Slashdot Mirror
FTC and JD Holding Hearings on IP
hondo77 writes "The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department are holding hearings on intellectual property laws over the next few weeks (the first one was Feb 6). They're looking at the balance between IP rights and the free market."
- abolish all business process patents
- repeal the DMCA
- make using copy protection a Federal felony
- publish the DeCSS code on a scrolling marquee in Times Square
- ban the RIAA and MPAA
- have Jack Valenti made U.S. Ambassador to Somalia
- have Sonny Bono, uh, never mind
That ought to be a good start to a "balance."
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
I suspect that the possibility of any outcome between Justice and the FTC is going to be a blatant corporate lovefest. Let's face it, Ashcroft is firmly in the pocket of big business, and the FTC, while trying to get a grip on reality, fails to do so much of the time. The big IP corps are goning to simply take the ball here and write their own rules. Is there any way to get in front of this bus and stop it? YES. Get off your dead ass and send snailmail to your congress critters. Write to the head of the FTC. I'm not even going to include links, your mostly smart people out there, you know how to use Google. Get after it!
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
I'm constantly amazed at the idealism shown on Slashdot. Politicians are about one thing, and one thing only: How can I get re-elected? The easiest way to get re-elected is to have lots of money to campaign with. The easiest way to get lots of money to campaign with is to get it from corporations. The easiest way to get lots of money from corporations is to use the "I scratch your back, you scratch mine" mentality.
They're going to uphold the current IP laws because it lets people make patents out of a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich.
Free your mind. It should be all about how well you implement the different ideas, and which ones are the good ones.
Stop the brainwash
I'd tend to agree on abolishing many of the copyrights, IP, etc... on the internet, but the fact still remains that someone somewhere must be paid for something to be developed or innovated and that particular person/company will want people to know and maybe even pay for something that has taken them so much time to develop. Think about the music industry, if someone said, OK you can copy the music as much as you like then the recording industry would simply stop releasing music, then there would be nothing to copy! maybe im on completely the wrong track here, but the way id understand this particular article is that everything should be free, I just dont know if that could be, as i said, someone somewhere has to foot the bill to pay someones wages to develop whatever is being trade marked.
http://www.webhostingtalk.com
Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot.
Try this.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
I just discovered gravity. Since no patent or prior art exists, I'm going to patent it and license it to people who pay me enough. The only currency I accept is gnus. Seriously, this is a prime example to see exactly when democracy can fail. That's right, it's not perfect! If the majority believe one thing and you don't you are wrong!
Ah, well, it has happened in history before and it will probably happen again. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, right? Just remember, you can't enjoy fame if you are dead.
Before you go to a flamewar about the newest draconian laws the US has passed, fix democracy. How do you fix it, by educating people!
This is like the balance between boxing and not-getting-punched-in-the-face.
If you want a free market, don't sponsor monopolies that wouldn't exist without government-approved idea ownership.
Why do I feel like these meetings are going to go over like a Mike Tyson press conference?
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
wrong, most of the technology created for the net except for the hardware stuff was all open source.
We went closed source and technology and innovation slowed down as microsoft got a firmer grip on the industry. There hasnt been any innovation in years.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Total agreement here, even with the Enron fartcloud envolping Washington, after that "Axis of evil" comment by Bush, I'm convinced the cherry is off the "war on terrorism" victory and W. is back to halfwit status. Particularly with the extremely soft stance with regard to Microsoft and the DoJ and M$ wanting to get the whole thing wrapped up fast so they can get back into the bedroom and continue screwing people. The current administration is a bunch of coldwarriors, corporate whores and dingbats, Colin Powell the notable exception, but tainted by association, nonetheless. If anything comes out of this it's probably the FTC and DoJ looking for any wrangling room left over Intellectual Property that they can lock up in favor of the GOP's big campaign donors.
While you're writing to your reps, tell them to vote for the campaign finance reform act to bring an end to the charade of people you've never heard of having $70 million before a presidential campaign even gets started.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What makes you say that? I don't see him mentioned in the article. I don't see anything that indicates that the Justice department is on the wrong side of the issue. They are at least holding hearings which indicates that they understand there is cause for concern!
And whilst you're at it read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
Millions of people in third world countries dying because of patents on drugs.
Kids and adults lacking intelligence due to patents on information which could enlighten the world.
Innovation controlled by big corperations using patents, and all for a profit, milk the old technology for 40 years or more until profits force you to change.
Government controlled by companies like Enron who take advantage of the flaws in the system.
Criminals and organized crime taking advantage of capitalism, people being killed for a buck, and wars being faught over money issues.
Whens it going to end? Capitalism is fine, but too much of anything is bad. When will people figure out, too much capitalism, too much competition, and not enough sharing is bad? Yes moderate competition fuels innovation, too much competition however makes the enviornment so competitive that no one can innovate.
