patenting a dictionary.
Please be advised that I have recently patented the process known as 'Referrals', whereas if you either pay or receive income for any sort of referral (Getting a new client, contract, job, etc), that you are violating my patent, and you must CEASE AND DESIST from any and all referral activities until a licensing agreement has been secured.
Come on! The above paragraph sounds absolutely ludicrous. How can the patent office sink to such low depths as to approve such common sense patents? This is not a product, nor is it new technology. It is a method of doing business (and a commonly used on at that). Whats next? Are they going to patent the process of marking up the price of the retail product?
Hmmmmmm. Theres an idea. The process of dynamically pricing the product based on the real time wholesale value of the product. Hmmmmmm.
Gotta go. I need to call my.... mother. Ya, thats it. I have to call my mom.
JB
Feed The Need[goatse.cx]
my point is that patnets are rewarding busisness men for choking off innovation to controll markets. Hardly the incentive to innovate that justifys their existence.
parhaps so, perhaps buyer beware would be best. but a common argument that favors patents is that pharmacuticals have no incentive to do R and D without them. My point challenges this benefit.
but you can't deny that this problem would have been avioded from the start without patents at all.
one example is that I work for an extremely large technology/consumer products company. but contrary to popular belief they are not a technology company. they buy up smaller companies, suck off the patents, and put the screws to all the other consumer products companies and all the other innovators in the valley. in addition, you arrogantly overlook the dark side of patents - eg. someone comes up a safety device and not only locks out the next guy who would have discovered it independently next month, but also locks out his competitors (perhaps auto makers) so that people who use their products for the next 20 years have a higher chance of dying than people who don't. Also consider a pharmacutical company that considersing researching a simple safe cure that it can't patent or a dangerous concoction with lots of side effects that it can. Finally, any idiot who looks into it would realize that people were inventing stuff at a steady pace of inprovement long before patents came along. inventions are derived to meet needs, not to secure monopolies. PS did you know that freon became environmentally illegal to use on the same month that DOWs patent exipred, and the only close replacement of which there is no reason believe is safer is also patented by DOW and hasn't exipred yet??
america is successfull, because of individual liberties being upheld, not because of patents. your argument reminds me of the 1850's argument that americas greatness was founded on slavery. but it wasn't.
did it ever occur to you that before democracy, the government owned all inventions so things like patents were a moot point. But now that there is an acknowledgemnet of liberty our society has to learn what is property rights and what is not, what is a basic right and what is not. we learn't the hard way with slavery and today it looks like were going to learn the hard way again with patents. there just not a basic right, or a property, they are a government granted monopoly designed to be an incentive - but doubtfully are as innovation has been increasing at a steady rate with and with out patents.
Mattel must be spending a fortune in lawyers for going after me and Barbie Benson's Sin Circus and going after a college kid for posting a Barbie Joke
Fight Spammers!
I posted my comment on Tim O'Reilly's An Open Letter to Jeff Bezos page and within an hour, nearly 200 new responses were posted on top of mine. If this rate keeps up, I think it will go a long way to convincing Amazon that they are headed down the wrong track. If we succeed in changing Amazon's course on these patents, it might set a precedent that will keep other companies from patenting the Internet to death. Tell everyone you know to go to this site and add their name to the list to keep up the momentum!
A quick hop over to the SlashDot book reviews reveals something interesting: "The books here are brought to us in Partnership with Amazon.com. If you follow the links around here, and eventually buy a book, we get a percentage of the cost!"
I question just how effective the "boycott" is. Some commentaries seem awfully positive, but I'm a sceptic. Heck, the majority of people don't even know there's reason to boycott let alone that a boycott's taking place. And of those that do, few seem committed.
A quick survey of the books reviewed shows most of them available from ThinkGeek or FatBrain, but even on SlashDot, Amazon gets more real estate on the page.
I'm boycotting. But if we hope to get anywhere, we'll have to evangelize. Explain to your family, friends, neighbors, coworkers--anyone that uses Amazon--why they should boycott. Then let them decide for themselves.
I see today (1 March) that ZD Net has an article on the Amazon patent issue now. Interestingly enough the NASDAQ closed up 87.390 at a new record close (yawn). Amazon.com closed at 65&7/8, down 3 points. Think those thousands of people that signed the petition had anything to do with it? :-) I don't think Amazon is getting the kind of publicity it wants just now. It will have to explain to its stockholders why it is losing thousands of customers. The best way to hurt a business is in the pocketbook. Think of all the people that cancelled orders. Maybe Amazon will change its mind. :-)
"Open code, in other words, can be a check on state power." -Lawrence Lessig
For many large, publicly-traded companies, the majority of shareholders are large institutions (e.g. mutual funds, pension funds, etc). If you want to get something voted on at a shareholder meeting, convince the biggest institutions and you're more likely to win. This means you only have to convince a few people of "the right thing".
3M, for example, is 70% owned by institutions. State Street & Merrill Lynch own pretty big chunks of that. See Yahoo to see what I mean.
The Daily Build
OReilley could just withdraw all its books from Amazon in protest, it has that power. It is not "Well its not on Amazon so I won't buy it." it is more like "O'Reilley books are somewhere else, so I will buy it there." Amazon is being really stupid, it needs a damn lesson. The technology was there, they didn't invent anything. I'm guessing O'Reilley probably has a commitment to its investors or something, if not it should take the step and tell Amazon what it really thinks.
What if Yahoo patented the portal, or something really stupid like that? What I would really like to be done to Amazon is the same thing they have done to the Web.
One click shopping isn't that good an idea though(which is probably why no one was doing it), the shopping cart metaphor seems to work ok.
I don't know, the idea of one-click shopping seems so insecure. Remember a while ago, people wouldn't trust the Internet with the smallest things? It was thought that small transactions, like lower than $50 would be used in eWallets or somesuch would rule the day. Why did people suddenly start trusting the Internet so much? I mean, the same level of crypto existed back then?
Amazon is using the excuse that "Oh since no one did it before, we must have invented it." No, it is just that people wouldn't trust it at the time, and no one had a reason to impement it. Would someone explain to me why people should trust it???
Hmm don't eWallets qualify as prior art for Amazon's thing?
