UN Bigwig: The Web Should Have Been Patented and Licensed

An anonymous reader writes "Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing has unearthed an amazing video where the head of WIPO, the UN agency responsible for 'promoting' intellectual property, suggests that Tim Berners-Lee should have patented HTML and licensed it to all users. Amazingly this is done on camera and in front of the head of CERN and the Internet Society, who look on in disbelief."

Comments

Hindsight

[Anonymous Coward]

Always 20/20, especially if you're a greed-focused farging bastage.

Re:Hindsight

[mwvdlee]

...and ignore that the web might not have grown quite so popular if everybody had to pay for everything and stick to some individual's arbitrary rules.

Re:Hindsight

[iamhassi]

It might not be too late, there's stories on here all the time about people patenting the obvious many years after it's already become a universal standard. Didn't someone just patent wifi?

Re:Hindsight

[Tsingi]

From Wikipedia: The Washington Post reported in 2003 that Lois Boland (USPTO Director of International Relations) said "that open-source software runs counter to the mission of WIPO, which is to promote intellectual-property rights." Also saying, "To hold a meeting which has as its purpose to disclaim or waive such rights seems to us to be contrary to the goals of WIPO

Re:Hindsight

[ewanm89]

Sorry but the IETF does a much better job of documenting than any patent office ever did. See: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1866 - HTML 2.0 documented in all it's glory.

Re:Hindsight

[mikelieman]

His opinion completely overlooks the fact that it's my intellectual property right to choose whatever licensing I want for my product, and if I *choose* to release it to the public domain OR under any other terms, that is my right.

Re:Hindsight

[Tsingi]

Yes, you may elect to contribute to the betterment of mankind. But in doing so you make yourself a bad person in the eyes of the WIPO.

Re:Hindsight

[nurb432]

Actually it would be just as popular, but it wouldn't be using HTML. And it wouldn't be called 'the web'. But the same functional result would be here.

Unless perhaps it was licensed for free, and control was used just to help keep the garbage out... donno.

Re:Hindsight

[Joce640k]

Slashdot groupthink at its best in this thread. The tone are personal attacks. "Patents are evil! Burn pro-patent people! UN is stupid!". How sad. Nobody saw the video, or tried to understand the argument he was trying to make.

He made the point that IP are useful because patents document an invention, information otherwise lost.

Yeah, all those RFCs are a complete waste of time.

All open standards should be written up in patent-speak (which nobody but patent lawyers can decipher) and never discussed in public beforehand (because that would make them unpatentable).

Re:Hindsight

[next_ghost]

Well, his note makes it clear that he's completely ignorant about all the drawbacks of intellectual property systems. The example of violin and saxophone does make sense but what he says about patenting WWW is completely idiotic. In a nutshell, he says that if WWW had been patented with flexible enough licensing that doesn't cripple its use (probably as flexible as if it wasn't patented at all), we'd see huge investments into WWW innovations (basically what we've seen in the past 20 years even without patents).

The single most important thing to remember about intellectual property systems is that while they create incentives to make innovations, they also as a side-effect create environment hostile to actually getting those innovations into general use. When you're dealing with intellectual property, you can never have the former without the latter.

Re:Hindsight

[Rich0]

Patents document things sufficiently to mount legal battles - not so well that it makes it easier to reproduce an invention.

Claim - a method in which atomic nuclei are fused together releasing energy capable of destroying cities.

Go ahead and try to build a hydrogen bomb now...

Chemists often mine old patents looking for ways to make things, but they're usually only useful as a starting point. If somebody wants to patent some molecule they'll publish some method that creates the molecule in 0.1% yield or whatever - enough to prove by spectral observation that they made it. They don't actually publish a practical method that can be used to make it, since they don't actually want anybody to make it.

Look here for an example of this in action. The patent (#4,444,784) describes Simvastatin/Zocor - one of the more popular drugs ever taken and due to its expiry probably one of the most commonly prescribed medications around. The first method in the patent starts with 200 gallons of mold and ends up with enough compound to make about 10 pills - at one of the lower dosages. Suffice it to say this is not economical even at $5/pill.

I didn't spend enough time digging through it to figure out which of the large family of compounds described in the patent ended up being the final pill and how you'd have to make it following the patent, but this is just illustrative. The patent was really just intended to cover the molecule, and the method just proves that they indeed had made it and tested its activity.

Re:Hindsight

[Targen]

Hydrogen bombs include fusion. That's what the hydrogen does, and it's also why they're sometimes called "fusion bombs".

Re:Hindsight

[hitmark]

A worryingly narrow starting point, as it do not allow any re-examination of the concepts within the term "intellectual property". Seems similar to how the mission statement of the Norwegian group tasked with updating the nations copyright law, specifically leaving out any chance of the group to re-examine the reasons behind the laws existence. This is the kind of deification of old thoughts that worries me these days. We are unwilling to go back and have a long hard look at the words of the founders of modern society, and evaluate their continued validity (or lack there of). As such, we are no better then the people that run their lives by a holy text that has stayed unchanged for a millennium or more.

Re:Hindsight

[NoSig]

That's not how patents really work, though. They are often written in legalese so that no technical person will gain much from reading them without considerable effort. Beyond that, technical people are usually advised/ordered in the strongest terms not to read patents for any reason ever because it's impossible not to infringe on some patent somewhere and if you have read the patent you are inevitably infringing, then damages are higher if you get sued. It is conceivable for an improved patent system to serve the function of dissemination of research, but the current patent system does the opposite. The obvious changes to make would be to require patents to be plainly understood to an average practitioner of whatever field the patent is in, and to remove the connection between reading a patent and higher damages for infringing on it.

Re:Hindsight

[AmElder]

In this case, the groupthink is right on and Francis Gurry's counter-history, such as it is, is patently(!) absurd. People are responding to his specific point about the web, which Cory accurately summarised. Thanks for the reasoned deviation from the party line, though. (I see it's been modded flame bait, now, but I disagree) You deserve an equally good counter-argument and I'll try to give it.

The context is a question posed to the panel: "How can countries, how can organisations improve in the area of innovation." In response to that question, and to the idea of measuring innovation that the Global Innovation Index aims to realise, everyone else on the panel talked about the important of things other than (you could say: in addition to) patents and traditional intellectual property tools. Daniele Archibugi included in his discussion of business innovations, an emphasis on the importance of institutions like schools (17:49) and of the infrastructure for innovation -- including the commons of the internet. Naushad Forbes called patents a "limited indicator of new product innovations and an almost non-existent indicator of new service and new business model innovations" (25:53), meaning that they do not account for the range of different kinds of innovation. Leonid Gokhberg talked about "differentiated policy mixes for different industries" as well as for different types of companies (33:57) because "innovation should be taken in its broad sense, including its non-technological, social, and environmental [effects]" (12:14).

Rolf-Dieter Heuer talked about how the Index fails to measure true innovation because it measures patents and not basic science, which he argues is the essential driver of innovation, essentially an inaccurate indicator instead of the thing itself (13:32). He values "substantial change" over "incremental change" (13:40). As an example of this problem, he cites the invention of the world wide web, which because it was not patented would not have shown up in this index, and yet reflects an important innovation of current age (to understate the case).

Francis Gurry addresses his concluding "white card" comments in response to Rolf-Dieter Heuer, but they apply as much to Lynn Saint-Amour's remarks, indeed you can see him begin to compose his words at 44:10 after she says "if it [the web] was patented, the internet community would have found a way to route around it." She talked generally, not terribly on-topic, about how innovators can use openness to their advantage and the value of non-traditional channels of innovation (the last point at 17:48).

