Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Offers to License the Internet
NW writes "According to an eWeek story Microsoft is beginning to assert IP rights over 130 protocols including many basic Internet protocols including TCP/IP, DNS, etc. The story originates with a mailing list post to the IETF's IPR list."
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Maybe they will be patenting their idea of setting the QOS on all packets to realtime, thereby making the whole damn thing useless.
Douglas P. Price
You think you are scared?
You're not scared enough -- MS has _tonnes_ of patents in the WIMP area, which several Operating Systems use.
MSR has been filing patents left right and center, in various areas such as Graphics, AI and what not. They even have people working on areas of Information Theory in Quantum Computing and what not.
A search on Delphion shows that about 7,542 patents have been registered in almost every conceivable area of computer science.
I was hoping that MS would not take this stance, but I guess this was inevitable.
What scares me is that Australia will probably end up with copyright and patent laws the same as the United States (which is part of our "free trade" agreement). I guess I can always renounce technology and go back to reading books and using pen and paper, but then, I'm sure Amazon has a patent on "a mechanism for the immediate and periodic loan of printed material from a central repository" (meaning I can't borrow library books, unless it takes more than one step :-)
I sit here using my Mac, open the MS page listing all the protocols that MS wants you to sign a licence agreement for, and lo and behold I see that Apple File Protocol is the first on that list. I think Apple might have some fun with it's lawyers on this one.
I also wonder just how arrogant, dumb and just plainly disconnected from reality you have to be to start licencing protocols that Microsoft had absolutely nothing to do with, such as DNS, DHCP, TCP/IP etc.
And the microsofties on this board wonder why people refer to MS as M$ or slam the company constantly.
MS is a bunch of criminal bastards. Fuck them and may they burn in fucking hell.
Doing what? If you actually GO AWAY AND READ THE ARTICLE you will notice that it's one guys conjecture based on something he found on Microsoft's website. Nowhere does it say that Microsoft are claiming the entirety of these protocols for themselves (and I doubt they would). There is a good chance that Microsoft do own some algorithms for something related to these protocols. As an example, while it is unlikely that MS can claim DNS as their own "invention", they may well have some patents relating to Dynamic DNS and its integration with their Active Directory stuff.
This is clearly, yet again, a story that is more about MSFT bashing than about anything real.
http://neokosmos.blogsome.com
November 5, 2004
Has Microsoft been trying to retroactively claim IP (intellectual property) rights over many of the Internet's basic protocols? Larry J. Blunk, senior engineer for networking research and development at Merit Network Inc., believes that might be the case.
[...]
I am not found of M$ like the next slashdotter, but, before 'we' start bashing M$ ... lets do it after we know the _facts_ :)
I mean,
Microsoft Offers to License the Internet
- vs
Is Microsoft Ready to Assert IP Rights over the Internet?is a big difference, that awards 'caution, biased story alert'.
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
When you sign an agreement with Microsoft, you are giving legal control over your self and your company in ways that, in this case, cannot be understood completely in advance.
in that case, we shouldn't forget the corollary: What looks like stupidity from one point of view may make perfect sense from another point of view.
I for one will welcome the day we can read a story about how Slashdot editors have finally decided to read the text of the submissions, and at least scan the contents of the offered links.
Well, that's very big of them, but some of these protocols don't belong to Microsoft. For example, TCP/IP was developed before Microsoft existed. You might reasonably call this "stupid". I would also call it "evil", just as I would call a burglar evil if I caught him trying to sell (sorry, "licence") property that belonged to me. I think "strange" is understating the case.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
..a license is available from Microsoft under whatever rights it may have...
...royalty free but (perhaps partially) restricting and confusing license...
Of what use is this license to the ordinary Joe? If MS terminates the license after 30 days, then what? Does Joe have to re-license the use of all 130 protocols elsewhere? And is Joe aware that there may be rights that are no longer valid making him have only partial rights to documentation and protocols? And, under the terms of the license, no improvement to the protocols is allowed either even if MS has no rights in that particular protocol.
Perhaps MS should have named it a
Did he inhale?
DARPA is the newer name. Back when I worked on the net in 1977 it was known as arpanet and IPV4 was so new that very few OS's had deployed it. RADC/Griffiss AFB where I worked was using the Honeywell IMP. At that time a fast arpanet connection was 56K with many sites on 9600 bps lines.
... is a marketing company first and formost. Second being a third party integrator of the works of others, if not law manipulators, making integration of the works of others in third place.
In their marketing they lie, they mislead, they present an illusion of their being something they are not, innovators. They use the law to manipulate others in the industry thru licensings and such agreements.
Numerious times they have been found guilty in a court of law for anti-trust violations and they general response is that such fines are part of the cost of doing business, as is the case of organized crime.
So when issues such as this article refers to comes up....
Facts?...... you want what?
OK!!
MS operates on illusion and their ability to fabricated it, if even just thru insinuation. And unfortunately, the public typically falls for it.