We need a blacklist of these stupid patent companies. Amazon, Unisys. They should be advertised as the bloodsuckers they are.
nah, i don't hate anybody for being successful. as for me, no, i never worshipped amazon. they used to provide me with a nice service, and they were winning the war fairly. now, with the 1-click thing, it seems like they're resorting to cheating even though they were winning. It's low, and, well, I vote with my wallet.
Amazon.com is in the same category as Wal-mart, Borders, BN and Starbucks. They've managed to become very successful, but along the way have done things which make me quite willing to avoid using their services. I doubt they even notice my absence, but I get to know that I'm not knowingly financing actions which I don't agree with.
I have absolutely no problem with success, as long as you play fair and don't intentionally cause injuries.
----------------------------
If I am not mistaken, your idea of placing conditions on people's freedom to enter into this license agreement with open source software is completely contrary to the spirit of the thing and specifically clashes with the GPL. I certainly will never support it, no matter how intensely I oppose corporations wielding software patents. It's almost as bad as the idea of building an 'open source patent portfolio' and then acting just like the corporations, to teach them a lesson! no no no ;P
As a corporate entity they are _compelled_ to behave like this, in all seriousness, with no concern for whether it is fair, valid or even sensible. They are _one_ 'reality check' away from a major collapse of their valuation- which could really blow up in their faces. Everything depends on the world continuing to think 'Amazon will stomp all other online booksellers! Jeff Bezos is man of the year!'. The second that no longer makes sense to, say, Wall Street, the reality takes hold- the reality is that they've had a _lot_ of trouble getting anywhere close to turning a profit.
They _are_ serious, they are playing the patents as a game, and they will continue to abuse the system until they crash and burn, because that is basically all they have- that and brand name loyalty, which is being eroded by their actions. They might have nasty contracts for affiliates (has anyone asked CmdrTaco if he's legally allowed to _pull_ the links to Amazon? Or did he sign off on a contract mandating them for X amount of time?). But mostly they have a stock valuation that's keeping them going. If that fails and the perception is that they've stumbled and no longer dominate, they have very serious trouble.
I'd want to see the contract. I see no reason to assume O'Reilly is free to cut its ties to Amazon just because it wants to. I see every reason to ask whether Amazon affiliates are required to maintain the link/connection to Amazon for X amount of time if they want to get a percentage of the Amazon sales. Unfortunately, there is also the possibility of a 'You do not talk about Amazon contracts!' clause.
The equivalent in patent terms is not a patent. It is the publication in a unarguably conspicuous place of the relevant ideas, in such a way that patent examiners can get access to and search for the ideas. Like the GPL, it impedes your ability to force people to pay for your idea (implementation is still fair game). Also like the GPL, it penalizes nobody and focusses on one key point: anyone can do anything with an established public domain idea _except_ patent it and restrict other people from using it.
The missing piece is this: we have no way of publishing any such ideas anywhere that will stand up in court as public domain. I feel strongly that just putting stuff on your website will not do- the patent examiners will not grovel through a million websites, and the whole point of the exercise is to make it possible to _block_ the blind granting of patents on things. There is a way to formally announce things as PD, but it costs money (much less than a patent) and is not a forum for sharing the ideas with a broad public. I've said before and I'll keep saying: we need a formal website for 'outing' ideas and inventions of all kinds, a centralised 'bazaar for inventions' that can be easily searched by patent examiners, individuals and corporations alike. The latter group is important: even if the patent examiners aren't on the ball, if you get two corporations grabbing a public domain idea, each one will bitterly deny the other's right to patent the idea- and the individuals and actual inventors won't have to concern themselves with that aspect. End result is that the idea stays public domain as intended.
Is anybody ever going to help put together such a site? I am getting desperate. The possibilities are great: even in the case of preexisting patents, it is often possible to come up with an invention of narrow focus that does not infringe on the patent. Such work done for an effective public domain resource would be able to rapidly propagate such workarounds to the public and to industry, quickly reducing the usefulness of existing patents unless they are genuinely brilliant inventions. But there has to be the site, it's useless to just have a bunch of random people putting stuff on their web pages...
I'm pretty sure there was a "back" button on NCSA Mosaic, before Spyglass existed.
Now, if CERN had patented HTTP...
--
Perhaps what is needed is another (yikes, did I just say that?) open source license. One with a specific clause restricting use of the software by companies that choose to hold software patents.
Amazon hosts using Stronghold/Apache. I bet they use gobs of other free software, and they give back to the community by filing for software patents?
If people really want to make a statement about their beliefs that software patents are bad, add a clause to your open source software specifically removing the rights for any corporation or individual holding software patents from use of your software without express written permission.
Feb 29 00:46:54 doma sendmail[23503]: AAA23503: from=, size=19449 , class=0, pri=49449, nrcpts=1, msgid=, proto=SMTP, relay=mattyt@localhost [127.0.0.1]
Feb 29 00:46:55 doma sendmail[23505]: AAA23503: to=, delay=00: 00:01, xdelay=00:00:01, mailer=smtp, relay=mail.oz.net. [216.39.128.2], stat=Sen t (AAA13184 Message accepted for delivery)
I didn't see it anywhere yet (I searched this entire thread and all of the above links for 'bezos'). I cut and pasted the letter into an email, with a few brief comments of my own. Maybe if he gets several thousand 20K emails from people, all of whom are very net-connected, who are saying they won't shop at his store until he rescinds the 2 patents, he'll think twice. Just a suggestion....
I'm amazed this post has a score 4, considering it seems to have even less fact checking than your average /. story.
--
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Uh, I followed your link and got:
Guys, pretty please cut your ties with Amazon? Or just take your links to Amazon and put in place a message saying why you should boycott Amazon until Bezos drops this stupid lawsuit? It's the right thing to do...even if it's a pain in the ass to code. Thanks.
Finding God in a Dog
I think the problem is that "stopping sales to amazon" won't change anything. It doesn't "convince" Amazon to change their ways. Amazon doesn't "need" O'Reilly (in the sense of buying their books directly from ORA). Amazon feels no pain or loss if they get the titles from ORA direct or via the distributor. (I also am not sure what percentage of the books already come from the distributors... it could be that the percentage of books that come direct from ORA is small-to-non-existent.)
