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A Look at Technology Legislation for 2006
segphault writes "Ars Technica provides some insight into technology legislation scheduled for congressional review in 2006. From the article: 'Congress plans to cover some important tech issues in 2006 [...] like digital communication, intellectual property law, and computer security. [...] Patent reform is also on the menu. Industry groups have requested that the government allow them to participate in the patent review process, and some legislators have discussed imposing stricter constraints upon patent related injunctions..'"
It's quite frightening the amount of control that the US government is gaining over computer technology. To me, technology, specifically the internet, is great because it offers freedom, a way to do as I like without the limitations of government and politics. Perhaps someday in the near future, that freedom will no longer exist...
According to TFA, it seems that this will basically be providing patent enforcement at a much quicker level. Of course, this could also lead to the realisation that patents are bullshit and enforcing anticompetitive monopolies based on patents is, dare I say, socialistic and not at all capitalistic.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
This is why lobbyists get paid so much money.
Your avg Congress Critter gets a lot of their information from lobbyists, industry groups and various other organizations with an agenda.
Worse, sometimes the legislation put forward by Congress people is essentially a cut-n-paste job from 'model legislation' that the lobbyists like to give out.
Occassionaly, your representatives get called on their blatant plagarizing, but more often than not, it goes unnoticed because the 'model' legislation was never made public in the first place.
Nowadays, with MS Word documents and PDF being posted to your Congress person's website, we get the occassional meta-bomb revealing that the document was written up by some lobbyist.
/not anti-congress, just pointing out the negatives that come with lobbying
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Our elected representatives are legitimately concerned that youngsters today aren't as interested in science as in days past,
It seems to me that many "youngsters" aren't interested in education in general.
I do not see, however, what this has to do with technology related legislation...
uW
Lovely.
Which is more likely, members of Congress understanding technological issues well enough to make rational, informed decisions and enact well-written legislation, or those same politicians going with whatever is pitched by the best funded set of lobbyists?
Call me crazy, but I can't picture a whole lot of Congressmen being technically literate enough to fully understand the issues described in the article. That's going to drastically limit their ability to predict the ramifications of the potential solutions.
"No doubt President Bush's well meaning but misguided No Child Left Behind Act is partly to blame as well. As the son of a science teacher, I regularly hear about how government emphasis on unrealistic academic standards incapacitates effective science education. And as a victim of the public school system myself, I am painfully aware of how it impedes learning"
Although not a regular supporter of mr. Bush, I am supportive of his "no child left behind" act. If implemented correctly it raises school standards to a higher level, creating an overall more educated workforce, and thus a more educated, flexible, and innovative society in which innovation thrives, and where racial injustice, crime and other human misdeeds are at a minumum. Coming from Denmark, a country that has carried this policy for many years, I think that I am justified in saying that I know what the implications of this policy are. The current good example, of course, being Skype - Started by a Dane and a Swede. Furthermore, there is the upside of not having outrageous public discussions about whether ID should be accepted into classrooms as science, a subject Danes spend many a cold winternight joking about, and of course being scared shitless that the worlds only superpower is at an educational level where the public can be made to believe this nonsense...
Rapid patent enforcement would be quite fine if patents in general respected the original social bargain, namely exclusive rights to the inventor in exchange for a temporary monopoly.
It's not really about politics, just that "intellectual rights" have been twisted into "intellectual property" over the last decades, with the implication being that ideas and inventions are now property. In fact they are not, it's the exclusive right that is property.
Patents and copyrights could work very well (possibly even in software, though only with fundamental reforms) if the concept of "I.P." was replaced, by, e.g. "Intellectual License", and the terms of these licenses made much more clear and transparent.
E.g. "the USPTO grants inventor X the exclusive commercial rights to invention Y for N years under such and such conditions, including a clear description of the invention, and fair use for all non-commercial use."
If the patent system was reformed to clarify the license behind the property, it'd be quite fine to enforce patents rapidly and firmly. At the same time, a large part of the enforcement would be against patent holders that abused their licenses.
Ah, in an ideal world...
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It looks like Congress needs to first pass a law mandating that all political candidates do a thorough class on studying the Constitution, pay for dictionaries to explain phrases such as "Congress shall make no law..." and maybe even look over a history of every fascist and socialist regime and why they always fail.
Not one of these laws falls under any Congressional power as given to them by the Constitution. The Commerce Clause has been distorted and stretched as far as imaginable, considering the intent of the clause was to give the Feds the power to keep the states from restricting trade between each other. Instead, we're seeing it used to help the Feds restrict trade completely, or to enhance trade of their friends/cronies with subsidies or monopoly power.
Congress has done so much damage, and it will only continue. Don't think a major change in party numbers or voting for a third party will help it -- we've lost the war again tyranny, and we have only one thing to look forward to: the continued rape we call democracy.
Bring back, at the least, a federalist representative republic where states compete with one another for the best talent, and the feds can do nothing but look on with empty pockets.
I know the Constitution. I see two things in the Constitutional quote above that don't exist in the laws we have today covering patents, copyright and trademarks:
by securing for limited times
and
to authors and inventors
Patents are for authors and inventors. The fact that are sold away to lawyers and patent holding groups is outrageous. Limited times doesn't mean decades or lifetimes.
It is interesting that Ars Technica didn't include legislation introduced to close the analog hole as some of the most important in 2005. I was worried that in the flurry of activity in congress before the winter recess that it might have passed. I did a little looking but didn't find anything about it so I assume it did not pass... yet.