In the context of everything that came before, Mr Gurry's specific comments about the world web web reflect a dogmatic misunderstanding of how the web came to be and how it worked, especially in the 1990s. It's a bizarre and irrelevant counter-history, as I assume is being argued elsewhere in this thread as I compose this long and detailed reply. In brief, if the web had been patented and commercialised it would indeed have been routed around, as Lynn Saint-Amour said. Also, it would not have returned the patent profits to basic research, as Francis Gurry suggests, because then it would have become applied research and the funds would have funded incremental change in the commercial environment, to use Professor Heuer's words. Gurry does not seem to have been listening to the academics and policy advisers around him. They're all saying "tradition IP instruments can't do it all." His response is that "intellectual property is a very flexible instrument" (50:13), essentially "oh yes it can too do it all."

I fancy you can get a measure of the in

Re:Hindsight

[Tsingi]

This is why history repeats itself. We ignore it and have to learn old lessons repeatedly.

Makes one wonder why we learned to write in the first place.

Then again, big media doesn't like us reading/listening to/watching things they don't get a cut from unless it's some sort of propaganda. They are well represented by the WIPO.

Re:Hindsight

[shentino]

If he was completely ignorant there's no way he would have made it to the head of WIPO.

He knows damn FUCKING WELL about the drawbacks.

He willfully chooses to disregard them so that the people whose pockets he's in don't get pissed off.

Re:Hindsight

[SlippyToad]

-1, Patent Troll.

Re:Hindsight

[19thNervousBreakdown]

I'm don't think you, or anyone that modded you up, know what that idiom means.

Re:Hindsight

[Stormthirst]

I've always wondered if there should be a system whereby when you patent something, the patent office must license it on your behalf.

It should work something like this:

1) You patent something, and you go through the normal processes of checking for prior art/obviousness etc. There is no fee at this point.
2) The patent office sets a standard fee (or tax if you want to call it that) for a patent, which you can negotiate on, but ultimately it HAS to be licensed. I'm not sure how you could make this fair to both patent holder and licensee. I considered a time limit on negotiations (say six months), but that would encourage the licensee to just negotiate their way to a cheaper license. So I don't know about this part.
3) The patent office gets a very small percentage of the patent fee, which it uses to fund itself, relieving the system of a tax burden.
3.1) This encourages the patent office to publicise patents, and negotiations/licenses.
3.2) It would mean that everyone, small and large has a shot at cheaply being able to use ideas already out there, encouraging innovations instead of creating the aforementioned hostile environment.
3.3) It also stops patent trolls from just suing - perhaps the courts can automatically throw out any case that hasn't already gone through the above negotiations/licensing.

Obviously you don't need to license the patents from yourself, so you still have an economical advantage - you don't have to pay the patent fees on your own ideas.

Re:Hindsight

[AmberBlackCat]

The way the current patent system works, they'd probably find some way to get gopher, ftp, bittorrent, and text messaging shut down, all on the grounds that it violates a patent on HTML. Something about a method of creating something based on text. But on a computer.

Re:Hindsight

[next_ghost]

It'd be more than enough to sue anybody who tries to build a bomb which uses hydrogen fusion at any point in the reaction. Hydrogen fusion doesn't have to be the only step and not even the last step in the explosion but if it's somewhere in the chain, it still falls under that ridiculously vague patent. That's what ridiculously vague patents are written for.

Re:Hindsight

[next_ghost]

Statutory licensing of patents doesn't really solve any of the major problems. Sure, it prevents patent hoarding and licensee discrimination but it doesn't stop patent trolls (just gives their victims one more chance to pay the troll a smaller fee), it doesn't prevent patent writers from being ridiulously vague about the actual implementation (see patent trolls) and it doesn't solve the problem of independent discovery (the single biggest patent problem out there; if this one was solved, patent trolls would go away forever).

Re:Hindsight

[shentino]

Let's just say I've seen a lot of experts in other areas get coopted by corporate interests. Our own congressional political system is a well known example.

To be blunt, de-ja-vu means his ignorance in a field his position would require expertise in, doesn't really pass the smell test.

Re:Hindsight

[kheldan]

It's even better than that, though: if that person had their wish, there would not be an Internet, at least not anything like what we have today. More likely than not, nobody would have wanted to pay a licensing fee for something so new and unproven, so either there would have been something else developed to take the place of HTML (rich text format of some kind?), or just plain nobody would have bothered with this newfangled "Internet" thing in the first place.

People like that need to be shouted down, but I think I'm preaching to the choir on that; I think anyone who matters already agrees that patents are completely out of control and benefit no one except the rich corporations.

Re:Hindsight

[next_ghost]

People who understand drawbacks of something they promote also know very well which examples they should avoid at all costs because that particular something won't work in that case. When they try to peddle their thing, they use examples where their thing makes everybody involved happy, seemingly look very similar but under the surface are actually fundamentally different (in other words: bait and switch). But when somebody says this kind of blatantly obvious nonsense, he has to be absolutely clueless. Probably from living in corporate ivory tower for too long.

Re:Hindsight

[maxwells_deamon]

It would have been AOL and CompuServe

Re:Hindsight

[gl4ss]

it would have been just as popular. nobody would remember lee though except as a huge turd mentioned only in few wikipedia articles and pc mag archives from '90s.

it's just that it would be "sss" or "hyper-gopher" or "annotated ftp" or something similar that would have been used, to get around the licensing issues. or just very complex ansi markup if the href was the point of the patent.

hyper text being a seperate invention from the web-serving techniques(which are very simple protocol rules) - and being something that was being invented in parallel all around the world during those years...

Re:Hindsight

[gl4ss]

well, he could have gone to late middle ages and suggest that patenting book printing would be an immensely good thing so they could use the licensing money to provide free paper for poor people to do basic research on.

he'd still be an idiot. just adding _any_ micro payments, or licensing to arrange for isp's per user or per page view or per hosted page or any model you can think of then that would have meant that we would be using some Microsoft HyperLibrary or IBM DataLinkServerFormat or something as silly and not the simple to use, easy to adapt protocols that made web what it is now - sure, a "lot more money" would have gone to research of whoever would have won that bid.

in the purest essence the guy thinks that more taxation == more research. fuck him, fuck his wipo. there's some group think for you.

oh and interestingly the comments on the article lead me to google to find this: http://www.aus.xanadu.com/general/future.html which is what stupid guys in a committee would come up with and actually think they could make it work(basically it seems like www with strict authoring and enforced micropayments - and a huge money grab attempt at making an impractical world wide web, sure, their version would be like the wipo version and _only_ work in a fantasy world or in a world where you would have 7 out of 10 people enforcing just that system with _violence_).

Re:Hindsight

[shentino]

*notices your username, decides not to respond further*

Re:Hindsight

[FauxReal]

Funny you say that. When I first tried the web in July of 1994, I thought it was a stupid bandwidth hogging ripoff of gopher and would go nowhere. This was back in the NCSA Mosaic days and a 14.4k SLIP was a badass Internet connection. When web pages were black text on grey backgrounds.

Re:Hindsight

[Rich0]

Yup, though in this particular case good luck suing somebody who actually manages to build a couple of hydrogen bombs. I suspect that their disputes will get settled in a somewhat different court.

Re:Hindsight

[mwvdlee]

Without knowing intent, we can only base judgement on behaviour.
Your guess that he is well aware of the bullshit he's uttering is equally likely as a guess that he doesn't and climbed to power by being unhindered by nuanced reality.

Re:Hindsight

[EuclideanSilence]

What a deliberately backwards way of looking at things. You can choose how to release it? Absolutely nonsensical statement. The threat of force is being applied against those who wish to copy and communicate the information. What you are choosing is whether or not legal action can be brought against other people.

