W3C Objects To Royalties On ISO Country Codes

Abolish "intellectual property". by Thinkit3 · 2003-09-20 11:13 · Score: 3, Insightful

"Intellectual property" is a silly and stupid idea. Cases like this only illustrate more obviously how bad an idea it is. It should be abolished as soon as possible.

--
-Libertarian secular transhumanist

Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by cperciva · 2003-09-20 11:18 · Score: 5, Insightful

No, cases like this illustrate that allowing "stealth IP" is a bad idea.

If ISO had said from the start "we own these country code standards, you'll have to pay if you want to use them", we wouldn't have a problem -- nobody would be using them. The problem arose only because ISO waited until after their standard had been widely adopted before mentioning the issue.

--
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Radio+Shack+Robot · 2003-09-20 11:19 · Score: 3, Funny

You are Communist, I presume?

--

Beep. Boop. Beep. You have questions. I have answers and your home address.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Solitonic · 2003-09-20 11:21 · Score: 5, Informative

GNU.org's "Words to Avoid" page at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html explains it like this:
Publishers and lawyers like to describe copyright as ``intellectual property''---a term that also includes patents, trademarks, and other more obscure areas of law. These laws have so little in common, and differ so much, that it is ill- advised to generalize about them. It is best to talk specifically about ``copyright,'' or about ``patents,'' or about ``trademarks.''
The term ``intellectual property'' carries a hidden assumption---that the way to think about all these disparate issues is based on an analogy with physical objects, and our ideas of physical property.
When it comes to copying, this analogy disregards the crucial difference between material objects and information: information can be copied and shared almost effortlessly, while material objects can't be. Basing your thinking on this analogy is tantamount to ignoring that difference. (Even the US legal system does not entirely accept the analogy, since it does not treat copyrights or patents like physical object property rights.)
If you don't want to limit yourself to this way of thinking, it is best to avoid using the term ``intellectual property'' in your words and thoughts.
``Intellectual property'' is also an unwise generalization. The term is a catch-all that lumps together several disparate legal systems, including copyright, patents, trademarks, and others, which have very little in common. These systems of law originated separately, cover different activities, operate in different ways, and raise different public policy issues. If you learn a fact about copyright law, you would do well to assume it does not apply to patent law, since that is almost always so.
Since these laws are so different, the term ``intellectual property'' is an invitation to simplistic thinking. It leads people to focus on the meager common aspect of these disparate laws, which is that they establish monopolies that can be bought and sold, and ignore their substance--the different restrictions they place on the public and the different consequences that result. At that broad level, you can't even see the specific public policy issues raised by copyright law, or the different issues raised by patent law, or any of the others. Thus, any opinion about ``intellectual property'' is almost surely foolish.
If you want to think clearly about the issues raised by patents, copyrights and trademarks, or even learn what these laws require, the first step is to forget that you ever heard the term ``intellectual property'' and treat them as unrelated subjects. To give clear information and encourage clear thinking, never speak or write about ``intellectual property''; instead, present the topic as copyright, patents, or whichever specific law you are discussing.
According to Professor Mark Lemley of the University of Texas Law School, the widespread use of term "intellectual property" is a recent fad, arising from the 1967 founding of the World Intellectual Property Organization. (See footnote 123 in his March 1997 book review, in the Texas Law Review, of Romantic Authorship and the Rhetoric of Property by James Boyle.) WIPO represents the interests of the holders of copyrights, patents and trademarks, and lobbies governments to increase their power. One WIPO treaty follows the lines of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which has been used to censor useful free software packages in the US. See http://www.wipout.net/ for a counter-WIPO campaign.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-20 11:24 · Score: 2, Interesting

Sounds good to me. Mind if I publish your personal letters and journals and make money off them? No, of course you wonln't, because they're not your property, right?
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-20 11:31 · Score: 1, Insightful

If you obtain them without stealing the paper I've written then on, go ahead. The paper is real property.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by incom · 2003-09-20 11:34 · Score: 4, Interesting

If anything he is libertarian. Anything that requires government intervention to protect is against the true principles of capitalism. You sir are much more communist in your belief of government interventionism.

--
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by k98sven · 2003-09-20 11:48 · Score: 1

"Intellectual property" is a silly and stupid idea. Cases like this only illustrate more obviously how bad an idea it is. It should be abolished as soon as possible.

Three words:
Baby, bath water.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by gilgongo · 2003-09-20 11:55 · Score: 1

OK, it's been over 100 years now...

I think it's time people who accused other people of being "communists" understood what that term actually means.

If you are against property rights (in general, not just intellectual) then you are an anarchist. Like the Diggers, the Levellers, the Autonomen, etc.

You are absolutely, totally and utterly NOT a communist!

--
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-20 11:55 · Score: 3, Insightful

Nothing stealthy about this; they simply changed their minds, which, given that you still want "intellectual property", they can do, because it's their "property."

I, myself, don't want intellectual property in the form that it has taken--that the primary beneficiary of the property is the temporary owner of the idea or work. Intellectual property was suppose to indicate the intangible ideas that are given short-term government protection. The idea, like land, in and of itself does not have worth; it's the creation of the idea, the implementation, the effort, like working the land, which creates value.

Intellectual property initially was the term to describe that value. However, it's become more a term singularly synonymous with physical property, when ideas and creative works are distinctive different than physical property.

The mere fact that ideas can lead to economic gain is one thing. That ideas themselves, not the execution of an idea, are owned and property is a problem. That is what the ISO wants.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Kaeru+the+Frog · 2003-09-20 11:59 · Score: 1

Three words:
Baby, bath water.

Eldred vs. Ashcroft said it was OK to retroactivly extend copyright so I would think it would be OK to retoactivly remove copyright. Right? Sigh, one should hope...
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by roystgnr · 2003-09-20 12:45 · Score: 1

Anything that requires government intervention to protect is against the true principles of capitalism.

You appear to have confused capitalism with anarchy. In capitalism, we have a government which (at the bare minimum) recognizes and defends property rights: it's not capital if you can't own it, and it's not very effective capital if you can't own it without running your own police force to protect it.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by ddimas · 2003-09-20 13:15 · Score: 1

Sounds good to me. Mind if I publish your personal letters and journals and make money off them? No, of course you wonln't, because they're not your property, right?
I have no problem with you breaking into my house to get that stuff as long as you understand that, I will shoot you...
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by salesgeek · 2003-09-20 13:28 · Score: 1

No, cases like this illustrate that allowing "stealth IP" is a bad idea.

Actually, since I can't for the life of me tell the diference since I have know way of knowing what ideas are owned and what are not, I think that IP in general is a bad idea. IP is having the following positive effects on the world:

* People are dying because of the artificial monopoly created by patents on drugs.
* Real software innovation is slowing due to patents.
* IP Litigation is a huge industry.
* Kids are being sued for copying a song that can be heard often for free on the radio.

IP was necessary to build industry and science, but imagine where science and industry would go with no restrictions on what ideas can be extended and copied?

--
-- $G
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by tytyty · 2003-09-20 13:39 · Score: 1

You can kiss my round white American ass before Ill shell out to another theivin conivin International holdup organazation. Think U.N.

--
REAL penguins build their own kernels and binaries!
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by SEE · 2003-09-20 13:48 · Score: 1

Um? The end stage and ultimate goal of Marxist communism is a property-less anarchy. See Marx's Communist Manifesto for details.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by smithmc · 2003-09-20 13:58 · Score: 1

Anything that requires government intervention to protect is against the true principles of capitalism.

Nonsense. By that reasoning, laws against murder are "against the true principles of capitalism".

--
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by IM6100 · 2003-09-20 14:13 · Score: 1

There are plenty of other 19th century utopian idealogues to read, if you're going to muddle around with Marx.

Please don't stop with him. There are plenty of others. Read Henry George, look up the Roycrofters. Enjoy it all. For entertainment value only.

--
A Good Intro to NetBS
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by whereiswaldo · 2003-09-20 14:41 · Score: 1

My two cents:
It's one thing to charge ~$40 for a copy of the ISO9660 standard, but totally another thing to charge royalties on an implementation of the standard.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Saeger · 2003-09-20 14:43 · Score: 1

"In the long run, death is a choice." -- me
--

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Power to the Peaceful
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by stubear · 2003-09-20 14:47 · Score: 1

* People are dying because of the artificial monopoly created by patents on drugs.

This artificial monopoly was created by a company using non-artificial money to develop these drugs. They are recouping the costs of R&D, which is quite high. The fact that third world countries can't afford the medicine is not their problem. They need to build an infrastructure that can support education of their people that will then lead to their own scientists discovering their own cures. To borrow an oft used phrase here, these governments "need to change their business model."

* Real software innovation is slowing due to patents.

See above. While I agree that most software patents should never have been allowed, I do not believe all software patents shoudl be allowed. Some ideas are quite rare or unique and cost a lot of R&D money. Companies should be allowed to get the money back that they sunk into the project if this is the case. Real software innovation would be developing an alternative, non-infringing method to work around the patent. However, many here find it far easier to grouse about the situation instead of taking the challenge head on.

* IP Litigation is a huge industry.

Since when was this illegal? I'd rather live in a free nation that allows for oppurtunities like this than one which follows the whims of the mob (which in most cases is the vocal minority), picking anc choosing whenm how and to whom laws shoudl or should not apply.

* Kids are being sued for copying a song that can be heard often for free on the radio.

Ah, but radio pays for the license to broadcast those songs AND the quality of FM is not nearly as good as MP3s which pale in copmparison to the audio quality of full CD quality audio. P2P apps are not paying for the rights to broadcast or distribute these songs.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by LostCluster · 2003-09-20 14:57 · Score: 3, Insightful

It also seriously undermines the whole point of the ISO. The idea is to create standards that everybody will use so that we can communicate with each other. If there's a price with such systems, then clearly somebody will balk at the price and create an alturnate, and then somebody will think any price is too high and we'll get a GNU/Whatever version of the same thing.

If the ISO starts treating its standards as IP, then ISO standards will cease to have value.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by micheas · 2003-09-20 15:39 · Score: 1

* People are dying because of the artificial monopoly created by patents on drugs.
This artificial monopoly was created by a company using non-artificial money to develop these drugs. They are recouping the costs of R&D, which is quite high. The fact that third world countries can't afford the medicine is not their problem. They need to build an infrastructure that can support education of their people that will then lead to their own scientists discovering their own cures. To borrow an oft used phrase here, these governments "need to change their business model."

A huge percentage of this money comes for taxpayers in the form of State funded universities and grants from places like the NSF. so tax payers are paying for the development ot the drugs twice. Private money is scarce until phase II clinical trials. and money only shows up there if the odds are for approval. and that there is a profitable market for the drug. (vacines are not developed due to the down side risk of being sued for large damages, the low profit per dose, and limited market for the drug.
* Real software innovation is slowing due to patents.
See above. While I agree that most software patents should never have been allowed, I do not believe all software patents shoudl be allowed. Some ideas are quite rare or unique and cost a lot of R&D money. Companies should be allowed to get the money back that they sunk into the project if this is the case. Real software innovation would be developing an alternative, non-infringing method to work around the patent. However, many here find it far easier to grouse about the situation instead of taking the challenge head on.

RSA and variants of PGP did not become popular until their patents lapsed. GIMP surpasses Photoshop in every area that is not affected by patents (Panatone color matching is patented by Kodak, HP and others and the reason why professionals that deal with print complain about GIMP.)
* IP Litigation is a huge industry.
Since when was this illegal? I'd rather live in a free nation that allows for oppurtunities like this than one which follows the whims of the mob (which in most cases is the vocal minority), picking anc choosing whenm how and to whom laws shoudl or should not apply.

It is not illegal, It is bad however. It means that large corporations can (not that they always do) squash new ideas from small businesses with lawsuits.
* Kids are being sued for copying a song that can be heard often for free on the radio.
Ah, but radio pays for the license to broadcast those songs AND the quality of FM is not nearly as good as MP3s which pale in copmparison to the audio quality of full CD quality audio. P2P apps are not paying for the rights to broadcast or distribute these songs.

Copyright was originally for books and maps in this country primarily because of the high production costs of both books and maps in the eighteenth century. The cost of producing a CD have dropped to under five grand including renting space. (You can spend more but you don't have to.) People will not stop recording songs if we remove copyright from songs. We may wind up with different artists, and artists may have to find different ways of funding themselves, but we will not have a shortage of songs, which is the problem copyright is supposed to solve.

--
Work bio at MMWD
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by salesgeek · 2003-09-20 15:58 · Score: 1

They need to build an infrastructure that can support education of their people that will then lead to their own scientists discovering their own cures. To borrow an oft used phrase here, these governments "need to change their business model."

I suppose human life just has no value to you.

* IP Litigation is a huge industry.

Since when was this illegal?

Since when was it productive?

P2P apps are not paying for the rights to broadcast or distribute these songs

I suppose cobbing a $.50 track off a cd is worth $10,000 in damages? Come on.

Intellectual property is stupid. You can't really own an idea!

--
-- $G
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by ddimas · 2003-09-20 16:30 · Score: 1

Vengence. Afterwards, sleep lightly...
The law was not established to protect people like me from criminals. The law was established to protect crimanals and society from people like me.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by bezuwork's+friend · 2003-09-20 16:41 · Score: 1

As to your reply to the grandparent's first item regarding costly drugs in 3rd world countries (brought to them by TRIPS, WIPO, and the US government):
... The fact that third world countries can't afford the medicine is not their [pharmaceutical companies] problem. They [the foreign countries] need to build an infrastructure that can support education of their people that will then lead to their own scientists discovering their own cures. To borrow an oft used phrase here, these governments "need to change their business model."
IP always was, and still is (though they're starting to change it) officially national. That is, each nation is sovereign and can implement IP as it chooses, at least in theory. India, for example, did have a working "business model" for patents in the biotechnology market which was very beneficial to India - it simply didn't provide much patent protection for pharmaceuticals. This was intentional and resulted in various benefits. For one, it allowed their pharmaceutical companies to reverse engineer foreign drugs at a fraction of the original cost to foreign companies. The usual numbers I have heard is that it costs 100 million for developing a successful new drug, and the Indians could reverse engineer a drug for about 10 million. Secondly, along with the lower development costs, as the drugs were then manufactured locally, with presumably lower manufacturing costs, the drugs were cheaper than if imported. Thirdly, as the domestic industry supplied much of the pharmaceuticals, there were plenty of local jobs made available. Whether it really pans out that as India adopts stricter patent protection as mandated by TRIPS, foreign companies build more plants and thus provides jobs in India, I don't know.
My point, which has been discussed on /. before, is that India, as well as Brazil and others, do not have the full freedom to conduct business as they please. At least not while the US is ready to apply economic and political pressure on them to the benefit of US companies.
As the US is acting on the behest of the pharmaceutical companies, I think the companies are, in part, responsible for the effects of the increased costs of drugs in the 3rd world - including the deaths.
Regarding the grandparent's item of software patents:
See above. While I agree that most software patents should never have been allowed, I do not believe all software patents shoudl be allowed. Some ideas are quite rare or unique and cost a lot of R&D money. Companies should be allowed to get the money back that they sunk into the project if this is the case. Real software innovation would be developing an alternative, non-infringing method to work around the patent. However, many here find it far easier to grouse about the situation instead of taking the challenge head on.
I agree with all of this. However, the grandparent was simply noting that patents slow software innovation. I think this is also true. Somewhere I have a Law Review article which sets forth studies of various industries in the 20th century. The article's point was that many industries were stifled due to one or more companies having a stranglehold on the patents for that industry. I don't think the same exact situation exists for software today, but the effects may be the same. I.e., instead of having a handful of huge rocks [blockbuster patents] in the way of innovation, there are many many smaller rocks [the patent portfolios of such as Microsoft].
Regarding the grandparent's comment that IP litigation is huge.
Again I don't disagree with what you said, but the grandparent's point is that all this litigation is not good. Being in law school, I just note that it is quite common to restrict the public's right to sue under the argument that 'we don't want to open the judicial floodgates' by allowing suits for a given cause of action (or the application of an old cause of action to a new situation). The idea being that t
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by orthogonal · 2003-09-20 17:51 · Score: 1

It also seriously undermines the whole point of the ISO. The idea is to create standards that everybody will use so that we can communicate with each other.

Mod parent up; this is perhaps even more central than the standard argument over IP.

The ISO ( International Organization for Standardization) exists to facilitate (make easier) the interchnage of ideas, products, software -- culture in general -- by creating commonly accepted -- standardized -- mechanisms of interchange.

By charging for these common mechanisms, they pervert their whole purpose: it's like saying we should all speak a common language, and "that'll be $9.95 for the first 50 words", or like advocating a common currency only to annnounce you'll skim off 5% as a special taz for anyone using it. What next? Royalties on the use of mettric units?

Attempts to charge for the use of these standards just means creating a alternative community that doesn't standardize because it's cheaper not to.

But I'm just echoing the parent comment, which deserves to be modded up.

--
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Baki · 2003-09-20 17:59 · Score: 1

No, you cannot make good IP from bad IP. The whole concept is twisted and harmful to civilization.

Science and civilization never would have developed if IP would have existed before the 20th century. In contrast it flourished without it.

I cannot find one good and beneficial example of IP today (don't start again about the cliche example w.r.t. pharmaindustry, they are a bunch of criminals as well and could/should be organized radically different).

I think/hope that the current idiocy and overdoing IP shall lead to a backlash, that it shall open the publics eyes and eventually lead to the total abolishment from everything that is related to it.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Baki · 2003-09-20 18:08 · Score: 1

IP was necessary to build industry and science, but imagine where science and industry would go with no restrictions on what ideas can be extended and copied?
IP was not necessary at too al build science. Science has developed without IP. Until very recently IP was an unknown phenomenen in science; science could develop only through free exchange of information and ideas.
As for industry: it is hard to tell. IP laws have existed during most of the industrial era, though not much in the first third of it (19th century). The question is if industry and engineering would not have developed faster and better without IP. I do believe so, and noone has ever proven that IP is beneficial, other than the vague feeling that some companies might have invested less in R&D without it.
While that may be true, others might have invested more. Because IP protection enabled them to comfortably lean back and cash in on their "invention", and it killed competition by granting a monopoly to the "inventor" (which may just have been lucky in many cases).
I see more proof to the contrary: The Japanese economic wonder after WW2 developed without IP at all. It has stagnated in a time that IP laws were introduced, though stagnation has other causes as well. No matter what, it is my firm belief that IP only protects vested interests of large companies that can afford to buy ever more restrictive IP laws. They have only drawbacks for society, economy and our culture (even though some individuals might profit mightily from them).
Therefore it must be abolished.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Baki · 2003-09-20 18:18 · Score: 1

Interesting idea. OTOH, it was the enemy (concentrated in the WIPO) who introduced this term. So if they do not differentiate and have the nuances, why should we, the victims of copyrights, patents and trademarks (i.e. almost all normal people).

