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."
This one was probably started by a intern lawyer at MS who's trying to impress his boss with "Look what I can do!"
Bye!
SeqBox
...is this a suprise? A mega-corporation trying to make money by expanding it's IP portfolio. I'm not sure what is worse, the fact that I'm responding to a story about how Microsoft is trying to invade into another part of my life, or the fact that someone else has decided that they have a better reason to "own" the Internet...
And I thought the purpose of intellectual property was to encourage innovation. With talented people now forced to investigate potential issues, I can't see how IP does anything but slow progress. Time for revision?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
This is totally insane, isn't anyone going to stop MS from doing this?
TCP/IP, DNS etc are open standards created to be used by anyone and should be kept away from being crippled by legal patents.
I guess it's time for something more radical than an online petition...
..because M$ wasn't even the publishers of most of the protocols.
For example, take the "Character Generator Protocol" http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0864.txt, which was posted by Mr. Postel on May 1983 without any restrictions for usage and/or modification.
And AFAIK Postel never did work for Microsoft and never sold his rights to them.
I didn't take a look at the other protocols yet, i i guess it's the same story for most, if not all, of them...
Look, this thing is totally safe! Built it myself, you know. You just press that button like this and then turn that lev
Not only are their legal precedents shaky (to say the least), they didn't even bother to check their facts very well. For one thing, they refer to the "ping" program as "Packet Internet Groper (ping)". This meaning of the program's name is a well-known backronym of the original meaning which the author of ping stated had to do with the similarity to submarines.
Maybe this is a hint as to how much actual investigative work they have put into this spectacle.
And of course, when yet another of MS' asinine patents is discussed, the shills come out of the woodwork bleating the corporate line "Microsoft is only interested in using their IP defensively!".
I completely fail to see how this can ever be used for anything but to harass competitors. Not surprising, since this strategic direction was already outlined in a 1998 memo.
So this ought to shut up the MS shills for awhile (unfortunately, there is a large divide between 'ought' and 'will').
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Lets just up and hand Microsoft the keys to the Internet. So every other company that has invested even one dollar in internet infrastructure or internet-capable programs will lose a lot of money from whatever Microsoft will do with it. Then, all these said companies can sue Microsoft (not a class action, individual cases) and they will absolutely slashdot Microsoft's legal funds. Once that's done, they'll have to tap into their reserves. If these companies can bare their chests to such financial loss and paperwork, Microsoft would be wiped out. Someone could take the things that Microsoft sealed up, and free them. Unfortunately, someone would claim them for themselves, much like a certain human claimed the Ring.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Yeah, but while I've never really thought of IBM as being particularly benign, I definitely do not think of them as the kinda company who'd go around suing people unless they _really_ had to -- but I'm afraid I share the same sentiment about Microsoft.
I think despite everything, IBM at the very least showcases some ethics and principles -- maybe the IBM of the days gone was indeed an Evil Corp (TM) -- but I think the IBM of today is not so evil, maybe nice even.
However, I've never felt so about Microsoft -- they've always come across as _exactly_ the kind who would do something like this. Especially given their antitrust track-record and FUD on Linux and what not. Microsoft comes across precisely as the sort of greedy company that you would expect such a lawsuit from, no matter what.
But what do I know. IBM maybe turn just as evil, when it comes to corps you can never really say. Look at Sun -- how quickly they changed sides and what they're degenerating into.
I can only hope that IBM (and Google) and a few others don't go the same way.
We've all been waiting for MS to start fighting with patents.
It is their last resort against a better product.
It has been reported here that the man primarily responsible for "productizing" IBM's patent portfolio went to microsoft to do the same thing a couple of years ago. So far, we've seen silly little things like attempting to patent the FAT32 format on flash devices, but nothing really used as an offensive weapon.
Ironically, our best hope of defeating Microsoft in the patent arena is IBM, and to a lesser extent, Novell. Both companies have significant patent portfolios that can be used as a retaliatory threat to MS for trying to lock-out Free software with their patents. Both companies have been hurt badly enough by MS in the past, but are currently stable enough that they aren't likely to make deals either (like Sun did).
Personally, I feel that the whole idea of patent portfolios and all encompassing cross-licensing agreements is an abuse of the patent system because it locks out the little guy. But, in this particular fight we don't have a hope of achieving patent reform soon enough (if ever), so we might as well be glad that we have a few big guns on our side.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Yeah, but while I've never really thought of IBM as being particularly benign, I definitely do not think of them as the kinda company who'd go around suing people unless they _really_ had to -- but I'm afraid I share the same sentiment about Microsoft.
I meant to say, I do not share the same sentiment about Microsoft.
I need more coffee, been up all night.
LMSFT is not, as TFA summary indicates, "licencing the internet," in any meaningful way. That would imply that MSFT owns or controls what it is licencing.
If they don't claim to own or control it, why are they licensing it?
