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RMS On How To Fight Software Patents
rimberg writes "Richard M. Stallman has a article on NewsForge talking about ways to fight software patents. It mentions the Public Patent Foundation (and why it's a good idea), but argues that fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria." (Newsforge, like Slashdot, is part of OSTG.)
"Every democray in hisotry has eventually commited suicide."
-William Durant, Historian
- The patent is accepted and you can invalidate all patents that follow (as they cover ground your patent now owns). No more software patents!
- The patent is rejected because of prior art. Subsequently, all software patents that follow that piece of prior art should also be invalidated. No more software patents!
The only thing you have to prove is that your patent for the turing machine describes all other possible software patents....Some guy even proved using lambda calculus that because of this property, several assumptions about the patent system are in contradiction with each other when applied to computer programs.
Donate free food here
All patent attorneys know that they can take an application to the board of appeals (or higher) if they want to bother. The only reason they wouldn't is if the examiner builds an airtight case that convinces the attorney that it would be a waste of his time to try. The attorneys know that the people who sit on the board of appeals are patent law experts but not software experts.
If you want to stop software patents, you need to lay off the examiners (they agree with half the stuff said on Slashdot and the other half isn't even close to accurate) and focus on the patent attorneys and the appeal process. Any examiner who has been at the USPTO has issued patents for ideas they believe they have rejected but the board doesn't agree that "simultaneous" means the same thing as "doing two things at once" or some garbage like that. So the patent gets issued and from a legal standpoint, it's a perfectly valid patent. The examiner hates to do it, but the examiner doesn't have a choice.
If you want to fix software patents, focus on the attorneys and the appeal process. The examiners are just trying to do their job without being burnt out by the moronic arguments they deal with on a daily basis.
Nothing in RMS's argument is specific to software patents. Clearly he believes that all patents should be abolished. That won't get passed in many countries this century!
It is also important to take a two pronged defense/attack on software patents. Giving the analytical arguments against patents, educating developers, and trying to give businesses a real business case why patents neither protects them, nor helps them competitively is the first approach, and a very important one. The second approach is the quantative and qualitative approach giving real figures and projected outcomes. A scientific approach. Here in Aus we are trying to set up a patents watch, now that we are locked into US style patents legislation. This means that in a year, or two years, we have real data on the amounts of trivial patents being attempted, and can realistically speculate on the impact of suh patents if they had been granted. Plus we get the open source community working directly with the people who need help in filtering patents.
:( We can't convince them just with argument, we need to give them proof they can't argue against.
A good eg of what is current in Australian patents:
> Australian Application Number 2004205327
> Title Programming interface for a computer platform
Through this we can hopefully prove that patents should simply not apply to software methods. It makes no sense, stifles innovation, and is an anti-competitive too of the most scary dimensions
--sounds like a good idea. Make it public enough so that examiners reference it all the time, and make sure they have the URL for it. And send the reference to every patent attorney and politician out there. Making a large repository of prior "thoughts and ideas" might help to mitigate patent frenzy. You could have a sub section where prior art that tends to argue against already issued patents as well. Wiki style is well understood, I would think a lot of developers might drop interesting ideas there just to keep them from getting patented. there's no way to fight industries with boatloads of cash, they are the only ones who can actually apply and get patents by the hundreds, but establishing the prior art is as easy as mashing the "submit" button on your idea, and much cheaper to pull off. Sort of a peer review wiki, concentrating on IP ideas.
Maybe someone with the bandwith and interest can host it, and maybe some legal geeks can write up the mission statement and goals, etc.
Is it possible to use the patent system against itself, in the same way that the GPL counteracts the principle of copyright using copyright law itself?
For example, a public foundation dedicated to holding patents in the public interest. Anyone with an idea could submit it to them; they would then obtain a patent on it, and license it freely to the public, with the exception of companies who use their patent portfolios offensively.
Also, as an attack against software patents, would it be possible for a free developer to patent their own algorithms/widgets etc, and license it *only* for use in GPL'd software?
Is the above legally possible? There's an obvious problem in that most FOSS developers have neither the time nor the expertise, nor the money to apply for patents, but if an organisation could be formed to do that part, I have no doubt that the intellectual citizens of the world can out-invent the corporations obtaining patents.
[I am personally convinced that patents per se are a very bad thing, in any field of endeavour. They run contrary to the spirit of scientific endeavour, and they create a "tragedy of the commons" on a global scale. They also lead to monopolies. Pragamatically, one might make a special exemption for pharmaceutical patents, on the grounds of the huge investment required up front, but even then, such patents should be unenforceable in the 3rd world on grounds of humanitarian necessity.]
The patent system didn't cause the collapse of the entire Industrial Revolution due to patent infringement
But it may have concentrated power into the hands of very few and slowed it down, and changed its direction to favour the interests of the establishment of the time.