The basic idea is that whenever a patent is issued, it should be put up for auction. When the auction is over, flip a coin. Heads: the highest bidder buys the patent. Tails: the government buys the patent and puts it in the public domain.
This would benefit society through wider use of patented technology, while still letting people who sponsor patentable innovations get rewarded. If the auctions price the patents fairly, the benefits to consumers through having better and cheaper products will outweigh the taxes they have to pay to get the government to buy the patents.
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
I agree with the posts that have pointed out that O'Reilly hasn't put his money where his mouth is, yet. He's taken a stance which I respect, and done it in a way I respect, but he really hasn't made much of an economic move. I wish he would, and there's good arguments for doing so floating around this discussion.
What I'm curious about is why he doesn't seem to think others should put their money where their mouth is. In his letter to Jeff Bezos, he states "I agree with [Stallman's] message, although not his methods." This implies to me that he's against the idea of a boycott, and I can't figure out for the life of me why.
Could you elaborate, Tim?
Tweet, tweet.
My favorite physical bookstore has a presence online, along with plenty of other independent bookstores:
All of these are smaller, independent bookstores that aren't huge conglomerates (or Internet behemoths,) and are very good alternatives to the conventional. This list has a good selection of online bookstores, including the ones listed above.
Or, there's always the old fasioned way. Walk to your local used bookstore. I guarantee that there is one in your town, and you might just find something worth reading.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Just add this line to /etc/hosts...
:)
216.92.118.211 www.amazon.com
Action is easy when the alternatives always
present themselves.
j. scott olsson
I just tried to reach Book Stacks at www.books.com, and it now appears to be simply Barnes & Noble. Does anyone know a working URL?
FWIW, while Amazon.com is abusing the patent system, B&N does not exactly wear a white hat. It has been B&N who have most agressively, in the brick-and-mortar market, been squeezing out independant bookstores. Support your local independant booksellers!
Expect to hear from my client shortly regarding further legal action.
_________________
rooooar
The internet is what it is today because people DID NOT file patents for the many unique technolgies/techniques used. IT's a damn good think nobody patented the 'internet provider business model'. Believe me, they could have. What Tim says is good, and well put... that Amazon should not force their 1-click issue, as it goes against the spirit of all the technologies that enabled amazon to do their thing in the first place.
Well, I would be a whole lot more impressed if Tim had actually advocated the Amazon boycott. As it is, his actions are not likely to affect his own bottom line, and so it's not really putting his money anywhere. Not where his mouth is nor anywhere else. Jeff is not going to stop selling O'Reilly books because of Tim's letter, and not a single O'Reilly book will go unsold.
While I do admire Tim's decision to speak out - it's way more than any other industry leader has done, and I do believe utterly that he speaks from his heart and not from any profit motive, the net effect on the profits of his company will probably be very positive.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Information is not Knowledge
I disagree with using the GPL with patents because the GPL was designed to encourge the freedom of information. Doing something like this doesn't do that - it forces authors to use the GPL which isn't helpful.
While I do like the GPL, I think most people will agree that it is a pretty.. aggressive.. open source licence. That's okay - it's designed to be like that. But in some cases, it makes it difficult to work with.
For instance - say the Amazon One-Click shopping patent had been GPL-licenced. Apache couldn't use it (Apache Licence), Zope couldn't use it, I don't think any Java webservers could use it (because of the Java libraries) - when I say "use it" I mean have it linked into something like an Apache Module. Oh yeah - PHP couldn't use it either, if it linked to any of the many non-GPL PHP classes.
SO to produce software that can use that patent, you'd have to write and maintain a GPL'ed Webserver (if you want to implement it in there for performance reasons), some kind of web development system - no CSPAN-Perl, remember, and then finally implement your program - all the while paying lawyer to stop people using your system on the web.
I guess it could be useful for a company to GPL-licence a Patent, and then sell exemptions to that licence (like the Reiser-FS). Actully, that could work pretty well.... I should go an patent it before Amazon does.
I'm not a anti-GPL person, BTW. I like the GPL a lot more than a BSD licence, but this isn't what it was designed for.
This is my first post with Mozilla M13 Linux - I hope it works! - Woah.. the screens all black in the preview.. but no crash yet...
This isn't a good idea. I've seen a couple of posts recently suggesting this idea - patenting things and then licenceing them only to GPL'ed software.
I disagree with this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, who is going to pay the legal costs of enforcing it?
Secondly, and more importantly it put limitations on the freedom of use of ideas. While it can be argued that the GPL does the same thing - it doesn't really. It only puts limitations on the implementation of those ideas. Someone if free to re-implement something written as GPL software, provided they don't use any of the source.
I'm somewhat unsure as to how I stand on softwear patents. While I feel I should say that all software patens should be abolished, I do see that they do have something of a point.
My personal idea is that the length that software patents are valid for should be radically shortened - to something like 1 year. I do understand that doing that might create something of a disincentive for some really hard-code patents - and those are the things that I can see a good reason to protect.
I mean if someone thought up an algorithm to compress audio by an order of magnitude more than MP3s - they should have some protection and a chance to make some money out of it, I think.
How long are patents valid for at the moment, anyway?
Go to the main page. Down the right side you'll see a few boxes with headers of Features, Science, Slashdot Poll, Older Stuff, and finally Book Reviews. At the bottom of the book reviews box there is a link to the Book Reviews section. Go there and then you will see the very text that I included in my post. Boo.
The text I'm referring to is in a box called "Amazon Info" right at the top of the book reviews home.
Tim O'Reilly is clearly jealous of Amazon's market-leading dominance in the field of losing money, while O'Reilly Associates stubbornly insists on remaining in the black. The intellectual effect of his argument is simply too powerful to be plausible.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
C&C is the highest standard of proof for a civil action in the United States.
While the standards are certainly different, and BRD is probably tougher, there is no meaningful practical difference. At the end of the day, the jury couldn't care less what the label is -- this is what the judge will tell them (in an 11th Circuit Patent case -- mileage may vary):
Take any six people off the street (jury pools are scary-dull generally; and any smart ones will be excluded), make them listen to mind-numbing testimony for two weeks, three hours of jury instructions (and the instructions on invalidity are both complex and dull), let them hear an expert on both sides who seem equally intelligent, show them a ribboned deed from the USPTO, and I can assure you what the result is likely to be.