A right is a restriction or requirement of the government or authority. Restricting the government from making laws against speech is a right.

When creating a restriction on another person with no authority over you, by means of government enforcement, it is called a law. The ability to bring legal force against someone for taking your possessions is a law.

When you have a general restriction of a person from copying and transferring information by threat of government action -- no matter how much you want to use the word "right" because it sounds compelling, it is still just a law. But that correct terminology is avoided because then it raises the question: "is it a fair law?" The answer to that depends on your priorities. What is more important, the freedom to communicate what information you know with your fellow person, or the financial compensation of one person by another with no prior contractual obligation?

No one can answer that for you, but the for a law to be proper, it is for the advocate of the law to justify it. In other words, to consider this impartially, you have to consider it as if the concept of "intellectual property" were just being brought up for the first time.

Re:Hindsight

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

You noticed something small and superficial about me, and fallaciously leapt from it to the conclusion most convenient to your viewpoint. Along the way, of course, you conveniently sidestep all my arguments, as though they are somehow less valid given the name of the person who said them.

In a conversation about leaping to conclusions, I suppose this is a pretty fitting end!

Re:Hindsight

[thejynxed]

Fancy pants...mine was BLUE text on gray backgrounds.

In fact, most of the MUDs I connected to back then used the same thing - blue on gray. Those systems were mostly old IBM PC clones - Tandys and whatnot in my local computer lab (my local colleges were a bit progressive for the time, they let non-students/staff get time on the computers for a monthly membership technology fee provided you were a local resident, aka "townie").

Re:Hindsight

[amRadioHed]

No, someone just bought existing patents regarding WI-FI. The patents aren't new.

Re:Hindsight

[goarilla]

He made the point that IP are useful because patents document an invention, information otherwise lost. He brings the example of Violin vs. Saxophone. I think his intention is correct, but should be solved by open standards as documentation, not patents.

They waited for Adolph Sax to die in the gutters so they could manufacture his instrument for free.
Same thing happened with the creator of the tv iirc.

Who...

[__Paul__]

...voted for this guy?

(Yes, pedants, I'm aware we don't get to vote for them)

Re:Who...

[Hognoxious]

I think some woman in a pond threw a sword at him.

Perhaps she should have thrown it harder.

Re:Who...

[Eunuchswear]

Your government voted for him.

The "UN" and it's myriad institutions is a figleaf for your rulers. It lets them do what they want and blame it on "The UN" or "WIPO" or "the WTO" or "the FMI" or "the World Bank".

Re:Who...

[PolygamousRanchKid]

(Yes, pedants, I'm aware we don't get to vote for them)

Which is reason enough that the folks in the UN should not be dictating Internet policy.

Re:Who...

[houghi]

Does that imply that people that were voted would do a better job? I have my doubts.

Re:Who...

[TheRaven64]

I don't remember anyone voting for Vint Cerf or Tim Berners-Lee either, but they seemed to do a good job...

Re:Who...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure they did. People voted by spending their money on the technology that Cerf and Berners-Lee produced.

Not unlike "voting with your feet," people voted with their wallets.

Re:Who...

[hedwards]

What!? And hit Al Gore?

Re:Who...

[Qzukk]

People voted by spending their money on the technology that Cerf and Berners-Lee produced.

That's unpossible! They're not megacorporations with patents worth billions, so it couldn't have possibly happened!</WIPO>

Re:Who...

[countertrolling]

Your vote is a cruel joke.

Well, as long as 98% keep voting for the same old shit, we'll never really know if that's true or not.

Re:Who...

[Anne Thwacks]

Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!

It beats the pants off using Diebold kit!

Re:Who...

[Dwonis]

ITU seems to be doing a fair and neutral job of running the phone network

Look closer. Like, compare any IETF standard with any telephony standard. Telcos brought us ASN.1, OSI, GSM, and a bunch of other vastly overcomplicated technologies. Not to mention the ridiculously dense patent thicket...

Re:Who...

[tehcyder]

Your vote is a cruel joke.

Well, as long as 98% keep voting for the same old shit, we'll never really know if that's true or not.

All you can do is help educate people in how he world actually works, and hope they will stop voting against their own best interests. For instance, anyone who isn't a millionaire who votes for a pro-free market, low tax and low welfare benefits party is deluded.

The trouble is, that at least in the US, the majority of people have been brainwashed into thinking that capitalism is the pinnacle of human social achievement, and that anyone can become rich/president if they work hard enough, so they keep voting for one of the two main parties.

Re:Who...

[Richy_T]

Anyone who thinks that everyone voting for their own immediate self-interest will result in a stable system is deluded.

Re:Who...

[snadrus]

It means I can work to get them out of their position without going to jail.

Re:Who...

[Hognoxious]

It's the worst, apart from all the other ones. At least, that's what F.D.Roosevelt said.

Patenting the web you say?

[youn]

what a ridiculous idea... it's not like anyone would try patenting ridiculous ideas such as 1 click purchases or pre existing stuff and sue others... it's been completely patent free haha

Re:Patenting the web you say?

[Z00L00K]

And if it had been patented then someone else would have done something completely different and that would have taken off instead leaving HTTP/HTML in the dark.

Impressive

[Spad]

It takes a monumental denial of reality to say something that stupid; anyone with even partial brain function is fully aware that if the underlying technologies of the web had been patented by Sir Tim (or similar) and licensed then we wouldn't be posting on Slashdot right now because nobody outside of large multinationals would even be *using* the web for anything.

Re:Impressive

[maxwell demon]

It takes a monumental denial of reality to say something that stupid; anyone with even partial brain function is fully aware that if the underlying technologies of the web had been patented by Sir Tim (or similar) and licensed then we wouldn't be posting on Slashdot right now because nobody outside of large multinationals would even be *using* the web for anything.

Oh, maybe we would be posting on Slashdot, but Slashdot would be a news server where the summary was the first message posted to each new group. Links would of course be manual, i.e. a description of how to get at the article.

Re:Impressive

[Motor]

Head of Intellectual Property at UN thinks Intellectual Property makes things better.

Pope thinks Catholicism makes the world better.

News at 11!

Re:Impressive

[MysteriousPreacher]

It'd be more akin to Pope claiming that the human race would have been more successful if everyone back in the 2nd century had followed Paul's advice to remain childless. Remaining true to an ideology is one thing; asserting ideology in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is an entirely different matter.

Re:Impressive

[MysteriousPreacher]

Oh, maybe we would be posting on Slashdot, but Slashdot would be a news server where the summary was the first message posted to each new group. Links would of course be manual, i.e. a description of how to get at the article.

Good post. I would have posted before you if my ISP had licensed the AppleTalk to IPX bridge that would have allowed me to view Slashdot from my connection at home. Fortunately at work we have can afford to buy a browser that supports the mark-up used by Slashdot. I may be late responding to replies; the email clients here don't support the protocol my ISP uses.

Re:Impressive

[Attila Dimedici]

But, there are a large number of people on slashdot who think that control of the Internet should be given to the UN.

Re:Impressive

[grumling]

gopher://slashdot.org

Re:Impressive

[drinkypoo]

Correct me if I'm wrong, because IANAL, but is there any reason why he couldn't have patented it, then made a public statement irrevocably granting public use?

Re:Impressive

[dna_(c)(tm)(r)]

Francis Gurry studied law. First requirement is removal of logic networks from the brain if present, so that you can convincingly represent any point of view. Some notable exceptions exist. BTW, thanks NYCL, a shining light in the darkness.