Lets generalize too and abolish them all. I think we can turn the "intelectual property" generalization to our advantage: If you convince people that in effect such laws try to make someone elses property that what is in their own brains (the intellect) it might create a backlash and a force which is needed to abolish all laws w.r.t. copyrights, patents and trademarks.

Extremism (of the IP proponents) causes an extreme counter reaction. One day the proponents shall regret that they went too far and could not limit their greed.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Sivaram_Velauthapill · 2003-09-20 18:39 · Score: 1

IBM is just as worse as Microsoft is. In fact, the worst of the big tech companies is probably Intel--far worse than MS. Admit it... The reason MS wins EASILY is because they actually make good products (some of them) and have a strong marketing. Examples of good products include MS Visual Studio (name a competitor now or then which was as good), MS Encarta (ever wonder why it killed the other encyclopedia vendors), Office (it was better than Wordperfect or Smartsuite at that time), etc...

Sivaram Velauthapillai

--
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Sivaram_Velauthapill · 2003-09-20 18:42 · Score: 1

Marx is right; you guys and your capitalism is not... Capitalism WILL collapse!!!

Sivaram Velauthapillai

--
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Sivaram_Velauthapill · 2003-09-20 18:55 · Score: 1

If you hate the UN so much, why don't you pull out of it? It is idiotic of you to hate the UN when USA is the one that provides the most money (of any country) to it...

Sivaram Velauthapillai

--
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by IM6100 · 2003-09-20 19:17 · Score: 1

Marx used in a 'present tense' context?

How quaint.

--
A Good Intro to NetBS
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by TomV · 2003-09-20 19:27 · Score: 1

The idea is to create standards that everybody will use so that we can communicate with each other.

And this particular standard has uses far, far beyond just the Internet.

I work at a fulfilment compnay. So obviously we've done a lot of work integrating our internal systems with our clients' preferrred couriers - DHL, UPS and so forth. And when we exchange address and customs-value information, we use ISO 3166 3-character countries (e.g. USA, GBR, DEU, FRA) and ISO 4127 Currencies (USD, GBP, EUR).

Now clearly both we and the couriers and the clients who supply us with order information benefit from the availability of these agreed codes, that's the point of standards.

But the amount of re-infrastructuring work we'd have to do to move away from using the ISO codes would be prohibitive (i.e. it could be a company-killing non-profit expense), which hardly seems fair recompense for the amount of work thatgoes into being compliant in the first place.

I also note that the Unicode Technical Committee also has concerns about these satndards remaining royalty free and notes that a lot of third-party pre-existing work was used in creating them in the first place.

TomV
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by TomV · 2003-09-20 19:49 · Score: 1

I'm not able to comment on the Diggers or the Autonomen.

But to call the Levellers anarchists is to call the framers of the US constitution anarchists.

Consider the start of Lilburne's Manifesto of 1649:

After the long and tedious prosecution of a most unnaturall cruell, homebred war, occasioned by divisions and distempers amongst our selves, and those distempers arising from the uncertaintie of our Government, and the exercise of un-limited or Arbitrary power, by such as have been trusted with supreme and subordinate Authority, whereby multitudes of grevances and intolerable oppressions have been brought upon us. And finding after eight yeares experience and expectation all indeavours hitherto used, or remedies hitherto applyed, to have encreased rather than diminished our distractions, and that if not speedily prevented our falling againe into factions and divisions; will not only deprive us of the benefit of all those wonderful Victories God hath vouchsafed against such as fought our bondage, but expose us first to poverty and misery, and then to be destroyed by forraigne enemies.

And being earnestly desirous to make a right use of that opportunity God hath given us to make this Nation Free and Happy, to reconcile our differences, and beget a perfect amitie and friendship once more amongst us, that we may stand clear in our consciences before Almighty God, as unbyassed by any corrupt Interest or particular advantages, and manifest to all the world that our indeavours have not proceeded from malice to the persons of any, or enmity against opinions; but in reference to the peace and prosperity of the Common-wealth, and for prevention of like distractions, and removall of all grievances; We the free People of England, to whom God hath given hearts, means and opportunity to effect the same, do with submission to his wisdom, in his name, and desiring the equity thereof may be to his praise and glory; Agree to ascertain our Government, to abolish all arbitrary Power, and to set bounds and limits both to our Supreme, and all Subordinate Authority, and remove all known Grievances.
Not too far from

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
And what kind of anarchist sets out a requirement in his manifesto that:

I.---That the Supreme Authority of England and the Territories therewith incorporate, shall be and reside henceforward in a Representative of the People consisting of four hundred persons, but no more; in the choice of whom (according to naturall right) all men of the age of one and twenty yeers and upwards (not being servants, or receiving alms, or having served in the late King in Arms or voluntary Contributions) shall have their voices; and be capable of being elected to that Supreme Trust those who served the King being disabled for ten years onely. All things concerning the distribution of the said four hundred Members proportionable to the respective parts of the Nation, the severall places for Election, the manner of giving and taking Voyces, with all Circumstances of like nature, tending to the compleating and equall proceedings at Elections, as also their Salary, is referred to be setled by this present Parliament, in such sort as the next Representative may be in a certain capacity to meet with safety at the time herein expressed: and such
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Elektroschock · 2003-09-20 20:46 · Score: 1

The please listen what OSI writes about it: they don't support a "crusade against patents".

Are you guys opposed to intellectual property rights?
The Open Source Initiative does not have a position on whether ideas can be owned, whether patents are good or bad, or any of the related controversies. We think the economic self-interest arguments for open source are strong enough that nobody needs to go on any moral crusades about it.

Crusade reminds me of the stupid remarks of GWBush, his "crusade against evil". And how does BinLaden call the West? "Crusaders"

I prefer a crusade against evil patents.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by danila · 2003-09-20 20:50 · Score: 1

Stealth IP is bad, but the problem is bigger. No matter what anyone says, two-letter combinations should not "belong" to anyone. Even if ISO said from the very beginning "we own" these, they should still be immediately anally raped and then shot. Look, country codes are not, cannot be and should not be "property", in whatever sense you ascribe to this word. ISO has no right to claim that they own these codes - neither now, nor when they first compiled the list.

--
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Simon+Brooke · 2003-09-20 22:42 · Score: 1
* People are dying because of the artificial monopoly created by patents on drugs.
This artificial monopoly was created by a company using non-artificial money to develop these drugs. They are recouping the costs of R&D, which is quite high. The fact that third world countries can't afford the medicine is not their problem. They need to build an infrastructure that can support education of their people that will then lead to their own scientists discovering their own cures. To borrow an oft used phrase here, these governments "need to change their business model."

Except that this standard parrot fashion argument happens not to be true. The overwhelming majority of new drugs are created/invented/discovered by public Universities and other publicly funded institutions, and by charities such as Cancer Research. We don't actually need private sector firms in this marketplace at all, and they add little or no value. Consequently there's no public policy benefit to protecting their 'Intellectual Property'

* IP Litigation is a huge industry.
Since when was this illegal? I'd rather live in a free nation that allows for oppurtunities like this than one which follows the whims of the mob (which in most cases is the vocal minority), picking anc choosing whenm how and to whom laws shoudl or should not apply
.
There are two points to be made here:
1. IP litigation adds no value. It is purely parasytic on the creative process. No-one except the lawyers benefits from it at all.
2. There is, in my opinion, something of a contradiction in terms about a so-called 'free' society in which the rich corporations buy the laws. In the end it becomes necessary for the private citizen to defy a corrupt state: that is, after all, what the US War of Independence was all about. For US (or UK, for that matter) citizens to talk about living in a 'free' society, now shows a remarkable degree of self-delusion.
--
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by salesgeek · 2003-09-21 00:33 · Score: 1

No matter what, it is my firm belief that IP only protects vested interests of large companies that can afford to buy ever more restrictive IP laws

It seems that IP has become more and more granular, covering smaller and smaller details. 100 years ago, you tradmarked your name and logo, but not the shape of the flap on your purse. 100 years ago, you would patent an invention, not a common application of someon else's invention (one click shopping). 100 years ago, you would copyright your book and the copyright would expire one day so you had to keep writing.

All that happens with IP is:

* Smaller ideas are owned.
* The system becomes more punative.
* Ownership rights are extended to perpetuity.

--
-- $G
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by jcast · 2003-09-21 01:38 · Score: 1

Actually, the bare minimum for capitalism is recognition of property and contract rights. If you don't have freedom of contract, you need mucho government regulation to cover areas like polution control, intellectual property, warranties, and others where good law consists of a compromise between conflicting interests, not just the errection of a single interest as supreme (as in traditional property law).

--
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Quickening · 2003-09-21 01:40 · Score: 1

I agree. The whole point of patents in the first place was to allow the inventor _time_ to implement his idea, and profit from it, before someone else (like M$ with incomparably more resources to implement said stolen idea) could copy it.

--
tcboo
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Darren+Winsper · 2003-09-21 05:49 · Score: 1

You can say that all you want, you're wrong.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Rich0 · 2003-09-22 08:06 · Score: 1

They are trying to make those drugs themselves.

Depends on how you define make. If you mean by make, pressing it into a pill, then yes.

If you mean by make, discovering how to make the drug, then no.

Drugmakers have no objection to anyone doing the latter. But the latter is where the HUGE research investment has to be made.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Rich0 · 2003-09-22 08:13 · Score: 1

The overwhelming majority of new drugs are created/invented/discovered by public Universities and other publicly funded institutions, and by charities such as Cancer Research [cancerresearchuk.org].

Then why are drugs so expensive? Why doesn't Bill Gates (who has money to spare) start a business undercutting drug prices. He could bid on a drug coming out of a university lab for depression and then go head-to-head with the big pharma labs and undercut them on price. Each time somebody did this the prices would fall lower and lower. This is how all industries operate.

The reason this doesn't happen with drugs is that your assertion is partially true at best. Many if not most drugs are discovered by private startups and big-name pharma companies. Any drug (regardless of origin) is almost certain to prove unsafe or ineffective - after having tens or hundreds of millions of dollars spent on development. The few drugs which make it to the market are prices to reflect the risk of development. The barriers to entry are high due to the HUGE research capital costs - pharma companies don't just take a molecule from a university and press it into pills and mark it up 10,000%.
Re:Abolish "intellectual property". by Rich0 · 2003-09-22 08:18 · Score: 1

Actually, most big-name pharma companies donate quite a bit of medicine to the 3rd world, or deeply discount it. They object to having the drug made by 3rd parties because they don't want a lot of pharma plants in countries like India which don't respect patents tooled up for heavy production of their products. Sure, they would start out by selling their drug to Nigeria, but soon somebody will start diverting product to European or American consumers, and then the price drops to an unprofitable level for the original company (which did the world (and themselves) a service discovering the cure in the first place).

There has to be a balance - nobody wants to see people dying in the middle of Africa. However, if the big pharma company didn't discover the cure for whatever ails them then we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place. Whoever pays to discover and develop the drug should receive payment for this service, in whatever form it ends up taking.

Welcome ! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-20 11:13 · Score: 4, Funny

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!

Re:Welcome ! by MNJavaGuy · 2003-09-20 11:30 · Score: 1, Funny

I, for one, welcome our new redundant joke overl....ah, fsck it......
Re:Welcome ! by Jonas+the+Bold · 2003-09-20 11:47 · Score: 1

I, for one, don't think these jokes are funny anymore and don't know why they keep getting modded as such.

--
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice

How long ... by El+Cubano · 2003-09-20 11:15 · Score: 3, Insightful

How long until you need to get license for your child when he is born so that he can speak his native language? How about a license to learn/teach a foreign language in shool?

This on the same level of absurdity as the SCO lawsuit.

Re:How long ... by Monkelectric · 2003-09-20 11:51 · Score: 1

For a discussion of that and other topics in a brilliant radio play format check out the Sean Kennedy Chronicles.

--
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Re:How long ... by Mattsson · 2003-09-20 12:20 · Score: 1

Or rather: How long before you have to pay a royalty to some pharmacutical company for using "their" genes when creating a child?

"Ehh? We own the gene for blond hair! Your child includes some of our intellectual property, pay up or terminate it..."

--
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Re:How long ... by blibbleblobble · 2003-09-20 23:46 · Score: 1

"How long until you need to get license for your child when he is born so that he can speak his native language? How about a license to learn/teach a foreign language in shool?"

Take that idea further, and you've got the start of an essay similar to right to read

Top Level Royalties! by joeszilagyi · 2003-09-20 11:16 · Score: 3, Funny

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?

Re:Top Level Royalties! by joeszilagyi · 2003-09-20 11:31 · Score: 1

Except he would get royalties on those, too. Yay, commerce!

--
Dude, where's my packet?

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2003-09-20 11:17 · Score: 1, Interesting

Comment removed based on user account deletion

And in other news by darkstar949 · 2003-09-20 11:19 · Score: 4, Funny

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.

Re:And in other news by kraiken · 2003-09-20 11:35 · Score: 1

SCO have now published an correction on the previous news item. SCO are in fact demanding 1000 USD per CPU, where CPU is defined as a single 'brain'. Therefore even thinking in English will require a license.
In a statement, SCO's press spokesperson said, "We do not yet have a mechanism to ensure only licensed users infringe upon our property rights, but we are working on a system which we will release any day now. If you pay now you will not face court action".
Promptly after releasing this statement, they sued all publications reporting the statement for a record 49 billion USD.
This publication will now self destruct....
Re:And in other news by KanshuShintai · 2003-09-20 12:49 · Score: 1

and in joining with the government of oceania, they will soon be calling for royalties for thoughts in english . . .
Re:And in other news by Sri+Lumpa · 2003-09-20 13:04 · Score: 1

Cela veux dire que tu leur doit trente et un mille dollars (en comptant les milles dollars US comme quatre mots) et que l'idiot qui va essayer de me traduire leur devra environ trente quatre milles dollars.

--
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Re:And in other news by philbowman · 2003-09-20 21:33 · Score: 1

How dare they! Don't they know the Queen owns English? SCO and the USA should be expecting a lawsuit forthwith. (USA for creating a derivative work, of course... :-)

--
Phil

No "intellectual property", no stealth. by Thinkit3 · 2003-09-20 11:20 · Score: 1

Simple as that. If there are no "intellectual property" laws, then this type of stealth cannot happen. Problem solved.

--
-Libertarian secular transhumanist

Re:No "intellectual property", no stealth. by kelnos · 2003-09-20 11:57 · Score: 1

ah, if only the world were only as simple as you seem to think. current IP laws aren't perfect. far from it. they need some serious rethinking. but getting rid of them all together will only create more problems than it solves.

--
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.

You are a robot, I presume? by Thinkit3 · 2003-09-20 11:24 · Score: 4, Funny

That communist line is pretty old. Time to update your database--"terrorists" are the current enemy.

--
-Libertarian secular transhumanist

Cost of Databases? by Scottm87 · 2003-09-20 11:25 · Score: 3, Informative

The ISO complains of the cost of keeping a few databases... Something that is cheap to begin with AND would probably be done by others if necessary. Besides, ISO collects more than enough money from companies looking to get certification.

Re:Cost of Databases? by kardar · 2003-09-20 12:12 · Score: 1

Have you ever seen how much ISO charges for their standards? You have some standards that are just a few pages, and they are like $75.00.

It's not surprising, not surprising at all. I predict that doing anything commercial on the internet is going to incur some costs, just like putting together a car costs money.

Standards are quite expensive. On the other hand, you have RFCs, which are publically available. And you also have IEEE giving away their 802 standards for free, in PDF form, once those standards are older than 6 months.

So I think it can work both ways, but you have to expect standards organizations to charge what seems like a lot for their standards, just like school textbooks tend to cost a lot more than they should, really.

The IEEE Posix Standards will cost you an arm and a leg if you want to look at those.

We should look to find a way to get the whole thing sponsored, if possible - IEEE is giving away the 802 standards because they got sponsorship to do it and they felt it was important.

I'll just use my *own* charset! by sketerpot · 2003-09-20 11:25 · Score: 2, Insightful

I offer, for your royalty-free consideration, the following scheme for avoiding paying royalties to people who apparently never learned how to think. Instead of "en-us", use "english-usa", instead of "de", use "deutch" (sp?), and so on.

Too incompatible for you? If so, we should just use GIFs and cough up to Unisys. Or these ISO yahoos could stop trying to charge for everything. If it's going to be standard, you shouldn't charge money for it.

Re:I'll just use my *own* charset! by MaxTardiveau · 2003-09-20 11:31 · Score: 1

Time to update your ranting points, my friend. The Unisys patent has expired. You're free to use GIF as you please.
Sometimes IP laws *do* work as intended.
-- Max
Re:I'll just use my *own* charset! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-20 11:42 · Score: 1, Interesting

There is more than one country. There is more than one Unisys patent.

The inventor who applies for a patent in the United States generally has one year to apply for a patent elsewhere. Terry Welch, the inventor of LZW data compression, used this entire window. Thus, patents on LZW in some countries don't expire until June 2004.
Re:I'll just use my *own* charset! by dvdeug · 2003-09-20 23:46 · Score: 1

I offer, for your royalty-free consideration, the following scheme for avoiding paying royalties to people who apparently never learned how to think. Instead of "en-us", use "english-usa", instead of "de", use "deutch" (sp?), and so on.

Great. Let's see how well the computer deals with having "german", "deutsch", "de" (it's not just going to disappear) and a bunch of spellings like "deutch" mean the same thing. Or (fun of fun) "interlingua", which has been used for at least three completely different languages.
Re:I'll just use my *own* charset! by sketerpot · 2003-09-21 04:34 · Score: 1

And that, my fellow fellow, is why the ISO is way out of line with this. I hate "pay us money or be incompatible" tactics. I think (although far be it from me to know what I was thinking yesterday) that I was trying to make that point.

umm... by justMichael · 2003-09-20 11:26 · Score: 3, Insightful

I don't think that LANG="en-US" would get you in any trouble..

but LANG="en_US" might ;-)

Re:umm... by RickHunter · 2003-09-20 11:53 · Score: 1

Well, we've got a solution! We define the OSI language code standard that's exactly the same as this one, but replaces all _s with -s. See, Slashdot can produce things other than bad BSD trolls and SCO stories!
Re:umm... by mikiN · 2003-09-20 15:56 · Score: 1

No you don't!

