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W3C Objects To Royalties On ISO Country Codes
An anonymous reader writes "Tim Berners-Lee has sent a letter of concern to the president of ISO about the idea of collecting royalties on...guess what...ISO language and country codes! According to the letter, the ISO Commercial Policies Steering Group is proposing a royalty on commercial use of ISO language, country and currency codes. The whole idea seems absurd. On what grounds could uttering lang="en-US" be subject to any intellectual property right that justified any royalty demand?"
I, for one, welcome our new ISO overlords. And, if they need a broadcaster to help them find slaves for their royalty mines, they know where to look!
I think the guy who invented the concept of royalties should at this point issue a lawsuit against the entire planet Earth for 1% of all gross national products that are protected under other royalties.
Dude, where's my packet?
You are Communist, I presume?
Beep. Boop. Beep. You have questions. I have answers and your home address.
And in other news SCO has anounced that all English speakers are infrenging upon their IP rights and are demading 1000$US for each word uttered or typed.
That communist line is pretty old. Time to update your database--"terrorists" are the current enemy.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Hey, us Brits invented the language, so you've been violating our intellectual property for the last 400 years or so. But don't worry, we'll only charge you 699 per sentence, as long as you say it before October 15.
Critics were quick to denounce the proposal, but admitted that the "cash-grab" move was unlikely to provoke any real backlash.
"Once they got that whole country and money code license fee put through, it was game over," said one US government official on condition of anonymity. "Now they're just, like, 'Well, what else can we charge for?'"
ISO distanced itself from the white paper, saying that it was "a modest proposal" put forth by an intern. "However, we will consider the ideas within as we would any other source," said Dr. Oliver Smoot, president of ISO. "And if there should happen to be megabucks within those ideas, we are most definitely there. W00t!"
Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman was unavailable for comment. However, those close to the computing guru said that he had been prepared for such an eventuality. "Richard switched long ago to non-carbon amino-like compounds," said one source close to Stallman. "It took some work to come up with a Free organic chemical basis for life, but he thought it was worthwhile. Looks like he was right."
Carousel is a lie!
In related news, ISO has instituted royalty fees for use of the metric system. Looks like en_US had good reason not to jump on the metric band wagon after all.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Slashdot - objective news source? I think not!
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
MPAA method: Release item under copyright. When market is saturated or copyright nears expiration (whichever is soonest) change a scene or two, or add different colour, re-release, generating 'new' item and copyright.
SCO method:Release item. Hide recipe. Claim that all competitors stole and used said recipe. Refuse to produce until suitably bribed by appeasements and concessions.
Amazon method: release item that uses obvious method. Patent said obvious method.
ISO method: Release item. Wait until standard is commonly adopted, as with SCO method. When market has adopted standard, charge for using said standard.
Windows method:Release item into market. Use all of the above whenever possible. proceeSystem error: (a)bort, (r)etry, (f)ail???
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
In recent news:
Intel (TM) claims that the word "intellectual" is covered by their trademark Intel.
All intellectual property should therby be considered intellectual property of Intel (TM)
I propose an international unit to stop stupid ideas before they become real. any stupid ideas from anti-piracy fritz chips to mandatory crypto back doors and ISO country royalties would be targeted and the special unit of highly trained black-ops agents would come in and "gently persuade" the people involved to abandon the ideas. Ofcourse they would have to destroy themselves for being a stupid idea in the first place.. ill shut up now
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George W.Bush, president of the A met today with the Chancellor of Uchland and the President of Ance. Later he will talk on the telephone with Mr Putin, president of Ssia, and with Mr Blair, Prime minister of nothing.
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
As a member of the Latin alphabet users community, I propose we counter sue ISO for using anything in the Latin alphabet character set, which predates the ISO standards. Furthermore, I highyl encourage members of the Arab community to countersue for use of the Arabic numerals.
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