Re:Impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually - there is good evidence that Paul was referring to Christians in that specific city and that specific time period. At the time that letter was written the church was being persecuted very heavily by the Romans - if you married you or your spouse would very likely be widowed in a short period of time.

In another place Paul refers to people in the church who forbid marriage as teaching a doctrine of the devil and also writes that pastors and bishops should be married. The Catholic church's teaching that it is more holy not to marry is contrary to what Paul wrote - and has caused all kinds of problems.

Re:Impressive

[countertrolling]

...nobody outside of large multinationals would even be *using* the web for anything.

Chaaa... I believe that was the idea.. to keep free and easy mass communication out of the hands of all those dirty hippies out there with their subversive thoughts poisoning the minds of our children

Re:Impressive

[MysteriousPreacher]

I'd agree that he was writing for his time, not least of all because he expected to see the return of Christ in his own lifetime. Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher, so each generation of Christians finds their own Christianity. Im yet to hear of a generation of Christians that didnt consider Christ's return to be imminent. Yeah, the Catholic aversion to allowing its priests and nuns to raise families is damaging and odd in that bringing children in to the world and raising them according to the tenets of the faith should surely be one of the best things a believer could do.

Re:Impressive

[BluBrick]

Firefox doesn't know how to open this address, because the protocol (gopher) isn't associated with any program.

Really? Maybe you're just not trying hard enough.

Re:Impressive

[aralin]

Gopher.

'nugh said!

Re:Impressive

[Sun]

It's akin to keep claiming that the earth is the center of the universe 200 years after Galileo was punished for saying otherwise. Don't put such feats of, well, belief beyond the Catholic church.

Shachar

Re:Impressive

[thejynxed]

Part of this reasoning was a sly way to prevent certain bishops, cardinals, and popes from creating familial dynasties within the church. There was more than one pope or bishop who attempted to also set themselves up as "king" before this went into effect.

Re:Impressive

[spauldo]

You need a pre-4.0 version of Firefox to load gopher pages.

Re:Impressive

[EETech1]

The Kentucky Fried Movie??? Bwaaah! Hello... Surfin USA:)

Re:Impressive

[tehcyder]

It takes a monumental denial of reality to say something that stupid; anyone with even partial brain function is fully aware that if the underlying technologies of the web had been patented by Sir Tim (or similar) and licensed then we wouldn't be posting on Slashdot right now because nobody outside of large multinationals would even be *using* the web for anything.

Oh, maybe we would be posting on Slashdot, but Slashdot would be a news server where the summary was the first message posted to each new group. Links would of course be manual, i.e. a description of how to get at the article.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee didn't invent hypertext.

Re:Impressive

[maxwell demon]

But NNTP is plain ASCII.

Re:Impressive

[tehcyder]

People (and I use that term loosely) like him only value money and would sell their mothers and children into slavery.

I love how on slashdot, as long as the topic is computer software, everyone comes over all anti-capitalist and greed is bad, but on every other subject they're vehement free-marketeers.

Re:Impressive

[mcgrew]

There's nothing wrong and much right with wanting to make money, but when you want to make your money with no thought as to the lives of others (examlpe: the mine in Virginia that blew up after being cited for the very situation that caused the problem numerous times before, or BP ignoring the engineers for the bottom line before the well blew up) you're just evil. The thing is, you don't HAVE to do evil to make a lot of money.

The guy in question, the one who thinks the internet should have been patented, is the same sort that would ignore safety violations and his own engineers and the lives of the people who work for him for a buck.

Capitalism is just a tool. Like any tool it can be used for good or for evil.

To quote Mr.T.

[Anonymous Coward]

I pity the fool

I patent frst posts!

[Hognoxious]

n/c

Re:I patent frst posts!

[Anonymous Coward]

There appears to be some prior art...

Re:I patent frst posts!

[Sparx139]

There appears to be some prior art...

Easy enough to get around, just add "on a computer" to the end of it and you're all set

Re:I patent frst posts!

[JabrTheHut]

Easy enough to get around, just add "on a computer" to the end of it and you're all set

I'm one step ahead - I'm getting all the old ideas and adding "on a refrigerator" to the end of them all...

Re:I patent frst posts!

[John Bresnahan]

n/c

Just like a Hollywood blockbuster.

That's OK. We'll just start the posts with #2.

Second post!

Re:I patent frst posts!

[Hognoxious]

But I filed first!

Gurry simple doesn't understand "sharing"

[Anonymous Coward]

He talks about the possibility that the burden of developing the web could have been shared by the users. Well, it was shared. The development of the web was as shared as it could have been. Hundreds or thousands of open source developers contributing pieces to it. Some commercial companies trying as well. All users paying for their share of the bandwidth. The web is a wonderful example for how sharing the burden can work without a traditional organization apportioning the shares. This guy simply doesn't get that. He may know something about the P in WIPO, but the I seems to be somewhat underdeveloped.

Re:Gurry simple doesn't understand "sharing"

[openfrog]

The web is a wonderful example for how sharing the burden can work without a traditional organization apportioning the shares. This guy simply doesn't get that.

Agreeing with your insightful post, but a nuance about him not 'getting it': take notice how he talks about "sharing the burden among the users". We may be witnessing a new approach by WIPO and a fresh Newspeak idiom in gestation, where appropriation of the public good by private entities is presented as 'sharing'.

Other observations made in hindsight...

[Anonymous Coward]

Francis Gurry's dad should have pulled out.

WIPO == Idiots

[zabzonk]

I worked at WIPO as a consultant for a year - a bigger collection of clueless f*ckwits would be hard to find.

Re:WIPO == Idiots

[kubitus]

I agree fully!

BTW my former boss of IT is now there CIO.

this of course has nothing to do with your statement!

Re:WIPO == Idiots

[tehcyder]

I worked at WIPO as a consultant for a year - a bigger collection of clueless f*ckwits would be hard to find.

And what was your great contribution to humanity during your time there?

If only...

[mudshark]

This certainly might have prolonged Gopher's viability.

Well? What do you expect?

[SmallFurryCreature]

A surgeon will recommend to operate. A lawyer to do legal work. A soldier to kill someone.

This guy is at WIPO, patents and such is what this guy does. You won't get creative commons out of him.

The problem is not even this guy, the problem is his opposition. There isn't one. As always, "Yes Prime Minister" has the example. Story: Hacker is given the task of coming up with a new transport policy involving road, rail and air. He soon learns that each sector is represented by a civil servant fighting not for the common good but for HIS sector.

This story alone does not cover it. In another story his chauffeur comments on a radio story and points out that all the decisions for public transport, public schools and public healthcare are made by people that go to private hospitals, send their kids to private schools and have chauffeur driven cars. Which Hacker sayed they need because else they would have to make public transport a lot more reliable...

The problem ain't sector reps fighting for their sector, the problem is the common man, the non-commercial, the non-status quo, has no such rep fighting for their cause.

People who are in ivory towers have plenty of sky bridges connecting them to other ivory towers. But never ever a connection to ground level. I have seen it myself, even if some newbie tries, the disconnect is already so great once they have enough power that any contact attempt is extremely uncomfortable so they soon learn not to do it again.

This is just how the system works, calling this guy an idiot only helps keep the system in place. Sadly getting a useful opposition in place is nearly impossible.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[Alex Belits]

A surgeon who will recommend to operate when it's not necessary, will lose his license, can be sued for malpractice and may even face criminal charges if he knew that he endangers a patient without a good reason for it.

