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When More Information Isn't a Good Thing
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "'Most of the time, speedier, cheaper information allows the economy to produce more from less, often by eliminating mistakes, cutting wasted effort and shrinking doubt,' David Wessel writes in the Wall Street Journal. But better information through technology has a downside; sometimes, efficiency benefits certain players to the detriment of society. One example Wessel cites: software that tells patent litigants which courts have the most favorable historical record for their side. 'It doesn't help the economy produce more goods or services. It creates nothing of beauty or pleasure,' he writes. 'It simply helps someone get a bigger slice of the pie.'"
'It doesn't help the economy produce more goods or services. It creates nothing of beauty or pleasure,' he writes. 'It simply helps someone get a bigger slice of the pie.'
Welcome to planet Earth.
Who ordered that?
'Knowledge is Power' vs 'Ignorance is Bliss'
It helps us identify courts with bias, and hopefully correct that.
Lies about crimes
When your parents are discussing their sexual preferences.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
The problem lies with the court system and the patent office.
Choosing which hospital has the best success rate for my operation is in the same ball court.
How about choosing which school has the best results for certain subjects.
If the number of applicants is the same for these examples then society doesn't benefit whichever I choose [discounting the relative merits of my self / children to society], so by his argument I shouldn't need that information.
Finding the lowest price for a product could be considered detrimental to society [less sales tax / corporaqtion tax paid or some such].
Choosing to buy one's fuel based on price is bad for the exchequer too, it is the highest taxed item in my country. Perhaps We should be prevented from knowing where to get the cheapest fuels too.
ad nauseum.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Mr. Upchurch can tell you how the judge has ruled on similar motions versus his peers.
So why couldn't the judge or those who review the judge's work use this data to identify potential problems in the judges decisions?
Bradley Holt
This issue isn't unique to information. Kitchen knives make nice tools for cutting up dinner...or the neighbor's cat. The entire concept of "significant non-infringing uses" is the foundation for the legality of such devices as ubiquitous as the VCR, CD/DVD recorder, TiVO and photo copy machine.
"The sword cuts both ways" is a phrase that was invented long before the information age.
Easy access to large amounts of information has benefits to society that vastly outweigh the detriments.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I'm sure someone applied the same argument to guns when they were first invented (well actually, people STILL do).
Its a tool and it can be used for good or bad purposes. The good almost always outweighs the bad.
Unfortunately, we can moan all we want, it's a fact of life. About the best we can do is convince judges to prohibit use of the Internet from within the courtroom.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
'It doesn't help the economy produce more goods or services. It creates nothing of beauty or pleasure,' he writes. 'It simply helps someone get a bigger slice of the pie.'
The one with the most money to throw around has always had an advantage in patent (or any other type of) litigation. This software doesn't change that.
What it does do is make the process more efficient, which reduces use of resources that can now be spent on something more productive, rather than having been "wasted" on patent litigation.
That in fact DOES 'help the economy produce more goods or services'. It even helps the 'little guy' by allowing them to do a type of search and analysis with lower resources.
Anyone who thinks that lowering the cost of entry to perform a particular activity helps the big players at the expense of the smaller players needs to go back to economics 101 and stop reading so many technophobe books.
This article is similar to saying 'The low cost of the Apache web server software allows big companies to get a bigger slice of the pie, since they no longer have to pay as much for serving web pages. Since big companies have more web sites per company than little companies, they save so much more money. How will the little people keep up!?!?'
It's complete and utter BS to blame a tool becoming more efficient for how that tool is used by someone.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Well, as even TFA states, it's not a new problem, just one that's finally feasible with the power of data mining.
It's high time people sat down and laid out generally acceptable standards for privacy balanced against freedom of information and dealt with how people can just aggregate data from all over the place and pull meaningful but harmful information at the push of a buton.
One example Wessel cites: software that tells patent litigants which courts have the most favorable historical record for their side.
That seems like an issue with the ability of litigants to go forum shopping in the first place (a problem with the judicial system), rather than the fault of information and processing tools.
Yeah right, next thing you tell me, Republican's fiscal policies are bad for the economy.
Voodoo indicates there should be a trickle down.
I've always said insurance is communism under disguise but nobody believed me. It's time people see through this corrupt practice.
This could equally be used to reform courts that are too biased in any direction, ensuring that justice is equal for all. It's all about how you use the information that you already have.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
There is very little reform in our judicial system. Lawyers want the system as screwed up as possible to keep themseves as relevent as possible and make them apear to earn their keep. Big business likes the legal system because it allows them to use SLAPP tactics, and get away with it for far less than correcting internal problems. Many people are afraid to let lawmakers have any say in the issue for fear that they will only make things worse (name one good reform and I can name three bad).
Also Strangly there is still some respect for judges in this country, They are seen as the uncorruptable link in the system regardless of the truth of that statement.
I am afraid that all databases like this will do is alow the folks with money to better game the system.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
It simply helps someone get a bigger slice of the pie.
When an economy grows the pie gets bigger. I hate it when people think that when somebody (Gates, Ellison, Jobs, etc.) gets richer that means somebody else is getting poorer. That is not necessarily true!!!
