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W3C Considers Royalty-Bound Patents In Web Standards
Svartalf writes: "There's a report on Linux Today about a proposed loosening of requirements on patented technologies being submitted for W3C consideration. Called RAND, short for 'reasonable and non-discriminatory,' it basically changes the position of W3C with respects to patents. This is a real problem as all of you know, considering that we've had all kinds of fun with other 'reasonable' licensing (MP3 and GIF come immediately to mind) -- the cutoff for comments is tomorrow (9-30) so if you want to get them in do it NOW." September 30 is now today rather than tomorrow. The same issue was raised in a post yesterday as well, but many readers have submitted news of this Linux Today piece. Reader WhyDoubt points out that comments on the change are archived on the W3C's site, including this pithy comment from Alan Cox. Do you think that fee-bound patents have a place in the standards promulgated by the W3C? Read the Patent Policy Working Group's FAQ, then add your comment.
Well, I had already sent my comments before this appeared on slashdot.
Please, dont just comment on this board; go ahead and send that email with your level- headed-non-profane thoughts.
This certainly looks like a sneak-it-in approach with such a short public comment periond - especially for something this large.
Hopefully some prudent arguments can be made to convince the W3C folks.
Said after pointing out the secretive and rule violating manner this happened and rightly snearing at how this will contribute the purpose of the organization, interoperability. His prediction:
This would mean SVG became a multi-vendor consortium pushing a private specification. But let's face it - with the patents involved - that is precisely what it is.
And so the internet becomes TV as all are shoved out to be replace by three or four big broadcasters. Can it happen? Sure it can, just look at all the empty TV and radio spectrum. There is no technical or real economic reason the airwaves are filled with nothing but comercial noise or static. It's a problem with bad laws.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
What I cannot understand is - why exactly they need it? Are there any Web standards incoming so complex that they need someone who will charge a fee for it and there's can be no open alternative possible? I know that almost for every proprietary standard known well enough there's an open alternative, often superior to its proprietary match. So why exactly W3C needs restricted standards? Just because someone paid for it? If so, the things are very sad indeed.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
placing a patent on a physical device that is the result of research obviously benefits business and mankind at large. however, when one applies a patent to a protocol that is intended to be part of the fabric that allows the global human community to communicate it hinders not only that communication but other business interests from using it.
you seem to forget that the very web board you are reading and commenting on would not exist, along with 99% of the rest of the internet, were patents accepted and applied on standard internet technologies. patents do have their place, but open network standards is not one of them.
Yes, but the only reason the modern electronics industry got off the ground is that people blatently violated those very patents. (I heard Jack Kilby say this in a recent talk.)
Second, the FET was patented in 1927, and it is this that makes modern computers go, not the BJT of which you speak. The original patent holder didn't make a damn dime. (Yes, it was because he couldn't make one, only design one.)
The transistor is a staple of modern electronics because it is superior technology. The concern about the W3C is that inferior technology will become standard as corporations push for profits. This isn't very far fetched (Microsoft), and that is why we Slashdotters are worried.
The question we should be asking is, do we want to hold back web standards by two decades to satisfy our irrational aversion to patents
The question we should be asking is, do we want to push forward web standards by two decades to satisfy our rational aversion to patents.
Why, yes I do.
Imagine if we had to pay someone everytime the http request was invoked, or everytime an html page was viewed - yep - that would have certainly moved things forward.
Feel free to make your money with patents - but dont stick it in a standard.
What, exactly, is WRONG with the current web standard? HOW IS IT BROKEN? It already does anything that we would need.
Can we exchange text on the web, already, of any arbitrary type and format? Yes.
Can we exchange images on the web, already, of any number of supported types? Yes.
Can we run backend scripts, already, to add functionality (such as, say, to implement a discussion board?). Yes.
Sound? Yes. Video? Yes. etc etc.
In fact the only niches for patented 'standard extensions' all involve commerce.
It's not very trendy to say so, but virtually all of the basic infrastructure technologies we're now using were developed at government expense. From TCP/IP to HTTP itself (Berners-Lee was on Supercollider funds at CERN when he developed it), WE paid for these inventions. Which makes them COMMONS which makes them OURS to share however we choose. Period.
Honestly, what business does Corporate America have using cynical exploitation of patent law to co-opt what was developed with taxpayer money? Can anyone without secret (or not so secret) fantasies of being the next Bill Gates really give me a logical, non-theological reason why we should let that happen?
I have grown so weary of even having to argue this anymore.
:M
Trasistors are hardware, not software. The issue here is software patents and open standards.