Your algorithm for transforming the OSI language codes into something else is in fact a circumvention of a copy-protection scheme and thus in violation of the DMCA. (Hint: the '_' is the copy protect character...)

1. Sue
2. Sue some more
3. ?
4. Profit!

--
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!

Don't click that sig... by Duckman5 · 2003-09-20 11:26 · Score: 2, Informative

Evil, evil goatse troll. I just thought i'd warn everyone else. I'm gonna go wash out my brain and scorch out my eyes now...

Re:Don't click that sig... by incom · 2003-09-20 11:38 · Score: 1

Damn, I should've believed you, nooooooooo......

--
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Re:Don't click that sig... by Flamerule · 2003-09-20 11:44 · Score: 1

God DAMN it!
Unfortunately dude, your warning may be doing more harm then good... You just made me curious, and he totally punked me with that magic eye thing.
Re:Don't click that sig... by ScrewMaster · 2003-09-20 11:49 · Score: 1

Dammit, I shoulda listened to you. Here I am having leftover pizza for dinner and THAT shows up on my screen. Dammit.

--
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.

Money, of course... by rjch · 2003-09-20 11:26 · Score: 2, Insightful

On what grounds could uttering lang="en-US" be subject to any intellectual property right that justified any royalty demand?

On the grounds that someone thinks they have half a chance of collecting money by saying "it's mine!" of course.

Not Surprised by rhysweatherley · 2003-09-20 11:27 · Score: 4, Insightful

The ISO is a standards organisation that has consistently "not got it" when it comes to making standards available to the public.

Try Googling for most major standards and you'll get nothing but price lists, despite the fact that their entire organisation's publishing needs could be run off a 486 in a cupboard running a Web server.

I hope we can use this incident to start a wider discussion with ISO and educate them that a public standard that isn't available to the public free of charge kind of defeats the purpose of the exercise.

Re:Not Surprised by divec · 2003-09-20 11:42 · Score: 4, Informative

Not Surprised [...] The ISO is a standards organisation that has consistently "not got it" [...] a public standard that isn't available to the public free of charge kind of defeats the purpose of the exercise.

You're right, but this proposal is an order of magnitude worse. Even if the ISO C spec is non-free, it is possible to write implementations of that standard which are free (GCC, TCC etc). If this proposal were to be followed, it'd be impossible to write open-source software which used ISO 3166 / 639 codes for countries or languages. This is especially problematic since they've waited for these codes to become widespread (e.g. as vital parts of the HTML, XML and POSIX standards) before saying they might have a problem with their free use.

This suggests to me that the proponent doesn't understand about free / open-source software, which is currently contributing hugely towards the very standardisation ISO is supposed to promote.

--
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Re:Not Surprised by zulux · 2003-09-20 11:47 · Score: 1

The ISO sucks. Their a monney grubbing orginistation that needs to die.

They charge the comiitie members to *make* the standards.
They charge the public to view the standards.

And for what? They provide no value.

The C++/C fiaso is a joke - they are allowing the two language to diverge for no good reason. C++ should be a superset of C, but not accoring to the ISO - it's getting harder all the time to create proper ISO C code that works with an ISO C++ compiler in C++ mode withoug a crap load of macros and kludges.

Idiots.

The C++ committie could be replaced by that Dinkumware guy and Stroustroup and a case of beer.

--
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Re:Not Surprised by the_greywolf · 2003-09-20 12:05 · Score: 1

try going to ISO for their Fortran specs.

45 swiss francs?!?! FOR A PDF?

--
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
Re:Not Surprised by smeenz · 2003-09-20 18:24 · Score: 1

It's not just the open source community that are concerned about this proposal - Anyone writing commercial code has exactly the same problem.
Sure they might have money that could be paid to the ISO, but that doesn't mean that should or would be any more willing to pay it than an open-source developer.
Re:Not Surprised by TomV · 2003-09-20 20:00 · Score: 1

Anyone writing commercial code has exactly the same problem.

I work at a fulfilment house. Our internal software's very much commercial closed source - it encapsulates all the business logic that lets us operate and compete.

And we use 3166 countries and 4127 currencies everywhere to make sure that our systems can interoperate internally and with external stuff like clients' order-creation systems and courier companies' addressing requirements.

TomV

ISO by El · 2003-09-20 11:28 · Score: 4, Interesting

These are the same guys who think they can set standards by copyrighting the standards and charging hundreds of dollars for a copy. I've implemented ISO standards; it was NOT pretty. Beleive me, the IETF model is orders of magnitude better. IETF: All standards available for free download. Draft standards require several independent implementations before approved. ISO: Argue about standard for several years in committee. Solve arguement by adding all the features competing companies ask for. Publish standard. Then spend next couple years publishing addendums to standard as people try to implement it and discover it's ambiguous and unimplementable. Why do you think we're all still running TCP/IP instead of the ISO/OSI protocol stack? Hint: Many years ago a company called Touch Communications implemented the entire ISO/OSI stack under DOS. It took around 600K -- leaving about 40K leftover for your application!

--

"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney

Re:ISO by cperciva · 2003-09-20 11:34 · Score: 4, Informative

Why do you think we're all still running TCP/IP instead of the ISO/OSI protocol stack?

We're running TCP/IP because the CSRG decided to release BSD under a free license.

TCP/IP might be better than OSI, but we're not using TCP/IP for any technical reasons; we're using TCP/IP because it is the standard, it is the standard because everyone supports it, and everyone supports it because there was a free TCP/IP stack available for anyone who wanted it.

--
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Re:ISO by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-20 11:45 · Score: 2, Informative

Or, was paid by the DoD to release it under a free, commercial-friendly license.

But back to the grandparent's point -- it's been said that the RFCs don't fully specify TCP/IP. That's why a "official" reference implementation like Berkeley helps adoption immensely.
Re:ISO by RevSmiley · 2003-09-20 13:18 · Score: 1

You make a bunch of good points.

You didn't mention the buckets o' money getting ISO certifcation costs to become and maintain. Lots of places (like the US government) will not do business for certain products unless you have ISO certifications and the products are 100% compliant.

They can take their "standards" and shove them all if this is what they are going to persue through out their organization.

Japan loves the ISO too :/

--
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
Re:ISO by putaro · 2003-09-20 14:30 · Score: 1

No, we're running TCP/IP because ISO just plain sucked. Back in the late '80's I attended a Usenet lecture on the OSI RPC mechanism (I think it was called ROSE). I saw a lot of strange stuff in it, especially some things that caused it to have performance problems on RISC processors. After the lecture I asked the speaker, who was one of the authors of the standard, how he thought it compared against Sun RPC (which was then the most well known RPC mechanism). He said that he had never looked at the Sun RPC specs or implementation. Arrogance again leads to downfall.
Re:ISO by Animats · 2003-09-20 16:30 · Score: 1

it's been said that the RFCs don't fully specify TCP/IP. That's why a "official" reference implementation like Berkeley helps adoption immensely.
Baloney. There were several implementations before the one from Berkeley, and the spec was strong enough to force them to interoperate. I was one of the people involved in making them interoperate. At first, the Berkeley guys didn't want to change their implementation where it didn't match the spec, but that didn't last long.
Berkeley just happened to be funded by the Government to give it away.

One-tenth of a penny by MaxTardiveau · 2003-09-20 11:28 · Score: 3, Insightful

every time I enter e.g. www.yahoo.fr -- maybe a pop-up that informs me that the URL I have just entered contains copyrighted material, and that I have to pay the fee or face infringement penalties.

The future looks bright!

Clearly, ISO invented the use of "US" for United States and "UK" for United Kingdom. They deserve to be rewarded for their creativity.

[walks away shaking his head]

-- Max

That's why I put it in quotes. by Thinkit3 · 2003-09-20 11:31 · Score: 1

I use it purposely to show that it makes no sense putting those words together. In quotes so I am mocking it.

--
-Libertarian secular transhumanist

Re:Sorry but you leftist bastards piss me off. by gellenburg · 2003-09-20 11:31 · Score: 2, Informative

Perhaps the following discussion would better help you understand just how fucked up IP & Copyrights have now become.

lang="en_US" by BabyDave · 2003-09-20 11:31 · Score: 5, Funny

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.

/me hears a knock at the door.
/me opens it to find Frenchmen, Germans, Celts, Normans, Danes, Vikings, Romans, Greeks, etc ... all accompanied by lawyers.

Re:lang="en_US" by El · 2003-09-20 11:39 · Score: 1

I thought that's why we spelled it "center" and not "centre" -- to avoid paying royalities to the Brits!

--
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Re:lang="en_US" by antimuon · 2003-09-20 12:00 · Score: 1

Of course, then you Brits have to pay the French, Germans (where do you think "kindergarten" came from?), Italians (after all, alot of your words have Latin roots)... and of course, all British subjects must also forward all payments the queen, as she is the only one with rights you know... she 0wnz0rs U ;)

The English language, the biggest "IP thief" of the languages... woot!
Re:lang="en_US" by antimuon · 2003-09-20 12:08 · Score: 1

/me *hangs head in shame for not reading post all the way through*

/me in pompous voice "I now claim as my IP not reading through the post fully before replying, all you slashdotters owe me big time"

/me realizes that there is too much prior art.... and walks away dejected
Re:lang="en_US" by zakezuke · 2003-09-20 12:14 · Score: 1

That does it, I'm heading to Finland. As far as common roots go, Finnish has the least of them out of all languages in europe.

If I could only stand the taste of salmalki though.

--
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Re:lang="en_US" by Nexus+Seven · 2003-09-20 12:28 · Score: 1

The word kindergarten isn't used in Britain. The term nursery school is instead.

The are very few modern german words in use in Britain - much fewer than the US, which had a large germanic population in the early part of it's history.
Re:lang="en_US" by Pius+II. · 2003-09-20 12:38 · Score: 1

Where do you think the words "the, word, is, in, than, had, a" come from? Perhaps from "das, wort, ist, in, denn, hat, ein"? I'd say seven of the words you used are quite a lot.
Note that I didn't include just similar sounding words (School-Schule, modern-modern, nurse-Nurse,population-Population); the former are of german origin, while the latter both german and english inherited from the "roman invaders" :-).
Re:lang="en_US" by Sri+Lumpa · 2003-09-20 13:13 · Score: 1

Yeah, but your poor attempts at obfuscation do not hide the fact that center is a clear derivative of the word centre.

And having deliberately obfuscated the language demonstrate willful infringement which means triple damages. Bouahahahaha.

--
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Re:lang="en_US" by Sri+Lumpa · 2003-09-20 13:16 · Score: 1

Yeah, but are they descending from German or are German and English inheriting them from an older language common to both culture?

--
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Re:lang="en_US" by graxrmelg · 2003-09-20 13:22 · Score: 1

No, "the, word, is, in, than, had, a" did not come from "das, wort, ist, in, denn, hat, ein", any more than humans came from apes or you came from your cousin. Both came from a common ancestor.

Part of the problem is that in English the words "German" and "Germanic" are similar. That doesn't mean that all Germanic languages come from German. In other languages, the confusion doesn't arise: deutsch/germanisch, aleman/germanico, tedesco/germanico, for example.
Re:lang="en_US" by jemfinch · 2003-09-20 17:45 · Score: 1

Hey, us Brits invented the language

For someone who invented the language, you sure have a funny way of spelling, "We Brits invented the language" :)

Jeremy

--
Looking for a Python IRC bot?
Re:lang="en_US" by drosselmeyer · 2003-09-20 18:20 · Score: 1

That's it, I'm swearing off speaking this one and switching to Esperanto. At least the amount of people eligible to copyright it is much smaller. :)

--
In Soviet Russia... RUSSIANS comment on YOU.
Re:lang="en_US" by elvum · 2003-09-20 21:23 · Score: 1

It's a colloquialism.
Re:lang="en_US" by belroth · 2003-09-21 01:08 · Score: 1

You'd be better of heading for Iceland.
IIRC it has the least changed language of the Nordic countries and seems to be (NO pun intended) a cool place to live.
Apparently you can use a snowmobile to cross open stretches of water if you're going fast enough - it will plane if you don't slow down or turn.
I haven't been yet, but I'd like to. Shame there are no trees though.

--
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.

Re:Sorry but you partisan bastards piss me off. by bobthemonkey13 · 2003-09-20 11:32 · Score: 1

Wow, way to take a sensible comment body and completely nullify it with a retarded title. I just love how people assume that every problem boils down to a left-right issue. Just check the box next to the correct letter, and you're free from having to think at all. Government by the people doesn't work when the people's behaviour can be adequately modeled with strcmp()*.

* I for one welcome our new C Library overlords.

ISO to charge for use of proteins, amino acids by Saint+Aardvark · 2003-09-20 11:32 · Score: 4, Funny

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND - In what one observer termed a "trial balloon", the ISO today released a white paper proposing a mandatory licensing fee for the use of "amino acids, proteins, and all derivatory compounds...for the use, creation, furtherance and sustaining of life on Earth."

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!

Re:ISO to charge for use of proteins, amino acids by sketerpot · 2003-09-20 12:00 · Score: 1

"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."
Yes, I figured it has to be something like that. It sounds like RMS, all right. But hey, if he's managed to get something better, I'm game---I'll switch over when I'm old and gray, and then hopefully my new body will expand my lifespan! Until then, I want to have some chance of getting la---um never mind.
Re:ISO to charge for use of proteins, amino acids by stwrtpj · 2003-09-20 13:46 · Score: 2, Funny

It took some work to come up with a Free organic chemical basis for life, but he thought it was worthwhile
And he will insist that everyone refer to it as "GNU/DNA"

--
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)

Re:ha by Jameth · 2003-09-20 11:33 · Score: 1

Actually, it's just the TLA's

Restores my faith in AC's. by Thinkit3 · 2003-09-20 11:34 · Score: 1

A coward you are not!

--
-Libertarian secular transhumanist

Re:Sorry but you leftist bastards piss me off. by Jameth · 2003-09-20 11:36 · Score: 1

I believe that the parent was not referring to how fucked up they are, but whether or not they have any value. Many people on Slashdot say to abolish IP entirely, which is totally separate from fixing it.

Much as we agree... by Thinkit3 · 2003-09-20 11:37 · Score: 1

Yes, I'm libertarian, but I think the whole communist as bait thing gets old. Throwing it back at them doesn't do much good. The issues are not the same because we're talking physical property versus "intellectual property".

--
-Libertarian secular transhumanist

Metric System by dfn5 · 2003-09-20 11:38 · Score: 3, Funny

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.

Re:Metric System by GISGEOLOGYGEEK · 2003-09-20 11:50 · Score: 1

sucker .. The US was one of the first countries in the world to adopt the metric system 200 years ago. It's just that the US was lazy and stopped after making the money system metric.

--
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Re:Metric System by ideut · 2003-09-20 12:09 · Score: 1

You seem to be conflating "decimal" with "metric".

--
--
Re:Metric System by GISGEOLOGYGEEK · 2003-09-20 12:38 · Score: 1

yes, the money is decimal, but that is the basis of the metric system ... base 10 numbers. 1792 is the date when decimal money was proposed, and it was in this era when metric was put forth as the official system in France where it originated.

and actually it seems that for 110 years your feet and pounds have been defined by your own government in terms of so many meters or kilograms. In other words your own measurements are a derivation and complication of metric standards.

http://ts.nist.gov/ts/htdocs/200/202/lc1136a.htm

--
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Re:Metric System by ideut · 2003-09-20 22:37 · Score: 1

yes, the money is decimal, but that is the basis of the metric system ... base 10 numbers.

The metric system is indeed decimal. The USD currency is also decimal. That does not imply that the USD currency is metric.
My car is blue. The sky is blue. Therefore the sky is a car.

and actually it seems that for 110 years your feet and pounds have been defined by your own government in terms of so many meters or kilograms.

WTF? My own government? Talk about making assumptions. Oh, look what GISGEOLOGYGEEK's government is up to at the moment!

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--

Outside the US by yerricde · 2003-09-20 11:40 · Score: 1

Foreign counterparts to U.S. Patent 4,558,302 are still in force for at least another nine months in Europe, Japan, Canada, and Australia.

--
Will I retire or break 10K?

Re:en-US by El · 2003-09-20 11:41 · Score: 1

Check your browser languages settings. In HTTP, it is "en-us".

--

"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney

Conflict of interest? by DogIsMyCoprocessor · 2003-09-20 11:43 · Score: 4, Funny

In examining the HTTP response headers for this page, I notice the following -

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."

Shoot IT guys wearing ties by yasa · 2003-09-20 11:46 · Score: 1

This solves a lot of problems! :D

Go ahead... by lordvdr · 2003-09-20 11:49 · Score: 3, Insightful

Something this absurd, while interesting, shouldn't even be worth caring about. The moment they choose to charge royalties, "the world" will choose to accept 'US-en' as the "standard" for indicating US English or 'eng-USA' or whatever and who cares. Remember Unisys? how far did they really get with their .gif fees? everyone said "*uck you", we'll work around it. everyone will do the same with this.

--
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor - Albert Einstein

Re:Go ahead... by rock_climbing_guy · 2003-09-20 18:54 · Score: 1

So then, could they get a patent on the idea of ID codes in general. Maybe they could retroactively sue at&t for using area codes then...

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Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???

Re:ha by rice_web · 2003-09-20 11:49 · Score: 1

Obviously you didn't notice the recession.

The tech industry is now nothing more than a commodity market, with relatively little change and no explosive growth. Not until the next big thing (i.e. radio, internet) comes along will we such growth, and everybody that expected to get rich from the internet but missed their chance or held on too long is no suing anyone or anything.

--
The Political Programmer

That's half of the problem by ironfrost · 2003-09-20 11:52 · Score: 1

Quoting directly from the article, "Any charges for the use of these standards are going to lead to fragmentation, delay in deployment, and in effect a lack of standardization. In particular, those users who depend upon multi-lingual or non-English language services will suffer." People using their own standards is what the author was concerned about. Old software won't recognise the language "deutch" or "english-usa".

On that note... by binary+paladin · 2003-09-20 11:53 · Score: 1

Just remember, in Soviet Russia, the jokes mod you!

Re:On that note... by MisterFancypants · 2003-09-21 00:10 · Score: 1

In Soviet Russia, the overlords welcome YOU
by pouring hot grits down your pants.