Imagine the innovation and the new technologies we'd have, if third world countries had access to all the information in the world, and any kid rich or poor could be the next einstien or bill gates, any living person, any of the 6 billion people could come out with an idea, which changes the world and shares the idea for free.
Money needs to be made people say, just because you share an idea doesnt mean you'll turn that idea into a product. The product is what people buy, the service is what people pay for, not the idea or the information.
My opinion is, more focus should be on sharing information, less focus on competiton, more focus on ways to earn money from hard work and not from information, ideas, or earning money from having money.
We also need to fix the problems in our government, the current administration is just a joke, they got into office in a suspicious manner, and now we here stuff about Eron, corruption within the government should be removed, it will be difficult but its possible.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Considering I'm posting this on a Microsoft OS, with a Microsoft browser, and I didn't really touch computers too much until DOS made easy computing ubiquitous, I would have to argue that closed software *did* help me post this to Slashdot.
Take a good look around what happens when you are a fan and make a fansite, the way IP attorneys gorge themselves encouraging the MPAA and RIAA in their folly of copy protection, or Rambus tried to destroy inexpensive fast memory with an excessive tariff on DDR SDRAM license and using it to get their own RDRAM more accepted.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
...that IP rights are supposed to be balanced with "free market" (what I consider to be a political doctrine on the border of being a religious belief) and not consumer protection, freedom of expression, advance of technology, science and human thought, or other real things that are threatened by overbroad patents and other kinds IP abuse.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
It is not scarce? So you're telling me that everyone thinks and creates on the same level of intelligence. Genius-level, creative, emotional and lax brains all work at the same speed, to the same quality, and therefore there is no scarcity between qualities of thought. That's bullshit. There's a reason why some people are artists, scientists, writers and others aren't: it's because they possess a level of intelligence others don't have, and therefore is SCARCE.
The question I ask then is, does anyone know of application 'quotas' or anything similar going on? Is it their policy to let a certain %% through, give or take, or is it just the fact that like it or not, and stupid and BAD ideas or not, the same percentage which meet the necessary patent requirements hasn't changed in 5 years.
Stupid and bad ideas still can be patented, the only requirement is describing a distinct device or process that did not exist before. The problem is, no one knows how "idea" in general is different from "device" or "process", and where algorithms and mathematical formulas fit between those things.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The problem is, this isnt a free market.
Since rich people control the information, the rich get richer by exploiting the information which they have.
Hows it free? I'll believe in capitalism with IP when i start seeing poor people from third world countries starting companies and beating our companies.
Afterall we are outnumbered, its kinda funny we are the ones benifiting from capitalism and no one else.
Maybe thats because we have the unfair advantage of already being rich, already controlling most of the information in the world, having all the patents and having enough monopolies to maintain the unfair advantage.
Thats why the global economy idea will never work, good on paper, bad in practice.
Poor people do not have information to educate themselves to our level giving us the unfair advantage, a kid who cant afford books to the quality of ours, who cant even afford medicine to stay healthy enough is too busy trying to survive to think about innovative stuff.
It will always be like that as long as we control information.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
James Rogan, director of the U.S. patent office:
> "The entry of patent law into these areas was
> greeted with predictions of disaster,"
> said "Yet the United States is the
> international leader in [software] and other
> technological areas."
The U.S. is the richest nation in the world. It was the international leader in software and other technological areas long before software patents reared their ugly head. But Mr. Rogan sounds surprised...
"How can this be? The U.S. has passed laws that allow us to arrest foreign programmers whose code we dislike and throw them in jail! We put export restrictions on encryption software! We grant patents on algorithms that are then included in ISO standards! We allow corporations to rip off huge quantities of code and call it "the Windows (R) network stack", and give them laws to allow the prosecution of anyone who makes unauthorised copies of it! How come we're the world leader?"
> "A return by competition regulators to viewing
> IP rights with a 1970s-era suspicion would risk
> interfering with these market-based incentives
> to innovate."
Market-based incentives to innovate are only incentives to the people involved in the marketing. You can't persuade an inventor to "invent more" by offering cash. You can only persuade firms to invest more in R&D, which isn't quite the same. Just as musical people would write and perform music whether or not they ever had a chance of becoming millionaires, so creative people would continue to create and invent. This is particularly true of software, where the cost of distribution is virtually nil. The deal is - money is (or should be) the means of exchange, not an end in itself.
The crunch comes with patents on drugs, where the initial investment is so large. There will never be (if you like to think in these terms) a medical-research Linus Torvalds to play the role of nemesis to the evil Glaxo-Smithkline, because you need more than a couple of PCs and some skill to cure cancer. I think this is a much more interesting and important area, and one that's a lot less easy to solve in the long run.
I dunno.
These sigs are more interesting tha
It is not scarce? So you're telling me that everyone thinks and creates on the same level of intelligence.