As for Amazon's chances of winning, I hereby volunteer to take the stand and testify to my uses of cookies in Web programming before 1997. I'll give the jury some clear and convincing evidence, all right. They won't be confused.
Good Luck! Naive statements such as the one set above, even as far more articulately put on behalf of B&N, couldn't convince the judge -- why would it convince any jury?
Such evidence wouldn't, by itself, even be relevant to invalidate the patent in suit, which is not directed to a cookie. Moreover, "before 1997" would not suffice to invalidate the patent in suit -- indeed such vagaries is precisely the stuff that creates doubt sufficient to defeat the standard. Testimony, without documentary evidence, is usually insufficient to meet the standard.
The heat here is not in the use of cookies, generally, but in a particular and limited use of a cookie.
Amazon's patent assertions are worthless.
Maybe they are -- I'd like to think so. But certainly nothing posted so far on Slashdot suffices to show that this is the case, even by a preponderance of the evidence, let alone C&C. Moreover, nothing brought before the Judge at the preliminary injunction hearing convinced the Court that such a claim would have any merit whatsoever.
So, here it is -- same challenge I posted earlier. Find MEANINGFUL prior art, and post its citation to the web -- or send it to B&N. Otherwise, I'd advise being somewhat more circumspect about making arrogant and extravagant claims. Amazon, at least, has a case. Denying this, without more, would be futile.
Hindsight is 20/20 eh? hehehehe...
--
PanDuh!
All I'd like to know is- who gives Mr. Bezos the right to patent the "One-Click" shopping that Amazon uses so much? Is he not satisfied with the billions of dollars that he's already currently worth? Does he feel that he has to do it for the shareholders, or is he just greedy? Just a couple of things that I think we should all think about....
That... and really, is one-click shopping really what it is? I mean, don't you have to make at least a few clicks anyway (choose a novel, type in your name/credit card number [at least the first time] and then follow that by the confirmation, choosing the shipping....)? Is it really One-Click, and is it even revolutionary?
-Chris
Ha! your halfclick shopping is obviously inferior to my 'no-click shopping'. If your pointer as much as touches a product, you bought it. onmouseover.. 'nuff said.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
From now on in, B&N must prove invalidity to a jury by clear and convincing evidence, which is the civil law equivalent of "beyond a reasonable doubt."
"Clear and convincing evidence" is a weaker standard in the courts than "beyond reasonable doubt".
As for Amazon's chances of winning, I hereby volunteer to take the stand and testify to my uses of cookies in Web programming before 1997. I'll give the jury some clear and convincing evidence, all right. They won't be confused. And just about every other programmer I know who was working before 1997 can do the same thing.
Amazon's patent assertions are worthless.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
Switzerland once had no less than Albert Einstein working in its patent office. While he was there, he came up with the theory of relativity in his spare time!
What have we come to?
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
Why doesn't Rob and friends put their money where their mouth is? Literally.
Rob, the poster is right about this. You've assured us that Slashdot would remain true to its principles, despite becoming a business. Here's a good opportunity for you to prove it. Breaking off your relationship with Amazon may cost a few dollars, but if Amazon prevails, it may cost you and Andover.net and all of the rest of us a lot more in the long run.
Tim O'Reilly has risked some trouble for his business by taking up a public fight with one of his biggest customers; but it will be worth it for him to stand on principle. Will Slashdot be willing to do the same thing?
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
They patented the fundamental technique of audio coding. (The equivalent of JPEG for audio; perform a frequency transform (DCT), quantize, entropy encode.) And just as JPEG was revolutionary when it came out, so has MP3 been; lightyears ahead of any other competeing format.
MP3 is the same way, well, except, that they didn't actually release anything useful on their patent. The black-magic that they managed to produce is their MP3 codec, but you won't find that on any patent application. they made it trade-secret. It deserves a patent, if anything does.
This is sorta like 3dfx patenting the idea of using a hardware-accelerated 3d graphics card to speed up games, then keeping all of the research and tricks they use in their implementation a trade secret.
So, we get the WORST of both worlds. They don't disclose their 'real' invention, and yet they are granted a patent that stops anyone else in their business from functioning. Full disclosure? HAH!
Bad companies can do good things every now and again, just as good companies can do stupid things.
Amazon isn't condemned for being huge. It's condemned because it's huge and abuses its size when making bonehead market-narrowing moves like this. Yes, geeks have bought from Amazon a lot in the past. That doesn't make the One-Click patent any less wrong.
Or, better yet, check out Best Book Buys, and you'll find that Amazon's nearly always last.
That would be interesting if it could be put up for a vote and be done (the first I've heard of such a move by a company). I remember some companies have taken similar action in the past due to another companies poor environmental practices, or involvement with countries with human rights violations (i.e. South Africa).
It is a pretty tough sell to shareholders when it comes to the one click patent. Sadly, unlike the one click patent the companies had some risk of boycott themselves due to their dealings with other companies with other violations. Also explaining why environmental damage and human rights violations are bad is a pretty simple task to explain to shareholders compared to the one click patent.
Most of them I'm sure are not aware of the patent issue (and I'm sure some who are wish they would have thought of it). Saying "Lets not ship to a big name (granted money losing) company so we can gain respect" is a hard sell to make. Granted you wouldn't say it that way but I think that's how your large share holders may hear it. It would be nice if they would go for it, but it could backfire and get ugly. Even just the attempt might rattle shareholders enough to lose their confidence in whomever proposes the idea or the entire company.
IMHO
Hmm.. I've gotten good service from them so far, though I have only ordered from them four or five times. (I'm blessed with a B&M geek haven a half block away!). I even ended up sending back one book because their abstract was woefully incorrect. They happily credited my card, altered the abstract to correct the mistakes, and it only took a single ten minute call. The level of service I recieved from Amazon usually consisted of 'phone-tag' and 'I'll have to talk to xxx'. BN treated me about as well as Amazon when I returned a damaged copy of 'Perl Cookbook' to them.
