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Adobe Gets Hit By DMCA
Reeses writes "Adobe has asked a U.S. District court to allow them to embed ITC and Monotpye fonts in their documents, claiming "Adobe has asked the court to declare that Adobe's popular Acrobat product does not violate certain provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as claimed by ITC and Agfa Monotype." Which is interesting after the Skylarov/Elcomsoft debacle from a year or so ago. I guess they figured that it didn't apply to them since they enforced it."
Comes around to byte 'em in the ass.
But on another note, how would this affect other Adobe products, like building a web page in Photoshop using these fonts and publishing?
Maybe with more large corps getting hit with DMCA violations, there will be stronger lobbying against it.
I for one like to see the DMCA used against companies that could possibly aid in its downfall.
We all know that laws like the DMCA are there to protect the big corporations who pay for the politicians to get those laws on the books. We can't have those same laws being used AGAINST these corporations now can we?
ain't it sweet?
It will show that poorly written laws with big teeth are dangerous to everyone, whether they are consumers, the non-consuming public, industry, or the politicians who support them.
Cross your fingers, maybe this is the beginning of the end for the DMCA.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
After the Sklyrov debace it is difficult to have any sympathy for Adobe.
... this is the kind of karmic returns such ill-considered, anti-social behavior in the name of padding stockholders pockets at the expense of the public good warrent, and perhaps now a little more often will actually receive.
Free Market ueber Alles types should take note
There is a social and ethical context to everything we do, as individuals, as members of corporations, or as corporations themselves. This is but one small aspect of it, and while it is far too seldom to see payback of this sort for wrongdoing within the span of a human life, it is most gratifying one rare occasions like this when poetic justice actually does occur.
Maybe next time Adobe will reconsider, and perhaps even lobby against such draconian and despicable legislation, rather than amorally adding it to their lawyers' arsenal.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
A nice analysis of this can be found here
They're getting hit by the DMCA
They're getting hit by the DMCA
They went and messed up
and embedded the font
now they're getting it in the [censored]
They're getting hit by the DMCA
They're getting hit by the DMCA
</YMCA Tune>
Arent these the same companies going after the CMU student for his embed tool?
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
first reaction: [in wise-man voice] what goes around comes around... yeah...
second reaction: so THAT's what a critical mass of dumbasses can do...
and then it dawned on me: so the legends of "lawyers with head in ass" is really true after all...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
All the link given states is that they're accusing Adobe of violating the DMCA with Acrobat. Is it that ITC/Afga are claiming that the embedding of fonts in PDF files with Acrobat defeats a technological measure used to control access to the copyrighted work? What technological measure would that be, for goodness sake. Is it possible to get an installable font out of a PDF that has a font embedded, or are they saying embedded fonts in PDFs bypass some license requirement that anyone who views a font through electronic means must have purchased a license for the font in question?
Hard to form any opinion about whether Adobe actually violates some portion of the DMCA, without hearing the actual complaint from ITC/Afga. Unless of course you're a thoughtless warrior against copyright, who doesn't care about niggling details like "the facts".
The real purpose of the DCMA -- and this ain't popular -- is to protect profits for American corporations. Despite the frothing ravings of the "everything wants to be free" crowd, this is not a bad thing. Copyright law has never existed to ensure or even provide equity between the little guys and the big guys. It exists to preserve the wealth creation potential of artists and content providers. It is wholly appropriate that Adobe used the DCMA against Skylarov .. after all, they are the corporation, they are the wealth creators, and they are the major contributors to the market economy. The same cannot be said of Skylarov.
The same is also true of the two parties who brought this frivolous action against Adobe, neither or which I have even heard of. There is nothing at stake in the economy if these clowns get their way. They are only trying to be a thorn in Adobe's side, and from all appearances, are doing it in the most meddlesome and intrusive way they know how.
Mod me down if you like, but I'm sick and tired of seeing people being demonized simply because they want to create wealth and live the American dream. Presumably, when you go home tonight, you're going to fix yourself a meal to eat. Consider this: the employees of Adobe would like to do the very same thing. Do your lofty ideals of socialistic code-sharing take precedence over the health and well-being of decent families?
