W3C Objects To Royalties On ISO Country Codes

An anonymous reader writes "Tim Berners-Lee has sent a letter of concern to the president of ISO about the idea of collecting royalties on...guess what...ISO language and country codes! According to the letter, the ISO Commercial Policies Steering Group is proposing a royalty on commercial use of ISO language, country and currency codes. The whole idea seems absurd. On what grounds could uttering lang="en-US" be subject to any intellectual property right that justified any royalty demand?"

Comments

Abolish "intellectual property".

[Thinkit3]

"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.

Re:Abolish "intellectual property".

[cperciva]

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.

Re:Abolish "intellectual property".

[Radio Shack Robot]

You are Communist, I presume?

Re:Abolish "intellectual property".

[Solitonic]

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".

[incom]

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.

Re:Abolish "intellectual property".

[Anonymous Coward]

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".

[LostCluster]

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.

Welcome !

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

How long ...

[El Cubano]

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.

Top Level Royalties!

[joeszilagyi]

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.

And in other news

[darkstar949]

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.

You are a robot, I presume?

[Thinkit3]

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

Cost of Databases?

[Scottm87]

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.

umm...

[justMichael]

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

but LANG="en_US" might ;-)

Not Surprised

[rhysweatherley]

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

[divec]

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.

ISO

[El]

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!

Re:ISO

[cperciva]

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.

One-tenth of a penny

[MaxTardiveau]

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

lang="en_US"

[BabyDave]

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.

ISO to charge for use of proteins, amino acids

[Saint Aardvark]

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."

Metric System

[dfn5]

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.

Conflict of interest?

[DogIsMyCoprocessor]

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!

Go ahead...

[lordvdr]

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.

systems

[SolemnDragon]

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....

We don't need ISO ... use SIL

[Skapare]

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).

in related news...

[wfmcwalter]

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.

We can rant all we want... Dewey Decimal is next

[Googol]

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.

How much is that in smoots?

[jerryasher]

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.

Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting

[reallocate]

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?

Re:Ill-Informed Juvenile Political Ranting

[baka_boy]

"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:What IP law would they use?

[Googol]

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=

Libertarianism != Capitalism

[Tony]

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.)

Obsolescene in public use

[Cyphertube]

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.

Here's What Started This

[HardCase]

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.