You're using the wrong definition of scarce. Each "new" IP created by someone is just that, a new property. This is much like a new model of car, a new type of CPU, or green orange-juice.
"Scarce," in economics terminology, means limited. If some X number of people have this, then the X+1'th person is going to get stiffed. This applies quite well to physical properties, because there are only so many, and that number is usually quite small compared to the number of people on the planet.
Oxygen, however, is not scarce. Nitrogen is not scarce. (Both if these come with caevats that it's breathable, but not pure.) Intellectual property is not scarce. I can breathe as much as I want and not affect the breating of anyone else on the planet. Likewise, I can copy the Linux Kernel (insert favorite rev. here) as many times as I want, and everybody else on the planet will still be able to get theirs.
Your argument (which seems to be that the market created/allowed by IP laws encourages the development of new IP) is possibly a valid one, but it is not based on the principle of scarcity. Don't get me wrong here -- I'm not an "abolish copyright/patents" type of guy: I think that you should be allowed to release your software on whatever terms you want, although any protections in excess of copyright law should be signed before purchase. I also happen to think that copyright is too long-term and the patent office is quickly becoming incompetent, but both of these are largely irrelevant to the fundamental discussion of Intellectual Property.
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
Information control leads to thought control.
When we have the ability to communicate via thoughts, will there be a law saying "That thought is patented"
I'm sure we will see patented thoughts, and some thoughts will be illegal, you'll have police arresting you for thinking bad thoughts, you'll get sued for thinking of thoughts which have owners, and you'll pay a fine for thinking of thoughts which are deemed as dangerous.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Software should not be able to patent. Its far to easy to solve a problem and take patent on the problem rather than the way to solve it. One-click from Amazon is an excellent example of patenting the problem (buying with a click). I wouldnt have opposed if it had been a patent on HOW to make one-klick working. Software is to fluid to be mesured up by a patent office because of the extremaly many ways to solve a specific task. Many of those ways fall under patent that hasnt anything with the patent at all, they just solve a problem in one of many ways possible.
I say, if they still want software patents then narrow them down so specific that they only patent real code and no just air like BTs patent on hyperlinks (or what you can call it).
HTTP/1.1 400
everything is based off of something thats already been done
Well you just succesfully bashed everything. I mean every modern OS, every modern programming language, every piece of modern hardware. Dammit you even bashed every modern language and even staplers.
Everything we make is based off of something that was created earlier going back throughout history. The trick is to take something and make it better. That is the definition of innovation. Now has Microsoft made anything better? That is not an argument I am about to make one way or the other.
Look, it's not the Intelluctual Property I have a problem with. Come up with a new idea? Great! If it's something worthy of it, than that person by all means deserves a Patent for the concept.
What I have a problem with, is people being awarded common-sense patents. OOoo! I had this great idea, that if instead of making a user click "Check-Out", then go through all the horrible tedious screens to do so, I'll make a one-click idea!!
Even better are the people who claim years after the fact that something becomes popular that they had the idea in the first place. Nothing explemifies this better than British Telecoms claims over the Hyperlink. If you had such a great idea in the first place, maybe you should have implemented it somehow. Or at the very least, at least keep posted on what's happening in the Real World with it. You mean to tell me that you had this patent since 198x/199x (not positive of the right date and too lazy to look it up) and you are just noticing now that it is being used massively on the Internet? Cut me an f-ing break.
Again, you come up with a great idea/new invention, than hey--I think you should be rewarded; but an onus falls upon those people as well to protect themselves if it's really that innovative.
Seriously, the patent office needs massive reforms. They need to start taking a serious look at what they are awarding patents for and really how innovative of an idea this is. How about going out on a limb and hiring some knowledgeable tech people that can check technology patents over before we award them?
As far as the MPAA and RIAA go, I hate them with a passion. Yeah, that's flamebait right there. I think they have far too much lobbying power (how else could we have gotten the DMCA out there). I do however think it is important for Artists to have some of protection (ie. a Union, which they have). The RIAA and MPAA are just the representation of more Big Business Interests who really care nothing about what happens to their artits. Intelluctual Property? Bah, as long as they can milk more money out of us, they're happy.
Honestly as optimistic as I'd like to be, I just can't see anyting really positive happening from this. Bush's Cabinet is just too far in the pocket of big business to really care about Fair-Use or any of those worrysome consumer ideas.
But Bush has an 85%+ approval rating. Boy do I hate the knowledge and ideals of the majority of voters in the US. (I talked to someone yesterday who was angry that he missed the last election. 2001? Huh? No, that one with Gore and Bush--that about sums it up for me.)
Stupid patent examiners are a problem.
There are certainly some ideas which are sufficiently new and non-obvious that they deserve patent protection. I think the Fast Fourier Transform would have been one of them. But right now there's a huge number of patents being issued for stuff which is neither new nor non-obvious... and that is where the problem lies.