Remember that Adobe is not fighting the DMCA. They are merely trying to bribe^h^h^h^h^hconvince a judge into saying that their actions are not a violation of the DMCA as has been alleged by other companies. This can have a couple possible outcomes. (IANALBTW)
1. Adobe is sucessful in getting a judge to declare they are not violating the DMCA. This has bad and good reprocussions. The DMCA is strengthened by case law, but what Adobe gets off for, everyone else does as well.
2. Adobe is not sucessful in getting a judge to decalre they are not violating the DMCA. This is initially bad, because the DMCA remains as strong as it was and the restrictions it imposes are stengthened by case law. In the long run, however, Adobe, one of the few non-Media oriented companies that has the most to gain from the DMCA is forced to lobby against it and fight it in court, possibly having longer lasting influence.
The lesson we should learn from all this is that if a law requires a trial just to see if it applies to any certain case, it's probably not a good law and won't be applied fairly.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I have worked in the advertising industry for 7 years, designing advertisements and catalogs -- with purchased fonts -- and I never had this problem, nor have I heard of anyone in that industry having this problem.
Presumably any fonts that shipped with product you got from a software vendor would be (should be) properly registered and legal to use out of the box. Otherwise, the fonts need to be purchased. It should be OK to distribute graphics, artwork, etc. as long as you purchased the fonts. I don't see why documents in Adobe acrobat should be considered any different from artwork produced in any other digital format.
It's a common thing that when sending files to a service bureau for ripping, that you give the service bureau your fonts, or you make sure they are *embedded* in your postscript output. I have never heard that this is considered *copyright infringement*.
The only problem I can forsee is if you can extract the fonts from Acrobat and use them for something else. Then there is a legitimate complaint.
Otherwise, if Adobe can show that Acrobat is yet another format like GIF, JPEG, etc., and that if the person who creates a particular piece of artwork with legally purchased fonts does not violate copyright, then Adobe should win.
If there is a copyright issue, it should be with the person who created the artwork and who didn't use licensed fonts, not with the people who created the file format.
"Many years ago Adobe anticipated the shift to electronic documents. At that time, we obtained the embedding rights from our font partners necessary to permit the creation of electronic documents," said Jim Heeger, senior vice president, cross media products....
Adobe believes these claims are being made to gain ITC and Agfa leverage in the contractual disputes. Adobe strongly disputes this claim and is asking the court to rule that there is no violation of the DMCA.
What this says to me is that Adobe licensed the fonts, intending to distribute them in electronic documents, and ITC/Afga didn't foresee that, and now they want more money for it, threatening to use the DMCA where it doesn't apply.
The Slashdot headline was sensationalist and misleading. I can't see how ITC/Afga could argue that the DMCA should even apply here.
Ironically, the legalese file which states the terms is a pdf...for which they strongly suggest Adobe Acrobat.
Dmitry does that really deep evil laugh.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Does this mean that we can get free fonts from PDF files?
To be fair about it, we should only grab fonts out of PDF files distributed by the copyright holders of the fonts in question. The most likely candidates for such use would be files from Microsoft and Apple.
And it's legal--they own the fonts, they gave them to us, and they didn't even have a click-through license on them.
Simply put, the best way to elminate the DMCA is to use it. Fight fire with fire. Use their own tool of control against themselves. I wouldn't be suprised if that is why they are poking at Adobe.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
It's not cool, especially since ITC and AGFA have some awesome fonts. I suppose it's time to ask Adobe to step up to the plate and make suitable replacements.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
This case brings up an interesting proposition, and may hint at future threats to the DMCA. If a law is so draconian and restrictive, then eventually it can come around and bite the ass of the people originally supporting it. The same could be said for Bermans 'right to hack' bill, if it some how survives constitutional muster, then it could allow anyone (you and me) to hack the RIAA, MPAA back, looking for any copyrighted works we have created - art, digital home photos and movies, etc.
The first thing to do is copyright every digital work you have and then sue any company that modifies it without your permission - which apparently every software program out there will modify your creation on some level. I'm not a software engineer, so I don't know all the intricacies.
www.enthea.org
I couldn't be happier. I would love to see the DMCA result in an enormous shift of capital from one bunch of pirates to another and collapse the whole so called software industry as a result. Watching self righteous bullies like Warnock and whomever replaced him squirm is the best news I've heard all week. My God if any software company annointed itself the bearer of standards for the whole fucking world, it's been Adobe. I would love to see Acrobat and its shitty document handling banished from earth. The only thing it really exists for is to create uneditable documents like that's some fucking holy grail upon which to dictate terms to the rest of us.