This asshat, on the other hand, has no oversight over his whoring to corporations, and should never be placed into any such position.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[rollingcalf]

Except that there is often a significant degree of subjectivity and room for disagreement on decisions of whether to operate, so the surgeon who recommends unnecessary operations won't face any consequences 99% of the time.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[Alex Belits]

At the level of blatant disregard for everything other than money demonstrated by the aforementioned asshat?

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[Overzeetop]

No, the difference is that doctors are licensed and can lose a license if they do something exceptionally negligent. This guy has no backstop.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[Halo1]

I also experienced very nice example of this during the fight against the software patents directive in Europe. I had a discussion with a guy from WIPO and at one point said that software patents were generally bad for small companies. Rather than denying this like EICTA (the organisation representing mostly large ICT companies), he fully agreed with that.

But then he went off the cliff: he argued that this is actually how the system is supposed to work. By making sure that most small companies will be driven out of business or swallowed by larger ones, you get a consolidation in the market. And consolidation is good for efficiency, cost cutting etc. Basically, he considered software patents as a market optimisation tool to get rid of all the fragmentation, to speed up the "natural" evolution that any economic sector is supposed to go through (starting out with many small time independent businesses, followed by a consolidation phase that leaves a few giants to rule it all).

That said, WIPO isn't the worst. Countries such as India and Brazil also have a say in there, and they're far less extremist than the Western world (at least for now). WIPO is in fact so annoying to the current extremists that the US, EU and friends completely bypassed it with ACTA. So anyone arguing against UN bodies with the argument that those people are not accountable should be careful, because there at least you have countries from all over the world that have a say rather than only the interests of your own administration (or rather your own "IP"-lobbyists) and some self-selected partners.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[S3D]

A surgeon will recommend to operate. A lawyer to do legal work. A soldier to kill ...this guy

I strongly object extrajudicial killings. Brain surgery looks like a human and compassionate way to deal with this guy.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[roman_mir]

A surgeon will recommend to operate. A lawyer to do legal work. A soldier to kill someone.

- a good professional surgeon will recommend to weigh in options and only operate if it is truly necessary. A lawyer will recommend to seek legal advice, and he probably would be correct. A soldier would not recommend to kill someone, that's the job of Ministry of Offense. Donald Rumsfeld would recommend to kill a bunch of people and he would insist to do it with very few soldiers to ensure that the civilian population wouldn't object much against a bigger invasion.

A soldier would recommend to NOT go to a war I bet, because a soldier is the most likely person to be killed and so are his soldier friends.

This tells me that this guy in UN is a Donald Rumsfeld in his own right. Which means he does not belong where he is sitting, but more importantly it means that you don't want to be part of UN.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[hitmark]

Careful, "Yes Prime Minister" was specifically written to promote the Thacher politics of its time.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[countertrolling]

This guy is at WIPO, patents and such is what this guy does.

Yes, exactly like the fable about the scorpion and the frog.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[Crayon Kid]

Surgeons and medical doctors in general do have their ethics. As should every professional. I know people are ready to believe that since "cutting into people" is what a surgeon does, he or she can't wait to do it at any opportunity. In fact it's usually quite the opposite. To put it simply, any part of the body you've cut into will never be quite the same as before, no matter how well it heals. So they try to avoid doing it unnecessarily.

Granted, not all surgeons respect this to the same degree, and then there's plastic surgery and so on, but generally speaking it's unfair to say all surgeons are knife-happy.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[marcosdumay]

You'd be hard pressed to find a surgeon that takes surgery easily, or a soldier that takes killing easily. If anything, they are even more reluctant of accepting they'd do any good than the rest of society.

Unfortunately, lawyers don't share that feature.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[mounthood]

Actually it wasn't. If you watch the DVD interview extras, the show was in development well before Thacher and they didn't try to turn it into a contemporary commentary. In my mind that makes it all the better, because it really does apply to the power structure in general, not just one party or politician.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[MightyMartian]

I don't see that at all. If it had been purely Thatcherite, Hacker would have been this brilliant fellow. Instead the series both Hacker and Sir Humphrey were vain and often very foolish men. I don't think anything pro-Thatcher would have shown a Minister or Prime Minister as a bit of a bumbling fool.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[hitmark]

Funny thing is, Adam Curtis makes the claim that it was in part one of The Trap.

http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtis_TheTrap

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[spire3661]

The problem is, open source is still intellectual property that has been licensed. Perhaps WIPO should rename itself to "we only care about IP that can be monetized"

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[spire3661]

Yes, otherwise why would you choose that profession? Either you are a bloodthirsty killer or a fool. If you sign up to become a soldier, you MUST come to terms with the fact that you may be forced to kill another human whether you want to or not. A person who would put themselves in that position is by definition a killer.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[sjames]

The only answer is for a few good men to come along and toss the whole damned tower on the trash heap.

In other words, if they're that disconnected, they need to just keep their noses out of the common people's business. If they won't, they should be beaten with sticks until they go away.

Calling these people idiots and putting them on display for ridicule is necessary so that the rest of us can see that beating them with sticks is the only useful response to their interference in the affairs of actual people.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[gl4ss]

on the internet he is on the same page as the guy calling him an idiot.
that is very different from his chauffer world.

so actually yes, calling him an idiot gets him to read this shit, maybe not on this page, but on some other page, and people who know him are going to mention it to him sooner or later. because he's a human being he's going to go to read comments on the OA - some of them are good points about how the internet works and why and how, and how there wouldn't have actually been any more money available for research had berners gone on a decade long futile attempt to get his standard for hyper text markup and transfer the one to be used WHILE trying to license it at the same time. how does it help that he realizes that he's an idiot? well, maybe he'll recommend to just one guy later on that patenting is not the answer for him to get his extra smart loan sorting algorithm that might save the world from financial crisis.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[redcaboodle]

That's a gross generalization. Not entirely untrue, but far from a given. My wife had surgery a few years ago. The surgeon tried to dissuade us from it since he gave it at best a 50% chance of working since some of the diagnostics they look for weren't there. He left the option up to us, and since we had been through everything else without any luck, we told him to go through with it. After removing her gall bladder he finally found the signs he expected to find originally and she's been doing much better.

Funny you should mention this. My aunt was operated by a gynecologist for a growth on her ovaries. Since they had to go in anyway they removed her gall bladder because of a stone. Unfortunately they bungled that part so badly that the gall couldn't leave by the external conduit they had installed so it poisoned her almost fatally. When the internal specialists operated on her they found the remnants of her natural gall conduits mangled to badly they could not use them and almost gave up before using an artificial internal conduit to get the gall to flow straight from the liver into the intestines.

She is now in intensive care under heavy pain medication and has not been conscious since the op. The point is since the pain from the large cut would be near unbearable the doctors have decided to switch her consciousness off until healing is well underway.

If the idiots doing the first op had just said: let's call in a specialist instead of trying to do the (in theory, relatively simple for a trained surgeon) removal of a gall bladder themselves she and her family would have been spared a lot of pain and permanent maiming. My guess is they didn't know that conduits, like sinews, shrivel when unconnected and cut too short.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[dkf]

Instead the series both Hacker and Sir Humphrey were vain and often very foolish men.

Each was written to be like that type of person as seen by the opposing group (so politicians as seen by bureaucrats and bureaucrats as seen by politicians). Left and right are really unimportant in that particular struggle.

The brilliant part is that both are largely how the general public views both groups, in part because of that superlative sitcom.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[rohan972]

What about cosmetic surgery?

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[tehcyder]

A surgeon who will recommend to operate when it's not necessary, will lose his license, can be sued for malpractice and may even face criminal charges if he knew that he endangers a patient without a good reason for it.

This asshat, on the other hand, has no oversight over his whoring to corporations, and should never be placed into any such position.

