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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 nice to know that congressmen are considering legislation to prevent ISPs from restricting third-party services and patent reform. It will be interesting to see what happens after the lobbyists get their hands on whatever bills get introduced.
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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.'
"Industry groups have requested that the government allow them to participate in the patent review process" While I suspect that this is letting the fox guard the henhouse, there is away to make it work:
When applying for a patent the applicant would split it into 2 parts. The first states what he can do, but not how. The second says how he can do it. The first part is made public a year before the second. If during that year, someone else can show how it is done, than the patent is denied on the basis of failing the nonobvious test. ( It need not be a year, maybe a month or two would work better ) If nobody can come up with something in that year, then the patent review process begins.
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]
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Although the situation in Iraq is sure to monopolize a big chunk of their time, they also want to spend time on issues like digital communication, intellectual property law, and computer security.
What's frightening is that the majority of congressmonkeys in office are either completely oblivious, or they consider orwellian DRM to be a "solution". I mean, honestly, can you expect a solid understanding of technology issues from a generation that doesn't even use direct deposit?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
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
Jus think Skype. If big operators and telecoms have to say what can be done without any rescrictions, soon there will be no Voip, except what they want to offer.
After all the operators are the bridges which connect customers to other bridges that form the internet.
Do we want to allow some troll to block our way and tell how and which way we can walk in the bridge?
I don't, but if nothing is done, that's where it will end. Because even operators have to make a buck, and that's the easiest way. And they have a point that when they say they've put money to infastructure that others use, unfortunately.
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that govenments start to wake up and actually furful their actual role and start to care about their citizens and stop caring less about greedy companies.
Its good to be informed about the going's on in technology, but the more I read slashdot, the more cynical I become.
I'm hoping the trend will change shortly.
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.
The first would be to disallow any blocking of others. IOW, it is status quo when it comes to packets going over a network. This would allow services to really build, but it could curtail future build-outs.
The second is the libertarian way. That is, we could allow anything, but we could also prohibit exclusive monopolies. Right now, govs. do a give away by allowing exclusive monopolies to various large companies. In my area, comcast has the coax rights. Qwest has the twisted pair rights. Comcast is now trying to stop Qwest from carrying iptv, by getting local legislation to block it, even though comcast has the right to offer phone and internet. By prohibiting any gov. from entering into a exclusive monopolies (or just allow very short-term ones), we would encourage huge build-outs, with the possibility of curtailments of services.
Personally, I prefer the later, but either should work. What I do know will fail, is if we give exclusive monopolies like we do now, AND we allow the companies to control services. That will prevent build-outs (why would the big players peer with you?), and would kill services that were not developed by a company.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I wonder how can all these laws restrict (real) freedom for Internet users.
I suppose that companies are concerned with P2P file sharing and (maybe) governs are concerned with pedophilia and terrorism.
On the first field there is little they can really do but limiting the usage of Internet itself as a bidirectional medium. If everyone used a strong encription P2P protocol mapped over, say, TCP port 80 or 25 to do my P2P, then I'd like to see how could they stop me. Only by avoiding incoming traffic to my systems. That's almost the same as old fashioned TV and averyone would skip such a stupid technology.
On the second field there is little to do without leaking into organisations in order to grab ciphers. A simple message (email, IM, etc.) like "Let's meet at the usual pub for a couple of beers at 10" could mean everything, from a friends party to a terrorist action meeting. Who knows?
Do they think they have enough resources to fight such a battle, 24 hours a day, 365 day a year all over the world?
Even by "controlling" the Internet they cannot stop people from creating VPNs (in a general sense) to do whatever they want.
Unless 1984 is much more in the near future than in near past!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
"...enforcing anticompetitive monopolies based on patents is, dare I say, socialistic and not at all capitalistic."
Please dare to say it! Say it to everone you meet, shout it from the rooftops!
I keep saying this, and I want to use this chance to shout it louder again.
Patents are unique in being simultaneously anti-capitalist and anti-social. They screw business and they screw society equally. They are a very devious form af anti-progressive thought, skillfully sold as the exact opposite.
"What is to be gained from damping progress?" you may ask. Work that one out for yourselves.
"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...
I guess.
Mostly it's that the original idea of patents has been corrupted.
I don't imagine that the original patent clerks envisioned companies whose sole business was patent litigation.
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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.