Screw them and fontmanagers they rode in on.
This too shall pass.
Honestly, I hope not, though I fear in the current political/economic climate that the difference will be rendered negligible. Fortunately, I expect that given a bit of time, the current political/economic climate will pass, too. I hope it will pass, first.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Fonts are explicitly excluded from being copyrighted in the US?
I never would have suspected that.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Just because you haven't heard of these companies doesn't mean that they're small. These are two big design groups, and a lot of the typefaces that you see every day in print, on billboards, on TV, and on your own monitor came out of them.
So would the Agfa and ITC employees. So would the designers who use these fonts every day. Everyone out there is trying to make a buck, but doing it by screwing over other people isn't the way it's supposed to be done. Granted, this is a messed up dog eat dog world, but that doesn't excuse laws like the DMCA which will harm us all in the long run. Just because someone like Skylarov didn't contribute to the annual GDP as much as the collective of Adobe doesn't mean that he should be valued any less. Remember, corporations are supposed to be counted as individuals legally, and thus they should have no more privledge and status than any other individual, no matter how much wealth they create.
And just remember that all companies that grew in to these wealth-creating machines had to start small. Two guys in a garage. A guy in a wharehouse. Two men and a woman with an idea. Everyone and everything has to start somewhere, but they never will get the chance to grow if they are squashed prematurely by the big guys. If you really want to see wealth, and if you really want to see growth then you've got to allow for enough freedom for people to do their work. The DMCA allows the big guys to deny that. If you're really for capitalism then you should be against the DMCA.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
This scary new "Homeland Security" thing they're trying to create. Doesn't make me feel secure, instead makes me feel like being watched all the time, cameras everywhere, interrogation for no reason, everything you heard scary about "the communists" in the old days, happening here instead this time.
Wow, you're an amazing dullard.
God, your myopia makes a televangelist appear openminded.
Free Marken uber Alles? Hello, flyspeck, it's not the free market that passed the DMCA--it's a hyper-active government that did so.
hyper-active government? Elected government, acting upon the desires its constituency (not the voter, but rather the paying special interest/corporation), in a free market of influence and paid-for legislators, thanks to a 1978 supreme court ruling interpreting corporate finance as equivelent to free speech. If the governmenty is hyper-active, it is because the ever-worshipped 'invisible hand' of the free market of legislative influence has made it so.
Legislation has everything to do with markets, free or otherwise, indeed no market (free or otherwise) can exist in a complete vacuum of legislation and function coherently (if you really need it spelled out for you, consider any number of ungoverned lands as well as the behavior of the black market itself. Lack of regulation means lack of laws for a court to interpret, i.e. a lack of jurisprudence and the rule of the gun, libertarian myths of anarchistic utopia notwithstanding).
But of course, all of that misses the point I originally made entirely (which was, perhaps, your intent). By perusing any number of Ayndroidian posts here on slashdot and elsewhere from people who argue similarly to yourself, the common reply to complaints about corporate malfaescence and misbehavior, be it financial, social, economic, or environmental, is always a handwave toward the mythical 'invisible hand' of the marketplace (which has already been debunked by more recent, and more applicable, economic theory for which a Nobel prise has been granted) with no supporting argument as to how or why a free market would, for example, prevent Monsanto from poisoning the drinking water of a small southern US town than, say, government oversight that would throw such people in jail for doing such a thing.
As I said before, oh thought-challenged reactionary, everything we do is done in an ethical and social context, a fact which libertarian dogma and naive readers of Ayn Rand can't seem to grasp for all its obviousness to the rest of the human population. That goes for Adobe, and is irrevelent with respect to the specifics of the legislation in question, to wit:
Adobe took a social convention (in this case the poorly concieved DMCA, but it might just as well have been copyright law itself, or some other convention) and used it to the detriment of the the society as a whole. Now that another has turned and done a similar thing to them, they are without support. This means that mitigating cirumstances, that might normally have led to a compromise, are likely to fall on deaf ears and evince, at most, an amused chuckle from the common observer.