Please, if you have continuing trouble with Fatbrain, let me know. (Yes, that is a real un-spam protected email address) I tend to purchase books in $300 increments online, and when I need them I need them. I'd hate to either got caught by a unreliable company or support the bad habits of such a company.
.sig: Now legally binding!
I recall a week-long strip of Berkley Breathed's Bloom County cartoon, where Opus the Penguin got addicted to a virtual reality home shopping network. He found that if he just points at an item he sees in the unwieldy goggles, it's ordered and delivered. "I think I just bought a forklift."
I wish I had a copy of it to scan, but it's in one of the anthologies, I'm sure.
Given that Bloom County stopped running before Bezos conceived of Amazon.com, and given that the patent on the waterbed was denied due to Robert Heinlein's depictions in novels, may we not consider this a form of prior art?
[
Well, I'm glad I was wrong!
There's no reason for a sig here.
It occurs to me that we are dealing with a range of expression problem. In copyright law, your right to assert copyright over a work decreases as the number of ways to express an idea decreases. That is, if there are only a small number of ways to describe something, you can't assert copyright over one of those ways. It seems that the patent office doesn't make the same distinctions. There is very little argument that these patents represent new or inobvious thinking.
Personally, I think the only way this is going to be solved is if the rest of the patent offices in the world (outside the US) summarily decide to ignore US patents in the software arena. The US office has demonstrated its complete ignorance and inability to handle this area, and is doing tremendous damage, to the detriment of individual inventors and small companies everywhere.
United States Patent 5,715,399
Bezos February 3, 1998
Secure method and system for communicating a list of credit card numbers over a non-secure network Abstract A method and system for securely indicating to a customer one or more credit card numbers that a merchant has on file for the customer when communicating with the customer over a non-secure network. The merchant sends a message to the customer that contains only a portion of each of the credit card numbers that are on file with the merchant. The message may also contain a notation explaining which portion of each of the credit card numbers has been extracted. A computer (38) retrieves the credit card numbers on file for the customer in a database (40), constructs the message, and transits the message to a customer location (10) over the Internet network (30) or other non-secure network. The customer can then confirm in a return message that a specific one of the credit card numbers on file with the merchant should be used in charging a transaction. Since only a portion of the credit card number(s) are included in any message transmitted, a third party cannot discover the customer's complete credit card number(s). United States Patent 5,727,163 Bezos March 10, 1998
Secure method for communicating credit card data when placing an order on a non-secure network
Abstract
A method and system for placing an order charged to a credit card, over an unsecured network. The customer completing an order for goods or services enters information required for the order, such as the shipping and billing addresses and identification of the goods, but enters only a subset of the credit card account number to which the order is to be charged. The order is transmitted over the Internet or other network to a remote merchant location (32) from a customer's location (10). A computer (38) at the remote merchant location processes the order to extract the data provided by the customer for storage in a database (40). During a subsequent telephone call to the remote merchant location, the customer enters the complete credit card number, preferably on a touch-tone keypad (28). The touch-tone signals are processed by an automated attendant system (44) for input of the complete credit card number into the computer. Using the portion of the complete credit card number that corresponds to the subset entered by the customer on the order form, the computer identifies the order previously placed and inserts the complete credit card number in the order data stored on the database to finalize the order.
United States Patent 5,960,411 Hartman , et al. September 28, 1999
Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network
Abstract
A method and system for placing an order to purchase an item via the Internet. The order is placed by a purchaser at a client system and received by a server system. The server system receives purchaser information including identification of the purchaser, payment information, and shipment information from the client system. The server system then assigns a client identifier to the client system and associates the assigned client identifier with the received purchaser information. The server system sends to the client system the assigned client identifier and an HTML document identifying the item and including an order button. The client system receives and stores the assigned client identifier and receives and displays the HTML document. In response to the selection of the order button, the client system sends to the server system a request to purchase the identified item. The server system receives the request and combines the purchaser information associated with the client identifier of the client system to generate an order to purchase the item in accordance with the billing and shipment information whereby the purchaser effects the ordering of the product by selection of the order button. United States Patent 5,999,924 Bair , et al. December 7, 1999
Method and apparatus for producing sequenced queries
Abstract
A method and apparatus converts an original query into a sequenced query that takes into account a range of values of a variable defined by a start and end point in performing the query. The start or end points are calculated if necessary and a query to collect all of the start and end points may be generated, and a query is generated that produces a constant set of start and end points defining consecutive periods, such that all the data in the tables related to the original query is constant over each of these periods. These two queries are merged into the original query to produce a sequenced query capable of execution on various database software and capable of taking into account the range of values of the variable in performing the original query.
I only wish that someone had patented HTTP, GPLed it, and then refused to let Amazon play, effectively kicking them out of the sandbox.
You do realize that this is completely against the letter and the spirit of the GPL, do you?
One of his points was that we should all put our ideas on the web and let them be linked to
The problem with that idea is that it's still far too easy for someone like Amazon to see a useful non-patent like that, then gain their own US patent on it. The original owner now has to face not only a usurper using a patent that's morally theirs, but may even have to defend their right to access their own work.
Could you fight a patent battle with Amazon ? I couldn't...
Yes, I know this isn't how the patent system should work. Given some of the idiotic, obvious and non-original patents granted by the USPTO recently, then I doubt if thie own searches to extablish originality could extend as far as using Google. Publication, outside a paper journal, is just no longer a workable defence against false claims of originality.
such lawsuits are, however, more rare because the number of such shareholders is much smaller and because they have less information about what goes on inside the company.
There is no need for an Amazon boycott: if O'Reilly put his money where is mouth is, he'd GPL the the content of the books and we could then download them instead of buying them from Amazon.
sorry, my statement was meant to read as, "if I were not buying books from Amazon, but were downloading them instead, my Amazon boycott would be moot. (like my Microsoft boycott is: I run linux :)
Your other points/questions are interesting, but I'm too exhausted to take them up. Another day, though...
"What saddens me is what they'll accomplish. Humorously enough, it's what a majority of Slashdot seems to want, the abolishment of the patent system."
First of all, I really hope that's not what the majority of /.ers want, because the patent system (when it works) is a good and necessary thing.