Is to take it to ludicrous extremes. The Patent System and the Stock Market are outdated 19th century ideas- I applaud anything that takes them to ludicrous extremes.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Joanna: Oh, what if you get caught? Oh, I, I, I, I just don't know if this is such a good idea. Peter: (angry) Yeah? Well, maybe it wasn't such a good idea for you to sleep with Lumbergh! Joanna: What?! What are you - Oh! All right, Lumbergh... Peter: ARGH!!! Ah God! Lumbergh!! Joanna: Peter! What is wrong with you? That was like to years ago! What, do you know him? Peter: Yeah, I know him!! I know him! He's my boss!! He's my unholy, disgusting, pig of a boss!! Joanna: Oh, he's not that disgusting. Peter: He represents all that is solace and wrong! And you slept with him! Joanna: That is none of your business, ok? I didn't ask you who you slept with before we were together. I don't care!
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Right.. Depending on what you see as good..
I would say no guns and are good.. Some would say the Personal Freedom to Carry a gun is good....(no need to go into detail about why.. I think it's clear)
I don't think guns are the same topic, as there is no clear side as to which is good. Although I wholeheartedly believe I am correct, I understand and realize that there are many people who disagree with me and have valid points...
Basically what I am trying to say is as Information has a clear good side and a clear bad side, it's only the point as to where that line is drawn that is questionable. Not which side is good
Losers whine about their best, Winners go home to fuck the prom queen
- Ripping them off, - Get a fair hearing - Protect their investment intellectual property (often many millions of dollars) .....
Does hiding that information make the system better????
Access for the sake of access doesn't help much. We don't need to have instant access to everything in the world, granted we should be able to get it but we don't need to be able to use it in ways such as these. As long as regulators can see stuff like this, the general populace doesn't need to. They can however see outcomes of certain cases and so on.
The problem is America is in the Information age (or the nano Tech age) and we are celebrating the fact that we can get so much information we don't think "should we be allowed to have this' Google earth is great, but it also can be used as a planning device (granted there are many other forms to use to plan stuff, so it shouldn't leave but we need to consider all usages)
It's the same level as leaving VNC on a computer with no password is fine, but you have to consider what can be done if they access that computer? That's what really gets people into trouble. And it's the same with Access.
Do we really need allow people to have complete access to such things as medical records, grades in school and so on? Privacy advocates would scream yes, but those who advocate access to information say no.
I have to say that those in power (IT or management) need to use their brain to figure out what can really help the US or their clients, rather then what's "easier" or creates less work for them.
I'm sure someone applied the same argument to guns when they were first invented (well actually, people STILL do). Its a tool and it can be used for good or bad purposes. The good almost always outweighs the bad.
go ahead. mod me troll or flamebait... i'm still not convinced there's a "good purpose" for guns, and i have no idea how they are a "tool" that can be used for good
in the case of shooting the guy who's trying to break into my house, i'll give you a bit, but i'd rather call that "necessary, but still bad" rather than "good"
All of the courts should be the same - the software is taking advantage of a situation that shouldn't exist. It's just like when you did something wrong when you were a kid and you had to tell someone - you'd tell the parent you thought would be the most lenient.
The availability of this information also lets the public identify jurisdictions/courts where changes are needed.
The larger issue is that the availability of information provides the most benefit to those with the time/resources to deal with it. This is why focused interest groups are doing so well in political advocacy. The average voter can only really be concerned with so many issues; lobbying groups can easily fly under the public's radar to push in a direction that, if they had time to think about it, the public wouldn't like.
Joanna: Oh, what if you get caught? Oh, I, I, I, I just don't know if this is such a good idea.
Peter: (angry) Yeah? Well, maybe it wasn't such a good idea for you to sleep with Lumbergh!
Joanna: What?! What are you - Oh! All right, Lumbergh...
Peter: ARGH!!! Ah God! Lumbergh!!
Joanna: Peter! What is wrong with you? That was like to years ago! What, do you know him?
Peter: Yeah, I know him!! I know him! He's my boss!! He's my unholy, disgusting, pig of a boss!!
Joanna: Oh, he's not that disgusting.
Peter: He represents all that is solace and wrong! And you slept with him!
Joanna: That is none of your business, ok? I didn't ask you who you slept with before we were together. I don't care!
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
'It doesn't help the economy produce more goods or services. It creates nothing of beauty or pleasure,' he writes. 'It simply helps someone get a bigger slice of the pie.'
You just described 99% of modern "brand-awareness" marketing. When will ads for Pepsi featuring the most recent just-overage female singer be recognized for the waste of resources that they are?
Every law carves off a slice of the economic pie for the legal profession.
Every member of the legislature has a fundamental conflict of interest, as they do or expect to move between law firms, legislative posts and judicial positions.
Florida has (or had) a Constitutional provision prohibiting lawyers from being members of the legislature. It was not/is not enforced.
Lew
"The Constitution, the WHOLE Constitution, and nothing but the CONSTITUTION."
What is this attitude that people shouldn't hear about specific problems, just because we can expect that type of problem? It's the worst kind of apathy. If you don't want to hear about the threat, you're free to ignore it (at your own peril). But why stand in the way of people trying to engage the problem to do something to solve it? You're siding with the problem. I know you're "just another Earthling", so you can't be expected to help without getting a bigger slice of the pie in return. But why don't you realize that your apathy is keeping the bigger slices away from you?