Re:Sorry but you leftist bastards piss me off. by kelnos · 2003-09-20 11:54 · Score: 1

i'd have to agree here for the most part, and it's nice to see a less extremist viewpoint such as this here on /.

is current IP law broken? yes. is IP law unnecessary? it would simplify things so much if that were the case, but i think IP law is most definitely necessary.

while i'm a proponent of free software (both as in speech and in beer), i refuse to tell other people what their philosophies should be. if others want to write software, make music, write books, invent new ways of doing things, etc., and try to sell the fruits of their work, then i think there should be some protections in place to make that possible. for every group of honest people, there's at least one group of dishonest people that would take another's work, and try to sell it as their own. for that reason i think copyright and patent laws are good.

but the current state of affairs - i don't remember exactly what the current copyright term is, but i remember it used to be life+75 years. and i think that's a bit excessive. i'd almost advocate that a person's copyright should only be in effect as long as that person is alive. one type of scenario make me reconsider - random author dude writes some novels, they get published. freak car accident, random author dude dies. random author dude loses copyright and children and wife/husband suffer. i don't like that. i would think that life+10 or life+20 is more than sufficient.

i'm going to ignore patent law and trademark law for the time being, tho i think those have their problems as well (despite being founded with good intentions).

however, DRM is a sticky area. i do not believe it is possible to create a DRM solution that protects the rights and interests of the media creators/distributors without unfairly restricting our rights as consumers. there are currently music CDs out there that use a form of DRM to prohibit copying. that violates my fair use right to make a backup copy. that also means i can't rip the CD to mp3 files so i can listen to the tracks individually on my CD player, or mixed with other tracks from other CDs i own on an mp3 player. this also infringes upon my rights as a consumer. once DRM can be created that can understand the difference between the copy i make for my own use and the copy joe pirate makes to distribute on kazaa, then i'll accept it. that may be impossible, and if that's the case, then DRM will not be on any product i buy.

--
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.

What IP law would they use? by harlows_monkeys · 2003-09-20 11:57 · Score: 2, Interesting

These codes are probably too small for copyright. They aren't patented. They aren't trademarks or service marks.

I'm having a hard time seeing what would cover them.

Re:What IP law would they use? by Googol · 2003-09-20 12:41 · Score: 3, Interesting

They're not suing people for damages, they're
charging royalties. They could make minor changes then put a click through license on the website. "Non-commercial use free; commercial have your credit card ready" is the usual scam. Royalties are charged on standards all the time, unfortunately. Most of the defunct "wireless" standards from the tail end of the dot-com bust were this way. ISO gets karma points for nostalgia.

I agree it's silly. Standards are easily avoided. If not covered by a freely distributable license, never use someone else's standard. Don't even read it. Don't visit their website. Soon we will all learn to do this. It will be as reflexive as "never use code of unknown origin without a free software or open source license".

=googol=

systems by SolemnDragon · 2003-09-20 11:57 · Score: 5, Funny

RIAA method: Release item under copyright. Saturate market. Raise prices until no longer sustainable. Obtain personal information of those filling market for free with the easily replicable product. Sue for 'damages.'

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???

/me shaking my head sadly....

--
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.

Re:systems by DeeKayWon · 2003-09-20 12:18 · Score: 1

ISO method: Release item. Wait until standard is commonly adopted, as with SCO method. When market has adopted standard, charge for using said standard.
Actually, that's the Unisys method. The ISO method is to rip off the Unisys method.

Two words. by Thinkit3 · 2003-09-20 11:57 · Score: 1

Slavery. Compromisers.

--
-Libertarian secular transhumanist

Intellectual property by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-20 11:58 · Score: 2, Funny

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)

Re:Intellectual property by Ricin · 2003-09-20 12:08 · Score: 1

Hehe +3 funny

Dr. Who? by Have+Blue · 2003-09-20 12:01 · Score: 1

To: Dr. Oliver Smoot, President, International Organization for Standardization

Is this the Oliver Smoot?

Much like in scandinavia then? by Snaller · 2003-09-20 12:06 · Score: 2, Interesting

When those countries have wanted to use their native letters (such as A/AE) they had to pay some obscure american company some money because they had some sort of patent.

(yeah vauge, but i can't find a link right now)

--
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating

Let them. by ScrewMaster · 2003-09-20 12:06 · Score: 1

Let them go right on ahead and do it. They will cause a lot of damage, and in the process of recovering from it the world will make them irrelevant.

--
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.

Extortion by Ricin · 2003-09-20 12:06 · Score: 1

The new business model after advertising didn't seem to work in the end (perhaps because PHBs started to believe their own marketdroids too much or they just generally got more stupid).

Big pie few pieces...

We don't need ISO ... use SIL by Skapare · 2003-09-20 12:14 · Score: 4, Informative

We don't need ISO for language codes. Besides, two letter codes are too limiting. SIL has organized a very thorough set of three letter codes (usable according to their terms) for every language as part of the Ethnologue project, including artificial languages and sign languages.

As for country codes, I'm sure we can make something up. Just ask the leader of each country what they'd like for us to use for their country, work out the collisions, and compile our own standard (and issue an RFC).

--
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars

Re:We don't need ISO ... use SIL by Unregistered · 2003-09-20 12:26 · Score: 1

does it have a code for kilingon?
Re:We don't need ISO ... use SIL by UnuMondo · 2003-09-20 12:31 · Score: 1

SIL is a Christian organisation which advocates sending missionaries to some of the world's most fragile cultures. I don't think that indigenous populations - not to mention the Muslim world for example - would appreciate using the system created by such a polemical organisation.

--
GPG Key ID: 8C444E97 Fingerprint: E7BA D851 9714 8D97 C4F9 1777 8168 6913 8C44 4E97
Re:We don't need ISO ... use SIL by dvdeug · 2003-09-20 23:34 · Score: 1

We don't need ISO for language codes.

Which is why ISO also publishes three letter codes. We may have alternatives to ISO for languages codes, but we also have alternatives to ASCII for a character set (basis); but those who use EBCDIC get to curse the incompatibilities daily.

two letter codes are too limiting.

Which is why ISO also offers three letter codes, which are used in cases where there's no two letter code. Check out KDE-i18n, where they use ven for Venda.

SIL has organized a very thorough set of three letter codes (usable according to their terms) for every language as part of the Ethnologue project, including artificial languages and sign languages.

ISO's codes were designed for bibliographic systems. SIL's were designed for linguistic. Furthermore, the ISO code system is battle-tested in computers, and details - like the distinction between Nynorsk and Bokmal Norwegian, and not between other pairs of dialects with similar lingustic distance but without the legal and social distance - have been pounded out.

Just ask the leader of each country what they'd like for us to use for their country

Good luck getting a hold of most of them, and better be prepared to keep updating it. Also, country names have a sensitivity that technical things don't. How about Chenchya, Eastern Timor and Palestine? How about ROM for Romania? (It was once a three letter ISO code, but Romania had it changed to ROU.) I rather let ISO and its UN connections take the heat for those decisions.
Re:We don't need ISO ... use SIL by KjetilK · 2003-09-21 01:23 · Score: 1

Without having researched SIL, the ccTLDs are built on the top of ISO-3166, and so, it is certainly a non-trivial matter to change all this... This is essentially a tax on everything on the Internet, and would be huge burden. I submitted this story last night, BTW, but it was rejected.

--
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Re:We don't need ISO ... use SIL by blibbleblobble · 2003-09-21 02:37 · Score: 2, Insightful

"Besides, two letter codes are too limiting. SIL has organized a very thorough set of three letter codes (usable according to their terms) for every language as part of the Ethnologue project, including artificial languages and sign languages."

You'd suggest a standard proposed by someone with a Terms Of Use statement attached to it?

If we want to pick a standard for something, it should typically be about 20 pages of text, with an RFC number at the top, and copyight notice, if absolutely required, with the words "verbatim copying is permitted without limitation". Anything else is just not suitable for use in public systems

Re:Sorry but you leftist bastards piss me off. by Jibber · 2003-09-20 12:14 · Score: 1

25 years or Life + 10, which ever comes first. If you want more, make it a trade secret.

If you are writing a book or lyrics, then that is more than enough. Anything after that is just stiffiling forward progress and allowing the major corps to limit the amount of similar material to exist.

Examples - Winne the Pooh - 1915 or so? Disney now has a strangle hold on that. Tarzan ? I'm thinking Disney again. Ohh Mounties? Let's pay a fee to Disney to use them in a TV show.

It is getting so ridiculous, that it is no longer even funny.

Bah, don't even get me started on one-click checkout etc, that's just assine.

Jib

Special Ops by t_allardyce · 2003-09-20 12:14 · Score: 2, Funny

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

--
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.

in related news... by wfmcwalter · 2003-09-20 12:16 · Score: 4, Funny

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 ##

Re:in related news... by quacking+duck · 2003-09-20 12:58 · Score: 1

with Mr Blair, Prime minister of nothing
Actually, the prime minister of Nada (i.e. nothing) is Mr. Chretien.

We can rant all we want... Dewey Decimal is next by Googol · 2003-09-20 12:16 · Score: 3, Interesting

The words "intellectual property" seduce enough people into thinking it is fair to collect money for these things. In the long run we have to treat "standards" (not the ISO's but the worthwhile ones) just like programs. They are part of the public domain and they have to be defended.

And yes, this means silly things like ISO country codes and the Dewey Decimal System (you saw the prediction here, despite Melvile being dead these 100 years....)

"IP" is like tollbooths on highways. Start paying and they will never take them away. Building roads without them takes planning, maybe regime change too (see France, 1789; U.S.A., 1776).

=googol=

Intellecutal property in two easy lessons:

Theft by value: you have something and I take it.

Theft by reference: you think of something and I
think of the same thing.

Re:What about slavery? by kelnos · 2003-09-20 12:21 · Score: 1

oh, great idea, pick slavery on which to build an argument like that.

and to what problems are you referring? so the unfortunate filthy rich landowners had to actually pay people to do work for them. awww, i'm so heartbroken. if you're talking about the civil war, forget about it. the civil war was about a lot more than the abolishment of slavery.

regardless, with slavery, we're talking about a fundamental human right that was being deprived. IP laws don't deal with people. they deal with inanimate objects, and often intangible ideas. no actual harm is being caused to anyone because of IP laws. perhaps their lives are made somewhat inconvenient because of them, but no one is dying or being denied person-status because of them. to put it in a different way: do you believe that you have a fundamental human right to damage another person's livelihood by stealing their ideas and representing them as your own? if you do, then your poor choice for an argument-backer is the least of your problems.

forget it. the parallels here are meager and worthless.

--
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.

Freedom of Expression is dead. by The+Famous+Druid · 2003-09-20 12:22 · Score: 2, Informative

Actuall, it's not dead,
it's just owned

--
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)

Re:One-tenth of a penny - not for UK/GB by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-20 12:23 · Score: 1, Informative

Actually, ISO invented 'GB' (Great Britain) for the UK. The UK code is 'Ukraine'.

The UK needs to pay infringement and back-licencing costs to ISO and the Ukraine.

Or, the UK has prima facia evidence that users were not selecting ISO country codes when assigning top level domains, just making up their own, independant implementations of a country name abreviating scheme.

How much is that in smoots? by jerryasher · 2003-09-20 12:23 · Score: 3, Interesting

The current president of the ISO, and the recipient of the letter mentioned in the article is Oliver Smoot, MIT '62.

Oliver has had a unit named after him, the smoot

This is an ESR standard in the public domain, and not an ISO standard, hence we can continue to measure objects in smoots for free.

Re:How much is that in smoots? by Citizen+of+Earth · 2003-09-20 19:21 · Score: 1

It should be obvious that this is just a trail balloon for a future cash grab against anyone stupid enough to adopt their standards. Looks like the ISO has become damage that we need to route around. How fucked up is it that you have to buy their 'public' standards. Time for them to go? Put some tenth-level theoretician wankers out of work.

Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by reallocate · 2003-09-20 12:24 · Score: 3, Interesting

The fact that this kind of immature pablum gets moderated as "Insightful" is evidence of the decline of Slashdot into a morass of ill-informed juvenile political ranting.

The existence of intellectual property is not the issue here. In fact, it looks like the ever-histrionic Timothy is the one who introduced the phrase into the conversation. (You really have to be careful to watch where the quotation marks are in Timothy's stories.)

Intellectual property is as real as the chair I'm sitting on. If someone makes something, they own it until they decide otherwise. If a make a chair, it's my property. If I write a book, it's my property.

Only utopian fools who believe that "Everything Belongs to Everyone" seriously espouse the abolition of property rights. (Including those that protect the vaunted halls of open source software. Absent IP rights, open source would not be possible.)

That said, Timothy and many others need to understand that this ISO proposal is simply a bad decision. Even if they do approve it, how are they going to enforce it?

--
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"

Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by baka_boy · 2003-09-20 13:22 · Score: 3, Insightful

"Intellectual property" is no more real than cash, and similar in purpose: an agreed-upon convenience used to represent and transfer resources. Consentual shared hallucinations are still hallucinations.

However, if I make a copy of your book after you've started distributing it, it costs you nothing. Therefore, describing the outcome as theft is rediculous -- you still have your book, and now I have one, too. In fact, having additional copies of your work in circulation should bring you additional future rewards, as later works will be more highly valued.
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by BiggerIsBetter · 2003-09-20 16:13 · Score: 1

That's backwards. From an accounting perspective, you having one that was not purchased cost the publisher the value of that sale - sure there was no cost of sales incured or production cost, but they didn't get the money they would have otherwise received had you bought it. And having additional copies of a book reduces its value - this is basic supply and demand.

I'm not saying it's right, but that's the business interpretation of it. Geek logic != Business logic.

--
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by Qzukk · 2003-09-20 16:29 · Score: 2, Interesting

Intellectual property is as real as the chair I'm sitting on.

There is no "Intellectual Property". There are Copyright, Trademark, Patent, and Trade Secret laws to protect your ideas, name, and inventions. Each of these are vastly different, covering different subjects and having different rules. To point at someone and say "you're violating my 'intellectual property'" is bogus. You must pick one of the above, and defend your claim appropriately.

Even if they do approve it, how are they going to enforce it?

Duh, the same way everyone else does it these days. Sue everyone and make them prove their innocence. This is unacceptable, but it is the only way to enforce "intellectual property" laws since there is no crime scene, no fingerprints, no missing goods that someone tries to pawn. Don't even ask how they're going to define "commercial" usage of the codes. Is that codes actually used in commerce? Is that any system run by a company that uses a locale other than "C"? (Is "C" an ISO-owned locale?). Who cares? Just sue them all and let the juries decide who owes what, that is if the people don't wimp out and pay up.

--
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by j_w_d · 2003-09-20 16:41 · Score: 1

Obviously then lending libraries are very bad for publishers as well. The argument MIGHT hold weight while discussing works that are still in print, but the way copyright operates, I can't legally make a copy of an out-of-print work that is still under copyright. Rationally, under your logic I should not be able to buy a used copy either, if you argue that the sale fails to benefit the publisher or author. In fact, by copying a work for reference and citation I may very well bring the work to the attention of others to the extent that the publisher might republish, or be persuaded to release the rights so that others may benefit, which WOULD benefit the publisher and hopefully the author.

--
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by __past__ · 2003-09-20 17:33 · Score: 1

Absent IP rights, open source would not be possible.
Nor would it be necessary.

--
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by Sivaram_Velauthapill · 2003-09-20 18:52 · Score: 1

Relying on business views is almost meaningless, for they make the rules.

You may claim the stated stance is backward but you can't deny that society will be better off with the "modern view". Imagine how science would have evolved if knowledge, which includes articles, works published, experiment steps, etc were limited. It never would have spread.

You are espousing the business perspective that profits are lost by spread of information. This is true. BUT remember that the only reason it is like that is because businesses started making money off of it. If they didn't it wouldn't be like this. Going back to the scientific revolution example, people didn't make money off of it (at least not like with intellectual property and other laws). In contrast, nowadays, science's growth is going to be stunted because of IP laws. A good example would be the biology fields. *I* predict that biological sciences will not evolve too far in the future because many of the key discoveris, knowledge, etc are tied up in intellecutal property. It wouldn't surprise me if some company patented a process to splice together genes (for example) and only let people/universities/etc that cut a deal with it. In contrast, in the past, someone patenting an experimentation process is unthinkable. If anything, all scientists copied someone else as soon as he/she developed a technique.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

--
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by reallocate · 2003-09-20 23:28 · Score: 1

Without IP rights, open source would devolve into an unusable and anarchic mess of code of unknown quality written by unknown persons. There would be no way for a user to know if their copy of, say, emacs, was legitimate emacs or a botched rewrite by some 16-year-old kid.

Nor would it be possible to enforce a requirement that source be distributed. It is the reality of IP -- that source code is intellectual property that needs to be made widely available -- that underpins open source.

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-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by reallocate · 2003-09-20 23:38 · Score: 1

I don't think it is a "business view" (whatever that is) to assert that I own something that I make. That's the basis of all property rights, real or intellectual. Paying sophomoric word games won't change that.

Please explain how someone other than myself has any rights to my creation until and unless I decide to give them some of those rights. I don't believe you can without lapsing into utopian silliness.

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-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by BiggerIsBetter · 2003-09-20 23:39 · Score: 1

I didn't say you should not be able to do anything, I only pointed out the real world business perspective of the scenario described in your post. We've got different views and ideas about this, so don't go trying to use my logic, rationally or otherwise.

Yes, buying a used copy is seen by some publishers as income they are missing out on. Of course, that is just them wanting to have their cake and eat it too, but again, this is a business perspective.

And if copying a work for reference and citation, you still have not bought the work have you? Regardless of circulation, unless the publisher specifically wants you to advertise for them, you're ripping them off.

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Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by blibbleblobble · 2003-09-20 23:40 · Score: 1

"Intellectual property is as real as the chair I'm sitting on."

That must hurt! Do you just fall, or do you have to crouch in position?
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by tkrotchko · 2003-09-21 00:09 · Score: 1

"Intellectual property is as real as the chair I'm sitting on. "

By what measure?

If I take a chair, I can hold it in my hands. I can hide it in a closet. I can chop it up and use it for firewood. If I sell it, I don't have it, same as if someone steals it. I can describe its composition in terms of certain materials. It takes space. Most importantly, it exists regardless of what some senator or congressman wants to define it. That is, my chair will exist, even if Congress says "There are no chairs". Its a fact.