Secondly, I don't see this causing anything more than a well-justified revamping (read: shake-up) of the whole patent system. Somehow it's fallen apart at the seams, and too seldom does what it was put in place for: To give originators the incentive and protection to release their ideas to the world.
But even in all the hype, the entire world of computing isn't big enough to destroy the patent system. If we're lucky, maybe it's just big enough to fix it.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Amazon have ignored my phone calls and solicitors letters for months over my attempts to receive due payment for my patented 'Two Eye (tm)' technology, the quickest way to get information from a monitor to the human brain.
And now they go and pull a stunt like this!!! I'm absolutely livid. All I'm asking for is one dollar per page that is displayed and transferred using 'Two Eye (tm)'.
Find funky gifts
Patents were historically introduced to encourage inventors to share their works rather than hide them in the back shed, and so promote the works of innovation and a technological society. As the pace of technology increases, this becomes less important, and in fact allows organisations to strangle access to particular technologies, stifling innovation. The length of patents should be modified accordingly and automatically.
I don't see the people at the patent office getting a clue about innovation anytime soon. The incremental stripping away and smoothing of features is very much a part of technological improvement. Also, massive innovations are sometimes recognised only in retrospect. Determining the difference between genuine innovation and technological "smoothing" leaves the patent office open to all sorts of problems with inconsistency.
Length of patents could be determined by some constant divided by the number of patents issued to all organisations over the previous year (not from Jan, from the date of submission). Alternatively some more sophisticated exponential based formula could be used. This would give a boost to innovators in slow periods and the acceptance of lots of spurious patents would quite appreciably devalue the value of other patents submitted.
It kind of "floats" patent duration like currencies are floated. Maybe you could extend the concept and have some kind of patent market, I'm not sure. I'm not sure whether you'd want it.
And no, this isn't intended as a troll.
So far I haven't seen anyone give a single example of prior art. The best argument that anyone has made is that it was an obvious use of the existing technology (ie cookies). By cookies had been out for a year or two before Amazon started offering 1-click shopping. In HINDSIGHT this is an obvious invention. Given that it so obviously IS a benefit to the customers and that Amazon did have lots of intelligent people trying to make the customer experience better, why would it take them over a year to impliment this "obvious" invention. Because perhaps it isn't "obvious" until you've seen it. I think that 1-click shopping DOES meet the USPTO's definitions for patentability.
Now they could still have it disallowed if someone can prove prior art. One thing to note here is that you don't need to prove art prior to the June 1997 filing date, you need to prove art prior to the July 1996 date taht Amazon made the technology public. Even citing the fact that it was in widespread use as of the date they filed the patent is meaningless if no one else had publically used it before they did (as long as those two dates are less then a year apart which they were).
I've seen people cite prior art on the associates/affiliates program patent but I haven't seen anyone cite a specific dated example of prior use of 1-click ordering. If people DO have hard data of a use before July 1996 THAT would be a reason for the patent to be invalidated, but this was NOT an obvious invention and shouldn't be disallowed as one.
Again, I'm not trying to troll here, I think that this is an important point that gets overlooked constantly in these discussions. All that said I don't think Amazon SHOULD defend the patent, but to me it looks like they have the RIGHT to.
-Brad
Grr. I hate this HTML formatted thing. Sorry for the repost.
> I have struggled with this issue since RMS first
> approached me to sign on to his campaign.
> I've declined to urge a boycott
I'm always amazed how RMS is straight on target. The FSFS calls for a boycott of amazon. Everybody laught: "I won't last", "It is stupid", "Nobody cares". But RMS don't mind. And things are slowly moving.
Tim clearly admit that he wouldn't move if RMS didn't boycott.
Few people remember, but the FSF boycotted apple for years. It was not allowed (by the license) to port GNU software on the macintosh. And now, Apple is (more or less) open-sourcing Darwin, the OS behind MOSX. There may be a correlation between those facts or there may not.
> I'm not completely opposed to software patents,
> since there are some things that do in fact
> qualify as legitimate "inventions", but when I
> see people patenting obvious ideas, ideas that
> are already in wide use, it makes my blood boil.
Well, looks like his blood take some time to boil. And need a little help to do so. (he admited that he waited for rms to start to struggle)
> [The patent] is a slap in the face of Tim
> Berners-Lee
Slippery argument. Would things be better is amazon gave a large amount of money to tbl ? Or isn't the simple fact that people are making much money with the web is a 'slap' on his face ?
> Fence in that platform, and who knows what
> opportunities will never come to light?
This is exactly what amazon wants. They have brand recognition. They have market share. Now they need to lock the thing and start making money.
> I urge Amazon to give up on this patent.
Sure. But the other amazon patents are good. He admited a few line before, that he is a 'not completely opposed' (which means that he is okay with the concept). I must congratulate him to stand on such strong position. And sure, he doesn't support the boycott. Mmm.
Summary (with a childish voice):
"Oh, amazon, it is not fair to all those nice people that give me thier money. My friend rms is upset. I love you as you sell many of my books, but this is a little too much. I'd like to publically ask you to recognize that it is not good and to promise me you won't do it again (but well, you do as you want anyway)."
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
Thank you for your post. "Javascript: The definitive guide" by O'Reilly: Amazon: $31.96 Bookpool: $24.95 Barnes&Noble: $21.96 This applies to lots of technical books that I'm interested in. Why would I buy it from Amazon?
I use www.addall.com to search for the cheapest price on a book and usually Amazon isn't on the top for best prices. This site, when give the book information and postal code, will sort the listings by price including shipping.
Personally, I think he made it very clear how he felt when I read the phrase 'pissing in the well' in his personal e-mail to Monsieur Bezos.
... on piles of money, with hundreds of naked women.
I'm glad to see Tim come out and publicly comment on this 1-click patent.
I just did a few quick lookups on Quicken, and it would appear that so far my boycott of amazon has cost them a touch over $7k. Unfortunately the boycott is bound to fail since we can only help them lose more money, which is evidentally pinnacle to their business plan.
How does Jeff Bezos sleep at night?
----------------------------
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Wish that it was, though. :)
Why doesn't Rob and friends put their money where their mouth is? Literally.