Let's take an example... searching for patents which include the phrase "hash table" in their title reveals ten patents.
The first patent (Dec 2001) is on a hash table which uses key mod N as an index and stores key div N inside the hash bucket (instead of storing the complete key). Hello set-associative content addressable memory. Every major cpu manufacturer has prior art on this one.
I can't make any sense out of the second patent.
The third patent is on using a hash table inside a switch to speed up finding a MAC address/port combination. Obvious to anyone with a background in algorithms: If you want to find something quickly, stick it in a hash table.
The fourth patent is on using two hash tables, and placing records into the second if they encounter a collision in the first. Prior art: Any 1st year data structures & algorithms textbook.
I can't make any sense out of the fifth patent.
The sixth patent is on inserting data into a hash table by writing the data first and the key last, in order to maintain thread safeness. Obvious to anyone who has written multi-threaded code.
The seventh patent is on growing and shrinking a hash table when it gets too full (or empty). Prior art: Any 1st year data structures & algorithms textbook.
The eighth patent actually looks like something intelligent; the ninth patent seems to be a duplicate.
I can't make any sense out of the tenth patent.
Ok, so out of nine distinct patents, we have five which should clearly have never been granted based on prior art or obviousness; three which I can't understand; and one which looks to be worthy of patent protection.
Here's an idea: If the USPTO grants a patent, and someone later demonstrates prior art or obviousness, the person who invalidates the patent should get to claim all the fees paid by the patent filer. I have a feeling that if this happened, we'd see a very rapid deflation in the number of dumb patents on the books.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Whoa there. While I agree that campaign finance reform would benifit one party or anouther, but it also destroys freespeach. Simply put, money is speach, and anytime you prevent someone from giving, you trample on their speach rights. Coperations cannot vote, but they do have more money to give. Polititions know that, they need money to get their money out, so they allow access to be bought with campaign contributions. However, that is all it buys, because enough voters watch the issues (if nothing else because the oponent does and has enough money to get the bad word out) that polititions cannot afford to go with the major donars all the time.
In short, campaign finance limits of any sort are unconstitutional.
Social security is being destroyed as we speak, 1 trllion dollar tax cut = destruction of social security.
health care wont be here much longer either, tax cuts.
subsidized houses and minimum wage, worker unions. These might stay, and i say might.
While we may not be 100 percent pure capitalist, if it were up to george bush and the right wing republicans, we would be 100 percent pure capitalist.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Imagine a world, where you can take the source code from any program ever written and add it to your own.
This would improve innovation because less time would be spent reinventing the wheel. You'd have better higher quality programs, you'd have more programs.
It will be proven via the success of linux, that patents on software is bad for progress.
Ever wonder why Linux in a few years caught up to Windows in every area except maybe 1 or 2? Its because in linux everyone shared software. Because its open source, people didnt have to reinvent the wheel even though they still do, people dont have to.
Now imagine a world where billions of people are programmers all writing solutions to problems, programming would turn into "Insert solution here for search algorithm" "Insert solution here for distributed networking" "Insert and combine solution here to create new solution"
It would make programming more like science or chemistry, it would be mixing and matching, combining and building, and less design issues and problem solving. Programs would be less buggy, would run faster, the quality level would increase and because people dont have to reinvest the wheel the innovation would increase. There would be more programmers because programming would be easier, and last but not lease a program would run in all Os's because all Os's are open source and compatible with each other.
This is the world we'd have without IP.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
In short, campaign finance limits of any sort are unconstitutional.
I see two problems with your logic. First Corporations can not vote for a reason, they are not people and therefore have no constitutional right to vote, in fact a Corporation has no constitutional rights at all. Because they are not people, Corporations should not have any voice in government at all. Second, money equals access, more money means more access, this means the wealthiest 2% of the population has the most access and can get thier opinions heard much easier than the rest of us. Micheal Dell and I have the same Senator, If want my voice heard, I have to write a letter, which will be read by an intern and thrown in a pile, if Dell wants to give his opinion, he asks the Senator out to lunch. Unregulated campaign finance is unconstitutional because it gives those who need the least, more say in government and those who need the most, the least say.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
>Sure. I'm all for IP. I think being able to own
:)
>ideas is a *good* thing. I think that people
>against it are primarily doing so because they
>themselves don't know how to make money.
No. It's usually because they actually can't.
IP is supposed to protect ideas. But, you can't get any legal protection of your IP unless you realise your idea ("fixed in a tangible representation"). That's fair enough, say the IP fans: an idea that never gets realised is no use to society, and giving people IP on unrealised ideas would let them use licencing to make it unattractive for anyone to realise them.