In other words, now that the tables are turned, the pathetic excuse of "their only responsibility is to their shareholders and it is proper that they do all that is legal, no matter how unethical or reprehensible, to make money" is shown to be the absurdity that most clear thinking people always recognized it to be, namely that, in the end, such behavior undermines not only the society, and hurts not only the victims of the initial misbehavior, but ultimately the very company and stockholders the behavior was purported to benefit.
Alas, the weakness of the free market for determining ethical behavior is that, as often as not, unethical behavior does pay, often with little or no unpleasant consiquence for the corporate wrongdoer. Which of course means if you want to build a society fit for humans to live in, rather than merely one that is designed to service corporate entities at the expense of everyone else, you need more than just a simple, unregulated, free market.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
If that is so, then we need a corporate death penalty. M$ needs to get the chair.
There will be many more of these cases where those who have attempted to enforce the DMCA against companies and indeviduals they find to be a threat to their business, will find themselves on the recieving end of these suits.
Such are the perils of ill concieved and internally inconsistant legislation like the DMCA. Making such drastic changes to the tenets of copyright and fair use, established 200 years ago, is frought with risks. I predict there will be a great many of these suits that victimize the vary companies who supported the legislation as it passed through congress, for the simple reason that for the past three decades, products have been developed based on the previously existing standards of copyright and fair use, and there's no grandfathering clause to speak of in the DMCA.
Eventually the quantity of these suits will diminish, as products based on the old standards are removed from distribution and we become acustomed to the slower creative development and weakened artistic and technical growth dictated by the new intellectual property standards we have imposed on ourselves.
The only remaining question is: Are these new standards in the best interest of the majority?
If so, we will fine a new ballance in our creative and technological endevours. If not, the law must be repealed and a more approprite piece of legislation developed.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Indeed, the way of democracy is that when enough corporations are inconvenienced, a law can be changed.
Hey, waitaminute . . .
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
AFGA uses Adobe fonts in that document, and none of their own! See Rotis and Plantin.
I NCD+ATRotisSerifi bris-Boldi s-Bold
-- pdffont reports these fonts:
JAFADN+ATRotisSerif
JAEPOI+Exlibris-Bold
Plantin-Italic
Symbol
JAIMNO+Exlibris-Bold
JA
JAMJLC+ATRotisSerif
JAMKFK+Exl
JBBHAD+ATRotisSansSerif
JBBFNC+Exlibr
JBBGBH+ATRotisSerif
(I couldn't get adobe's name out of the pdf, but I assume these trademarks are exclusive to adobe)
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
> ..sooner or later everything comes from something.
Yes, this is true, but often what it comes from is human effort,
which is often (albeit not always) motivated by a paycheck.
> Wealth does *not* come from thin air. Resources are used to create
> it, even if those resources are just the nutrients in the soil that
> eventually end up boosting somebody's brain power. Unless the
> resources used are returned, sooner or later we find there's no
> more resource.
Yes, but we're talking about copyrighted works here, not fossil
fuels. Copyrighted works are produced _primarily_ by human effort,
which is an extremely renewable resource. Yes, it comes from
somewhere. Ultimately it comes from the food you eat. Maybe
you've had science in elementary school: do you remember where
the food chain starts? Photosynthesis is powered by sunlight.
Basically, the human effort to create copyrightable works runs
(indirectly) on solar power. But yeah, if we create too much
then we'll exhaust the sun.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
That's exactly what I was going to say. I know this post is kind of pointless, but considering you didn't get modded up I had to at least recognise a good joke.
Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
So if we stop enforcing IP laws, IP will cease to have value, and thus not be considered wealth. Makes sense to me!
You say it's only the force of Law that gives value to Intellectual Property? I can only guess from this statement that your intellect has never produced anything which you greatly value. Either that, or you just don't understand the nature of wealth.
The ideal of copyright law, and the ideals of capitalism in general, reflect the truth that ideas -do- have value... that ideas can put food on tables, bring clean water to homes, save lives, and so much more. The fact that the DMCA and the patent system as they currently exist in the United States are inherently flawed does not change this truth.
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
What I'd like to see is that anarchistic utopia of free software developers squash software corporations like Adobe into the ground. There's only one way capitalists will learn and that's for them to watch the very markets that make them rich disappear from right under their nose. Not only software, but media, TV, music, etc. will all experience the effects of the mythical anarchistic utopia you've mentioned. Or maybe they won't... but it sure looks to me like free software is giving Microsoft a run for its money. Who do you think will be next?