--
make install -not war
Well speaking of mor einformation i got a very funny phishing email this morning..you know the ebay scam kind...well it turns out this guy aint the brightest koi in the pond..when clicking through link, it brings user to http://66.246.183.37/~neil/images/.sign/...ok standard ebay sign in page..lets see what i can derive form here..well look at the address...looks like the guys name is Neil..hmmm lets see if we can get to the rootpage..http://66.246.183.37/~neil/ did this and found out a bit more...this page shows
This is Neil Campbell-Brennan's new website More to come!
Well now we got more info on this guy..where should i go from here?This is my question to the Slashdot Horde! I know this is a bit off topic but why not do it here..
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
a "bigger slice of the pie" is a thing of beauty and pleasure to some people. To a lawyer, this "bigger slice" for him/her and their client is a job well done. I have no problems whatsoever with anyone using freely available information, in a legal way, to help them in their jobs.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Those who see the market potential as a zero-sum resource always fail to consider this.
If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly... MacBeth
More information, even info like this (weakness in patent vetting system) is a good thing. But only when it's more info consumed by more people. Unfair access to these kinds of stats has always been the privilege of the rich, the connected, the Harvard Law School. Tech makes it cheap enough to be more widely available. That means a "level playing field". And quite possibly closing the holes revealed by the stats. If only because the Harvard Law School needs to keep equitable access to system vulnerabilities as proprietary knowledge, closing the holes that offer nonmembers any comparative advantage. No surprise that the Wall Street Journal wants this cheap dirt off the streets, and back in the boardrooms where (they think) it belongs.
--
make install -not war
After RTFAing...
How about the service offered by LegalMetric LLC, a start-up founded by patent lawyer Greg Upchurch? Contemplating a patent-infringement case in Delaware? For $795, Mr. Upchurch will tell you which judges rule most swiftly and which tend to favor patent holders. Making a motion for summary judgment? Mr. Upchurch can tell you how the judge has ruled on similar motions versus his peers.
- Will possibly make apparent significant biases of one judge over another, and allow procedures to be setup which monitor or train judges to become less biased?
Imagine a place with uncertain weather where food is plentiful in rainy spots, but not in others. Residents, in essence, buy insurance. The lucky feed the unlucky. No one starves. Then it becomes possible to buy accurate weather forecasts. One who buys the forecast knows whether he needs insurance or not; he profits. But the total amount of food available is unchanged. And if everyone buys the weather forecast, the insurance market becomes impossible.
- Knowing where food can be produced and where it cannot can help people choose where to live. Perhaps even develop a more effecient way to produce the food.
If deciphering the human genome allows each of us to know the precise odds of contracting a dread disease, life and health insurance will be very tricky.
- Identifying which genes lead to diseases is the first step to preventing/eradicating them at the genome level for everyone.
The only time that "too much information" could be harmful socialy, as Arrow put it, is when that information is shown to a minority and withheld from the majority. In fact, this is the lack of information that is not beneficial.
Ultimately what Arrow is trying to say is that information given to one party but withheld from another can be detrimental to the later. Seems common sense to me.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
On the way you look at it. It is a fact that these big companies have much more money and have hired much better lawyers than an individual ever can afford! It is also a fact, that companies are all about making profit. Which leaves the individual at a huge disadvantage when trying to seek 'justified' compensation because the company will always try to minimize what it has to pay, irrespective of if it SHOULD or if it CAN pay a large amount or not.
So, many can see such software as justified because it *tries* to level the field. This can be seen as no different than how the expensive lawyers from the company's side come up with loopholes and bring out bias from the jury or judge in the way they make their case.
On the other hand, the companies will probably portray such software in negative light, because they do not want to give out any money, no matter if it is deserved or not.
All a matter of perspective...
Staying one step ahead!
..but a little knowledge is dangerous...
I totally agree whith what you have to say.
Losers whine about their best, Winners go home to fuck the prom queen
all expressions of socialism, at least thus far, have been characterized by some form of common labor to a governing authority that one cannot escape. This is a subclass of Slavery and always will be.
If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly... MacBeth
...and power cuts both ways - for good and for bad. It all depends on how it is applied.
Perhaps our job as society is to try to apply power for good more often than for bad, not just cut the power off alltogether?
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
...just because USA's economy is collapsing.
Are there an infinite number of atoms in the solar system? Or merely a very large number? If the first is true, then you're right, you can always make more economic pies. If the second is true, I'm right- economics is a zero sum game, but we might not have squeezed out the total economic potential YET. We will, because we're adding 80 million people a year to the planet, but we might not be there yet.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
There's a lot to be said about contrails (or specifically, chemtrails). Mind control particles are being rained down on us.
Tom Bearden says NASA failures were due to Russian weather control technology.
Others say that hurricanes (even the two most recent ones) were man made. It involves geometric hyperdimensional phyics.
Every letter in the torah has 70 dimensions associated with it. If even a single letter in the torah was different, the universe would be chaos and man would not exist.
Saturn's moon Iapetus is an ancient alien spacecraft. Richard Hoagland says so.
What else... oh yes. Fluoride is put into water as a form of controlling the population.
Jesus, Mary, paintings, and saint's blood miracles aren't hoaxes.
Judges can use the same software to see if they are too favorable to plaintiffs or defendants compared to their peers. They can also use it to spot blatant cases of forum-shopping.
Lawmakers can use the software to change procedural rules to reduce the disparity.