But realising an idea is hard. You need to buy tools and possibly raw materials to do it with. And those tools and raw materials are expensive, because they sell to people who are already established in the IP industry and can afford high prices. Not only that, but you may not be able to get them, because you can't prove you aren't just going to use them to copy other people's material. To prove that you need a reputation, which you can never get because you can't get started without the tools.
So, suppose you've paid a load of money and gotten the tools. Now you have to do the work. This takes time. And, you have to eat while you're working. And, you can forget about having a day job to pay the bills, because your employer can use your contract to grab all your IP if you do that. So you've just lost even MORE money. (Or, far more likely, you've found you can't afford it and given up or never started.)
And if you manage to get a realised idea - you still have to get it distributed if you want to make money, and you also need distribution to get meaningful IP protection because otherwise anyone can copy you and claim parallel development. But again you are stuck: distributors and publishers are *really* only interested in reputation, which you can still never get because you can't get started. You could try internet distribution, but that's rather variable.
And even if you get a product out there - you still need to advertise, because your competitors are going to. And guess what? There is NO WAY to afford that unless you're established, because the demand for advertising by the established companies is high enough to keep the prices in more figures than you'll probably ever see.
Basically, you're screwed. To even get to market requires so much money that you'd be hard pressed to ever get it if you're starting from scratch. If you get to market, you then have to compete with the established firms - in a market where the one who spends most money on hype usually wins. Guess who that won't be?
And all of this acts the same way: to freeze the common person out from making money from their IP. Corporations are very fond of saying they "just don't have talent", but there is (I believe) no scientific evidence for talent even existing (and if it did, it would make IP nothing more than genetic fascism). Is it then no surprise that people do not respect IP law? Is it not possible that at least some of the 'freeware' today is just the result of the average joe throwing his hands up in the air and surrendering any attempt at making money from his own work?
And this is the old point. IP advocates like saying things like "If you spend the time writing a really awesome program, and I spend my time watching trash TV, don't you deserve the rights to what you've done and a reward for it?" The answer is yes, but even if you write that program you're not going to get a reward for it.
Is there anything that can be done about this? I don't know. My pet IP revolution would be:
- Create an inverse ultra vires on copyright: "Any act, which is explicitly permitted, or which is not explicitly prohibited, by copyright law, is raised to the status of an inaliable right."
- The inverse DMCA: "It is an offense to use technology to block any of the rights created by the above modification, to artifically complicate any of the rights so created, or to omit to include an interface permitting their exercise in a piece of technology whose hardware is capable of doing so."
- Block can't-progress-without-it agreements: "The rights created by the above modification, together with (other ones to be determined), may never be surrended or waived, not even voluntarily."
Which somewhat helps. Of course, you then have to sort out the markets:
- Criminalise advertising. (Harsh and sounds ridiculous, but it's the only way to stop those who have money already always being the ones who win the market wars.)
- Criminalise irresponsible consumer behaviour (as a very minor crime; capitalism assumes responsible and selective consumers, so if you don't behave as one, you're breaking it).
But I think those might be a little bit extreme for this debate.
tax cuts did not destroy SS or Medicade, the war on terror did......you do realise that about 5 times as much money was spent on the 3 months after Sept 11 than the sum of the entire tax cut (which by the way does not take even close to the full amount untill after the end of the projected deficets...about 5 years).
then the new budget is being decided....it is almost a give that we will allocate about 10 times more money over the next 10 years to fight terror than the whole of the bush tax cut.
before you cast blame on an insignificant (in comparison) amount of money, look at the whole picture and then realise that all the fools in washington put us here and that what we realy need is a erson in office who actualy cares about all the citizens and consumers' rights so we can stop the real threat to our freedoms...corprate power.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Right now patents in the software industry represent a security threat to the US economic interests long term. Countries who do not recognize software patents (or for that matter EULA's) will arguably have a faster rate of innovation than the US.
I can name a few that already are on thier way to killing our home grown software industries:
Linux
Linux wasn't invented in the US, and it is fast becomming a economic boost to those countries that can't afford to pay patents to Microsoft or the licensing fees. Linux does not recognize patents as a viable way to obtain money for software. No one in thier right mind would invest the kind of money required to obtain a better OS than Microsoft's in the US market with the current monopoly.
Which is my point, innovation has basically stopped in the OS market for the past 8 years in the United States.
Is this healthy for the market with 1 or two competitors?
Is this healthy long term for the US goverment that relies on economic activity to fund its Armed forces?
No I don't think it is.
Linux is based on an entirely new economic concept of "writing software is more important than the software itself." Therefore, people are at the center of this new economic model, not the software end product.
My concern, is that we defeated the USSR through economic means, as they represented a view of the world we didn't like. The US and such nations as up and comming China and India, who do not recognize patents or licensing, and who do not enforce it, could easily defeat the US eventually with a free market in those countries that do not have our limitations of doing business.