You can't license what you don't own. The obvious motivation for this long list is to allow MS to claim ownership at some future date when President Jeb Bush lifts even the pathetic restrictions of the DoJ case. They know that many small companies (and that's most when compared to MS) will simply fold and pay up rather than face being ground down in court for 10 years arguing the point.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
This does seem like it was created just to fulfill that portion of the DOJ settlement. However, MS obfuscated it in an insane way so you can't even see which protocols you actually want to license. Give the reader so much data that they are overwhelmed and just give up.
Although I had assumed it was illegal to claim you could license something you don't own. Or maybe MS is licensing "their" version of the protocol. Like Kerberos. Their version isn't standard at all...
"Thus, by signing the agreement as it presently stands, one might be agreeing to certain things gratuitously, meaning simply that the licensee agrees to give Microsoft continuing control over how the protocols are used," Peterson said.
This is exactly how the real world works. The worlds of politics, business, law, promotions, even employment interviews, are based on recruiting your support for agreements which can't be negotiated.
Wasn't this how BIll managed to get Microsoft's ownership of an early version of DOS for a minimal amount of money? I'd heard he got someone else to enter an agreement which recognized it as owned by Microsoft, but he hadn't actually paid anyone else that contributed to writing it (yet).
Well, and all the poor German children around the 1940s. They thought it was like playing mountaineer when they got to join Boy Scouts (or whatever the German equivalent is).
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
It is clear to anyone who reads the license itself (or, if you perfer english, the FAQ) that Microsoft is not trying to claim IP ownership over *any* of the protocols listed in the license. They specifically and clearly say this a number of times in both documents.
However, that doesn't mean this is totally benign. It is classic M$ policy to require the user to license technology from them whether they plan to profit from it, or restrict usage or not; it is better, on their view, to have consumers using their technologies under only a nominal license (the terms of which may be changed later, if need be) than under no license at all. Given that M$ clearly doesn't *know* what protocols they have what rights over, it may be that they're distributing a catch-all license, in the hopes of figuring out what their rights are later and locking them down.
However, as IANAL, this raises the question of whether such a hypothetical license is binding...can you ask a user to sign a license under an IP right that neither party can identify, and that may not even exist? Given that it doesnt even specifiy what it is that the user is licensing (it only effectively says what it relates to)...can this even be considered a real license?
caritj.org
... when I think of Microsoft's original reluctance to do anything "TCP/IP" or internet in the first place and then their use of BSD code to make it all happen I kinda wonder...
Is the BSD licensing such a good thing after all? It's a license to leech -- a license to embrace and extend -- to take that which is ubiquitous and to own it.
I haven't read the article yet but when I read through the comments here, I get a pretty good feel for what others have read. And while Microsoft might have added tweaks to existing code, I don't think it would have been possible for them to make it happen with existing BSD licensed code for them to start off with. I've long thought it was a bad thing and now I see a pretty clear example of what I consider an abuse of it.
Hello folks! Facts: Microsoft did not claim to hold patents on these technologies. They are offering to license "any applicable intellectual property rights that Microsoft may have in regard to these technologies". Of course you may say that they has no claim. You would be right if he claimed all rights to the usage of many of these protocols, but he doesn't(at least not yet). Probably what is in mind here is that he is offering to license out the rights that have, can, or will be secured by Microsoft at some point. For example, the use of a given protocol in so far as it interacts with SQL server, or WINXP. You may have paid for XP, but did you pay for the right to connect it to the Internet? Or more specifically for the ability to have your http request processed on the IIS server run by XYZ.com In effect they are circumventing the (by now grounded to a halt) US patent system. Instead of leasing a patent, they are leasing the rights to the potential rights etc. Bottom line, they may have no rights, in which case buying the license isn't worth the paper its written on. More likely, Big Bill is using the ability to claim "Prior Art" as a defense against anyone else's claims (whether they have been made yet or not). In essence what it does is allows for his rights to be established without even filing a claim. So as long as he can claim prior art even if it was 20 years ago, he will retain his rights until 20 years from the day he files (which could be today, tomorrow, or 10 years from now if no one makes him). Anyway I drag on, sorry I just thought I'd turn this discussion back towards law. -Kraloftian
Except that we don't need a license to use them, and by signing up to the license we are locked into something.
This looks very much like someone saying "Sign my free license and you will be able to use your own bank cards", which you can do now, but the license says you can only use money obtained through the bank card to buy Microsoft products. Why would anyone take that license?
This sounds very much like a bad scam. It's not clear what the purpose of it is or why Microsoft is doing this. It doesn't appear to give you anything you don't already have. (And yes, I RTFA.)
Is this the MS way to get rid of Firefox and other freeware on MS Windows ? In the future, MS Windows could check aplications and run only the ones which are properly certified. Certification might require proper licensing. Ah, and what about an administrative fee for the whole procedure ? Am I having a bad dream here ?