How can you compare "Clicking on this button lets you buy anything from Amazon with a single click". It only exists because you and I wink and say "Yes, that's intellectual property". If Congress decided tomorrow that it was a judgement in error to allow patents on business processes, then it would no longer exist. And anything that can be made to disappear by legislative process or judicial fiat is about as real as Mille Vanelli's singing career.

Does Santa Claus or the Easter bunny exist? They do to people who believe in them, but that doesn't mean they really exist.

You choose to claim "intellectual property" is real because it supports your arguments, but just saying it doesn't make it correct or true. Its simply a shorthand way to get the upper hand in a debate.

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You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by reallocate · 2003-09-21 00:18 · Score: 1

You seem to asserting that something is "real" only if you can touch it. That's obviously absurd.

If I make something, I own it. That's the basis of property rights. No one else has any rights in what I've made, or any ownership share, until and unless I transfer rights or ownership.

That applies to all property, whether or not a create something from a block of wood or from words and thoughts. If I make a chair, it is real, it exists, and I own it. If I write a book or piece of code, it is real, it exists, and I own it.

To make your assertion that IP doesn't exist anything more than a utopian pipedream, you'll need to refute that and prove that I don't own what I make.

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-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by tkrotchko · 2003-09-21 00:32 · Score: 1

" You seem to asserting that something is "real" only if you can touch it. That's obviously absurd."

I made no such assertion.

I said that something is real only if it exists outside the boundaries of a legal framework. That's far different than ownership. You're confusing the existence of something with ownership of something.

If you write a treatise on the folly of Intellectual Property and come up with some very clever ideas, it very clearly exists, you are owner of the treatise, bu that doesn't mean you own the ideas expoused in the treatise. Its a subtle point, but one I'm sure you see.

And its where modern copyright and patent laws have gone wrong. People should own expressions of ideas, but not the idea itself. That was true in copyright and patent law until very very recently (less than 25 years ago). You seem to think the current legislative approach to copyright and patents is a natural one, when it really has only existed for a very short time, and will iikely disappear in less than 25 years.

"If I make something, I own it. That's the basis of property rights."

Not at all. You can own a piece of land, but you had no basis in "making" it. The same is true of ideas. Einstein figured out that E=mc^2, but he doesn't "own" that idea; the universe already knew that idea on its own. All Einstein did was write it down. Some people might claim Einstein "owned" E=mc^2, but clearly he didn't. Now, if Einsten made a space ship that made use of E=mc^2 (an expression of that idea), then he could claim ownership, but there is no ownership of fundamental ideas because you can only discover and document what you find.

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You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by reallocate · 2003-09-21 01:48 · Score: 1

I'm not talking about ideas, or stating my position on current copyright and patent law. I'm simply stating that anyone who makes something owns that "thing" and has all rights to it until some or all of those rights and ownership are transferred elsewhere.

If I write a book or record a song, I own the collection of words or recorded sounds that comprise the book or song. If I decide to do nothing else with that original work, it stays where it is. If I sign a contrct with a publisher to that gives it the right to make and sell copies of that book or that recording, then I have transferred some of my rights to another in return for, presumably, payment. Copyright and IP law protect my rights regarding that collection of words or that original recording. Ideas have nothing to do with it. I'm not claiming ownership of ideas; I'm protecting my rights to something I created.

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-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by jcast · 2003-09-21 02:12 · Score: 1
s/IP rights/a different arrangement of IP rights/

Seriously, are you alleging that our only choice is rediculous every-right-is-owned-by-the-creator vs. everything-is-completely-PD-and-no-restrictions-on -attribution? That's rediculous. In the first place, it's misleading to think of IP law as enshrining a single set of IP rights. There are two sets of IP rights, one possessed by the owner of a work and the other by the owner of a copy. And there is no natural distinction as to which owner gets any given right. Even a right to copy does not naturally attach to the owner of a work---after all, my copying a work seems to involve only myself and my copy and my copying equipment. If anything, the work as a whole increases in value as a result, so it's hardly obvious that copying is a tort against the owner of the work. Also, note that (1) certain kinds of copying (so-called ``fair use'') are reserved by copyright law to the owner of a copy and (2) copyright law thus constitutes a balance between conflicting claims, not a simple assertion of the work owner's claims.

Given the possibility of compromise, there are six possible areas for positions on (say) copyright law:
1. The owner of the work should possess all rights, and the owner of a copy should have only those rights explicitly granted.
2. The owner of a work should have more rights than granted under copyright law, but not all rights.
3. The owner of a work should have exactly those rights granted under copyright law.
4. The owner of a work should have the same amount of rights as now, but a different set of rights.
5. The owner of a work should have fewer rights than now, but not none at all. This is (say) RMS's position.
6. The owner of a work should have no rights except those explicitly retained.
Of course, cutting across all of these is the issue of how far from the default the members of a particular work owner/copy owner pair should be allowed to deviate in their contracts.

People who advocate ``IP'' usually mean one of the first three, and assume the only other choice is the last one (usually combined with severe restrictions on contracts to ban the others). People who contest ``IP'' usually advocate one of the last three (usually one of the last two) and the first one is the only other alternative. Newsflash: you're both wrong. There are six possibilities, not two---and at least five of them allow the GPL to be written and enforced.
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There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by reallocate · 2003-09-21 02:44 · Score: 1

I'm asserting that the creator of a work owns that work and retains all rights to that work until he or she transfers some or all of those rights or some or all of that wonership to others.

Example: I write a novel. That novel exists as a collection of words represented by sympbols on paper or as a digital file. That's what I own. If I don't transfer that original copy to anyone else, then by definition, they can only possess it by theft. Copyright law protects my right to determine how copies of my original work are made and distributed. If I sign a contract with a publisher, I have transferred some of my rights and some of my ownership share to that publisher. In return, the publisher has contracted with me to make and market copies of my novel. The publisher keeps some of the reveneue and I keep some of the revenue. If someone other than my publisher makes and markets copies of my novel with authorization, I am asserting that they are thieves and violators of the law.

Notice I'm not talking about "ideas".

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-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by Zak3056 · 2003-09-21 03:12 · Score: 1

Intellectual property is as real as the chair I'm sitting on. If someone makes something, they own it until they decide otherwise. If a make a chair, it's my property. If I write a book, it's my property.

In the United States, the above is untrue--at least Constitutionally.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to grant copyrights and patents "in order to promote the advancement of the useful arts" or, in other words, to ensure a rich public domain.

Creators of "intellectual property" exploit that property at the sufferance of the People, who are the actual owners of the work--the creators just have a limited time exclusive license to it.

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What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by reallocate · 2003-09-21 03:36 · Score: 1

>> ...Creators of "intellectual property" exploit that property at the sufferance of the People, who are the actual owners of the work...

Strange, you must be reading a different copy of the Constitution. I don't see an assertion that "the people" own what someone makes in my copy.

Must be wishful thinking on your part.

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-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by annodomini · 2003-09-21 04:35 · Score: 1

Sorry, the analogy to cash shows just where you are wrong. If I copy a dollar bill, it doesn't cost anybody anything. Now I have a dollar bill, and everyone else still has theirs. So, by analogy with your logic, shouldn't dollar bills now be more highly valued since there are more in circulation? Well, no. The more there are in circulation, the less well valued they are. And there's a very good reason why forgery is against the law. Sure, it's a little different with books, where mindshare is important, but the point still remains, you are not benefiting the author when you copy their book to read on your own. It would benefit the author much more if you bought the book.
So, I maintain that copyright is an important fiction, just like cash is. And breaking that fiction is seen as a crime for important reasons. The issue is that there are huge problems with how it is currently implemented. Having copyrights that last almost a century after the death of their author is just ridiculous; it doesn't promote the creation and sharing of ideas, like copyright is intended to, it just makes people who don't deserve it to get wealthier. But copyright, and other forms of intellectual property, are important legal fictions, which are becoming more and more abused of late. But anything that is of any value has the ability to be abused, so you can't condemn intellectual property as a whole because of a few people who abuse it.
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by Sivaram_Velauthapill · 2003-09-21 08:14 · Score: 1

Utopian ideals are what guide society and control progress; pragmatic views are next to useless in the long term. Two hundread years ago, one with a pragmatic 'business view' would have said that owning slaves was ok and acceptable. Another with a more idealistic UTOPIAN view would have said it isn't. I'm not equating slavery to you. On the contrary. I am simply pointing out how you cannot dismiss "utopian silliness" when looking at society.

I classified your views as a 'business view' because they are based on a profit motive. I think that is a fairly accurate description. Whether someone thinks that is good or bad depends on your econopolitics. Capitalists would consider a 'business view' to be good while socialists would consider it to be bad. What I call it is irrelevant; What matters is your underlying ideal.

Please explain how someone other than myself has any rights to my creation ...

The question boils down to what I highlighted above: creation. What exactly is the creation? My biggest concern and disagreement with intellectual property is not with art but more with science (although both are a problem). If I discover the theory of gravity, do *I* own it? Should the people that publish my theory pay a royalty to me? Should they get my permission? *I* discovered it through my hard work and through my own processes and techniques. So should I own it? You are saying it belongs to me and I'm saying it does not!

Your view is a business view--based on profit. You want me to PROFIT from my discoverty. I should get money from anyone that uses my experiment techniques, anyone that uses my equation relating gravity to mass, etc. You clearly cannot justify my intellectual property (on gravity) if you didn't consider a profit motive. From a societal point of view, society would be better off if the theory of gravity was owned by no one.

Patenting--or whatever concept you call it--the theory of gravity might seem silly and far-fetched. But is it? This is EXACTLY what is happening now in science, in particular the biological field. All the press, the businesses, and the govt talk about innovation in bioscience and how it helps everyone, creates jobs, and so on. But does it really? Many firms are gaining patents to biological processes, techniques, and outright concepts. Firms are even attempting to patent genes that cause certain diseases/defects/etc. Do these firms have the right to OWN the ideas on biology? These firms spent billions on research yet do they own it?

Move to the tech field. You see the same thing happening. Everyone is trying to patent EVERYTHING. If you didn't own patents, you really can't even do business anymore because you are likely infringing on someone's ideas/patents/whatever. For the most part, nothing will happen to you. BUT when some large company like IBM (or SCO :) ) wants to step on you, they will.

Let's move to art. You make a movie, which ends up being a classic. In 25 years (I'm just making up a number here), it would be FAR MORE preferable if your movie were free than if it weren't. If I want to study your movie or capture frames and put it on my website, or whatever, I should have the right to your movie--not just me, but everyone (ie. society). Will you lose profit? Yes! But it is better for society that thins like that b free.

My view (I'm a socialist BTW :) ) is that things that benefit society should be free. If you want to make money off your work, fine. In fact, I'm totally supportive of that, and would even be totally against people who profit off you without consent (ie. I wouldn't want someone selling your stuff without paying you what YOU want). What I don't like is the CAPITALIZATION of science, art, etc. The problem really isn't ideals. I'll bet that most humans (once educated) would suppport my ideals more than yours. The real complication is things like peer/peer transfers, and things like that. I would be supportive of you ma

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Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by reallocate · 2003-09-21 08:31 · Score: 1

>> Utopian ideals are what guide society and control progress;

Nonsense. People act in their own self-interest.

I'll try once more:

If I make a chair, would you deny that I own that chair? If so, what possible justification can you provide for the curious notion that someone else can own something that did not exist until I brought it into being?

Likewise, if I write a book, I own that book. How can you make the assertion that someone else owns a book that did not exist until it wrote it? And, if you can't make that argument, how can you argue that I, as the original owner of the original book, can't control how copies are made and to whom their are distributed?

Please try to remember that your "feelings" are of no interest.

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-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by phliar · 2003-09-21 09:13 · Score: 1

The fact that this kind of immature pablum gets moderated as "Insightful" is evidence of the decline of Slashdot into a morass of ill-informed juvenile political ranting.... Intellectual property is as real as the chair I'm sitting on.
Maybe in your country, but not in these United States of America. (Or is it because you use words like "pablum" and "histrionic" you think you are the arbiter of what constitutes decline?) We have copyrights; we have patents; we have trademarks and service-marks. We don't have anything called "intellectual property" -- for a very good reason. It's because copyrights, patents, trademarks etc. are all different. The only thing they have in common is that they are not property. You don't have property for a limited time period. You don't lose property through disuse.
So call copyrights, patents, trademarks, and whatever else you want to throw in that bag by their proper names. Completely different laws apply to copyrights and patents; they should not be lumped together. And if you do perform that intellectually bankrupt practice, do not co-opt a term that has a specific legal meaning.
Utopians fools are one thing; doctrinaire blowhards engaging in sophistry are another. This bogus "intellectual property" ugliness has nothing to do with "Everything Belongs to Everyone". Ownership of physical objects must be different from "ownership" of ideas; if I give someone an apple, I no longer have the use of that apple. If I share my idea with someone else, I still have the use of that idea. (Or, to use the words of a certain Founding Father, you can light another's candle without dousing your own.) If I want some benefit from that idea, I must execute it into something. There is a very good reason the laws of this country distinguish between copyrights, patents, and property.

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Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by reallocate · 2003-09-21 10:54 · Score: 1

Sorry, but I wasn't talking about "ideas". I was talking about property, like a book.

If I make a chair, I own that chair.

If I write a book, I own that particular collection of words.

Both the chair and the book are my property. One is as real as the other.

As the person who made the chair or the bovel, I'm not especially interested in keeping you from conjuring up the "idea" of my chair or my book, but I am very much interested in keeping you from making and selling unauthorized copies of my property.

The argument that ideas can't be owned is a red herring often tossed out by ideologues who don't understand that copyright and IP aren't about ideas, but about property. Somehow, they've got the notion that any piece of property that contains symbolic language or representations is an "idea" that can't be owned. That's wrong.

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-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by Sivaram_Velauthapill · 2003-09-21 15:04 · Score: 1

Nonsense. People act in their own self-interest.

Most people are conformists, who do absolutely nothing. They simply follow the idealists...

Actually I'm against the chair thing too. The way the patent system works nowadays, I'll bet if someone makes a chair now, no one can make a device to sit on. I'm not supportive of that.

In any case, there is a difference between the book and the chair. The book captures ideas and thoughts. The chair captures work and labour. This is not to say that they are mutually exclusive. But rather, the book's VALUE is more dependent on thoughts. I believe you shouldn't have the right--or monopoly--on those ideas...I'm open to you making money off the book and possibly event granting you a short term monopoly. HOWEVER, if someone reads your stuff and comes up with other ideas based off them, I don't think YOU own them.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

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Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by j_w_d · 2003-09-21 19:43 · Score: 1

And if copying a work for reference and citation, you still have not bought the work have you? Regardless of circulation, unless the publisher specifically wants you to advertise for them, you're ripping them off.

If it is not for sale, then the publisher can not logically claim a loss. Actually, I have had a publisher or two suggest xeroxing works they no longer offer. One example is a translated work from Russian. I could not find a copy to keep on hand and contacted the publisher, who actually suggested xeeroxing a copy from interlibrary loan. I did that. Fifteen years later I tracked down a hard copy.

Another work I know of gets copied regularly because the estate of the author won't permit re-publishing the volume, though I can't imagine why. Rumour has it that the family disapproved of the author's "hobby" and would like it to go away. I do not have a copy of it, but only because it is not essential to a prehistorian. From the number of people I know who HAVE copied it, it would have paid for republishing quite nicely.

Given these examples: explain how the publisher, or more importantly, the dead authors are getting ripped off. Publishers should never HAVE copyright to content and jandiced though I may be, I can't see that extending copyright to the third and fourth generation of an author's descendants can possibly encourage anything but slackers.

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------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by reallocate · 2003-09-22 00:22 · Score: 1

Like so many here, you are arguing to support what you believe ought to be, not from a position rooted in reality.

First, people do not follow idealists. They follow leaders, who, in my experience, are seldom idealistic.

Two, the patent system works today the same as it always has. But, I don't need a patent system or any government to establish the fact that I own what I make. If I make something that did not previously exist, how can there be any claim that I do not own it?

Third, as I've said, I'm not really interested in claiming onership of ideas. I'm interested in my ownership of the collection of words, etc., that I create when, for example, I write a book. Even if I accept your assertion that a books "captures ideas", it is obvious that the book itself is not a collection of ideas, but a collection of symbolic characters contained on some medium, e.g., paper or a digitial file. That is what I own. And, it is property that is just as real as any other property. Copyright law simply recognizes that fact of ownership and provides protection of the rights due me as the book's creator and owner. Typically, a professional author contracts with a publisher to market the book. Fundamentally, this is a process whereby the author legally transfer some of his rights to the publisher in return for the services provided by the publisher. But, copyright law does not compel that transfer, and does not exist to enable it.

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-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by Zak3056 · 2003-09-22 02:05 · Score: 1

Strange, you must be reading a different copy of the Constitution. I don't see an assertion that "the people" own what someone makes in my copy

I infer that "the people" own those works based on Article I, section 8 of the constitution, which states in part:

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

The purpose of this is to ensure a rich public domain--you encourage creators to create by giving them exclusive rights over their works--FOR A LIMITED TIME. After that limited time, there are no exclusive rights--the works are owned by the people.

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What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by CKW · 2003-09-22 03:53 · Score: 1

> Intellectual property is as real as the chair I'm sitting on. If someone makes something, they own it until they decide otherwise.

No it is not.

Information can exist without an act of creation by a sentient being. Somewhere in the universe there are literally thousands of different patches of atoms and lines of sand which in morse code spell out this very sentence. Information can be posessed by every single sentient being in the universe, and yet not deprive the original "creator" (if there is one) of anything.

How can I "OWN" the sentence I typed above, when inanimate objects all over the universe already exist with that "information" embedded into them? Who "created" that sentence first?

The difference between a short story and a single sentence is only the *amount* of information needed to formulate it. Who owns the following? - 00101101011010010100010111001010 ?

Do you even understand the fundamental philosophical origin of physical property itself?

Who owns the earth and all the things on it? You or me? What about the guy over there? Who owns the wood you used to create the chair? The origin of the "ownership" of physical property is entirely based upon the premise that "ownership" only happens once a person has used physical effort to change a raw material (say that tree over there that currently belongs to all of us) into something useful. We as a society grant them "ownership" of that physical object because it is useful for us as a society to do that.

There is no innanimate right for you to own anything. If we as a society decided to abolish "ownership" of physical things, we could.