Long term monopolies represent stagnation both in invester stock evaluations and a very dangerous threat if something is introduced from the outside into a monopoly market that we have no control over and changes the rules to that market.
I suppose we could resort to bombing 1/3rd of the worlds population (India and China) if they don't accept our ways of doing business, but I do not think that would be wise if the US wants to stay an economic power.
In the end, patents and licensing are not in themselves bad, as long as they don't put up walls in the market place, and as long as the laws of the country in which they reside recognize this fact and enforce them to the ends of creating a competitive market.
This is where AntiTrust laws come into play over monopolies and this is no longer the case in the United States. These laws have failed in the past decade with respect to the US software industry. As a result we have a very unhealthy market, where value is low, and prices are very very high.
Why have these laws failed?
In the US, increasing business buyouts of government elected officials and thier cohesion with the wheels of business, are proving to be a real long term business threat to the US economy. Patent laws are not being used to the ends in which they were designed and AntiTrust laws are being blatently ignored.
The Enron scandal in the US is the tip of the Iceberg, in my opinion. Our government's unwilling recognition of the "Microsoft problem" and what to do about is are far more telling about how money and the US government are intertwined now days with business.
Patents are now a tool that:
1) Is designed to stamp out any startup capital that creates or designs new innovative solutions that would invalidate an existing patent.
Legally, most startups fold immediately. The tax revenue and the job's lost are incalcuable to the United States long term tax base.
I read about it all the time. X number of employees leave Y company and Z company is gone in 14 months because Y company killed Z in court.
2) It is very difficult to invest in such a patent world because you don't know if your money is going to be safe in a company attempting to break into an existing market. (Beyond what you think is a good idea of a product or not. You essentially have to have a lawyer to be an investor. Investing shouldn't be that hard.)
Patents do not encourage investment in a monopoly market. Worse, it would be better not to invest in the US, I think I will put my money over in China or India. (etc...)
3) Prices are cheaper in a monopoly market? Of course not. Long term, the interests of consumers are affected.
It is increasingly becomming clear that the US is heading for a collapse of Titanic proportions in my mind. Increasinging stagnation in a variety of industries from software to hardware business is increasingly becomming entangled in politics.
Influencing government to keep markets static, keeping conditions poor for long term growth.
(i.e. Compaq and HP merger is just another example of real BAD ideas...being endorsed on a wide scale from Washington.)
Long term the Giant will awaken and squash the US high tech software industry like a bug if we don't start waking up ourselves and realize that our long term safety as a country is at stake.
The US government always has exceptions to rules of its "Hands Off" policies with regards to business. But in the end, when monopolies drive up prices, and squash long term new technologies in the name of keep the market "business as usual", one must realize exceptions to these rules need to be enforced for the betterment and health of the market place.
The government exists to level the playing field in business, to make it fair, to insure everyone plays by the rules and opportunity abounds.
Not too close markets too a few individuals in business.
In the end IP rights I believe are an archaic view of the world of technology. They will be increasingly hard to enforce as nations shuch as China and India grow up and learn that they can change the rules very quickly, without our help.
IP rights focus the importance of doing business and what is of value on the end product instead of the company or people creating the IP. I don't believe this way of doing business will survive long term, given the fast maturity rates of China and India in the free trade block, high tech sector.
Once you had a taste of Linux as they say, you never go back.
[:-)]
-hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Because both the patent office and the courts have forgotten why patents exist.
In every case of IP assertion (whether it's a patent or a copyright or whatever), you have to ask, "How does this fit with the purpose of IP?" Do that, and everything is just fine and dandy. Copyrights for stuff written in the 1960s or earlier, predatory patents that "surround" other patents to make them impossible to use, patents on "obvious" things, etc. all go flying right out the window. And IP will exist and inventors and creators will still have incentive.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Reference found at http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/pdf/Debating_Wrong _Question.PDF Defiantely biased but has more up-to-date info.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
A few years ago, McDonalds (I believe they were the first - if not, it still works) introduced the "Extra Value Meal". The idea is instead ordering a sandwich, maybe fries, maybe a drink, they tie all three together so it is a better deal than if you bought each seperatly. This way you WILL get fries and a drink. So they sell you three items for a quarter or two more than the two items you would have bought before. Because profit margins on fries and drinks are so high, it's not like they lose money.
So, next thing you know every fast food place from Dairy Queen to Burger King to Wendys has various meal deals by various names.
Did they all pay McDonalds a royalty for bundeling items together? I seriously doubt it. They looked at a business model and implemented it themselves.
Now...Amazon comes along and someone has the bright idea of "lets store the customer info so when they want something they don't need to fill that info out again". A wonderful new idea? Probably not...I'm sure tons of places have regular customers who the owners know and can have everything taken care of just by the customer calling up and saying "Hey Bob, I need another x number of y's". Bob knows his customer and ships them to the usual place with the usual billing. Probably been going on for years on end.