A surgeon who will recommend to operate when it's not necessary, will lose his license, can be sued for malpractice and may even face criminal charges if he knew that he endangers a patient without a good reason for it.

This asshat, on the other hand, has no oversight over his whoring to corporations, and should never be placed into any such position.

So, if I may paraphrase, you have come to realise the inherent contradictions in the liberal capitalist socio-economic system, and the impossibility of its retaining any maningful long-term structural integrity in the face of the inevitable politicisation of the proletariat leading to a full scale cultural and political revolution, abolishing the cash nexus as the basis for human interaction, and ushering the socialist dream of equality, fraternity and true liberty?

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[Alex Belits]

No, I mean that a corporate whore asshat has no oversight over his whoring and asshatery. My political views are quite irrelevant in face of this blatant betrayal of public trust into UN-affiliated institutions.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[jafac]

This is true - many economists seem to be of the opinion that "consolidation" is a sign of maturity in an industry, and it eliminates malinvestment and inefficiency.

In my opinion - of course, this view is completely ignorant, and stupid, and utterly bonkers. Because consolidation eliminates any meaningful competition and innovation. A consolidated industry is the complete opposite of what is good and desirable in Capitalism.

Re:Well? What do you expect?

[Cinnamon Beige]

A surgeon will recommend to operate. A lawyer to do legal work. A soldier to kill ...this guy

I strongly object extrajudicial killings. Brain surgery looks like a human and compassionate way to deal with this guy.

I agree with you on extrajudicial killings, but...brain surgery? I know what the state of the art (and the effects & things that can go Horribly Wrong) is there well enough to consider just killing the person a more humane option. It's like yanking hardware out of a computer while it's running--while blindfolded, with not even a glance at the particular computer's insides before you started reaching in. (On the up side, since it's running you'll quickly know what just got fried.)

Their Goals

[bky1701]

The copy of copyright and patent supporters is to prevent systems like the internet from being founded. This is a great example: were the important protocols and general structure patented, what you know of as the internet would not have been delayed or more expensive, it would have never existed. It is quite obvious that the greater good is of no concern to IP supporters, only their own profits.

Yet these people are still given free rein of our legal system and allowed by the weak minded to claim that copyright and patent infringement is "theft," while the real theft is that of the copyright and patent holders from society as a whole. It's time that stop, before the next big innovation is prevented. End these archaic systems this decade, support the abolition of imaginary property.

Re:Their Goals

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it might just be some form of super extreme capitalism...

Hardly. Unlike real property which you can hire people with guns to protect, Imaginary Property is only 'property' because you have a magic certificate from the government claiming that it is. The entire structure is artificial, it functions like a parasitic vine [Public domain abolitionists] growing around a tree [legislation/government], shaping the direction the tree grows so that the vine can reach higher above everything else whilst slowly strangling it. The tree will eventually collapse under its own dead weight, what exactly happens after that is not going to be pleasant.

This whole thing started as a trade off, a deal, the idea wasn't to give artists 'ownership' of anything, it was to allow them to make a living and be able to afford to eat whilst they worked on something new. The idea of perpetual copyright and the seemingly vast collection of patents on simplistic or vague ideas is antithetical to the entire point.

Re:Their Goals

[Bert64]

And it's also worth noting that artists existed and survived just fine prior to the invention of copyright... They worked a job just like everyone else, they got paid while they performed their work and if they stopped performing they stopped being paid.

William Shakespeare was able to write his plays without needing copyright protection, why can't modern artists do the same? In fact, it's partly due to copyright that its unlikely any of todays works will go down in history the way Shakespeare did...

A lot of work is simply forgotten and/or lost when the publisher stops selling it after a year or two, and this work then sits useless, still copyrighted and not in the public domain for many years. By the time copyright expires, the work is long since forgotten.

Re:Their Goals

[sgt101]

How would writers (novelists for example) make a living without copyright? Isn't society enriched by their work? My mind is enriched by their work - isn't it fair that they are compensated for the work and value that they create?

Re:Their Goals

[sgt101]

And as for patents, they have a purpose of guaranteeing publication of . If you abolish them altogether get ready for more black boxes and permanent monopolies on ideas via trade secrets.

Re:Their Goals

[Mr. Underbridge]

Not to defend the asshole in this example, but the opposite extreme (espoused by you) won't be any better. Here's a question for you: under your model, who pays for pharmaceutical research and expensive FDA trials if the resulting drug can be manufactured by anyone for pennies on the dollar compared to the upfront investment?

Re:Their Goals

[jopsen]

Hardly. Unlike real property which you can hire people with guns to protect, Imaginary Property....

Nice definition :)
But there aren't many civilized countries in the world where you can hire people with guns... I don't hope that makes physical property imaginary...

Re:Their Goals

[jopsen]

Just because a world where everybody has to pay for everything is a bad place to live doesn't mean that the exact opposite is any better.

Probably not... extremes are rarely good...

There may be massive room for reform in our current system but it's not software/music/movie pirates that keep these industries alive, it's the people who pay for the privilege of consuming their products.

Yes and no, money doesn't drive every discovery, but they do drive some...

Re:Their Goals

[lolcutusofbong]

Hire schmire. You can buy guns yourself.

Re:Their Goals

[mollymoo]

Paying taxes is just a collective way of hiring people with guns to protect your property.

Re:Their Goals

[captainproton1971]

And if nobody ever paid for anything and every Tom Dick and Harry could take your ideas and use them for his own profit without compensating you that would solve all the world's problems?

Uhh... how exactly would Tom, Dick or Harry be making a profit using your ideas if nobody paid for anything? Not trying to be snarky, but isn't this something of a circular rationalization for the existence of IP laws?

Re:Their Goals

[eclectechie]

This is a great example: were the important protocols and general structure patented, what you know of as the internet would not have been delayed or more expensive, it would have never existed.

I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that it would have existed, in a different form.

Remember SNA? When TCP/IP was young, SNA was better. There is no reason the web couldn't run on SNA. But it would be a really different web; your ISP would (auto-)generate device configurations so you could connect. But it would still provide the same basic functionality to those with access to it.

TCP/IP prevailed over SNA because it was unencumbered and readily available, not on technical merit.* Ditto Ethernet over Token Ring. The web we have prevailed over all its stillborn competitors because it was unencumbered.

(* I make no judgement of technical merit, I merely point out that it was not the principal factor.)

Re:Their Goals

[sjames]

Funny how the same people seem to be so resistant to paying others the way they want to be paid.

Re:Their Goals

[jc79]

The government? Drug R&D funded from taxes on drug sales. Might lead to more honest reporting of drug research, rather than inconvenient trial data being buried, as happens in the current system.

Re:Their Goals

[tehcyder]

Hardly. Unlike real property which you can hire people with guns to protect, Imaginary Property is only 'property' because you have a magic certificate from the government claiming that it is

The whole concept of property is just another fiction anyway, once you extend it past "stuff I can carry around with me and hit you if you try to take it". There is no more reality in saying that a certain person "owns" a piece if land than that he "owns" a piece of sky or the right to licence a piece of music.

A cat doesn't "own" his favourite cat blanket. A cow doesn't "own" the field he munches grass in. It's all just artificial rules made up by humans to make our lives betterin some way.

Re:Their Goals

[tehcyder]

Hardly. Unlike real property which you can hire people with guns to protect, Imaginary Property....

Nice definition :) But there aren't many civilized countries in the world where you can hire people with guns... I don't hope that makes physical property imaginary...

It's a rubbish definition,as you can hire people with guns to protect your intellectual property if you want to be ridiculous about it.