Of course we won't, because we know that human beings are too selfless to create a proper society with something to motivate them, such as ownership. Remember all the little kids fighting over shit? Yeah, "ownership" is a social concept we use to channel that selfish desire into something that helps us be civilized and create great things.

The concept of "Intellectual property" as you call it, was created for similar reasons, but does not have nearly the fundamental underpinnings that ownership of physical objects have.

God help us if we let mooks like you continue to make laws about complicated matters like this.
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by reallocate · 2003-09-22 04:00 · Score: 1

Nothing in that clause states that someone who creates a work ever loses ownership of it if he or she chooses not to distribute copies. The original work remains the only work, and if the creator of that work does not give it to someone else, ownership does not transfe. IP and copyright law provide the legal basis by which a creator can transfer certain rights to copies of the original to others.

Here's a simple example: If I write a book, print out a copy, and store that copy in my closet, I retain ownership of that copy -- the only copy -- in perpetuity. The clause you quote only comes into play if I want to make and distribute copies of the novel.

Besides, you're wrong in asserting that the purpose of this clause is to promote the "public domain". As the clause states, it is intended to "promote the progress of science and useful arts". The intent of the founding fathers was to ensure that American inventors and authors had an incentive to create; their intent was not to manaufacture a "healty public domain". The clause does that by protecting the natural rights of creators to benefit from their creations, thereby ensuring that they have an incentive to invent and create.

In other words, the purpose of the clause is to guarantee that creators continue to have an incentive to create. The impact on the so-called "public domain" is a secondary by-product.

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-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by reallocate · 2003-09-22 04:07 · Score: 1

You still don;'t get it. I'm not talking about ideas, or "inanimate" concepts, or any such mumbo jumbo.

I'm talking about the words I put on paper or in a digital file when I create a work. That's a very real thing, very real property, not the kind of mysterious wispy information you seem to believe is floating around the universe waiting to be discovered.

If I create that property, I own it. If it is a book, the words in it are composed of symbol characters we call letters. Those words represent whatever thoughts and ideas I chose. I'm not asserting that I own the thoughts and the ideas; I am stating that I own the words and the medium on which they are written.

Ideas are one thing; words on paper or in a file are an entirely different kind of thing.

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-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by Zak3056 · 2003-09-22 04:26 · Score: 1

Nothing in that clause states that someone who creates a work ever loses ownership of it if he or she chooses not to distribute copies. The original work remains the only work, and if the creator of that work does not give it to someone else, ownership does not transfe.

That's true, and more than a little obvious--it is impossible for ownership to be transferred if no one knows it exists.

The clause does that by protecting the natural rights of creators to benefit from their creations, thereby ensuring that they have an incentive to invent and create.

Incorrect--that clause does not protect anything--it merely gives the Congress the power to do so.

their intent was not to manaufacture a "healty public domain".

Progress requires a healthy public domain to draw from. There are very few truly original ideas--it is the ability to build upon the work of others that truly guarantees the advancement of science and the useful arts.

Ask yourself this question: If the intent is merely to enable creators to profit from their work, giving them incentive to create, why the requirement of limited terms? Wouldn't it be an even greater incentive if creators knew that their heirs would profit in perpetuity?

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What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by reallocate · 2003-09-22 04:59 · Score: 1

>> If the intent is merely to enable creators to profit from their work, giving them incentive to create, why the requirement of limited terms? Wouldn't it be an even greater incentive if creators knew that their heirs would profit in perpetuity?

Of course, there's a balance to be struck between incentivizing people to create and ensuring that new knowledge and technology is widely disseminated. That's the basis of having limited terms for copyrights and patents. People can argue that those terms are too long, or too short, without arguing that the concepts of copyright and IP are invalid.

It seems to be a common practice of many to attack people who defend copyright and IP law by claiming that ideas can't be owned, and that, therefore, copyright and patents are evil capitalists notions that merit elimination. I think that's a red herring. The point of copyright and IP law is not to protect ownership of ideas (which, obviously, can't be owned) but to protect, on the one hand, a creator's right to his work (which, by definition, he owns) and society's interests in ensuring that new knowledge and new works are widely available.

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-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by CKW · 2003-09-22 05:39 · Score: 1

Nope, ideas and words on paper are one and the same. Information. I can memorize the words you wrote on paper as easily as I can a poem. There was even one guy who memorized the entire Illiad and could quote it sentence by sentence.

If I write your words down on my own piece of paper, who owns my piece of paper. You or me?

> I'm not asserting that I own the thoughts and the ideas; I am stating that I own the words and the medium on which they are written.

I agree that you own the medium on which they are written (the paper, the ink), but you don't own the words. Society grants you a temporary right to derive economic benefit from that particular arrangement of words, as an incentive for you to arrange those words. And as a result, I am not allowed to write down that particular arrangement of words on my own piece of paper for 100 years or so, not without your permission. This "temporary right" did not exist as little as 250 years ago (8 generations ago, you in your lifetime will know 5 generations of people, from your grandparents to your grandchildren, so 250 years is in fact a small snippet of time).

It is not "juvenile political ranting" to wonder whether or not this temporary monopoly is still in our best interests, considering just how easily it is to infinitely duplicate and distribute "your words that you own".
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Shoot, I just took a look at your profile. I think I've been trolled. Go away troll, I have better things to do than argue with someone who is actually arguing for the fun of it because they're unemployed and lonely or something.
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Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by reallocate · 2003-09-22 05:54 · Score: 1

>> Society grants you a temporary right ...

I don't agree with that. And I make an important distinction between information and the technology used to represent it. If your basing your argument on those premises, we're poles apart.

As for my profile, beats me. Never looked at it. Why would I care?

--
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by Zak3056 · 2003-09-22 14:53 · Score: 1

People can argue that those terms are too long, or too short, without arguing that the concepts of copyright and IP are invalid.

I agree with you on this completely. I believe the current sentiment about ALL IP being invalid can be traced to some of the downright stupid things the government is granting protection to. Business method patents, or "one click shopping" patents, or "doing the same thing that's been done for centuries on the internet" patents have created a massive backlash against IP rights, as have things like the DMCA, Sonny Bono, etc.

Most people are fairly honest and willing to pay a fair price for something they use/enjoy--but the current move in the industry seems to be toward "you didn't really BUY that, you're only licensing it" in a bald attempt to do away with the doctrine of first sale. This, I think we can all agree, is bad.

It seems to be a common practice of many to attack people who defend copyright and IP law by claiming that ideas can't be owned, and that, therefore, copyright and patents are evil capitalists notions that merit elimination

Under our system, ideas CAN'T be owned--only specific implementations of those ideas. At least that was the case until recently. I notice that you say later that you agree with me on this, so I won't continue. :)

FWIW, I agree with you--it is a red herring. There needs to be a balance between the rights of creators, and the rights of the people.

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What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by reallocate · 2003-09-22 23:30 · Score: 1

On a few occasions I've had to consult lawyers about copyright issues re: the web. I found them surprisingly precise and consistent in the advice they offered. In particular, they all confirmed that the fact that the Internet is used as the medium to copy or distribute a copyrighted object is irrelevant in the eyes of the law. What counts is the actual copying and distribution, not the techology used to do it.

There's a natural tendency to think that the Internet will "change everything", that it is a great revolutionary engine to which existing law does not apply.

Personally, I don't believe that. The Internet certainly has changed many things, but not nearly to the degree I might have imagined several years ago. It's vaunted provision of almost-free publishing capability to anyone who wants it has given us blogs (the jury is out, and I still trust an established news site's reporting before I do some blogger with nothing to lose and no professional training) and p2p filesharing (whether legal or not, there's nothing revolutionary about copying music).

The web has upset the equilibrium in part of the content industry. Because they were already organized, are well-financed, already have access, and focus on the task at hand, the music industry has the upper hand so far in this copyright circus. It is not an issue that will sway votes in the general electorate, but eventually interests and organizations that share some common ground with the p2p folks will organize and push back. Eventually, a new equilibrium will be reached.

As for filesharing...I expect some new form of commercial music distribution to finally emerge that will do an end run around filesharers as well as most existing music companies.

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-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting by jcast · 2003-09-23 12:49 · Score: 1

1. Nothing in your IP claim would change if copyright law is abolished.

2. What are you talking about anyway? Nothing you said supports your claim that your style of IP rights is essential to Open Source, or even contradicts a single thing I said. I.e., your post has no meaning.

--
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman

The other half is... by Pius+II. · 2003-09-20 12:28 · Score: 1

that all programs from Germany probably will suffer when seeing "deutsch" becoming "deuch", "deutch" or "duetcsh" :-).

Seriously, though, what are you to do with Japanese? Use the Japanese word in ASCII? Use the English word? Somewhere, you'll need standarisation, and you'll have to look close, because perhaps your standards entity will just pull a stunt like this...

Re:ISO is not alone by at10u8 · 2003-09-20 12:29 · Score: 1

In the same class is the ITU who have a similar model of charging. Among their standards is ITU-R TF.460 which defines coordinated Universal time (UTC). If you've ever wondered why leap seconds are so poorly implemented by your computer, this proprietary standard is part of the reason. It is evident that the original authors of the POSIX standard had not read it before they declared that a Unix time_t should indicate time in UTC.

I used to think standards were a good idea. by DarkOx · 2003-09-20 12:29 · Score: 1

I used to think standards were a good idea. It would be wonderful if everything could interoperate like it's supposed to. More and more though with the rampant effects if both technical attack in the from of worms and sploits in addition to the Ass*ole attacts in the form of patents and lawsuits, we need to look back to nature. Nature always assures a certain level of diversity within a species so that one event won't likely wipe out every organism. We should forget standards and let everyone do thire *own thing* that way noone will be able to leverage something like a gif a patent or supposed ownership of some code to extort money from the entire industry. Besides if nothing is interoperable out of the box there will be more jobs for us develops who are interested in middleware. So here we are standards are bad, the OSS comunity needs to start developing new kernels with their own unique character encoding schema as well as new operating enviornments to run on them with total incompatibility with all know file formats.

--
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Re:I used to think standards were a good idea. by lurker412 · 2003-09-20 15:08 · Score: 1

Jeeze, I think you may be overreacting a bit. Are you really serious? How about ASCII? How about IP, TCP and HTTP? Want to roll your own?
Standards are a good thing, even if hijacking them for profit is an inherent risk. As long as Microsoft is with us, I don't think there is any threat to diversity. If you were being ironic, I apologize, but I didn't see the end sarcasm tag or winking emoticon that I expected.
Re:I used to think standards were a good idea. by lxs · 2003-09-20 21:17 · Score: 1

We should forget standards and let everyone do thire *own thing*

Yes! Every town should have a different line voltage, because 110V and 220V are just too restrictive. Every screw should have a different type of thread, some left-handed and some right-handed. and everyone will invent their own currency and road-signs. What you're suggesting leads us back to the dark ages of the early 1900's. The problem is not standardisation, the problem is a standards organisation that has forgotten why they were set up in the first place. Standards are there to benefit industry and, by lowering production cost and by stimulating progress (which is a dirty word now, I know), to help the rest of humanity. They were never ment to make money for short-sighted managers.
Re:I used to think standards were a good idea. by DarkOx · 2003-09-21 01:19 · Score: 1

You guys really need to learn to take a joke.

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Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

That's the point, Companies are not individuals by Ricin · 2003-09-20 12:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

And the bigger they are the more freedoms meant for individuals they enjoy. Legal entity of company == legal entity of individual is one of the major flaws in law at this moment.

BigComp gets *your* bill of rights and then some while you are increasingly being denied those rights, not even mentioning what a head on collision between BigComp and you would be.

This is the whole motivation behind the notion that advertising the untruth == free speech, same thing.

Let's countersue... by Comatose51 · 2003-09-20 12:37 · Score: 2, Funny

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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EvilCON - Made Famous by /.

Re:Let's countersue... by dodobh · 2003-09-20 23:10 · Score: 1

Arabic numerals and zero originated in India. They were introduced to Europe by Arabian traders, and hence are termed "Arabic" numerals.

--
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.

What legal basis? by Daniel+Phillips · 2003-09-20 12:41 · Score: 2, Interesting

What would be the legal basis for ISO charging royalties on using these codes? Copyright does not cover it: for purely informational documents, copyright only covers the exact form of expression. I don't know of any other kind of intellectual property, however fanciful, that even comes close to covering the use of a set of codes.

So my question is: what kind of drugs do they smoke over there at ISO, and can I get some?

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Have you got your LWN subscription yet?

Re:What legal basis? by Citizen+of+Earth · 2003-09-20 19:27 · Score: 1

What would be the legal basis for ISO charging royalties on using these codes?

Presumably they would try to have a copyright enforced for it being a compilation of database. Apparently, such things are copyrightable.

Oww, those guys are going to get rich ! by deniea · 2003-09-20 12:47 · Score: 1

As overhere in Europe, a lot of the car license platse use the same country codes, I expect that if their 'codes' becom a valid 'standard' that you have to pay for, that would also mean they will receive money for quite a lot of countries !!

Re:Oww, those guys are going to get rich ! by GISGEOLOGYGEEK · 2003-09-20 12:59 · Score: 1

Only if you submit to the idea that your country is subject to the idiot laws passed within other countries.

Its up to you to make sure that US law stops at the US border ... unless your country pumps oil, then you're screwed.

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George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"

YHBT YHL HAND by Radio+Shack+Robot · 2003-09-20 12:53 · Score: 1

YHBT YHL HAND

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Beep. Boop. Beep. You have questions. I have answers and your home address.

"Intellectual property" is a legal fiction by ebcdic · 2003-09-20 12:56 · Score: 1

It's one of the unfortunate properties of physical objects that if you have one, and I take it, you don't have it any more. Ideas and inventions don't have this unfortunate property, but to make them fit in to our system of commerce, the law has decreed that they should be treated as if they did.

This is the wrong way round. Suppose we developed a device that could copy objects, wouldn't that be wonderful? But no, it would be illegal to use it.

Libertarianism != Capitalism by Tony · 2003-09-20 12:57 · Score: 5, Insightful

One is a political ideology, the other is an economic philosophy.

Unfettered corporate capitalism leads to fascism (the state regulation of the economy) in that the state becomes a tool of the corporations, rather like you see in the USA today.

A well-structured capitalist society *requires* government intervention, for the same reasons a well-structured civil society requires government intervention (in the form of the police, and the judicial arm of the government). Even if you ignore the travesty of corporations-as-entities as practiced by the USA today, and concentrate on corporations-as-public-charters (such as the the US had before about 1880 or so), you still need regulation and monitoring. Otherwise, the biggest corporations will carry the most power, and therefore have the ability to "regulate" (in the political and economic sense) the functioning of corporations of lesser power.

This is why the US has the Sherman Act, and anti-trust laws. Now, these laws are not followed, as is evidenced by the recent anti-trust ruling against Microsoft, and the refusal by the US government to follow through on any meaningful penalty. But, even criminal law doesn't work against corporations, as seen by the recent inaction of the US government against the Enron corporation, and its executives responsible for those crimes.

The "true principals of capitalism" work no better than the true principles of communism. (*NOT* that there has been an implementation of true communism, except on extremely small scales. The most we've ever seen practiced by as large as a country is socialism.)

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Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.

Re:Libertarianism != Capitalism by beakburke · 2003-09-20 14:19 · Score: 1

Replace capitalism with "social democracy" and the resulting sentence would be just as true!

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----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Re:Libertarianism != Capitalism by jcast · 2003-09-21 01:46 · Score: 1

Unfettered corporate capitalism leads to fascism (the state regulation of the economy) in that the state becomes a tool of the corporations, rather like you see in the USA today.

Um, no. The situation in the US is the product of not enough unfettered capitalism, so that only corporations can afford to jump the complex hoops necessary to influence campaigns. If the campaign laws were blown wide open, Kazaa users could spend more than enough to buy a congressman somewhere to stand up for them, without paying half as much as they would in license fees if they bought all their downloaded music...

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There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman

Obsolescene in public use by Cyphertube · 2003-09-20 13:03 · Score: 4, Insightful

Wouldn't this, in a reasonable world, suddenly come under the same purview as when a company fails to defend a trademark. Unless ISO has been hiding under a rock for the past 10 years, they would be clearly aware of the widespread adoption of these standards, and the adoption does not reference ISO as holding copyright, etc. It could be considered defensible to make such a decision were it simply to have been used in a small program, but when implemented by just about every browser and published by another standards group, it becomes impossible to defend such a decision.

Simply put, somewhere in this world I'm sure is a country that will recognise that ISO's failure to react earlier has effectively allowed the standard into public domain.

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Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.

Re:What about slavery? by baka_boy · 2003-09-20 13:10 · Score: 1

In the US, and other developed nations, all of that may be true; however, in the developing world, you could probably find quite a few farmers, disease-sufferers, etc., who would argue with you. The nations that need economic support and free-trade agreements are forced to accept WIPO rules governing their IP laws, and therefore to immediately put valuable genetic, pharmeceutical, and telecommunications tech out of the reach of most of their population.

Re:What about slavery? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-20 13:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

kelnos wrote:

no actual harm is being caused to anyone because of IP laws

This is incredibly naive. People are dying all the time thanks to IP laws. This is because many people in this world die because of the high cost of medication, which is due in large part to the exclusive monopolies granted by patents. While it is true that research and FDA approval cost a lot of money, there is a lot of money being made well beyond what it takes to pay back the research costs in a lot of biotech companies. A lot of people talk about patents in biotech as if they are they only way to get funding for research. This is not the case. There are a lot of other ways it could work. The research really would be a lot cheaper without anyone skimming off the top. Also, FDA approval might be less expensive if drugs were being developed for the public good instead of profit. My rationale for that is that the FDA was originally created because of one drug company that used ethylene Glycol (the stuff in antifreeze) as a sweetener in childrens medicine because it was the cheapest thing available. A research effort working for the public good might be somewhat less likely to willingly poison thousands of children for profit.

If you want another example of IP laws killing people, how about when Chiquita banana sued a reporter for theft of intellectual property for his copies of voicemail messages implicating officers of the company in directing soldiers in a thirld world country to evict people from their homes at gunpoint. Maybe no-one died that time, but it has happened and will continue to happen when so much power that was never intended is granted to holders of copyrights and patents (trademarks are abused horribly too, but I have trouble seeing them killing people).