... unless the cartel in question buys legislation from a corrupt government to kill individual innovation.
I like capitalism. I'm quite good at it (and make a very good living at it). Capitalism, in the form of competative free markets is generally good for dealing with most naturally scarce things (not all mind you, as sometimes other pressures can cause the free market to break down. Natural monopolies, such as the road to your home and your drinking water are one type of example. Medical services, where the pressure of having an alternative of dying if you chose not to be a customer, is arguably another area that lends itself only very imperfectly to a competative, free market.)
However, in the realm of ideas, invention, software, and infinitly copiable content, there is no natural scarcity, and capitalism breaks down. So much so that the government feels compelled to create monopolies, with no pretense of a competative, free market.
And you are right, a thriving, cooperative commons, with its own internal (mostly friendly, though sometimes not) competition will outcompete a monopoly cartel every time
Which is exactly what Microsoft is all about with Palladium, and the RIAA and the MPAA are all about with so-called DRM (digital rights revocation). They know they can't compete. Microsoft can't compete with free software and, in the long run, the recording industry and movie studios will not be able to compete with a vibrant community of artists creating free (or very inexpensive) music and movies (the latter quite possibly with blender, as I am doing). Online copyright violators and file sharers aren't any more of a threat than VHS and cassette tape users were fifteen years ago, and they know that. It isn't about preventing file sharing, its about preventing competition, something a corporation with a cartel mindset simply cannot abide.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
you don't get anything when you spend money to pay your taxes.
So having roads to travel on, schools for your children, and armed forces to defend your nation count as nothing?
Copyrights are (in general) good, because they cause more money to be spent more times.
You're saying copyright is good because it will cause people to spend money. That may make sense if people would not otherwise spend that money. In reality, if people could acquire copyrighted content for free, they would spend their money on something else. Furthermore, without copyright, anyone who wants the content could get it; whereas with copyright, only those willing to spend the demanded fee will obtain the content. Thus copyright holds back the distribution of wealth (content).
You argue that copyright is good because it encourages people to spend money. Your argument is flawed. Spending money is only good in that it can encourage the creation of wealth. When you buy a sandwich at McDonalds, you pay McDonalds to serve you a quick, convenient meal, so wealth has been created. McDonalds pays someone to process your order (which is really just overhead), someone to make your sandwich, and a farmer to grow the food. In each case (except for the overhead), McDonalds pays for the creation of wealth.
As another example, suppose I sell my car to a high school student. The student can't afford a new car, so she won't pay anyone to create a car for her. I can't afford a new car, so I won't pay anyone to create one. However, since I gave up my car in return for money, the student has acquired wealth, and I have enough money to buy a new car, thus creating wealth.
Copyright increases wealth only insomuch as it encourages the creation of wealth (content). Without copyright, artists would presumably not bother creating content and no one would get anything. If copyright lasts longer than is necessary, it prohibits people from acquiring wealth, and allows the publisher to collect money for doing nothing.
Spending money for nothing is pointless. It allows some people to collect money for doing nothing, when they should be out creating wealth.
Actually, that comment is about my software , not Adobe. However, the similarities are striking. I think Agfa Monotype and ITC just love to send out empty threats...
That's actually a press release about My Software . I can't find anything about the Adobe business, but I'd be very interested in hearing Agfa Monotype's complaint, for obvious reasons...
You copied the Constitution???!? Holy crap! I am calling the founding fathers!
Simple, Acrobat can ignore the bits and embed the font anyway. Oops, that's circumventing a copy protection measure, instant DMCA violation.
Actually, even if you can argue that embedding bits are a DMCA "technological measure," etc., (see my reply to Agfa Monotype for arguments about that) I don't think the issue is that clear cut.
Check out 17 USC 1201(c)(3):
Basically, this says that a consumer device (ie, Acrobat) does NOT need to implement any particular response to a technological measure. In other words, it is free to ignore the measure if it wishes, but it can't CIRCUMVENT it. Circumvention as defined in the DMCA has an active component, check out the definition. Simply ignoring the bit would be hard to argue as circumvention.
However, I think the issue in question has to do with licensing, and that the DMCA is a red herring. But, since the article is so poor on details, we can only guess...