If I say "copy this song and I will send round ten men with guns to kill you" and you go ahead and copy it, the reality of being riddled with bullets is the same as if you tried to nick a gangster's car.

Re:Their Goals

[tehcyder]

How the fuck does a novelist perform his work? Do tours like Charles Dickens?

Oddly enough, most people like the idea of reading by themselves at home.

Re:Their Goals

[TonyTech]

The copy of copyright and patent supporters is to prevent systems like the internet from being founded. This is a great example: were the important protocols and general structure patented, what you know of as the internet would not have been delayed or more expensive, it would have never existed. It is quite obvious that the greater good is of no concern to IP supporters, only their own profits. Yet these people are still given free rein of our legal system and allowed by the weak minded to claim that copyright and patent infringement is "theft," while the real theft is that of the copyright and patent holders from society as a whole. It's time that stop, before the next big innovation is prevented. End these archaic systems this decade, support the abolition of imaginary property.

Just say no to mind rape.

Re:Their Goals

[TonyTech]

The goal of copyright and patent supporters is to prevent systems like the internet from being founded.

What an assinine thing to say. Where do all these "entitled" twits wanting to get something for nothing come from?

Prior Art

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey WIPO - never go full retard.

SGML is almost certainly prior art.

Re:Prior Art

[maxwell demon]

But this was using SGML on the internet!

Re:Prior Art

[qxcv]

Berners-Lee still could have patented HTTP (or core parts of it) without any problems. The HTML spec is only a very small part of the "web", and even then the real patent troll payoffs come from registering far more vague and general patents like "Method of Communication and Rendering of Styled, Semantically Structured Documents over a Network"

Re:Prior Art

[gl4ss]

html pages work just fine over ftp. that just wastes couple of more bytes _usually_ on transfers.

plenty of other protocols would have worked just fine too - and inventing another one is just a matter of engineers in a room for an hour.

had he patented any part then IE would have gone around it.

This clearly shows their incompetence

[Hentes]

This complete denial of reality and disregarding of facts clearly shows the incompetence of WIPO.

WIPO

[MichaelSmith]

Its not the World Intellectual Freedom Organisation.

What a absolute failure.

[tramp]

Luckily Tim Berners-Lee did have a vision about his idea and probably even knew about the lack of vision of those greedy bastards.

Re:What a absolute failure.

[MichaelSmith]

Tim Berners-Lee did have a vision

Well he was working at CERN. I wonder if Tim wants to tell us more about those FTL neutrinos?

Re:What a absolute failure.

[maxwell demon]

Tim Berners-Lee did have a vision

Well he was working at CERN. I wonder if Tim wants to tell us more about those FTL neutrinos?

Sorry, the patent on FTL is held by God and not licensed for use by mere mortals.

Re:What a absolute failure.

[MichaelSmith]

Tim Berners-Lee did have a vision

Well he was working at CERN. I wonder if Tim wants to tell us more about those FTL neutrinos?

Sorry, the patent on FTL is held by God and not licensed for use by mere mortals.

And yet it works. We had a glimpse..

The point of laws and courts...

[bmo]

...is to keep people from resolving their differences at the point of a gun.

If you turn laws into something that people can no longer turn to for fairness, then what?

--
BMO

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[rambling]

The point of laws and courts is to bring justice. Unfortunately, it can be perfectly well used to justify injustices; that is, to do the exact opposite of what it is advertized to be doing. The first law in every law system, is the law that says that you will not recognize any other law system than then one you just have recognized: ONE: 'You shall have no other gods before Me.' If you believe that a bunch of corrupt politicians, sitting in congress, can keep voting on new laws, again and again, to restrict your freedom, again and again, you are their slave. I personally prefer to be the slave of something that may not even exist.

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[Ihmhi]

One way or another, a whole bunch of people get shot up and you start all over again.

It isn't the first time it happened, and it won't be the last. Hell, it's happening right now in the Middle East. It's starting to brew here. Granted, it's a bunch of rail-thin, jobless hipsters who think they can bank a liberal arts degree towards a white collar salary, but it's starting nonetheless.

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[Attila Dimedici]

how else do you explain people that demand to pay more for a private health system with worse outcomes then public health systems?

Perhaps by looking at actual outcomes and discovering that the prognosis for someone diagnosed with a serious illness is significantly better in the US than in countries where the government pays for health-care?

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[NoSig]

I raise you this study saying that Americans pay twice as much and the outcome is just average among the rich countries compared. Your move.

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[Attila Dimedici]

The article failed to list what the benchmarks the study used to compare health care in different countries. However, at least one of its benchmarks was "breast cancer screening, which is significantly effected by sociological factors involving the members of a society and the choices they make as opposed to the actual quality of available medical care. Additionally, most such studies I have seen factor in the degree to which the government pays for health care into their ranking and then say that the fact that the U.S. ranks low indicates that outcomes would be improved by government financing of health care. I am not going to take the time to look it up, however, several months ago I came across an article listing expected survival rates for people diagnosed with about 15-20 serious illnesses. The U.S. ranked in the top 5 in all of them, no other country came close to that.

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[jc79]

Publicly-funded healthcare keeps more people alive for less money than the US system.

This study shows that the UK NHS achieves a greater reduction in mortality rates than the US healthcare system despite costing significantly less per capita:
http://shortreports.rsmjournals.com/content/2/7/60.abstract
They fully describe their methods.

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[jc79]

Here's the numbers (Ireland wins, US is 17 out of 19 countries studied when ranked by mortality reduction per dollar spend):

Country and rank Average 15–74 reduced deaths (rpm) Average GDPHE: death ratio 55–74 Deaths reduced (rpm) 55–74 Deaths: GDPHE ratio
1 Ireland 4941 1:696 12,903 1:1817
2 UK 3951 1:557 10,5760 1:1490
3 New Zealand 4076 1:566 10,449 1:1451
4 Austria 4460 1:551 11,194 1:1382
5 Australia 4328 1:521 10,903 1:1314
6 Italy 3579 1:436 9290 1:1133
7 Finland 2255 1:318 7183 1:1012
8 Japan 2600 1:380 6500 1:929
9 Spain 1586 1:233 6316 1:929
10 Sweden 3123 1:355 7919 1:900
11 Canada 2822 1:324 7321 1:841
12 Netherlands 2570 1:306 6633 1:790
13 France 2779 1:316 6849 1:778
14 Norway 2407 1:294 6230 1:766
15 Greece 2230 1:265 6423 1:765
16 Germany 2395 1:247 5916 1:610
17 USA 2498 1:205 6286 1:515
18 Portugal 1304 1:169 3344 1:434
19 Switzerland 1298 1:140 3229 1:347

                rpm = rates per million

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[Attila Dimedici]

That is interesting considering that while the life expectancy for Japan is higher than the life expectancy for the U.S., the life expectancy for Japanese Americans is higher than the life expectancy for Japan. So, I wonder if the same thing would hold true for this study? As I said, some time back I saw a review of the expected survival rate for someone diagnosed with a number of severe health issues, in the vast majority the U.S. ranks high. As an example, the survival rate for most cancers is higher in the U.S. than in Canada or Europe. This is a better measure of the health care system than mortality rates, because mortality rates vary by many factors and the U.S. is much less homogeneous in any of those factors than any of the other countries on the list you referenced.