For better or for worse, jurors will always be the wildcard, and people will be able to take advantages of regional biases and group-think that may favor one side or the other in a given case.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"'It doesn't help the economy produce more goods or services. It creates nothing of beauty or pleasure,' he writes. 'It simply helps someone get a bigger slice of the pie.'"
You could also say lawyers just help people get a bigger slice of the pie, but that doesn't mean lawyers are bad. They level the playing field, for a cut of the pie.
Also, if courts are inconsistent I want to know about it so we can start fixing them. More transparency is a good thing, even if we don't like what we initially see.
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
Reality check: bad judges are almost never kicked out no matter how disastrous their decisions are to other people's lives; the legal system is massivly more devoted to making life easier for its "workers" than it is for the people.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Capitalism is a funny thing. It creates an entire breed of people who sit around all day wondering about how to increase "production" and how to benefit "the economy".
Every once in a while one will come up with what seems like a startling revelation: "Giving people more freedom doesn't help 'the economy'".
And, for a brief second, they sit back and contemplate what it all means. Their unwavering faith in 'the economy' and 'production' is momentarily, almost, slightly shaken by the realization that the goals they spend their lives working for are often in direct opposition to human happiness.
It's kind of like a paradox, but not really. More like argument from ignorance or the induction problem:
1) I want to increase human happiness.
2) Increased production increases human happiness.
3) I want to increase production.
The problem is, step #2 isn't always true (eg. Soylent Green)! And, too often, humans can go from step #1, to step #3, and then completely forget about step #1! This happens all the time, in everything from physics to law to chemistry to computer science to politics.
Eventually, when somebody comes along who has a grasp of the big picture, you'll often hear them talking about going back to "first principles". This "revolutionary" will then proceed to throw out all of the junk that has accumulated or been derived from step #3, and that is in opposition to step #1.
By making this simple change, he's often hailed as a great, clear thinker. People slap themselves on the forehead and say "why didn't I think of that!" and "it's so obvious now!" On the other hand, in politics for instance, vested interests often fight against this new, revolutionary thinking. They condemn it as "against step #3!" even though nobody really cares about step #3; they only care about step #1.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
...is to enforce it absolutly.
The same goes for failing systems. The case of the court database simply exposes the problems inherent in the system.
Technology has a habit of enhancing things, the bad as well as the good. The problem isn't the technology, but the problem it exposes (in the cited case: the inconsistencies in rulings by judges, and the natural human bias in any such system).
This is like tax avoidance (as opposed to evasion) where you avoid paying taxes by taking advantage of loopholes in the system. If a method of evasion becomes popular then the system gets fixed to close the hole.
Any patent lawyer who didn't use this kind of research would be failing their client. The same goes for Copyright law. The problem isn't really that people like the RIAA are taking advantage of a broken system, but that the system is broken in the first place. Fix the system and the RIAAs of this world will have to find something else to do with their time.
Hopefully, once this sort of thing becomes common-place, something might be done about the inconsistencies in the judicial system.
Is it really right that identical cases tried in different courts should result in different verdicts?
Technology is just making the world a smaller places, so that suddenly the differences and inconsistencies are side-by-side and can be seen more clearly for what they are.
Paul
Paul Leader
One example Wessel cites: software that tells patent litigants which courts have the most favorable historical record for their side. 'It doesn't help the economy produce more goods or services.
This can have positive side effects as well. If enough people exploit abnormal judicial variation, that variation may be reduced, the laws which allow plaintifs to shop for a jurisdiction may be changed. In general, the system can be adapted to compensate for the problem once the problem is clearly identified. If people didn't collect and analyze data, the problem would still exist. While it might not be as damaging, it would have little chance of ever being fixed. This sounds not unlike a vulnerability scanner for the judicial system.
Well duh. Of course a paper with a conservative editorial staff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Journal) like the WSJ would tell you why its bad to have transparency in our government.
Which is supposed to be good...
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
It's what you do with it. And you can do as much damage with little information as you can with a lot of it. Quantity of information, if such information is objective, of course, only helps making informed decisions. That's when information becomes biased that we have a problem. Bias is not related to quantity.
I honestly don't think there's any such thing as "too much information" (with the possible exception of the Paris Hilton sex video). In this case, the information is only "bad" if you assume that the only use for it is to find favorable courts for patent cases.
Eventually, the judges will find out (either directly from the database, or because their dockets are severely backed up) that their findings have favored a particular side, and they may choose to adjust their basis for ruling. Or, other factors will come up as a result of this feedback that will help correct the situation.
Moderators - don't miss this one.
News for merdes. Shit that matters.
Ask me about my sig.
One example Wessel cites: software that tells patent litigants which courts have the most favorable historical record for their side.
Maybe I'm wrong but it seems to me that the problem falls with the courts, not too much informaion...
I hear that open source helps RMS get a bigger portion of the ideological pie.
Or illegally downloading content helps one get a bigger portion of the content pie.
Or working for money instead of love helps one get more of the economic pie.
Or seizing the Gaza strip helps one get a bigger portion of the land pie.
Face it. We all are in it for something that benefits ourselves. If it happens to benefit others as a side-effect? Great.
Man, you must be new here. Haven't you seen the standard Slashdot gun control debate?
A: Why would anyone want a gun?
B: To shoot criminals who try to attack you!
A: Wouldn't it be safer to just give them your wallet or whatever?
B: Criminals are cowards, who only attack people because they think they can get away with it. If a random potential victim could be packing, do you think they'd still try it?
A: I'd still rather not get shot.
B: Okay, fine, I'll be over to your place to take your computer, because you'd rather not fight for your property.
Does any of that sound familiar?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
This argument is misleading: people have been keeping track of which courts have what biases for decades. That you can identify a court that is more favorable to your arguments using computers isn't terribly new--but insurance companies were keeping track of this kind of information l-o-n-g before personal computers and the adoption of the Internet.
How do I know? Because I helped design a system doing more or less exactly what is described here for one of the largest insurance companies in the world--back in the early 1990s. We specifically tracked "history" with the court, the specific judge, the opposing counsel, our counsel (whether employed, retained, or hired for just this case), and a bunch of other factors. We were using data that the company had accumulated over a long period of time--the results of the system helped the company establish a financial reserve for potential settlement of any given lawsuit.
Okay, so what's changed?
The difference now is that you, the plaintiff, also have access to that kind of information. Which substantially levels the playing field. Insurance companies have been able to shop for jurisdictions with very detailed knowledge of how cases turn out--experienced trial lawyers do so as well. Easier, cheaper, simpler access to this same data enables Joe Schmo and his fresh-out-of-law-school lawyer to make the same decisions.
The precise, technical term of art for this is: fairness.
Can someone explain to me the function of jury selection? Why can lawyers ask questions beyond "do you know the people involved in the case?" and "do you understand the responsibilities involved in jury service?"? How does voir dire differ in any meaningful sense from jury stacking?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
You could also argue that not breaking windows is harmful to the window repair industry and GDP. The benefits of this new information and access to it so overwhelmingly outweigh the negative effects that this article comes across as luddite scare-mongering.
Give journalism five years to clear out the old crusty paper-saurs and people who use IT for the wrong reasons will face the wrath of good investigative reporting. Yahoo's already catching hell for it's Chinese tomfoolery.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Seems like they say intelligence is bad because people become more aware. Which kinda supports the idea that the government somewhat depends on the ignorance of society..
'It simply helps someone get a bigger slice of the pie.'
Talk to the invisible hand of competition, because the Adam Smith in me ain't listening.
You're making an incoherent argument, or at the very least, skipping a step.
/.-ers, but the point holds).
If your argument is "patents are bad for society", then state that, and be done with it.
If your argument is "patents are good, but having a quantifiable probability of how a judge will rule on your particular case is bad", then state that.
If your argument is "patents are good, but jurisdiction shopping is bad", then say that.
The argument you actually seem to be making is that when (a) patents exist; (b) people have hard data on courts; (c) they jurisdiction shop, the end result is overall less utility.
I do not believe this to be true.
There are two economic concepts that need to be disambiguated: the first is how one divides up a certain amount of utility that exists. If I have an apple that I value at $1 and you value at $2, I can sell it to you, thus improving total societal utility. If I sell it to you at $1, I break even, and you reap $1 of utility profit (you got a $2 apple for just $1!). If I sell it to you at $2, you break even, and I reap $1 of utility profit (I sold a $1 apple for $2). If I sell the apple to you at $1.50, we profit evenly.
The second concept is the total amount of utility. Let's say that 10 of us each have one apple, and we each value them at $1 each. The total societal wealth if $10. Now let's say that one of us announces his plan to sneak around at night, stealing apples. In response, we band together and institute shift sleeping to guard our apples. We have now decreased the total wealth of our society, because staying up late at night is a cost (well, OK, maybe not for most
Now, you (and the article you cite) are conflating these two things: you're saying that the decision of how two parties sell an apple (which affects only the RELATIVE profit of those two parties, and does not increase or decrease total utility) decreases overall utility in the population.
Now, it is just barely possible that this is true. If the result of the software was a chilling effect, where inventors feared inventing lest they get sued by someone, then society as a whole would have less inventions, and there would be a deadweight loss.
However, there is not even the kernel of an argument to support such an argument. There could be one, but no one has made it.
The article is arguing that the mere transfer of wealth from one party to another is a bad thing...but this is not at all true. Say that you start a small company, work hard, come up with an idea, patent it, mortgage your home, invest $200k in the idea...and then, just before coming to market, you find that Sony or Microsoft has stolen your patented idea, blatantly and egregiously.
Which do you prefer: picking the nearest court, with no idea whether you can win, or using computer research to find a court that has a competent clueful judge?
Of course, you prefer the latter.
Now, does the ability to find courts that rule a certain way increase or decrease the total number of lawsuits? And is increasing or decreasing the total number of lawsuits a good thing?
First, I assert that it's not clear that this data would increase the total number of lawsuits. Imagine that Wealthy But Easily Offended Bob gets upset at your new joystick design and decides to sue you (it looks a WHOLE lot like a hockey puck-with-LEDs that he patented four years ago). With out hard data on what his chances are in various courts, he might plunge right in, swamp you with legal briefs, and destroy your bank account. He'd likely lose, in the end, but he doesn't know that. Now, imagine that this service exists. He shops for jurisdictions, but finds that his chances of winning the suite vary all the way from 2% in one jurisdiction to 6% in another. Having hard data, he decides not to sue at all.
Addressing the topic of whether more lawsuits (even if that's the result of this software) is a good thing: if you accept the validity of patents at
"Easy access to large amounts of information has benefits to society that vastly outweigh the detriments."
I wonder if we'll feel this way in a couple years when do-it-yourself germ warfare kits come on the market?
The problem with information is that it's not all equal. Some is more influential than others, and not everyone is mature enough to handle the consequences of it's possession.
There indeed may have to be limits even though we may bridle at the "father knows best" attitude behind it. The assumption that "everyone knows best" isn't any better.
--
The "are you a script" word for today is anxiety.
"But better information through technology has a downside; sometimes, efficiency benefits certain players to the detriment of society."
Hogwash. The problem is not that there is better information; the problem is that only those people that benefit from the information have used it to their advantage. Why can't we use the information to push for standard application of the law?
Let's examine his argument:
(1) Patent laws are adjudicated differently in different courts;
(2) These differences in how patent law is adjudicated lead to decisions that are more favorable to specific litigants depending on which court decides their case;
(3) Greater efficiency in information access means that litigants can benefit themselves by choosing which jurisdiction to file in;
(4) This 'selection' of courts is a net negative for society, because the people who benefit from this do so at the expense of society in general.
I'm going to add (3a), which refutes his argument:
(3a) The rest of the public can use their greater access to information to discover the root problem (1) and demand that it is fixed.
The author's mistake is thinking that there can be no other action based upon the more available information. Why not take action that would not only fix the problem he points out, but would also fix the underlying problem -- that the courts apply the law differently?
This guy probably thinks it's better to ignore security flaws, hoping no one exploits them, instead of making sure they get fixed.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
against patent litigants. Patent litigation is not in and of itself an immoral, evil, or destructive enterprise. Forum shopping occurs in every type of litigation and in other decisions such as where to build industrial facilities and locate other commercial endeavors. Slashdot readers should stop becoming so enraged over lawsuits and let the system work. The time to get upset is when a case has been through the system and has still ended with the disagreed with result.
The litigants will see it to know where they should plead their case & get the best results.
The residents of that area will see it also and decide if that is the court system they want. Then speak up accordingly.
More knowledge is ALWAYS good. The facts are the facts. Not knowing them does not make them untrue.
"The idea that we are all supposed to work within "the system" to get as much as we can is ridiculous."
"Within the system", or "getting as much as we can"? Is "working outside the system", and "getting as little as possible" necessarily better?
"If we were playing Monopoly or Risk that would be a sensible approach, but life is not a game."
Actually life IS a game. And no, I'm not talking about game theory. Most people say "life is not a game" because there's the implicit assumption that games are frivolous play. However play (game or otherwise) is a serious affair, with gains, losses, and lessons.
"America is run by lawyers, for lawyers. Stories like this confirm it. The rest of us are just in the way"
The problem with the above is that it focuses our attention on only one specific segment of society (however deserving one may feel), and flat out ignores the other contributing factors that go into the makeup of an entity as complicated as a society.
No one has ever solved a problem with the attitude "it's all their fault", however encompassing one makes it out to be. A functioning society is predicated not only on the principle of "division of...", but the equal sharing of responsability to it's smooth operation.
As a Theoretical Construct, the concept of "Free Markets" requires perfect, factual information flow - in order to function. In other words, when two manufacturers are competing to sell the same product, the customer must have complete information on the cost of that product to him or her. This includes; cost to drive to and from both retail outlets, including the customer's time (if one store is less conveniently located), cost to the consumer in the form of warranties, and intangibles like the quality of the service (employees) at the stores (how long they'll wait in the checkout line, how long it takes to find the product in the store, how long it takes to identify it, given possibly confusing packaging schemes, 2-for-1 pricing deals, etc.)
More information can only be BETTER for consumers.
Lower price tag isn't necessarily a lower cost for the consumer.
For example, buying a cheaper, but otherwise an equivalent quality car manufactured in a third-world country using cheap labor can cost the consumer more in the long run, by participating in the gutting of his or her own country's manufacturing base, (with all the unwanted side-effects that includes).
Free Market Proponents like to say that this is all a good thing. But the ugly truth is, the "Free Market" is a theoretical construct. In the real world, consumers will act against their own best interest because they simply don't have all the information, or they've been passed false information.
There is no Free Market when producers are allowed to lie, or conceal information. There is no Free Market when producers are compelled by regulatory law, to truthfully divulge all information. Therefore, there can be no Free Market. It's a theoretical impossibility.
In practice, keeping regulation to a minimum can be a good thing, and a desirable policy. But scammers will always try to find loopholes. And the more loopholes you try to close, the more complicated the regulatory structure gets, until it begins to generate unacceptable transactional friction. In short, the real problem is human beings.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"America is run by lawyers, for lawyers."
That should be: America is run by lawyers, for corporations.
Lawyers may make a lot of money in America, but it's a pittance compared to what their corporate clients/employers get. The game is played by hiring lawyers and paying them to help you exploit laws to your favor. Usually this is done to eliminate competition, because the last thing corporations want is competitors (no matter how much they proclaim their reverence for "capitalism").
The problem is in the existence of patents, not in finding out the information. If patent monopolies didn't exist, the service would just be of historical interest (unless maybe people got it into their heads to compensate the vast numbers of people who suffered due to the patent monopolies in the past).
First of all, if the laws allow one court to decide differently than another court, then they're probably not good enough laws. Laws should be ultra-clear. Patent law as much as any other law.
Secondly, if the laws are clear, then the judges should be deciding even-handedly. If they were, what would the software have to "detect"?
These things should not be matters of opinion. If they are, the legal system is at fault, not some chunk of software that winnows who has what opinion out of the pile of conflicting crap that comprises judicial patent rulings.
Not that I think any of this is going to change — far from it — but that is what I think the problem is.
Blaming the software seems to me to be the equivalent of blaming a newspaper photographer for photographing a murder scene. The photographer wasn't responsible for the problem. But that doesn't mean it isn't useful and worthwhile for people to know the facts of the matter. Stopping the newspaper reporter isn't the point. Stopping the murderer is.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That makes the unwritten assumption that the patent litigant does not deserve a favorable ruling. If you assume that any given litigant has a 50% chance of being in the right (that is you assume that one party is more right than the other) then this software had no net effect. It certainly doesn't benefit benefit one member of society over others.
I don't see a good reason why this software should be considered detrimental.
If every loophole or rent-seeking opportunity were well known and easily exploitable, then eventually they'd be closed up or everyone would have fair access to them rather than an elite few.
Bullshit.
The problem is not the availabity (or lack thereof) of information.
The problem (I claim) is that some judges and courts are intent on creating law instead of interpreting it.
It creates nothing of beauty or pleasure,' he writes. 'It simply helps someone get a bigger slice of the pie.
I bet the ones getting that bigger slice think it's a beautiful pleasure. It all depends on perspective. I mean, I find it repulsive, but then again, I don't think that everyone on Earth should share my exact values on beauty and pleasure. Maybe that's why I'm not a journalist. Zing!
http://xkcd.com/386/
Security through obscurity is not security, everyone on Slashdot should know that.
What people on Slashdot might not know is that governments are also markets, except they trade in votes or the power to gelp get votes. The players in government are competing groups of voters and politicians. The only difference is that the real market and the political market wield different powers (the political market can do things like drop nuclear weapons legally) and they have different units of currency.
There is no "doing away with the market," there is only changing which market you play in.
i'd rather call that "necessary, but still bad" rather than "good"
You agree on the substantive part, that it is better than the alternatives. What words you prefer to use discussing it does not affect what actions you recommend people take.
It's widely believed that some lawyers have decoded the supposedly "secret" systems of how cases are assigned to appeals courts.
The ACLU in particular is believed to manage challenges to new laws in such a way that insures that the case is heard before a sympathetic judge.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
It's an interesting choice of example. What he is picking is based upon the assumption that selecting your court of appeals a) is a bad thing and b) that litigants shouldn't be doing it. Whether it produces beauty or not is a different issue. The WSJ has been on about this toppic for a while (mostly on the editorial pages) where they have supported the Bush Administration's efforts to prevent individuals from being able to choose what court they sue a company in.
According to them this process is detrimental to society because someone suing a corporation for fraud will "game the system" by suing in a corporate-unfriendly area rather than say, ina court where the company would win. The idea is that this unfairly impacts the Verizons and Microsofts of the world versus the little guys.
Notabley, they have never raised objection to the long corporate practice of writing all contracts with a specified domain of dispute in mind. If you sign a contract with MNBA bank for example you will arbitrate in Delaware, even if you signed the contract in Bangor. They do so because the laws of Delaware given them the greatest advantages. They can afford to set their staffs researching this, the single individual can't. Here the software is perhaps problematic because it enables everyone to see this info (for a fee) not just the big boys.
He seems to think that being aware of what diseases one is likely to be succeptible for either guarantees one will get those diseases, or that one won't buy health insurance because of that. Most people are already doing that; young and healthy people tend not to buy health insurance.
He also ignores that life (and health) insurance also covers things like injury as a result of accident or unpredictable event; I blew a blood vessel in my foot once and had to go to the hospital to get stitches. It is doubtful that any genetic test would show that the vessel was close to the top of my foot and was likely to pop the skin and start bleeding.
Nor was any genetic test likely to show when I would have an automobile accident (or if I was involved in one with someone who might be uninsured or underinsured, for example).
This presumes that, with more information, behavioral change will not cause other changes. The current way we sell insurance is based on lack of knowledge; chances are if the information becomes available to individuals, insurers will have access long before they do (unless it is barred to them by law). As the costs to provide health coverage change, prices, benefits and what insurers will offer will change as well.
This applies to all forms of insurance. Insurance companies may be rapacious in sticking to the fine print, but they aren't stupid; they will change their contracts - or get out of certain lines altogether - if they become unprofitable.
Another example he gives is of "forum shopping" for judges. He's noting that it could have been done before by examining judges' decisions but it was just too expensive. Meaning if you were looking at defending a $300,000,000 case you could afford to do it but not if you had to defend a $300,000 one. So it's simply lowered the barrier to entry for others.
So what he's whining about is that now those who aren't ultra rich or powerful have access to tools previously only available to them.
I can think of another reason it might be valuable: if the potential litigant sees the judges would tend to rule against them they might be inclined to settle and thus the case doesn't clog up the courts in the first place.
All technology has benefits and drawbacks, and we learn to handle each as they become evident.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Well, I was hoping for a response from someone supporting the system---someone who could actually back up the system as it stands today. Because "THE POWERFUL TRAMPLE THE WEAK" wasn't what I was looking for.
That said, remember how the ancient Greeks chose their leaders by lot from the available pool of citizens? Man, they had a lot more faith in their average citizen than we do.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
'These data always have been available in court files, but putting the pieces together was so expensive no one did it. Now, it's on the U.S. federal judiciary's Web site. Mr. Upchurch and his two employees download dockets, key information into a database and push a button so their software generates detailed reports.'
You know, I highly doubt that any lawyer worth his salt that was involved in patent litigation didn't at least know what jurisdictions were more favorable to patent litigation than others. Maybe not with the clarity this software allows (individual judges), but I still don't see how 'too much information is a bad thing' in this case. It just seems like more of the same. Sure, I guess now you can request a certain judge, but the other side can use the software as well and request a different judge. It seems to me that the argument works both ways.
"God is dead." - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead." - God
Non Sequitur Comic: The Too Much Information Age
... by the Dew of Mountains the thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning
A lobby group that wants a more equitable distribution of bias across the court system would kill for this software; it allows them to point fingers at specific instances of bias and work the system armed with complete information.
So, while the black hats gain momentarily from this software, eventually there will be less of an advantage in choosing a specific court, since it is likely the most egregious examples will be dealt with.
"It is true that when laws try to nail down every factor, they're going to fail to work in many cases, and that is where we get into the trouble you describe... you can't account for situations you didn't anticipate. But... when a law is broad and general, it accounts for much more than a law that is nit-picky and has a large number of metrics to meet."
The Ten Commandments.
This technology, like anything else in this world can be good or bad, depending on how you use it.
Sometimes I comment just to hear myself typing.
Society, in the form of the death penalty, directs an executioner to kill. So that's not murder. In the case of defense, if we allow that, society directs killing in the case of defending a person (which might be yourself.) In the case of having war made on you or a group you are a member of, society directs you to kill in order to defend yourself and those others in your group.
I wondered if you'd venture an opinion on how defense should be handled. The two cases you describe are really the same thing. Defense of a cognitive being from apparent threat of murder.
I see defense as having three fairly distinct approaches, the first two of which I will describe depend on how society would obligate its citizens:
First, defense can be seen as covered by something similar to the "equal force" dictum that is law in most states today: The law allows you to use equal force. In other words, if I punch you, you can punch me. If I hit you with a pot, you can hit me with a pot. But you can't kill me, because I didn't kill you. Society would place an obligation on the defender to disable, rather than kill, the attacker. In this case, the original verbiage is sufficient. This covers the A/B/C scenario, because authority is not given to kill to anyone but the courts to do anything but respond to disable.
I'd prefer to reserve the authority to authorize killing to the courts, myself, so this would be my choice. This won't always result in a fair outcome (we can imagine a scenario where the defender was be unable, or incompetent, to stop an attacker except by killing them, for instance, a child who had a gun against an adult), but neither will any other scenario always result in a fair outcome.
Secondly, "(making) war" can be defined as the act of the attacker, and "(making) defense" as the act of the attacked. In this case also, the original verbiage is sufficient. This isn't all that bad an approach, because it has a strong ethical basis in fact. Again, it covers the A/B/C scenario implicitly. I don't make this my first choice because fairness is eroded in that with authority to kill in the hands of the rank and file, people will be killed who should not have been — particularly by agents of the state (police and the military.) We have seen this in everything from the Kent State massacre to shooting that guy who was driving the tank in LA in the head. Cops are always killing people "by mistake" and getting away with it. It is my personal opinion that the majority of people who tend to go for jobs as cops and soldiers aren't there for what I consider the right reasons — helping citizens — but as a power trip and so on. I am not comfortable giving them the authority to kill. So that's my thinking there.
The third is if you want defense to be an explicit exception, eliminating citizen obligation either way. In that case it only adds a few words. We're definitely still in broad, clear, territory:
There is another set of factors, too: Jury nullification and not guilty verdicts. No matter what law there is, a jury can throw it out for any case. This is very important law, though it is seldom mentioned. For a bench trial, the judge can rule "not guilty" if the circumstances demand an exception. This allows law to be broader and less nit-picky by applying comm
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
In the United States, the outcome of legal disputes is often arbitrary and can be heavily influenced by factors that have nothing to do with the merits of the case.
Information tools do not cause this problem. In fact, they may well be the solution since:
A) They level the playing field between the powerful and the powerless. This information was once treated as a sort of trade secret by the highest priced law firms, now it is available to anyone at a greatly diminished price.
B) It renders transparent the absurdities of our legal system, greatly enhancing the chance for corrective legislative action, and shaming the worst offenders (jurisdictions and judges) with indisputable statistical comparisons.
No legal system is perfect, but in comparison to other equally developed nations, ours is dramatically worse. Compare, for example, per capita legal expenses in Japan vs. the United States. People spend money on legal expenses because they believe that by spending money they can change the outcome. Spending on lawsuits and legal expenses is directly proportional to people's belief that they can influence outcomes by spending this money.
That most basic principle of justice, that it should be determined based on the actions of the parties and not who they are and how much money they have, is in grave peril in the United States. Thank heavens for information tools that shine a light on the situation.