As a mechanical engineer, I detest all patents, not just software ones. You wouldn't _believe_ the stuff engineers aren't allowed to do because of patents, particularly sealed patents (patents that have been indefinitely extended and simultaneously removed in whole or in part from public records for reasons of "national security" - (i.e. corporate cronies requested it) This is intensely irritating - the patent still applies, so you can still be stopped from creating whatever it is you have rediscovered, but unlike with an ordinary patent, you don't know when/if it'll expire (typically when a citizen in another country independently reinvents it and _doesn't_ also keep it secret), and because there's little public record, people think you're being paranoid if you try to fight it.)
I think your parent post answered that.
We treat him as a paranoid nutcase because he sees these trends in intellectual property law about 3-5 years before they affect us users of the system. Since we don't have the same context, we don't understand what he's saying.
For example, he probably wrote The Right to Read back when the DMCA was being drafted; and he probably had some exposure to the debates that were part of its drafting. We, on the other hand, didn't know anything about the DMCA when we first read the article. Without this context it sounded quite paranoid. Only after the DMCA passed as law did the popular media (/.) notice the law, and only after that point did RMS's article make sense.
Mean anything?
Yep, it means that Bill Gates is paying the same percentage of his income as a million other concerned citizens. As far as it goes, a good thing and my congratulations to him.
I find it interesting that he really only got started donating to significant non-M$ benefiting causes when he met Melinda. She appears to have been a positive influence.
In any case M$ is still taxing the world $35,000,000,000 per year for about a dozen programs mostly written more than a decade ago with the most complicated bits (the device drivers) being largely written by third parties. That's wrong, the market isn't working and the law needs to be fixed.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
Right to read
This article appeared in the February 1997 issue of Communications of the ACM (Volume 40, Number 2).
(from "The Road To Tycho", a collection of articles about the antecedents of the Lunarian Revolution, published in Luna City in 2096)
For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in college--when Lissa Lenz asked to borrow his computer. Hers had broken down, and unless she could borrow another, she would fail her midterm project. There was no one she dared ask, except Dan.
This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help her--but if he lent her his computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books, the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and wrong--something that only pirates would do.(poisoning of our school system, remember BSA?)
And there wasn't much chance that the SPA--the Software Protection Authority--would fail to catch him. In his software class, Dan had learned that each book had a copyright monitor that reported when and where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing. (They used this information to catch reading pirates, but also to sell personal interest profiles to retailers.) The next time his computer was networked, Central Licensing would find out. He, as computer owner, would receive the harshest punishment--for not taking pains to prevent the crime. (DRM-OS! Any takers for palladium?)
Of course, Lissa did not necessarily intend to read his books. She might want the computer only to write her midterm. But Dan knew she came from a middle-class family and could hardly afford the tuition, let alone her reading fees. Reading his books might be the only way she could graduate. He understood this situation; he himself had had to borrow to pay for all the research papers he read. (10% of those fees went to the researchers who wrote the papers; since Dan aimed for an academic career, he could hope that his own research papers, if frequently referenced, would bring in enough to repay this loan.)(Per use licensing! Bill Gates and the RIAA hoos probably masturbate to this every day!!!)
Later on, Dan would learn there was a time when anyone could go to the library and read journal articles, and even books, without having to pay. There were independent scholars who read thousands of pages without government library grants. But in the 1990s, both commercial and nonprofit journal publishers had begun charging fees for access. By 2047, libraries offering free public access to scholarly literature were a dim memory.(The OTHER 1984)
There were ways, of course, to get around the SPA and Central Licensing. They were themselves illegal. Dan had had a classmate in software, Frank Martucci, who had obtained an illicit debugging tool, and used it to skip over the copyright monitor code when reading books. But he had told too many friends about it, and one of them turned him in to the SPA for a reward (students deep in debt were easily tempted into betrayal). In 2047, Frank was in prison, not for pirate reading, but for possessing a debugger.(Well well.. INDUCE ACT?)
Dan would later learn that there was a time when anyone could have debugging tools. There were even free debugging tools available on CD or downloadable over the net. But ordinary users started using them to bypass copyright monitors, and eventually a judge ruled that this had become their principal use in actual practice. This meant they were illegal; the debuggers' developers were sent to prison.(Up to 10 years for downloading a mp3 today under the PIRATE act, 'nuff said!)
Programmers still needed debugging tools, of course, but debugger vendors in 2047 distributed numbered copies only, and only to officially licensed and bonded programmers. The debugger Dan used in software class was kept behind a special firewall so that it could be used only for
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
"In a *real* democracy, you wouldn't need to elect a president. The citizens would vote on the issues directly, just as the ancient Athenians did."