How could the open-source community retaliate? They probably can't do this, since it just doesn't fit the philosophy, but it's fun to imagine modifying the open source licenses so that they specifically forbid Amazon from using the software. Take your favorite license and consider adding the following article:
Oh, all right, we can't do that. But it would serve 'em, right, wouldn't it?
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
Nope..
MP3 is only specced as a bitstream, (and implicitly, a decoder to decode it). ISO does not spec how one does the encoding to that bitstream... That ISO working group does require that there be a reference implementation, it says nothing about the quality and sophistication of that reference implementation; it just has to work and create valid bitstreams.
Compare this with MPEG[12]; The reference MPEG encoder does work, but it doesn't do the black-magic things that commercial encoders costing thousands of dollars will do as far as high-quality encoding at low bitrates.
Similarily, a lamish coder like 8hz and the other freeware encoders are based off the reference encoder, and likewise aren't very sophisticated. The fraunhofer encoder is black magic and proprietary, and I would have no problems with them patenting it. (As patenting would lead to disclosure of how they accomplish their black-magic.)
Instead, they patented a variety of relatively obvious techniques that ANY encoder would use.. This way they get to kill competetion and still keep their coder trade secret. This is why I dislike their patent; for this abuse. They get the best of both worlds; they don't have to disclose anything non-obvious, and they still get a government-granted monopoly on MP3 coding.
Had they patented their encoder, I would be gloriously happy. The tricks used in their encoder would be disclosed to the world, and likely it could or would be improved upon to make it faster or higher quality. Nor would I have any problems with their monopoly, as I know that I merely have to wait for it to exit patent protection. Also, someone who derive a superior encoder has the option of licensing the patent or selling it to them.
This is what the patent system was meant to support, this was the purpose, and properly used, its not all that bad of a deal for the world. What is a bad deal for the world is when 30-minute back-of-the-envelope ideas are patented and used to control whole industries. When someone patents the result of years of work, (like fraunhofer), they deserve the patent and its rewards.
But, since the patent office is granting patents for quick ideas, people like fraunhofer patent the obvious ideas behind their invention, then they keep their real work a proprietary secret.
Summing it up: ``Patents should be granted for perspiration, NOT inspiration.''
He's gradually turning up the heat on Amazon. First it was a private exchange of email. Now it's an open letter and a petition. If that fails, maybe he will stop supplying Amazon. I doubt that it would hurt his business very much, as people buy O'Reilly because of their reputation and if Amazon don't stock them, they'll go elsewhere.
And please sign the petition
HH
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings.
Maybe he's jealous that the guy can get named Time's Man of the Year while his company hemorrages money like a Freddy Krueger victim...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
We all agree that this sucks, so go sign the open letter. I did. It's just as easy to leave a comment, there as it is to flame or troll or discuss it here.
Many people have already signed the letter but not as many as commented on sunday's x-files episode. Quit talking and go do something.
I know that many of you already have this was not meant for you. I was talking to the people who will cry and whine here, but will never make it past the slashdot story to go try and express their opinions.
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
To have any effect on Amazon and similar companies that threaten freedom of innovation in the new wild west we must alert our media. If you cant get the attention of a major media outlet start small..ask your campus paper/radio to do a story on it. Contact NPR (BBC etc) and request this as a topic. Write a letter to your congressperson or the editor of your local rag. Write or call amazon and tell them how you feel. We need to hurt them where it counts, the bottom line or their perceived image in the public marketplace.
We need an organization that has the money to place public service advertizements telling JQ Public whats what in a direct, no bullshit and preferably funny way to keep these companies inline.
I am not very aware of such organizations if they exist. Can you tell me who I should be giving my charitable donation to?? (Tax time in the US..a good opportunity) Are they trustworthy?
My fav quote from the article...kinda sums it up
<i>In short, I think you're pissing in the well. </i><p>
no sig.
I wonder if Tim O'Reilly has or is contemplating such a move. I don't expect it to happen, but it would certainly be a huge event, and not the first time that O'Reilly has done The Right Thing.
Cheers,
Jeffrey
O'Reilly puts his money where his mouth is. O'Reilly chose to chase up the issue. i.e. O'Reilly is putting his money (and influence) where his mouth is.
No, he's not putting money anywhere than in his bank account at the moment. If he were putting his money where his mouth is he would be refusing to ship through Amazon.
Please note, I am not making any statement about whether or not that is the right thing to do. Just disputing your rhetoric. At the moment all that is happening is "mouth". There is no economic incentive issuing from O'Reilly. RMS is the one advocating that we put our money somewhere else other than Amazon.
Let's not get confused about the difference between a verbal appeal and an economic boycott!
--Crush
I'm tired of signing ineffective petitions.
I'm tired of participating in ineffective boycotts.
It's time to DO SOMETHING!
Good Lord! How much longer are we going to have to put up with crap like this? The Corporate Man(tm) isn't going to do anything about this, because they either already have or are trying to aquire their very own frivolous patents. It's time for someone to stand up and start filing civil suits. I've got disposable income, I'll contribute.
I'm sorry but boycots/embargos simply don't work. (Blockades on the other hand...) They do in theory, but in reality it's pretty damn hard to reach critical mass.
Did anyone else catch this?
"It's a well known technology truism that all of the smart people don't work for you, and that one of the surest ways to success is to get more ideas and more work out of people outside your own fences."
Proof positive that Tim O'Reilly knows from whence he speaks. That's got to be one of the most effective and concise explanations of the philosophy behind open source development I've ever read.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
The constant creation of these silly patents can only result in litigation. After all, a patent serves only two purposes; to put a process or invention in a publicly accessable database, and to give you ammo to sue your competitors.
Once this goes to court, there's very little chance it will stand up. Unfortunately, as more of these stupid patents go to court, the courts will require better evidence than they do now, until eventaully patents become worthless.
And despite the Slashdot concensus, this is NOT a good thing.
Software patents are usually bogus, however I seriously believe that there are exceptions. The problem is, it's easy to look at a solution an say how easy it must have been to find. It's much more difficult to look at a problem and come up with a decent solution.
Google is a tricky piece of work. Macromedia Flash is an amazing bit of programming. I only wish that someone had patented HTTP, GPLed it, and then refused to let Amazon play, effectively kicking them out of the sandbox.