Wrong wrong wrong! That software was written by me, and is an entirely different DMCA complaint by Monotype. I have no clue about the Adobe stuff, though I'd be very interested in hearing about it...
Macromedia??
Corporations call you consumer, fascists call you citizen. Take your pick (neither is a fine answer.)
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Being a consumer and a citizen are not mutually exclusive. The grandparent even specifically included "the non-consuming public" in the list of the affected.
I don't normally comment on moderations, but this is hardly Insightful. The poster used a perfectly appropriate word for the point he was making; he didn't say you weren't a citizen, and in the context of the list his word was more correct, since he was pointing out that BOTH consumers and the non-consuming public were affected.
I don't normally comment on moderations, but this is hardly Insightful. In context it's not even correct; it's a knee-jerk reaction to a word which is frequently misused but was not in this case.
The fonts are generally licensed per user, per a certain number of printers. I think the common license is 5 users two printers. Well your service bureau/printer doesn't have access to the license. The reason why its technically OK for you to do this is because they have already purchased the fonts as well. As far as the adobe acrobat format is concerned, i agree with you, the fact that you make the pdf is as if you printed it. It whould be considerd an electronic piece of paper. You can photocopy something printed with their fonts without a license, this is just the electronic form of photocopying. Their issue with it however is now you can send that to someone else who can print it, and make an exact perfect replica. Now the whole printer license is messed up. And since you embedded the font in the pdf, they can but legally do not have the right to print it. Adobe allows this by ignoring the Allow_embedded bit, and is therefore violating the DMCA.
Yes, it would terrible if a single organization controlled the construction, maintenance, and regulation of all the roads in a locality. They might impose draconian corporate policies about helmets and seat belts [...yada yada yada usual anti-government free market ueber alles dogma yada yada...]
Are you being deliberately obtuse, or do you simply prefer feudalism to democracy?
I dislike much about our government and am as scathingly critical of them (particularly the current administration) as anyone, but your sarcastic diatribe simply reeks of stupidity.
Hint: local governments are elected, are directly accountable to the people, and more often than not regulate across the board equally. UPS, Federal Express, and the US Post Office all have equal access to the highway system and local roads.
Do you really think that would be the case if UPS, a non-democractic, non-elected, feudalistically organized entity (as are all private companies BTW) owned the highway instead? Recent experience in the telco industry, and the resulting disappearance of DSL providors in the united states as a result of local baby bell abuses of their last mile of copper monopolies, suggests otherwise.
Frankly, I cannot believe anyone over the age of eight would be so stupid as to advocate what you just did. Amazing.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Please tell me what you think ideas can do without implementation?
A very good point, and a worthy question. An idea without some form of implementation is like a car without an engine: It's worth something to somebody, but only to the mechanic who can make it run, or the junkyard warrior who can craft it into something new and different. Most of these ideas fall in the realm of theoretical sciences: physics, math, philosophy, and so on. The best such ideas can do is spawn other ideas.
For example, take Boole, the inventor of binary logic. He died thinking he had come up with an idea with no possible implementation whatsoever. Someone else found an implementation for the idea, and so computers were made possible.
On the other hand, implementations without ideas simply do not exist. And without the implementation of certain great ideas, there are very valuable things that would not exist. Therefore, it's safe to say that these things would not exist without the ideas that lead to the implementations. Before someone had the idea of using penicillin to combat bacterial infection, all we had was bread mold. Now we have antibiotics.
I alone am not going to think food onto my table. But my implementations of my ideas are valuable to my employer. My employer's services (which stem from his ideas and are made possible and affordable by my ideas) are of value to his clients. Somewhere, one of his clients is providing life-essential services (which stemmed from an idea) to an agricultural engineer. Because that engineer is able to afford those life-essential services, he can focus his attention less on the the effort of living, and more on creating and implementing ideas. Those ideas, once implemented, lead to a surplus of food. Another industrious-minded individual has had the idea to transport surplus food to places far and wide, where it can be used.
Some of this food gets transported to feed starving in Africa (assuming it doesn't get 'appropriated' by some dictatorship on the way). Without this long chain of implemented ideas, they would not have food. And some of this food ends up on my own table, too.
I still hold to my original point. Ideas have inherent value. Some ideas are worth more than others, and different people will value an idea differently, but still. Ideas have value.
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.