SIL licence too restrictive by dmoen · 2003-09-20 13:28 · Score: 2, Informative

Skapare says We don't need ISO for language codes ... use SIL

But the SIL licence terms are too restrictive: you can't use their tables in an open source/free software program, because the SIL tables themselves are not freely redistributable: "You are not authorized to redistribute the downloadable code or mapping tables, whether in the exact form they were obtained from this site or in a modified form you have developed, without the written consent of SIL International.

Doug Moen.

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I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.

what next? by ShadowRage · 2003-09-20 13:31 · Score: 1

proprietary rights over numbers? words? languages? oh wait, that's been done. there's a number that's considered illegal because in base16 hex it's the gzipped code for the decss technology, and of course certain words have been copyrighted, and languages, well this would be about that. I'm waiting for someone in power to stand up and scream they own the proprietary rights to water and air becuase they use it to live, etc. people are getting copyright crazy lately.

Re:what next? by mikiN · 2003-09-20 16:35 · Score: 1

This is turning into one hell of a steaming blubbering ball of insanity.

Soon someone with his or her mind in something like the state of John Nash in his lesser years will argue that the base 16 decimal expansion of Pi contains a gzip'ped tarball of DeCSS and declare the use of Pi illegal in any circumstance where it could possibly be expanded to that many digits.

I pity beforehand the poor schmuck who will be required to actually prove this in a court of law. I'm afraid the world (maybe even the universe) may not be big enough to support the evidence (pun intended).

Anyway, that case might go down as the biggest in its class in history...

--
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!

Why not charge? by oliverthered · 2003-09-20 13:32 · Score: 1

ISO have put atleast a small amount of effort into creating and managing ISO language codes, so why shouldn't they get payed for it?

This is exactly the type of thing IP laws were made for, organisations alowing free use of a product until it saturates the market, the kind of marketing stratergy any shrood business man would be proud of.

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thank God the internet isn't a human right.

Re:Why not charge? by thebigmacd · 2003-09-20 14:04 · Score: 1

The spelling is "shrewd". In case you have always wondered...
Re:Why not charge? by thebigmacd · 2003-09-21 05:45 · Score: 1

Wrong word dummy. Shrewd is an adjective, not a verb.

And Capitalism!=Liberty by istartedi · 2003-09-20 13:33 · Score: 1

I get tired of people who talk about the Cold War as "defending capitalism" and who refer to the US as a "capitalist country".

Capitalism is at best a secondary player to the real principle that underlies the founding of the Republic: Liberty.

Now, because we have liberty, capitalism tends to arise within that framework, but it's an effect, not a cause in any sense of that word.

When liberty comes into conflict with capitalism (and it often does) it's our moral duty to defer to liberty. For example, that means minimum wage (because 19th century robber barons created virtual slaves without it). A pure capitalist system with no intervention from the government would not have a minimum wage, but it would not uphold liberty. Liberty should always trump capitalism when they come into conflict.

So. I guess you could also say that Libertarianism!=Liberty and Libertarianism!=Freedom as long as they are so abhorent of government intervention that they refuse to employ it in the defense of liberty even when it can be plainly seen that such action is required.

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For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?

Re:And Capitalism!=Liberty by beakburke · 2003-09-20 14:16 · Score: 1

Two points 1. If capitalism is only an effect of liberty, how can they come into conflict? 2. How can you equate the minimum wage with liberty. I don't see how that qualifies as a liberty, unless you believe that liberty = social justice. In which case you are not really a libertarian. You would be further left.

--
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Re:And Capitalism!=Liberty by istartedi · 2003-09-20 17:21 · Score: 1

If capitalism is only an effect of liberty, how can they come into conflict?

Dad, can I have the car keys?

How can you equate the minimum wage with liberty.

If wages are too low, then people are more likely to get trapped in situations where they actually lose money just by working. There used to be such things as debtor's prisons, and debt to the company store. Under such a system, it's possible for people to become slaves just because the "free market" doesn't value their labor enough to cover their cost of living, or because a company can finagle them into debt. Minimum wage is just part of the system that prevents that from happening.

I don't see how that qualifies as a liberty, unless you believe that liberty = social justice. In which case you are not really a libertarian. You would be further left

No Leftist am I! In fact, that phrase "social justice" really grates on me. I've only voted D once in my entire life. R most of the time, and I a few times.

I think it was Ayn Rand who drew attention to the importance of deciding what a "unit" of society is. Under what many call "capitalism" it has been shown that liberty tends to acrue to corporations--corporations become the defacto unit of society. Individuals are an obvious choice as the unit, but we find that if corporations don't exist at all then things are not quite so convenient. So, we find that we have to balance collective needs vs. individual needs. This doesn't just happen between corporations and individuals either. It happens between different levels of government and organizations.

If you think about this, you might have less trouble seeing why an "independant Republican" thinks minimum wage is a good idea. This is one of those times when I really hate the whole idea of Left/Right R/D etc. Those are very broad brushes, and not useful here at all.

If you don't want to think about it... just trust me... there's nothing paradoxical about my stand... because there is no Left vs. Right here. That whole paradigm falls apart at some point.

--
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Re:And Capitalism!=Liberty by jcast · 2003-09-21 01:42 · Score: 1

If wages are too low, then people are more likely to get trapped in situations where they actually lose money just by working. There used to be such things as debtor's prisons, and debt to the company store. Under such a system, it's possible for people to become slaves just because the "free market" doesn't value their labor enough to cover their cost of living,

Usually this means they need to go get some job skills...

--
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
Re:And Capitalism!=Liberty by istartedi · 2003-09-21 12:17 · Score: 1

Usually this means they need to go get some job skills...

Ummm... no. You might think a miner or a machine tender is "unskilled" but if people who fill these positions are being exploited, training them out is not the answer for 2 reasons I can think of quickly:

1. It may not be possible to train them.

2. Even if you do train out the current workers, the jobs will just be filled by somebody else who will still be exploited.

Training is sometimes an appropriate answer for job loss which is entirely different from worker exploitation.

--
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?

Unisys gif fees - not really by dustmite · 2003-09-20 13:34 · Score: 1

Actually, Unisys probably did fairly well with their .gif fees. Many companies, such as Adobe, who create software such as Adobe Photoshop, paid license fees to Unisys for including the .gif encoder as part of the package. Adobe, of course, simply passes this cost directly on to its customers, in the form of a slightly higher price for Photoshop. Companies and individuals, in turn, who then have increased costs for Photoshop, either (a) pass those costs onto their customers, or (b) get by on narrower margins - meaning, for example, slightly lower potential salaries for people working for such companies.

We've all paid for GIFs, in one way or another, most of us without consciously realising it. Unisys never cared that they could not collect royalties from the "man on the street", because the money was in the big easy targets, like Photoshop. But of course, the costs always trickle down to you and me, one way or another, so long as we are "consumers" of GIF files. I doubt that Unisys made billions, but they probably "settled for" millions ..

Re: Unisys method by solprovider · 2003-09-20 13:57 · Score: 1

I worked at Unisys while they were getting much of the bad publicity. According to my memory of the situation:

1. Unisys developed and patented a compression algorithm.
2. Compuserve licensed that algorithm for their graphics format (.GIF).
3. The original web browser programmers built in compatibility for the popular Compuserve graphic format. (I have read stories that imply they knew it used protected IP, but did not care.)
4. Most web site developers used the format to build web pages with graphics.
5. Unisys noticed. They were collecting royalties from some companies, but others were using it in violation of the patent. Unisys did not want to void their current contracts so...
6. Unisys demanded royalties from the makers of software that included the algorithm. (Notice they did not go after the web site developers or the internet users.) I do not think they had to sue anybody, just asked for a few cents for using their algorithm. I believe it was cheap enough that nobody cared about paying.
7. Unisys made so much money that it barely covered the cost of collecting it, and received some bad press.
(I checked how to get a license back then. The web site had a printable form buried very deeply. Ignoring their public statements, I think they hoped that only companies big enough to catch the public eye would bother filing it.)
8. A few years pass.
9. Unisys declined to renew the patent, even though it is obviously still relevant. They could have received revenues from it for another 14 (17?) years, but decided it was not worth the paperwork. (Not the renewal filing paperwork. The paperwork involved with licensing the technology, since they had kept the price so low.)
10. Today, anybody, including free software, can use this algorithm.

Unisys had to protect their patent to maintain their current contracts. This happened during a really bad time for Unisys. They had completely bungled their merger, and were losing money really well.

Yet they did not use their patent for extortion, and as soon as possible, they freed the software.

I am not saying we should all love Unisys. Unisys has some great engineers, and makes good hardware and software. They lack marketing savvy, and so partner with Microsoft. Today they are basically a Microsoft development department that pays MS for the priviledge of being one, while MS attempts to steal the code. (If MS had anybody that could understand the code, Unisys would be in trouble.) Unisys still provides hardware, software, and services to industries such as banks and airlines. Their services industry is very profitable. The downside is that most of their current offerings are tied to MS, so when MS falls, so will Unisys.

--
I spend my life entertaining my brain.

Psychological observation. by Thinkit3 · 2003-09-20 14:28 · Score: 1

One stupid enough to equate intellectual property with real property will also use the word "utopia" as an insult. Makes sense.

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-Libertarian secular transhumanist

Thanks SCO by pkesel · 2003-09-20 14:28 · Score: 1

Where do you think they got this idea? It's more 'IP' blackmail.

--
- Sig this!

Here's What Started This by HardCase · 2003-09-20 14:36 · Score: 4, Informative

The Fifth Meeting of the ISO Commercial Policies Steering Group (CPSG) was held May 12-13, 2003, at the New York offices of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Attending were representatives from 12 international standards bodies including Alan Bryden, Secretary-General of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The CPSG was created by the ISO Council in 2000, and serves as an advisory body to the Secretary-General; rather than a policy-setting body, the group offers recommendations to be forwarded to Council at the Secretary-General's discretion. Among topics of discussion was the proposed development of a new business plan for working with the Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC-1) and ways to build awareness and increase distribution of JTC-1 standards. The CPSG also discussed the ISO 3166 country codes, ISO 4217 currency codes, and ISO 639 language codes and proposed clarifications for their distribution. Noting the necessity for a number of ISO standards to be published as databases, the CPSG asked that the Secretary-General recommend a consideration of the publication of some ISO standards as such, and promoted studying related pricing, delivery, and maintenance issues. The group also addressed the changing needs of customers in varied electronic environment, and looked at revising some distribution methods to better meet ISO customer needs.

The relevant paragraph:

Noting the necessity for a number of ISO standards to be published as databases, the CPSG asked that the Secretary-General recommend a consideration of the publication of some ISO standards as such, and promoted studying related pricing, delivery, and maintenance issues.

Perhaps I've misunderstood this, but this doesn't seem to be the ISO saying that they want to charge royalties on language and country codes. It is the CPSG saying that they want to study pricing issues related to publishing ISO standards as databases. It seems to me that studying the issues would include such things as taking comment on them.

It also seems to me that the whole /. article is a little inflammatory, fairly inaccurate and that pretty much nobody has read the CPSG's statement.

Even so, I'm with Tim Berners-Lee's position that collecting royalties on a commonly used standards seems self-defeating.

Re:ha by IM6100 · 2003-09-20 16:22 · Score: 1

There was an era when every boy's fantasy was to be a riverboat captain. There was an era when every boy's fantasy was to be a railroad engineer. There was a time when every boy wanted to be a telegraph operator. There was a time when every boy's fantasy was to be a sysadmin.

Well, it really wasn't a fantasy for 'every boy' but those were all 'nerd' aspirations from the past. There's still something of an aura to being a sysadmin, but it's fading. As the 'glamour' of a new communications technology (those were ALL new communications technologies in their heyday, mind you...) fades the fantasy fades.

It's probably time to stop pretending the guy whose job is to make sure the toner cartridges are changed on time and that that big room of cubes up on fourth floor all have reliable connectivity.... it's time for that guy to put away his superman cape.

--
A Good Intro to NetBS

Re:Sorry but you leftist bastards piss me off. by IM6100 · 2003-09-20 16:33 · Score: 1

you can't post as 'anonymous coward' and make copyright claims. In fact, without a clear line of connection, NONE of our comments in these discussion threads can be copyrighted.

It's one of the paradoxes of the Internet. Everybody wants to be anonymous, but everybody wants to make their mark, just the same.

--
A Good Intro to NetBS

Re:Sorry but you leftist bastards piss me off. by IM6100 · 2003-09-20 16:38 · Score: 1

there are currently music CDs out there that use a form of DRM to prohibit copying. that violates my fair use right to make a backup copy.

Yeah, sure. And books 'violate your right' to make exact copies of the book, which is your 'fair use right', by binding them in tight glue-and-thread bindings. Damned those bookbinders! Repressing us all!

Translation of above: Get Real. Nobody guarantees you the 'right' to make copies of a work. Publishers can make it as hard as it amuses them to make it for you to make copies. They can't prosecute you for making 'fair use' copies, but whatever they want to throw in the way of you making said copies is their right to do.

--
A Good Intro to NetBS

Frontaulty by KalvinB · 2003-09-20 17:44 · Score: 1

ew lla udnretsnad gbibresih

Bnejiamn

--
Work Safe Porn

Let's follow the GNU politics... by SharpFang · 2003-09-20 17:48 · Score: 1

...and create OUR OWN, FREE standard country extensions!

--
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2

s/4127/4217/ by mutende · 2003-09-20 18:19 · Score: 2, Informative

From the letter:

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) wishes to express its deep concerns over a recent proposal by the ISO Commercial Policies Steering Group (CPSG) to charge fees for the commercial use of ISO codes such as ISO 639 (language codes), ISO 3166 (country codes), and ISO 4127 (currency codes).

Make that ISO 4217 for the currency codes

--
Unselfish actions pay back better

Re: Unisys method by 3.1415926535 · 2003-09-20 18:35 · Score: 1

Perhaps that explains their statement that using GIFs on a web page would always be free, and their subsequent backpedaling.

</sarcasm>

Please mod parent up by rock_climbing_guy · 2003-09-20 18:43 · Score: 1

That's the most intelligent thing said so far in this discussion.

--
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???

it went insane when lawyers took over by Sivaram_Velauthapill · 2003-09-20 18:58 · Score: 1

When lawyers took over the IP sector, it went insane...most lawsuits have nothing to do with protecting intellecutal property nowadays. Instead, it is nothing more than a money-making scheme...

Sivaram Velauthapillai

--
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)

sort of by Sivaram_Velauthapill · 2003-09-20 19:20 · Score: 1

Diversity IS good but I don't think it will work as you imply. Having incompatibility and no standard just for diversity isn't very useful. I think the ideal scenario is when you have MANY standards that all INTEROPERATE. This way, you could fall back on others if one fails while being guaranteed that they will work with others.

Perhaps the best example of this (although it is sort of different) is programming languages. You basically have a choice of at least 3 programming languags for a job. If one fails, a company can survive by switching (although there WILL be a cost to retrain etc). For example, let's say you pick Java. If SUN folds and doesn't release the Java intellectual property to the public (or to some non-profit organization), you can switch to C++. As I said, it isn't easy but you do have the choice. Your programming company is not going to be destroyed by this choice... Other examples include web browsers. Although it isn't perfect, you can have a choice of at least 2 web browsers. If one web browser dissapears, you can still carry on... In contrast, imagine if there were only one web browser or one programming language or something...

Needless to say, this is very anti-capitalistic and I doubt many corporations would want to do something like that. If anything, the #1 goal of a for-profit organization is to monopolize the market...

Sivaram Velauthapillai

--
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)

Re:Sorry but you partisan bastards piss me off. by Sivaram_Velauthapill · 2003-09-20 19:30 · Score: 1

Actually most people on SlashDot are more like centre-left. If you are left, you are basically close to a socialist (although you don't have to be) and I dont' see too many people supporting socialism except me :) Also, there are A LOT of conservatives here. I don't know where you get the idea that conservatives are extinct here...

Sivaram Velauthapillai

--
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)

Notifying your local representatives by Asmodai · 2003-09-20 22:18 · Score: 1

As per the W3C email I already emailed my concern to info@nen.nl.

As always, remain polite and explain why you think this is bad.

Ideas to use:

stickers on cars which show the country (at least in Europe): NL, DE, BE, and so on.

Commercial packaging of open source software, as I understand it the packager would need to pay, since it became commercial when he started to sell the CDs and DVDs.

I18n and l10n depend on standardized codes.

And so on...

--
Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai

Re:One-tenth of a penny - not for UK/GB by DHam · 2003-09-20 22:26 · Score: 1

No, UK is not Ukraine. The iso country code of Ukraine is UA. UK is a reserved code - basically because it is in widespread use for the UK so it would cause confusion if allocated to another country.

David

Re: Unisys method by Teancum · 2003-09-20 22:32 · Score: 2, Informative

I hate to open this can of worms, but you totally have the wrong spin on this subject.

While I will grant you that Unisys may have helped pay some very small part of the salaries of some of the originators of the LZW algorithm, you are stretching the truth quite a bit here. All that can be said is that at some point Unisys had the foresight to try to patent the algorithm and the USPTO was stupid enough to actually award it (not necessarily the fault of Unisys, but that is another story). From what I understand, IBM also patented the same idea, and there was also considerable prior art, not to mention the very shaky legal grounds that algorithm patents still stand on. Read up on that some time if you get a chance.

BTW, Compuserv did not originally license the "technology". The algorithm was published in a respected academic journal for Computer Science (I can't remember which one) which covered several other computing algorithms, of which the LZW compression algorithm was merely one of many articles. It was common for programmers to beg, borrow, or steal useful algorithms from each other (IMHO the sign of a good programmer anyway). We are not talking the copying of actual source code, but the the concept and idea, like the concept of a bubble sort or a quick sort.

The a couple of programmers at Compuserve saw the article, and liked the idea because they wanted to improve the ability to send graphic images to their users (or rather, even allow the capability). Remember, this was done in the days of the BBS systems when it was still common for 1200 baud modems. Of course, I remember when 1200 baud was considered a high-speed connnection. The GIF file format was in use well before the the world wide web. Several other data compression methods could have been used, but when the GIF standard was created it appeared as though the LZW algorithm was in the public domain.

The journal article didn't have any mention of any licensure requirements. Besides, it wasn't really practice (at the time) for programmers to seek licensure of an algorithm. In addition, at the time the GIF standard was created there was no simple way to search patents for violations. You litterally had to hire a law clerk to manually open patent abstracts and read each one. On paper. Sometimes you could find classified indexes to help with the patent search, but algorithm patents were so new at the time that even that wasn't commonly done because I doubt it had a classification code.

