Slashdot Mirror
Lawsuit Filed Against Software Copyright
mdielmann writes "CNet has a story about a lawsuit asking for copyright protection to be removed from software, while leaving patent protection in place. Intellectual-property consultant Greg Aharonian hopes to convince the court that software makers can protect their products adequately through patents, which provide more comprehensive protection but are difficult to obtain and expire in a shorter period of time. It looks like this would hamstring licenses such as the GPL, which are often based on copyright privileges, while leaving OSS vulnerable to patent infringement. Apparently, he's been working on this for the last three years."
Your post advocates a
( ) technical (x) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting software copyright/patent abuses. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Total chaos determining what code is protected under which law
( ) Legitimate uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
(x) It is defenseless against Hong Kong dupe factories
( ) It will stop abuses for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of software will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(x) Requires too much cooperation from software companies
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(x) Many software developers cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential clients
( ) Code thieves don't care about patents or copyrights
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for determining if code is in violation
(x) Foreign countries
( ) Difficulty of searching a code database of protected code
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new laws
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of licenses
(x) Huge existing software investment
( ) Susceptibility of established software to copyright attack
( ) Willingness of users to upgrade existing software to new violation-free versions
( ) Willingness of users to pay more for the same software
(x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all copyright approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of patents
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with patent houses
(x) Dishonesty on the part of some developers themselves
(x) Development costs that are unaffected by copyrights/patents
( ) MS Office vs. OpenOffice
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) Any idea posted on
( ) The right to develop code independently should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
(x) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Writing software should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your "prior art"?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/throwaway development in place of a real project is cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my source
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
Yeah, right.