Don't know if there are any anime fans here, but if you want Kino's Journey there was an episode that is exactly like this. So people all vote on issues, and there are disagreements, and eventually, what did they do?
They start voting to have the minority executed.
Eventually there is only a couple and a man left, and the couple voted to have that man killed. Then one fine day the wife died of illness, because there are no doctors left (they killed them all).
Finally, the remaining man shot himself.
Not a pretty end for the US of A, I'd say stick with the present system however bad it is.
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
This is one of the ways that open democracies fail. The U.S. was never meant to be a democracy but a [Limited] Republic with democratically elected officials.
Alot of people like to blaim politicians being bought out on the free market (often trying to use the term capitalism, as if they are one and the same). The problem of becoming too democratic is that the most powerful few (tyrrany of the minority/of the wealthy elite) and those of the greatest numbers (tyrrany of the majority) can influence the law to their own will.
If we fought to maintain our Limited Republic more dilligantly, we would not be set up in a system where it is easy to sway the legislature in your favor. When making new laws is just short of impossible, and government does not have the "right" to set in place new legislature at will, you do not see politicians being bought out...
I'm not specifically saying you were doing this, Pig_Hogger, but alot of people here at slashdot need to stop pointing at corporations and saying that capitalism (not to be confused with a free market... since corporations do not naturally exist in a free market) is the problem, totally ignoring the unfolding of our government with the decrease in trust and the rise in illegitimacy issues.
Democracy has been making democracy look bad for the past few thousand years, that's why people as far back as Plato have been warning us of the difficulties.
I'll give a few quotes...
"We are now forming a Republican form of government. Real Liberty is not found in the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy, or some other form of dictatorship."
--Alexander Hamilton
# "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
-- John Adams, 1814
"The adoption of Democracy as a form of Government by all European nations is fatal to good Government, to liberty, to law and order, to respect for authority, and to religion, and must eventually produce a state of chaos from which a new world tyranny will arise."
-- Duke of Northumberland, 1931
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury."
-- Alexander Tytler
"The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections."
-- Lord Acton
I'll stop before I get even more carried away...
Speckpot?
Frankly I still don't understand any of this. Why was it legal to create the JPEG format, which obviously does the same thing (from a user perspective) as GIF, when it was not legal for Barnes and Noble to implement their own version of one-click?
My gut feel is that all software patents are bad because computer science is just too young a field. The government doesn't need to encourage basic research in software, it will happen anyway.
If a town has only one lawyer, then (s)he starves. If the town has two lawyers, then they're both rich. The moral of the story is that lawyers know how to create work for themselves, and they are carving our a new niche in the software industry.
Perhaps you should collect data on how all the lawyer expenses are just a ball and chain around the industry. Thus, the numbers of $$$ spent on patent attorneys, legal fees, court cases and such.
Then you can argue that other than killing innovation, creating artificial barriers to entry and a software oligarchy, the industry is also spending $$$ on this complete waste of time.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Personally, I am not sure that software patents are the overarching threat that people make them out to be. IANAL, though I have done some reading into patent law and have been thinking about the role of patents in the software industry for quite a while. I used to be afraid of them, but not anymore. Here is why:
1) The really dangerous patents (say, required to interop with Microsoft software) may be vulnerable to court-ordered licensing in terms useable by the competition as per anti-trust law. (Again, IANAL).
2) Although the theoretical danger of software patents partially revolves around the fact that nearly every software patent will be obsolete long before it expires, this actually serves to kill encumbered technology (such as GIF) because people are realizing that they don't want to be tied to dead-end technology. With unencumbered technology legacy integration is far more straightforward, and the cost is usually lower too. So encumbered technology only lasts a couple years before it is superceded by "good enough" unencumbered technology. By encumbered, I mean software technology with comparitively onerous patent licensing conditions.
Look at the popularity of GIF today compared to PNG. Compare to where everyone was when Unisys decided to pursue their patent rights. This is a case in point regarding how patent encumbrance kills encumbered technology.
3) Patents are *expensive* to enforce. After a few such suits and the fact that in the end they won't get much in the way of damages, companies will decide that suing open source projects over patents is simply not worth it and will go away.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Years ago a friend told me to keep a patent idea book. He said get a notebook with printed page numbers and at the start of each entry write the date, the idea and draw a line. If you want to add to it, use the next entry location and never ever update an existing entry. That book has killed a few bad patents so far.
That friend has several patents on the best selling chip of the time (Am/FM radio chip). He also has a patent on using morse code to talk to a device even though it had been patented nearly a century before.
You might want to read about Direct Democracy in Switzerland. Why does it seem so inconceivable here? Well, (from the second link there), "the extensive choice of media play a decisive role in ensuring the proper functioning of this particular form of State."
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