Also, you are forgetting the state of the art for graphic file formats prior to GIF. There were litterally hundreds of image file formats. Some compressed, some with different methods to store the image (usually a vector drawing format). Many were only monochrome images only. Every image processing application usually created their own propriatary format that was usually poorly documented (at best) and totally incompatable with other formats. Good conversions of data from one format to another often resulted in the loss of information, similar to converting a JPEG file to GIF.

From this mess Compuserve came in and offered the Graphic Image Format (GIF) for their customers, and in a philosophy that even Richard Stallman would approve, Compuserve offered the full published details of the format, to be freely distributed and copied without royalty (meaning the actual specification document...it was merely presumed that file formats themselves were freely distributable), and programmers were encouraged to develop software using the format. I believe it was something similar to the BSD license, but it later became free of attribution but still suggested. Keep in mind that Compuserve was at the time the 800 lb. gorilla in the computer industry, and as I said standardization of graphic images was just beginning to happen. Compuserve was treated as a hero, and due to the royalty-free nature of the format it was widely adopted. I can't remember a single graphic manipulation program that didn't support the GIF format pri

Charging is so silly by Teancum · 2003-09-20 23:24 · Score: 1

There are a couple of problems here.

First, there are organizations like the ECMA that publish freely their specification. I can also think of several others, including Microsoft, that publish information without charging royalties for internet distribution. In the case of ISO, I think they see this as a revenue source.

Personally, I think that standards can and ought to be in the public domain. By trying to limit or restrict a standard, you are encouraging other competing "standards" to be developed. Image if you had to pay a royalty for using a gram, meter, or liter? I think pounds, feet, and gallons would become very popular if that occured, even in Europe.

On the other hand, it appears as though ISO is trying to charge royalties on their copyrighted works. This is fair in and of itself, because they wrote the original document and it is in fact copyrighted. That means that people who publish these ISO standards on alternate or mirrored web sites are violating copyright law. As a private organization that can copyright anything they produce, they have every right to prevent or control how that text can be copied. This is the very definition of copyright.

That doesn't stop me from thinking they should never have been copyrighted in the first place. Standards need to be available for everybody to access and learn about, and the companies that sponsor and develop those standards also gain by having the standards availble for their products. Indeed, it is financially in the interest for any for-profit company to get involved, and involved early in the development of a standard. If you are the first company to successfully implement a standard you can often turn that into a near monopoly of the market that has been standarized, or at least get a major portion of that market. Also, competing companies that want to stay compatable with your products (following the standard) must not only comply with the written standard, but must also test against your products, which also help to define the standard. Since you wrote the standard, you don't have that cost.

Any other justification to charge for standards publications is just legal BS beyond the mere cost to support the servers. ISO gets plenty of money from its membership dues, and that should cover the cost of its support staff. I don't object to some donations to cover the server, or even charge for the documents to be given to you, but ISO has nothing in terms of document volume compared to the Gutenberg Project And that is donated server space.

Re:Charging is so silly by oliverthered · 2003-09-21 05:39 · Score: 1

It's a freemarket paradox.

Microsoft are slated for preventing interoperability,
but the freemarket, copyright and IP only works if there are a number of interoperable products.

You can't have a left wing freemarket, it just doesn't work.
Personaly I believe that standards bodys should be classed as an esential service and be supported by tax imposed on companies, just like the British Standards body that product must comply with to be fit for sale.

--
thank God the internet isn't a human right.

Re: Unisys method by MisterFancypants · 2003-09-21 00:05 · Score: 1

They lack marketing savvy, and so partner with Microsoft.

Good call. Microsoft's market penetration in the computer industry is only about 90% or so. What kind of dumbass no-marketing-savvy company would partner with them?

Re:Wrong. by Jesus+2.0 · 2003-09-21 01:04 · Score: 1

Any self-respecting libertarian does not demand the absense of government. Government has a useful purpose--the protection of property, whether it's physical, personal, or to uphold contracts, etc. Property whether physical or personal, but not intellectual?

Re:Lack of Lucidity is a crime...or it should be by reallocate · 2003-09-21 01:11 · Score: 1

>> You personally have no "rights" to your creation.

If not me, then who? How did they get those rights? How can someone else own something I make unless I transfer ownership to them?

>> Lets say you come up with a song that's a hit. I listen to your song and start humming it.

* do I have that right? Or do you control my right to hum your song?

Yes.

>> My friend has a secret tape recorder and so he tapes me singing it. He plays it for other people.

* Did he need your permission to do that?
* Did he need my permisssion to do that?

Yes, your friend has a right to tape you singing my song. Yes, your friend has a right to play that recording.

No, you do not have a right to make a copy of my version of that song, or of the sheet music, without my permission. Copyright law is how we transfer those rights.

>> The truth is, once an idea is expressed to the wider world, nobody "owns" it. Its impossible to own an ideas.

Wrong. This is the same bogus strawman argument that is always trotted out. Intellectual property and copyright are not about ideas. They are about protecting things like books, music, images, software code, etc. None of those things are "ideas". If I write a book, I expect copyright law to protect my right to benefits from the sale of my creation. "Ideas" have nothing to do with it, because I'm not selling "ideas".

--
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"

If ISO starts to charge for country codes by Spunk · 2003-09-21 01:40 · Score: 1

...people will stop using them, and they will become neither International, Standard, nor Organized.

Standards *are* a good idea. by Crash+Culligan · 2003-09-21 02:12 · Score: 1

Quoth the DarkOx...

I used to think standards were a good idea. It would be wonderful if everything could interoperate like it's supposed to. More and more though with the rampant effects if both technical attack in the from of worms and sploits in addition to the Ass*ole attacts in the form of patents and lawsuits, we need to look back to nature.

Funny thing you mentioning nature... because as I recall, human evolution (not that I was actually there, mind you) involved not only the development of positive traits like the opposable thumb and the ability to stand up on two legs, but standardizations like language. When people learned to communicate with each other, when they standardized on a particular grunt meaning "food" and a different grunt meaning "threat," they were able to coordinate, increase the chances of their survival, etc. Language was the necessary beginnings of human interoperability. Incompatability meant ostracism, death, etc.

What does this have to do with the current topic? Plenty! The notion of claiming a standard would be like one proto-human claiming a language for his own and attacking anyone who used similar patterns. How long do you think that sorry schmuck would last on his own? In my opinion, too long, no matter how quickly he got eaten by a tiger! Public standards should be free, and anything which someone wants to claim as their own should never be allowed to become a public standard.

Now, for the other line of thinking that this whole thing spurred...

The big difference between humans and computers is that humans grow up with a huge database of information about the world, permissible actions, prohibited actions, and a certain amount of common sense.

Humans consider information by trying to integrate it into their experiences, and either accepting it if it fits, or, if it doesn't fit, trying to determine whether this new information is bad or they had gotten bad information from another source.

Computers will believe whatever crap you tell them.

But computers are operated by humans. The problem is that many humans (none of whom will read this on Slashdot, unfortunately) tend not to understand computers, and don't know enough to tell them not to accept any crap that comes down the pike. And even then, people who do know what they're doing only have to be caught off guard for one moment. "Social Engineering" can be summed up as the art or science of getting information or results by feeding bad information to good humans.

(And yes, I know, some lack the common sense and critical thinking skills to differentiate fantasy from reality or correct information from incorrect. We could say that the information is "bad," but I find it easier to believe that we have subhumans in our midst. >:) Clearly we must find them and keep them contained for the benefit of the species.)

The steps seem clear, but only because it's Sunday morning and I've had my coffee:

Better computer education,
Computers that are better at identifying where code comes from or what it does before the user clicks OK,
And let's round up them homo ovinus before they breed any more!

--
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.

Re:Wrong. by jcast · 2003-09-21 02:14 · Score: 1

Consider this: every time we've tried a government solution to a product and a private solution, the private solution has turned out better. What makes you think protection of property and enforcement of contracts constitutes the one exception?

--
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman

Metric Units are IP by yanestra · 2003-09-21 02:53 · Score: 1

What happened if BIPM (Bureau International des Poids et Mesures), keeper of the SI (the international metric standards) found out that their funding be too low and started to collect money for their standards?

That's what's ISO is doing all the time! E.g. the standards for the C programming language are not available to the public for free, there are only old drafts.

Can a modern (I mean democratic) world live with such a kind of "standards bureaucrats"?

Re:Wrong. by Jesus+2.0 · 2003-09-21 04:17 · Score: 1

What makes you think that I think what you're saying I think? I never said I think that. I am just questioning a person who says that we need government for protection of property - any kind of property - and simultaneously says that government should not protect intellectual property.

Re:Wrong. by Jesus+2.0 · 2003-09-21 04:22 · Score: 1

Besides, I do think that your claim is a tad oversimplistic. There has never been a government solution that worked out better than a private solution?

Privatized law enforcement turned out pretty horribly (Pinkerton et al), for example.

Partnering with MS by solprovider · 2003-09-21 05:01 · Score: 1

Partnering with MS is always a bad idea.
Get MS to buy you? Take the money and run.
Expect that a partnership with MS will benefit you? Forget it.

Unisys put much work into making NT work on more than 4 processors. As soon as they started selling 20 processor NT systems, MS released their 12(?) processor systems. Would you rather buy a proprietary system with a little extra power or get the standard from the source? Yeah, so did everybody else. Anybody who needed more power was already running a variant of Unix.

A current "partner" is Groove. At least they made MS give them $50 million for the right to look at their code. And their technology is locked into MS anyway since it depends on ActiveX. Just wait and see how much of the tech is merged into MS Sharepoint. (Groove does have some name recognition because it was founded by Ray Ozzie, one of the creators of Lotus Notes, but much of the Notes community will not use Groove because it is too dependent on MS software, so the name recognition does not help with Groove's target market.)

--
I spend my life entertaining my brain.

Re:What about slavery? by danrees · 2003-09-21 05:16 · Score: 1

That's interesting - I'd love to see how most Americans would react to their federal tax going up by a few percentage points to fund drugs research...

Crusade against slavery? by Thinkit3 · 2003-09-21 05:18 · Score: 1

I'm not the only one who thinks of this as the new slavery.

--
-Libertarian secular transhumanist

Thank you by solprovider · 2003-09-21 05:21 · Score: 1

Thank you for the clarification. It was both interesting and informative.

I did mention that my post was based on memory, and was biased because most of my information came from Unisys.

One correction, Graphics Image Format would have been redundant.
GIF = Graphics Interchange Format

I think Compuserve was hoping that it would replace the hundreds of image file formats. With their market power, it did. I remember it (and JPGs to save bandwidth) being the primary format for many BBSs. They were popular enough for the browser makers to standardize on it.

It was common for programmers to beg, borrow, or steal useful algorithms from each other (IMHO the sign of a good programmer anyway).

Hey, isn't this the perfect example why software patents are bad?

I remember the days when if you saw code that worked, you used it. I usually improved it, or at least adapted it to the current application, but there were no worries about where it came from. There was not an "open source" movement to collect the improvements, so it was more difficult to exchange code, but it did happen. RMS is trying to return to the days when software added value to other business, rather than being its own business. I believe we are almost there.

--
I spend my life entertaining my brain.

Who needs government in this? by Thinkit3 · 2003-09-21 08:19 · Score: 1

Since when did we need the government to do open source. Why should anyone want to enforce a requirement that source be distributed? There doesn't need to be any enforcement anywhere. You'll get your software from trusted sources that voluntarily give the source code. Government has nothing to do with it.

--
-Libertarian secular transhumanist

Re:Who needs government in this? by reallocate · 2003-09-21 08:33 · Score: 1

What's government got to do with it? Do I even use the word "government"?

You seem to think that copyright, intellectual property and the common-sense notion that the person who creates something owns it are inventions of government.

Dream on...

--
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"

Hey I own the slavery analogy. by Thinkit3 · 2003-09-21 08:34 · Score: 1

I created that analogy with "intellectual property" and slavery. People say abolishing "intellectual property" is drastic...so was abolishing slavery. I'll be sending my invoice for your unlicensed use of my idea!

--
-Libertarian secular transhumanist

Re:Hey I own the slavery analogy. by Sivaram_Velauthapill · 2003-09-21 14:58 · Score: 1

Great minds think alike... what can I say ;)

I think SCO already has a patent on the concept of analogy. Anytime you use an analogy, you owe them $699. I suggest that you back down from your invoice threats or else I'm going to inform SCO of your 'analogy violation'. I might be weak and powerless but I have SCO on my side ;)

Sivaram Velauthapillai

--
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)

ISO == drug dealers? by chiph · 2003-09-21 10:09 · Score: 1

They *have* spent time & money on their standards, and deserve to get something for their effort. I don't mind paying a one-time fee to use their codes -- much like you have to buy a copy of the X.12 spec, or buy a dictionary or encyclopedia.

Royalties, OTOH, imply that the rate schedule can be changed at a later date -- You could call it the "drug dealer" revenue plan. Give them a little taste for free, then raise the rates when they've gotten "hooked" by writing software around their list and have little alternative but to continue to pay.

Chip H.

"intellectual property" leads to insanity... by Thinkit3 · 2003-09-21 11:49 · Score: 1

Ah, I see you are insane. I was reading a flame in a USA Today editorial page by the RIAA head. That sounded insane too.

--
-Libertarian secular transhumanist

Re:"intellectual property" leads to insanity... by reallocate · 2003-09-21 12:11 · Score: 1

Ah, gratuitous insult and attack. The last resort of someone without an argument.

Go back to listening to your garage-band mp3's and let the adults handle this.

--
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"

Re:What about slavery? by Rich0 · 2003-09-22 08:01 · Score: 1

One problem with Federal-funded research is political correctness.

A drug maker ideally tries to make a drug which is easiest to develop but cures the most people of the most serious considion possible. Why:

1. Easiest to develop - obvious - if you are going to get the same return would you rather spend 100 million to develop the drug, or 1 billion?

2. Cures the most people - the biggest market.

3. Most serious condition possible - the more serious the condition the faster the FDA review and the more likely to get approved. A consumer will also pay more for a drug that will stop their cancer than for a cold medication.

There are some abberations to this though:

1. Drugs get targetted at people who can afford them - so 3rd-world-only drugs (malaria, etc) tend to be underdeveloped compared to true need.

2. Because of the big arguments against charging big money for essential medicines there is pressure to develop more "cosmetic" drugs (like Viagra). Drugs which are extremely essential could make the least money since there would be pressure to deny patent protection.

3. It is more profitable to treat a disease than to cure it.

4. You end up paying for marketing campaigns and corporate profits. The former is significant but not all that huge. The latter is expensive, but it varies a GREAT deal from drug to drug - a top-10 blockbuster is 95% profits. A more typical drug may just barely recoup development costs - and some don't even do that. Companies don't usually know which ones will make big money, so they end up funding a lot of low-profit (but still medically useful) research by accident.

On the other hand, if you federalize the whole process you get:

1. The usual benefits of federal stewardship (extra jobs for cousins of politicians, department heads which try to undermine each other and exhibit fierce bureaucratic territoriality, etc.).

2. The drugs that get funded are the ones with the greatest lobbying effort - ie activist-driven. You don't find activists plugging diabetes drugs - they get avoided in favor of pursing the IMMENSELY expensive cure for AIDS which still has yet to emerge. (I have nothing against AIDS research - but in a lives-saved / dollar spent basis I could think of a lot of better places to spend the money first - the numerator of that equation is still zero, by the way.)

#2 is a BIG downside. Sure, it will start out with the NIH picking the research programs it wants to pursue. Then a congressman will indicate that one of the research centers has to be in Kansas. Then another will insist that at least $x goes to social-disease-of-choice. The senate will make sure that Viagra still gets improved upon, and that there are medicines to assist the over-85 crowd.

Oh yeah, the cost of pharmaceuticals would be even more disproportionately bourne by the USA. Under the current system most countries at least give the brand-name pharma companies a token amount of profit - so they have a little more money to defray the cost of development. Under the federally-subsidized program the USA would pay to discover drugs, and the Indians would manufacture them, and everyone outside the USA would only pay the marginal cost (at the expense of the US taxpayer who bears the full development cost).

I'm not saying the present situation is perfect, but don't think that government-funded research is the perfect ticket to immortality.

Re:We can rant all we want... Dewey Decimal is nex by illtud · 2003-09-23 02:21 · Score: 1

The words "intellectual property" seduce enough people into thinking it is fair to collect money for these things. In the long run we have to treat "standards" (not the ISO's but the worthwhile ones) just like programs. They are part of the public domain and they have to be defended.

And yes, this means silly things like ISO country codes and the Dewey Decimal System

As somebody who's used Dewey Decimal in a project, I can assure you that it's never been royalty-free. I was surprised at the time, but the librarians I worked with on the project assured me that this has always been the case.

Re:Sorry but you leftist bastards piss me off. by kelnos · 2003-09-23 04:23 · Score: 1

They can't prosecute you for making 'fair use' copies, but whatever they want to throw in the way of you making said copies is their right to do.

were that correct, i would just about agree with you. unfortunately, you aren't, and this is the crux of the problem. because of the DMCA, they _can_ go after you. take a DRMed content-holding device, whether it's an ebook, a CD, DVD, anything, break the copyright protection, and you are in violation of the DMCA and can be the recipient scary legal action. sure, you were just exercising your fair use right to copy that section of music or video clip, but the DMCA illegalises the _method_ you used to do so.

--
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.

Re:Wrong. by jcast · 2003-09-23 12:52 · Score: 1

I'm not replying to you. I'm replying to an AC that didn't even reply to you. Nothing in the post you replied to is a reply to anything you said.

--
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman

Re:Wrong. by jcast · 2003-09-23 12:56 · Score: 1

The difference is that there are many private companies, but only one governement. If a private company fail there is another that don't fail.

Is this supposed to be an argument for government monopolies?

And don't forget the last blackout.

The product of government established municipal and regional monopolies... Hardly an argument for government monopolies.

--
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman

Re:Wrong. by jcast · 2003-09-23 13:30 · Score: 1

There has never been a government solution that worked out better than a private solution?

Not that I'm aware of.

Privatized law enforcement turned out pretty horribly (Pinkerton et al), for example.

Could you give some more details? More than likely, any problems with Pinkerton are ultimately the result of government monopoly, i.e., Pinkerton's only real competition was an inefficient tax-supported monopoly and no other competition could be established due to government interference. If the government establishes a high barrier to entry in the private enforcement market, that's not an argument for having a government in the first place.

--
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman

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W3C Objects To Royalties On ISO Country Codes

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