The whole point of an open standard is that anyone can implement it. If we allow the use of patents in open standards, then they cannot be implemented by just anyone, you need a license, or a whole bunch of licenses, to implement it. Furthermore, as far as I understand it companies aren't legally obligated to license a patent to any particular party, so if they decide that they don't want you, in particular, competing with them they might decide not to license it to you. All it takes is one company on the list to do this and you can *never* implement that "open standard."
We should expect this to destroy the usefulness of open standards and bring a big step back to the days when software companies had total control over your computing experience. The Internet itself only exists because of the adoption of an open, non-patented standard, TCP/IP. Imagine if Microsoft, for example, had a patent pending on TCP/IP, where would we be now? Every little Internet app author would have to fork out cash to them, probably on a yearly basis.
I think that the W3C incorporating a "non-discriminatory" license to patents does just the opposite -
Lets take a look at open source, shall we?
According to a Netcraft survey (http://www.netcraft.com/survey/) taken in July 2001, 60% of the internet's web servers STILL RUN APACHE. The reasons for this? It is fast, cheap, and secure. The reason it is all three of these is it is OPEN SOURCE. If the W3C began considering patented technology for standards, and incorporated those standards into core web systems (example: secure, uncopyable web page) then, if that technology uses some server-side component, Apache, the LONG TIME leader in web servers, would be LEFT OUT IN THE COLD and hence, discriminated against.
Granted, that may the whole point for this move - the authors are from some of the largest IT companies in the US - Microsoft (well, their IP law firm), Apple Computer, and HP. That's fine. It is also counter to the goals of the W3C.
(quoting from http://www.w3.org/Consortium/#goals)
"W3C's long term goals for the Web are:
1) Universal Access: To make the Web accessible to all by promoting technologies that take into account the vast differences in culture, education, ability, material resources, and physical limitations of users on all continents;
2) Semantic Web : To develop a software environment that permits each user to make the best use of the resources available on the Web;
3) Web of Trust : To guide the Web's development with careful consideration for the novel legal, commercial, and social issues raised by this technology."
So unless the W3C wants to become a hypocrisy and a joke, either this proposal has to go, or the original goals have to go. I'd hate to see the goals change. W3C has provided an amazing service to the web community, and if its goals change, I'm afraid that service would cease to exist.
Don't get me wrong - I am a small business owner and as a small business owner I understand the value of intellectual property as much as if not more than a large company. If my business model is based on my IP, then with it I make money, without it, I fall into the (if I'm not mistaken) 95% of companies that close their doors within the first five years of existence. HOWEVER, I don't think that STANDARDS should be based on patented technologies unless the patent owner freely licenses it to anyone who uses the standard.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes - Juvenal
What you're forgetting is that the very transistors that make up your beloved computers were once patented. Without that patent, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
:o)
:o)
Wrong. At least this is an profable statement in in scietific understanding at least thus "not right".
The field effect transistor FET was long patent before even the first transistor was build. The patent holder didn't see get a penny.
I'm not 100% sure how it was with the "classic" PNP transistor. As far I know it was mainly developed by military, they survive pretty well without patents
On the other hand I've a *very* *very* old book at home about radio technology. It was prior to transistor age, times where all was done with tubes. In on of the last chapters they made an *outlook* to the future of radio technology. One thing they spend several pages was a new effect than when put to speical negative loaded needles, into a strange material (the p material) they could gain intensification effects by this setup. At this times nobody yet understood why and how. but the effect was already known, without an patent. I personally doubt that today electronics would look any different without, how as the same with your postulate this is not proofable so at least also "not right"
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
Patents, in the final analysis, give the corporation power over the people.
That is simply absurd. The whole point of patents is to give people power over corporations. How do you think it's possible for an inventor to invent something without a big company just stealing it and "cutting out the middleman"?
This FUD about patents really needs to be brought under control. Patents are the friend of the little guy. Just because big entities have the same rights as little entities doesn't mean the rights are bad.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Basing your standards on patented methods will fragment the web and destroy your organization. If you succeed in forcing such debased standards on the web, your corporate masters will no longer need you. If you fail, you will be irrelevant. Either way W3C loses.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
True, IETF is very friendly towards business. To the point of letting patented stuff get into IETF standards.
Something this important should have been brought up here over a month ago. To not hear about it until literally the last day is very surprising and disappointing. What happened? Some of the documents on the W3C site are dated last modified on 8/10/2001.
That said, I believe we should raise bloody hell. We can't afford to have the standards for the Web become closed and proprietary. I know of no way patents can be enforced without also closing the source of implementations. This is absolutely unacceptable. It is also unacceptable that basic software technology is owned as "property".