All Amazon did was to expand this system to all of their customers and cut down on the human part - which is what computers do well anyway.
So why shouldn't b&n, and every other company out there be able to do the same thing? Hey...look at that business idea...does it work - well hell, lets do it as well...just the same way as we take the old crap and mark it way down as clearance to move it so we don't take a loss---just like every other store.
I could see if B&N stole amazon's code, did a s/amazon/b&n/g on it and put it into place, but why should amazon be able to patent an idea they had. A segway, I can see where there would be a patent on that - they guy came up with an idea and actually implemented it, and patented that. I don't believe the patent is for "platform on wheels that moves".
I'm sorry, but this is bullshit. Money is not speech. Paying money to politicians in exchange for privledged access is bribery. If you want to spend your money buying a newspaper ad in support of a politician, that's free speech. Handing him an envelope of money at a dinner so that he'll give you special treatment is bribery. Giving large sums of money to both parties, which is what a lot of the big doners do, is especially blatent bribery.
If your little sound bite money is speach were true, then income tax would be unconstitutional. After all, how can you tax a person's first amendment rights? Face it, the whole 'money is speech' is a load of crap that the crooks use to cover up their crimes. You want to support a politician? Buy an ad yourself. Volunteer some time. Make phone calls. Go door to door. Get the word out. That's free speech. Passing bribes is a crime, not speech. Until folks like you open your eyes to the blatent corruption going on, nothing is going to improve.
This whole circular argument sounds exactly like the common problems entry-level people out of college (like myself) have finding jobs. People can see your skill, but don't necessarily want to hire you because you don't have experience. You can't get experience without being hired by *someone*. It's a vicious circle that needs to be defeated by a company or individual giving you a shot (which, fortunately for me, has happened).
This has been going on for years, though, and some would argue that it's an integral catch-22 of the current corporate market. Unless mommy and daddy have relations within the company you're going to apply for, chances are you won't be hired even if you have skills.
Same for IP. All of these things match your paragraph on IP, yet people still manage to break through. Example (and a bit of a poor one): South Park. The original idea of South Park came from two guys who decided to create something totally original. When selling wasn't feasible, they gave the first video tapes away. Gradually, the intellectual property went from free to owned. No one would have argued that Trey Parker and Matt Stone don't deserve some kind of payment for their actions.
And yet, they didn't have the financial backing, the advertising knowledge, or even many connections in the industry. They just had their IP.
The Great Rogerborgio will use his mysterious powers of prediction to determine what will happen in this debate:
Flame away, but far better if you get over to WIPOUT and actually write it down where someone other than the /. regulars might read it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"I think being able to own ideas is a *good* thing. "
Sure, if you're a corporate megagiant. Otherwise, the ownership of ideas (which is pretty revolutionary...patents don't cover ideas) is essentially a way to set up a feudal guild system.
If you're big and can hire a lot of ideas, then you own the world. If you're an inventor in a garage, you're screwed.
Note:
"I'm sorry Mr. Woz, Mr. Jobs, but IBM thought of the idea of a small computer hooked to a television first and you can't make that. Sorry, but the PC revolution will have to wait until IBM decides it will happen".
Do you get why its a bad thing you're suggesting now?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Except this never, ever happens. See my post in this thread on South Park to see how the little guys use IP to bend their way.
Actually, in the U.S. at least, corporations are people. The U.S. Supreme Court said so in 1886, Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad case, based on the 14th Amendment.
Which does raise some interesting questions, personally... corporations are legal persons, but not allowed to vote? That's just wrong.
I'd love to see some corporation (that was established more than 21 years ago, just to avoid that little detail) sue to be given voting rights.
The outcome of that case would be seriously interesting. Now, whether it would make things seriously bad, or fix 100 years of bad legal precedent, is a frightening thought.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
Congressman: Is that a letter about the IP and copyright hearings?
Staffer: Yes it is,. We've received quite a few today.
Congressman: Wait a minute, is that some white stuff on the envelope.
Staffer: No, I don't see anything. Are you sure?
Congressman: Yes I think it is, quick throw it out.
Staffer: Uh, are you sure? We've gotten quite a few letters about the hearings
Congressman: Yes, quick throw out all the mail. We can't take any chances.
A few days later...
AP Wire: pparently slashdot.org is reporting that it's readers have sent over one million letters to their congressman, but none ever received a reply.
FTC and JD Holding Hearings on IP
Maybe the FTC finally realized that they were *drinking* JD when they came up with some of the current IP restrictions that are in place...
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
How in the hell does your comment rebutt anything he said? You sure you didn't accidentally respond to the wrong post??
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Money is to legislation what software is to an operating system.
If speech (as software) does not qualify for full First Amendment protection (we are seeing this in the various DeCSS cases), why should speech (as money) qualify?