There are deserving patents out there. Amazon however seems to be "patent squatting", i.e. sitting on obvious patents and hoping they become valuable. Meanwhile the Patent Office understands just as little about the Internet as ICANN, which is an impressively small amount.
[Any errors or stupidity in this document is the result of not sleeping. Goodnight.]
-----
No Zen is good zen
And of course, it's always best to do a search for the cheapest price at places like pricescan.com
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
how does anyone expect "boycotts" to have any effect on a company that has never made a dime, yet still sells stock at any price they want to name?
Dave Winer wrote an article on how we could escape the patent straightjacket at:s osForSenorBezos
t ented/
http://davenet.userland.com/2000/02/28/noMorePe
One of his points was that we should all put our ideas on the web and let them be linked to. To that end I'm putting my idea for a memory efficient hashtable on the web:
http://www.worldforge.org/website/servers/notpa
Ideally someone will make a searchable open idea database; but, in the meantime, the web and search engines can serve.
That's right, a method twice as efficient as the old way of shopping! I don't require one whole wasteful click to purchase a product - only the mouse_down action is captured, and immediatey selects the product of your choice to be whisked to your choice of locations!
What then to do with the remaining mouse_up operation? No need to squander - you can purchase yet ANOTHER product by hovering over another item and releasing the plastic rodent from your grasp! In the same time as it would have taken you to purchase a single item at OTHER on-line shopettes you may have heard of, you have two delightful items in the air and almost there!
I being a genererous person who cares little for material things and has a boundless fondness for all things O' Riley, hereby place this idea (even just the mouse_down portion) in the public domain to be used by all without recompense.
Now the chorded binary mouse button quantity selection technique, that's another story...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Once this goes to court, there's very little chance it will stand up. Unfortunately, as more of these stupid patents go to court, the courts will require better evidence than they do now, until eventaully patents become worthless.
Er. . . this patent has gone to court, and it has survived so far. Amazon obtained preliminary injunction, despite the arguments of a well-represented Barnes and Noble that the patent was invalid. Now, of course, this is hardly a final adjudication: all the court determined was that there was a substantial likelihood of success on the merits. More needs to be discovered, argued and presented to the Court, but this brings me to my point:
Whatever you might think of patents generally, the invalidity of this patent is not all that clear. While it is politically correct in this forum to savage the USPTO for issuing it, dropping lines like, "a trivial application of cookies," the truth appears far more interesting. It is far more difficult to make a legitimate, legal, argument as to this patent's invalidity.
Preliminary injunction in a patent (as opposed to a copyright or trademark) case, particularly when it stops a major enterprise from continuing business as usual, is quite rare. All a defendant needs to do is introduce evidence of invalidity or unenforceability that defeats plaintiff's claim there is a "substantial likelihood" of winning on the merits. This is the easiest standard B&N will ever face in this matter.
From now on in, B&N must prove invalidity to a jury by clear and convincing evidence, which is the civil law equivalent of "beyond a reasonable doubt." The jury will be told to find for the plaintiff unless they harbor an unwavering, clear and abiding conviction that the patent is invalid. Oh yeah, that will happen.
Not.
This is one of the principal reasons that plaintiffs win over 75% of patent cases that go to trial -- a jury, overwhelmed with reams of legal instructions from the judge and presented with technology it barely groks isn't going to harbor an unwavering, clear and abiding conviction of anything. Ultimately, what they will see is the pretty deed, and the judges instruction that, if they aren't sure, they should find for the plaintiff and go back to their families. But that's only the practical side of it.
It is one thing to say, without more, that the issuing of a patent is bad policy and should not have issued therefor. On that point, I might even find myself in agreement. It is another thing entirely to actually argue that the patent *IS* invalid. B&N was in a position to present their best prior art, and they didn't induce even the slightest doubt in the judge that there was less than a substantial likelihood that the patent was valid. In view of this, how, exactly, are they going to convince a jury that there isn't any doubt that the patent is invalid?
But to take this a step further, let's assume that Amazon actually deserves its large price-to-earnings ratio and combine it with something from http://www.oreilly.com/ask_tim/am azon_patent.html:
By scaring away other e-commerce sites, Amazon ensures that fewer people will find the Internet useful. That means fewer websites in the future, and therefore fewer people, and so on. Since Amazon depends on having a large user base in the future, why is it abusing a weak patent-checking system in an Internet-destroying way?
--
The shareholder is always right.
Good work O'Reilly. You might say that it has taken a long time from the initial outcry over Amazon's one-click shopping to O'Reilly doing anything, but it's not only great that he's responded, but that he has responded the way he has.
Everyone take note.
First of all, he noted that there was a community feeling of disgust over the software patent in question. Now, while O'Reilly makes a lot of cash from Amazon's business (a fact freely admitted to by O'Reilly), instead of refusing to "bite the hand" that at least partially feeds him and his company, O'Reilly chose to chase up the issue.
i.e. O'Reilly is putting his money (and influence) where his mouth is. It has been a long time claim that O'Reilly supports Open Source, and here is definitely doing the right thing [tm].
But not only that; how did he respond? First of all he wrote a private e-mail to Bezos, which wasn't necessarily a "you guys are evil! wtf do you think you are doing?!?!?", but a well-worded even-handed explanation of his situation. When that met with unsatisfactory results he has upped the pressure, with the petition mail, and public responses.
Sure, you might say, he's just protecting his own interests by mollifying the community and not abusing Amazon. But I would disagree with that. Not only has he made it clear on a personal level that he is not happy with Amazon's policies, but he's willing to step into the public space to state so, while not taking to anyone with a blowtorch.
And lets face it, if all Linux advocates, or any advocates whatsoever were so careful, and measured about their approach, there would be a lot fewer holy wars, and probably fewer lawsuits.
Cheers,
SuperG
Obviously, Amazon wants to set new records for losing money. Previous steady drains will be dwarfed when they finally piss off the largest chunk of their customer base. They'll set new records for hemorrhaging cash. And, if past performance is any indicator, their stock will skyrocket as a result.
Who knows, in a few months they may end up buying M$...
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
See: my comments on the Amazon 1-click patent. --p