Is that fact enough for you all?
Licensing the internet is a good summary of what the general public would preceive of this, and MS knows it, and that is why they are doing it.
DUH!
This may be the big one folks. There is so much prior art for this that its not even funny. Not only that, this is the backbone of the world's economy and its rigorous enforcement may well wake up the world to the problem of broad software patents and bring about quick change to the patent system. May it be rigorously enforced for the good of humanity.
No they are not. With this silly triple damages if you knew about it, people will stay the hell away from doing patent research. Some people may decide to use the services of patent attornies, but these are not talented, except in ripping of people.
The (US) patent system is only good for lawyers. they will be 7861st against the wall when the revolution comes.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
It is not within Microsofts power to do that - so why is this document not considered fraud?
Also, MS offers no form of warranty and accepts no liability, so this licence is completely worthless in any case.
3rd sentence in that article ...if you want Microsoft to implement a protocol...
They're licensing and implementation, not the protocol.
For a group of people who claim to be intelligent, a lot of stupid things get posted on this site.
It is a documented fact that Microsoft made plans to take over Internet (and other) protocols in order to stop Linux, Apache, and other Open Source software.
.Net authentication protocols, and so on.
In the Halloween Document, Microsoft states:
"OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market."
This licensing ploy is just one of many steps that Microsoft has taken in order to achieve their goal of de-commoditizing the Internet.
Other steps include Microsoft's extended Kerberos protocols, Microsoft's patented Office XML protocols, Microsoft's secret/patented
As always, Microsoft is more akin to a crime syndicate, than to a legitimate business.
Microsoft would never do anything like this unless they firmly believed that they had an ace up their sleeve that they could later use to crush anyone who got in the way of their grand vision of One World, One Operating System, One Vendor.
Finally... if you actually believe that you can win in a court of law against Microsoft just because you're right... you've got another thing coming. Justice is a myth. Most court battles are won by the party who outspends their opponent... and Microsoft can outspend just about everybody.
If you actually take 5 mins to read what Microsoft are allegedly trying to claim ownership of (see here) then you will find that the first paragraph of the "ROYALTY FREE PROTOCOL LICENSE AGREEMENT" states:
"Licensee desires a license from Microsoft, under any applicable intellectual property rights that Microsoft may have, to implement the Protocol(s) for which the applicable box(es) are checked on Exhibit A, and to use the corresponding Technical Documentation (as defined below) for that purpose. Licensee understands and acknowledges that licenses from other third parties may also be required to use that Technical Documentation or implement those Protocols. "
As you will see, Microsoft (in this case at least) is licensing on a royalty-free basis any IP that they may have in any of these protocols. They clearly state that other licenses from 3rd parties may be required (including I would imagine GPL/BSD licenses) and even give hyperlinks to all of the relevant RFC documents and/or other vendor sites.
The only reason we are even discussing this is because the eWeek article repeats a claim that one person (Larry J. Blunk) believes that might be the case. One persons belief that something might be so is hardly justification for claiming that MS are about to patent the whole internet.
because they are 'server' softwares that connect to Microsoft clients. Considering that Apache connects 70% of the internet, this 'license' is nothing more than an attempt to restrict Apache's ability to connect with Microsoft users attempting to surf the web.
... this license is unnecessary.
SAMBA sees the threat and already given warnings about submitting patches which may contain 'offending' software.
If Microsoft begins enforcing these IP claims, (how many OpenSource projects can afford to fight a Microsoft "cease and desist" order?), they will be able to do what they couldn't do on a level playing field... defeat Apache. Do you run a Linux server at work that connects to Windows clients using SAMBA?
This license establishes a legal precedent for control of these technologies. Ask yourself, if they have no intent to later change the 'free' part of this license to require $$$, why issue the license at all? If it really doesn't matter
Don't stick your heads in the sand... It's not IF Microsoft will jam these IP claims down your throat with leagal action, only WHEN.
They have to do destroy Apache and SAMBA. Even after hundreds of 'patches' they have been unable to even reduce the number of new vulnerabilities that arise to plague Windows. It's getting so bad that Professionals are recommending folks switch from Internet Explorer to FireFox. Microsoft Word vulnerabilities are even beginning to plague OS X users. LongHorn has been emasculated and is now ShortHorn, and there is no guarantee that it will be any more secure than XP is. And it is a year or more away. Microsoft needs something to impede the success of Linux as a server in the server room and on the Internet. SCO hasn't had the desired effect. If just issuing this 'free' license which, by the way, causes the signer to give up their future rights, doesn't slow down the Linux tsunami, then a well publicized lawsuit might help. The most likely targets are, or course, Apache and SAMBA.
If you actually execute the license agreement, you will be under all sorts of legal obligations to Microsoft that you weren't under before; for example, you need to put a notice into your software and you may be restricted in how you can sublicense it. And you get nothing from them in return because they don't actually own any of the protocols. This is not a "liberal" license, it's a license for suckers.