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
This is an interesting idea. Corporations as people could lead to many pitfalls. For instance, if a Corporation is allowed to vote, can it hold public office ? President Microsoft ? If a Corporation is deemed a person with the right to vote, then isn't it also subject to Military Draft Registration and if the draft were reinstated, would then everyone who works for the company then have too serve ? The Microsoft Brigade ?
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
Even when votes are properly recorded the voting record itself is attached to the bill as a static text document. There are many votes and votes on similar bills. It is impossible for the average person to sift through all the bills and find out the voting record of their elected officials. The only sane way to get this information is to look at congressional watchdog groups that will tally votes and keep a proper database of voting records, but even this account may not be accurate as usually these groups have a bias or only focus on one type of legislation.
Last year there was a bill that would have created an online database of congressional voting. This bill failed, good luck finding out what the bill number was or who voted against it.
We have the best government that money can buy.
Always go directly to the source. This case may finally be used to break the gravy train that is corporate contributions to politicians. The case challenged a Missouri statute imposing limits ranging from $275 to $1,075 on contributions to candidates for state office. The Supreme Court upheld the limitations, saying that limiting contributions left communication significantly unimpaired. Of course, no limits may be imposed on how much they spend, since that is speech.
But, read Stevens' concurring opinion in which he explicitly says that political contributions are property, not speech, and should be regulated tightly.
Thalia
Why should people be paid for doing what they'll do for free?
People share ideas when theres no incentive to sell them.
Linux is a perfect example, theres many others.
Competition does not equal innovation, in some situations it can help it and in some situations it can harm it.
Patents do not help people in third worlds at all, they cant get venture capital at all, they lack the information needed.
To the guy who mentioned they are ignortance, ignorance is lack of knowledge, when knowledge has a price often people cannot afford to not be ignorant.
Some kid who cant afford a book wont learn to read, wont learn math, i mean afterall college isnt free, and neither are books, when information has a price, people with money can buy thier way out of ignorance, people without it, are out of luck.
Its not a fair playing ground.
Last but not least, big companies arent needed to form ideas, and if you have an idea and want to make a product, you keep the idea, you make a prototype, then there could be a law which allows you to sign an NDA with the company, the two of you can then turn your idea into a product and it would be illegal for them to reveal your idea however once the product is made, your idea is released to the world and your product must be the best to continue selling.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
This is what Gerald Mossinghoff had to say. I started off thinking that this guy might not be too bad. By the time I got to the end though, I realized that the way this guy thinks is the source of many of the problems with the patent system. Check out his report here: http://www.ftc.gov/os/comments/intelpropertycommen ts/mossinghoffgeraldj.pdf
He seems to think that the current system is good enough and should not be challenged because it could cause confusion. Furthermore, he think that such a challenge would probably be unsuccessful due to the combined power of the high-tech industry, Patent Bar, and various inventors groups. He seems to think that it's a great thing that we've cemented IP laws in place through legislation and treaties. So much so that it would cause chaos if we were to try to roll any of it back or even simply subject patent applications to a higher standard than we currently do. I'm depressed now. Thanks Gerald.
Then we have economics professor, Richard Gilbert. He has a formula that will tell us whether we should pursue anti-trust suits against holders of blocking patents (collections of patents that bar competition). I can't really tell whether it makes sense or not since I don't have any handy way of applying it to a real world case. Does anyone have any idea what this guy is saying, or who will benefit the most from it? His presentation is done in Powerpoint, so you'll need access to MS Office or something else that can read Powerpoint documents. http://www.ftc.gov/opp/intellect/guide1.ppt
Finally, we come to someone who is making sense to me. Yale president, Richard C. Levin. He makes several good points, some that cover the same topics as Mr. Gilbert, and others that cover areas of concern to many of us who have had our eye on the IP system. Read his presentation here: http://www.ftc.gov/os/comments/intelpropertycommen ts/levinrichardc.htm
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Do you really believe that? How many bands are there that over the times, before they got their record contracts and whatever released music *free*? Personally I know quite a few people that were making
I'd wouldn't worry too much about the movies marked either, because they can usually recover costs and more by running it in the cinemas first. Most of us would rather spend 10 every once in a while than shelling out 10000 for a projector and big screen, sourround system, DVD player (which still wouldn't be as good as the theater) and all, and we still get to see it earlier in the cinemas than on DVD.
There's the software marked and other things where you have some *serious* costs making and developing them, and no real way of recovering them that needs protection. Those will be hurt, and that will hurt consumers back. The music and movie business would be hurt too, but I don't see it as hurting the consumers back all that much.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
All a brain does is create ideas.
Basically its what we were designed to do.
Money wont make you create any more or less than you'd naturally create, it would just perhaps give you incentive to create a product based on it.
Creating the idea and sharing it allows others to create the product when they need to. Ideas will always be created, its a natural ability.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac