Slashdot Mirror
Royal Society Issues IP Charter
An anonymous reader writes "The Economist
and the Guardian
both have stories about the release of the
Adelphi Charter – an international blueprint for how
intellectual property should be made – by Britain's Royal
Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce.
The Economist says “The Adelphi group are a varied crew
ranging from Gilberto Gil, the Brazilian culture minister (and pop
star) to Sir John Sulston, a Nobel-winning scientist who helped
decode the human genome, and James Boyle, a law professor at Duke
University. They believe that the intellectual-property system is
starting to lean so far in favor of private enrichment that it no
longer serves the public interest.” The charter calls for
evidence-based policy, and a balance between rights protection and
the public domain. It also condemns business method and software
patents."
Actually... yes. Business patents are similarly wrong... The reason for this is fairly (glaringly?) apparent if you've followed the decisions leading up to State Street Bank. Originally, algorithms could not be patented at all. (Gottschalk v. Benson). Slowly, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit started to chip away at that decision, following up with Diamond v. Diehr, which allowed for an algorithm to be patented if it was used in conjunction with a machine. Finally, in Judge Rich's twilight years, he wrote State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group which allowed for the patenting of algorithms regardless of whether or not it was attached to a machine. The problem with this is that it impermissibly allows for a person to patent mental processes. In State Street Bank, the "invention" being claimed was software that would compute the market value of the different funds after the close of the market. (I believe this was necessary because funds required computation within 30 minutes of the close of the market -- I'm not entirely sure why...) In any case, what it did was patent a series of steps, mental processes if you will, whereby the valuation was computed. Now if you do those same processes in your head, you are "infringing" a patent. Whether or not you'll be sued is another story, given the problems inherent in providing evidence of your infringement. Regardless of whether you're sued though, there are serious normative problems in blessing a patent system in which we allow for what takes place entirely in someone's head to constitute an infringement of property rights. Also, software is already copyrightable. The reason that people may prefer patents is because patents have "stronger" rights that are not susceptible to the "fair use" exceptions that copyright is... In my view, patent protection for software is superfluous, and a creation of political lobbying rather than as a fulfillment of the Constitution's promise to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts."
No offense, but you have absolutely no clue in the world what in the hell you are talking about. Go do a Google search with "libertarian intellectual property". Now before you post anything else, read a few of the hits you get.
Oh... what is this? It turns out that libertarians actually fall somewhere between against IP laws or vaguely in favor of weakened IP laws. I know that +1 insightful karma tastes wonderful, as you did manage to throw in a bunch of libertarian buzz words combined with IP law and disparaging remarks, but you can do it without posting in complete ignorance.
The libertarian position in IP law is weak at best. They do NOT have a universal stance on the issue. Libertarians do NOT like the idea of a government enforced monopoly via IP laws. Only the utility of IP laws has led some libertarians to abandon the extreme position of no IP laws at all to favor something more limited. In other words, your average libertarian is more likely somewhere left of your average democrat on the issue. The most pro-IP law libertarians are moderates at best.
So, thanks for your ignorance. It really livened up my day. Hey, how about you make a post showing that libertarians are pro-war and how they love drug laws. I bet you can score another insightful post off that ignorant bullshit too.
Gilberto Gil is a pretty interesting guy. A few days ago, the guardian had this pretty interesting article about him, which talks a bit about Brazil's stance on free software. What is going on in Brazil is pretty interesting, also in terms of patents on food. For example there was a huge outcry after a Japanese firm patented a modification of the delicious cupuaçu fruit. The term "biopiracy" is part of popular language over there.
Deconstruct the State
Summary of Discussion: The original post was very wrong about Rand's views on IP.
Summary of Rand's Position: Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
The Royal Society* is an organisation that promotes UK science, The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce is different.
*Yes, they should call themselves The Royal Society of Britain or something else a bit more specific to prevent confusion like this.
I quit!
In the meantime, there has been remarkable progress on most of those fronts. The two individuals who deserve most of the credit on the campaigning and lobbying side are Rufus Pollock and Gavin Hill of the FFII UK. Gavin is the "someone" who contacted me last year. In fact, that contact resulted from a slashdot discussion. And in parallel to the political stuff, we've now seen some really good rulings by Judge Prescott of the High Court of England and Wales who has already invalidated a few software patents.
Someone said in this thread that people should make suggestions for how to make political decision-makers more aware. Here's a suggestion:
Vote Against Software Patents / Vote For Your Right To Program
We're doing this online campaign and we've already had a very good start. This is about the most important political award series in the EU, and if our camp once again demonstrates its Internet campaigning power (we're trying hard!), then this will make politicians, press and the public more aware of the software patent issue.
Actually, a lot of recipes are protected. When was the last time you cooked up some KFC or made some Coca Cola?
There are a great many ways of making "southern-fried chicken", and you're welcome to follow any recipe you like. You can't make Kentucky Fried Chicken(tm) unless you're KFC. The situation is just the same for software - you're free to write your own word processor, you just can't write Microsoft Word.
Actually, you are confusing not two, not three, but four distinct kinds of "Intellectual Property" law. (One can see from this example why Stallman hates the term so much. Disclaimer: IANAL.)
Incidentally, according to William Poundstone's book Big Secrets, the "secret" recipe for KFC is salt, flour, pepper, and MSG: cook in a pressure baster. By telling you this, I have as far as I know violated no US laws. Go cook up some chicken that tastes "Southern Fried" and contemplate the complicated world of the simple recipe.