The license contains some interesting clauses. For example:
Here we have an obligation for licensee to license their implementation of the protocol and require third parties to enforce the license as well. This obligation exists even if M$ has no right to the protocol in the first place.Another funny clause:
Yes M$ admits they might not have a patent, but they don't tell you if they have one or not. So read clause a). It says you can distribute the licensed protocol only as a Licensed Implementation. Do you take the chance and distribute an open source implementation? If M$ happens to have a patent afterall, you are in violation. You may have good chance to challenge the patent and invalidate it, but then you are up for a trial and the contract may be found enforceable for the time period before the patent is invaludated. What would the company lawyer advice? What a PHB will decide? This is called chilling effect.Now look at clause b). As a licensee you are required to tell the world that M$ has rights to the protocol, even if it might not be the case.
" Lawrence Rosen, a partner in the law firm Rosenlaw & Einschlag and author..."
and
"Glenn Peterson, an IP attorney and shareholder with Sacramento-based law firm McDonough Holland & Allen..."
which I'ld say is more than one, more than just "this guy's opinion" and pretty good research for a short magazine article. Since it seems you didn't RTA, these two experts disagree with your assessment.
Yup. Just the same way they have to accept the health risks from breathing the crap that belches out of every car and truck on the road. Maybe vehicles should be prohibited from use in public places as well. And if you don't think the two scenarios equate, I have a few asthmatic friends who'll be happy to tell you different.
The answer, none. But the problem is, with the way current legal system operates, Microsoft (I'll not do the s => $ thingy, I think its childish) could just drag out the lawsuit until their opponent collapse under the legal fees. This is actually the most common tactic used by large coporation to destroy a smaller ones.
Second is that most small company would just settle and avoid the legal battle.
That's the threat. Not that Microsoft has a claim on TCP/IP protocol, but the threat that they actually have a claim.
I really wish US could adopt a IP (intellectual, not internet one) system that gives an enforcement expiration date. Basically, if you didn't enforce a patent after a period of time, the patent automatically expires (I think a country does this, not sure which).
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
But even in that case I consider it to be an inaccurate term
You are arguing with Stephens over the defintion of the term TCP/IP... this is like watching a guy walk up to John Glenn and say, "you sir, have no idea how hard it is to get into space."
Please, just stop. We've all been through the TCP/IP thing. Yeah, it sounds wrong when you know how the protocols are structured. Yeah, it's convention. Whatever.
All the RTFA and "this is just MS bashing" posts are missing the point. This license is not intended to control the protocols, its intended to control the developers. If you sign this license, you have a legally binding agreement with MS that you can't use protocol XYZ in a GPL product. It doesn't matter if MS owns or controls protocol XYZ, if you sign this contract, they don't need to. If enough developers sign this, or things like it, MS can squeeze open source development without owning anything. The idea isn't to do a knock-out blow against Linux, just a lot of little things to put a chill in the air.
They're saying "We own some of the patents/copyrights etc in these protocols. You may licence what we own of these protocols for free." Then comes the king-hit: you read the terms of this free-as-in-beer licence and dicover that you can no longer use your knowledge of these protocols to write GPLed software.
And of course the shallow thinkers in the audience will think "so what?" Here's what: the law says innocent until proven guilty, but Real Life says that if you get sued, you're going down whether innocent or not because you simply don't have the money to adequately defend yourself in court.
Think about that for a while. You contribute a GUI frontend to nmap and also sign their protocols licence. They sue you for using your knowledge of their parts of the protocols to contribute to a GPLed project. Sure, the code you wrote knows diddly squat about the protocols - only nmap needs to do that - but proving it in court before a judge who barely knows a PCMCIA card from a memory stick ain't gunna be so easy.
While you're busy doing that, they're also suing forty other GPL developers and another 40,000 have become too terrified by all of this to continue with their projects.
Then someone signs up for the licence who once contributed to SaMBa, KDE, GNOME, KOffice, OpenOffice, Mozilla, name it and suddenly Microsoft have a much bigger, meatier target in their corporate crosshairs than a lone developer.
Remember, they don't really care whether they win or lose the court battle, the end goal is to do as much damage to their competitors as possible, and everyone is Microsoft's competitor, even their own customers.
If they lose a court battle but shut down the OpenOffice project and permanently taint the codebase doing that, it's a big win from their corporate competitive perspective. The price of MS-Office would double within the year in most places, and they'd be constantly going over the code for KOffice, AbiWord and even Pathetic Writer after that, in the hope of finding a tainted author that they can bludgeon each project with.
Are we clear on this point now?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...Microsoft trying to make money from licenses than it has to do with trying to make it harder for the average person to be a content producer and distributor vs. just being a consumer. It's still a bad thing, but do not let them convince you that licensing profits are at stake. Something bigger is at stake: your role as a consumer of services.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o