RTFL (read the f'ing license). There's no "signup", no "legal binding". I don't think they even expect anyone to request this license.
Methinks this was just a way of classification within Microsoft. Someone in management asked "What kind of license do we give out for the public domain stuff we use?" (because EVERYTHING at MS is license; if you use the bathroom, you're licensed to do so). The lawyers looked, saw that they didn't own any of it, and put together a faux "license" that basically says "We don't own any of it, even though it's in our product."
If you read through the license, it basically exercises no legal rights at all. It's a pointer, in essense, to the public domain. If this was ever brought up in a court, the opponents could basically point to the thing and say "MS, you absolved all potential 'rights' with this 'license'." If nothing else, this "license" is a good thing, because MS is basically backing off with it's hands in the air.
This license resembles the Sender-ID license and therefor makes Open Source implementations with this license very dificult. Please read the Apache Software Foundation's position regarding sender ID. Lawrence Rosen states:
Now, please have a look at the Microsoft license for these 130 protocols:Due to the similairities of the Sender ID license and this license I think, Open Source may never be able to live up to the requirements of this license. If it doesn't, it might not necessarily be at risk for litigation over whatever rights Microsoft might have, but Microsoft definitely gains the selling point of having legally unencombered implementations while Open Source has none.
As I said, IANAL. Maybe someone with more legal knowledge can comment on this subject. I hope I'm wrong.
more like racketeering.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It's pretty obvious. The license doesn't do much, but it DOES say:
"Microsoft, at its option, may list You as a licensee on a website or in other public communications."
So in other words, they will put out a newsletter at some point that looks a something like this:
"Microsoft customers see value in Intellectual Property rights, unlike those Communist Linux Bastards. The Microsoft Protocol Bullshit License has been signed by JoeBobCompany because they know that being protected is important in these times of questionable patent and license issues that our legal department is causing."
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
IANAL, but I think this would apply here. This doctrine should be applied more often to sink submarine patent claims.
p pe l.htm/ /www.converium.com/2103.asp
http://www.legal-definitions.com/equitable-esto
http://www.lectlaw.com/def/l056.htm
http:
My rights don't need management.
True enough, although there have been a lot of extensions to TCP/IP in recent years, and they may have IP rights over features like Explicit Congestion Notification, or maybe even the Evil Bit (has MS patented Evil? They certainly have a _lot_ of experience implementing it...)
I have a question then: how would their copyrighted feature with strings attached get into mainstream TCP/IP implementations? How can they now say they want money? It's like someone saying "Hey, I tell you how to make better paper airplanes" and then 5 years later say "now sign this and you won't be infringing my paper airplane IP rights".
...this license is referenced in the EULA for the next version of Windows, whether XP2 or Longhorn (or sooner in the next versions of various network enabled products, like MSN messenger). End user and PHB ignorance is they only way this scheme can work, and MS knows it.
Microsoft is essentially trying to do to the internet what SCO is trying to do to linux.
This license basically amounts to intent to defraud.
if you are familiar with the OSI model, it can pretty easily explain any network
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model
Anyway, the microsoft "network model" appears to be the same for every protocol, and more or less has an easy swap Network/Transport area (or, the protocol used).
7 Application - Windows Application
6 Presentation - Kernel mode Executive Services
5 Session - SMB | WIN sockets
4 Transport - *see below
3 Network - *see below
2 Data Link - NDIS interface (driver)
1 Physical - Hardware
*these are filled in with anything MS offers as a drop in, wether it be IPX/SPX, APPLETALK, NETBEUI, or, in the case of my example, TCP/IP.
Now, to get all these to work "seamlessly" (yeah, right), microsoft made tie-ins so that they can all still use "NetBEUI" style names (the NetBios over TCP/IP for example).
Starting with Windows NT, microsoft began altering the normal steps for NetBIOS (you know, that \\computername thing?)resolution to "enhance" it the standard (most likely set by IBM when they came up with it), doing things they thought were more efficient.
Most likely they did this with everything else too (which explains "rights" to most of the protocols that would fill in layers 5 and up, including FTP, HTTP, SMPT, etc.), and in doing so, did something that required them to change the level 4 and 5 protocols, which alone would be enough to claim "rights" to their changes.
****I stopped reading other comments about 1 page into the 6 that are here now. Why? I'm impulsive... I did however search for the word "NetBIOS" to see if the exapmle was there, and it wasn't, so if someone already actually argued the changes they had to make in order to use NetBIOS for everything when nobody else ever does, then I'm sorry. Also, I'm lazy and didn't actually read that link, and instead relied on things I had to learn 3 years ago for the Network+. Yes, I know the OSI layer is an abstract thought more than anything technical, but it still shows the connection, and as such, maybe, in some way is slightly... on topic...even if completely unneeded in my point. I am not responsible for any injuries you may inflict upon yourself as a result of reading this. Ducks are kinda neat. They echo, though.****