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[NoSig]

I agree that it is a complicated question that is it difficult to reduce down to a single ranking of who gets more bang for the buck. I will say that I didn't cherry pick this link - it was the first I found that directly addressed the question. The fact that it is difficult to do, and that there are plenty of studies saying that American health care is not efficient as evidenced by the other posters in the story, indicate to me that you don't really know that America is particularly efficient, and that you instead assumed it must be because you already believe that governments are inefficient. In any case it would be weird if America were efficient at health care when evaluated as a whole, because many poor people have no or little health care, while many rich people have a great deal of health care. You could argue that this skews the numbers since the poor people are inappropriately counted even though they shouldn't be as they aren't actually receiving much care - though I think making that argument might give you pause and cause some reflection on your position?

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[NoSig]

Immigrants are not the same kind of people as those that stay in their country, so it's not a sensible comparison to compare Japanese in Japan and Japanese in the US. Otherwise for example we'd be forced to conclude that people from India are a whole lot more intelligent than Americans on average, but that's not the case, even if it is true of the average Indian who shows up in the US. Thus the stereotype of Asians being more intelligent.

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[Attila Dimedici]

I never said that America is particularly efficient at health care. To be perfectly honest, I do not consider efficiency a particularly useful metric when it comes to health care. My point was that American health care is, by metrics I consider significant, more effective than other countries.

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[NoSig]

I think you must mean more effective for the people who can afford whatever expensive care they need in that case. However, for the filthy rich, it doesn't matter where you have your care, so those people aren't going to receive health care in just one country. They can travel to whatever country has the best hospital for doing the thing they need done, so it becomes a per-hospital and per-malady thing rather than a per-country thing. For everyone but the filthy rich, there is a fixed budget for health care (whatever you can afford/your country can afford) and in that case efficient=effective, since if the budget is fixed then bang/buck * buck becomes just bang. I take it you aren't filthy rich so efficiency directly impacts your health prospects since if the US had more efficient health care, you could afford better care for the same amount of money.

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[Attila Dimedici]

No, I mean more effective for everybody. The prognosis for someone diagnosed with most serious illnesses is better if they live the U.S. than if they live elsewhere.

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[NoSig]

You haven't demonstrated that, and I doubt that it's true, but I acknowledge that it could be true. Even in that case, having become seriously ill in the first place is already a failure of the health care system - it is better to prevent the illness than to treat it after the fact. So prognosis after onset of illness wouldn't be the most telling figure.

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[Attila Dimedici]

There are several studies that show that cancer survival rates are higher in the U.S. and Canada. I have also seen similar numbers for other serious illnesses.
Considering that at this point most serious illnesses are the result of life style choices that people make, it is really unfair to judge the health care system on the basis of something that it is not under its purview.

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[NoSig]

Take a look at the comment by the poster called "N.J." on your link, which handily demolishes the whole thing. Key point is that if data is processed for European countries as it is for the US, the European countries suddenly come out on top, despite spending far less. Also, people who don't receive treatment or who stop receiving treatment aren't counted in the US. Here's another point from another comment on another story (http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/08/us-vs-europe-life-expectancy-and-cancer.html): Americans get sick earlier in life, and younger people are more resilient to disease, so survival rates are raised by that, even though the situation itself is actually worse. As an example of that, the more childhood cancer in a country, the better the cancer survival rates (I'm not saying that I know childhood cancer to be more prevalent in the US, it's an example). European governments sometimes run campaigns to increase awareness of health information, which is probably related to the potential for such campaigns to directly decrease health expenditure, and governments are very much involved in deciding for example what additives are legal in food, so I don't think that it's fair to say that prevention is outside the purview of the health care system. The US system just chooses not to engage that angle as much because the incentive isn't there.

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[Attila Dimedici]

Well, since you seem to believe that giving up freedom for the promise of better health (not actually better health) is a good thing, there is no point for further discussion.

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[NoSig]

I see you don't like the facts. ;)

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[Attila Dimedici]

What facts? That you appear to think it is the government's business what I choose to eat?

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[NoSig]

How's that for cherry picking. You can eat your poison cherries, you just can't sell it as edible food to other people. You really think non-poisonous food laws are bad?

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[Attila Dimedici]

You presented no facts that show that the food supply is any more poisonous in the U.S. than in any other country. I presented facts: the prognosis for someone diagnosed with cancer is better for someone in the U.S. than in most other countries. You presented opinion that the incidence of cancer is less in countries with fully nationalized healthcare.

Re:The point of laws and courts...

[NoSig]

I'm flabbergasted at your ability to not comprehend what you are reading. Well done.

In related news

[jpapon]

"In related news, Mr. Doctorow also emphasized his continued belief that the revolution should have been televised, and the buggy whip industry subsidized".

Re:In related news

[Phrogman]

Your new to this internet thing aren't you? Cory Doctorow - a big proponent of Open Source, Creative Commons and one of the founders of the blog Boingboing is the guy who REPORTED the UN Guy's comments, not the guy who made them. I mean I know its common practice on /. not to RTFA, but you got it thoroughly ass backwards here dude.

With regards to the revolution, what exactly has been our source of information on the Arab Spring revolutions? The internet and TV mostly in my case :)

Good point though

[boulat]

And he is absolutely right. If Internet was patented by the Universities, today we would have more money centered around basic research and development. We would still have businesses competing to create an alternative and perhaps yield a better standard than HTML. Ultimately the price level and innovation are correlated and depend on consumer demand.

Re:Good point though

[MichaelSmith]

Nobody would have used the patented internet. Look at all the commercial protocols which failed to take off. DECNet for example.

Re:Good point though

[boulat]

Fax is patented and it is still used today worldwide and is unlikely to go away. What is so wrong with Coke and Pepsi? McDonalds and Burger King? All these are proprietary, patented products, that have created a market and inspired competition FOR that market share. If Internet was a commercial entity, then perhaps we would have faster expansion of various networks trying to compete with one another for the customers. Since there is a free networking standard, Cisco still managed to monopolize it, so did Microsoft and any other company. And what did they contribute to the basic research? Very little compared to what would've been contributed by a nonprofit entity.

Re:Good point though

[ubersoldat2k7]

Ehm... I still have to send a stupid FAX to any motherfucking ISP in Spain when I want to cancel off their shit full service of 1Mbs download and 256Kbs upload.

Re:Good point though

[MichaelSmith]

The Internet (and its subset, the web) are the common spaces which commercial enterprises rely on. They are the streets and roads which connect the shops where consumers choose to buy Coke, Pepsi and Big Macs. Without those common spaces there would not be Coke and Pepsi. Only one would remain in business because Coke could have bought up the roads and made sure they would not stop at shops which sell Pepsi.

Re:Good point though

[Bert64]

There were multiple incompatible network services, AOL, Compuserve and many smaller ones...
That simply doesn't work because they are all limited in scope and incompatible, you end up having to have 50 different accounts in order to communicate with everyone.

The Internet worked because it was a single network, open to all and used by everyone.

Re:Good point though

[mikechant]

Fax is patented and it is still used today worldwide and is unlikely to go away.

*Is* patented? It *was* patented, (first patent 1843). All the basic fax patents expired long before it became popular in its current form.
As for Coke, Pepsi etc. you're talking total rubbish. They have secret recipes (which anyone can reproduce if they can figure them out independently) , and the names are trademarked. Patents don't come into it anywhere.

Re:Good point though

[sjames]

So what is the last innovative use of FAX you have seen?

As for the rest, you must be too young to remember when Prodigy, AOL and Compu$serve were their own little walled gardens crowing about how much better than the world wide web they were.

Cisco has nothing like a monopoly. Because their product is only as useful as it's ability to work with open protocols, they never will.

No he didn't

[Anonymous Coward]

The relevant quote:

Intellectual property is a very flexible instrument. So, for example, had the world wide web been able to be patented, and I think that is a question in itself, perhaps the amount of investment that has gone into or would be able to go into basic science would be different. If you had found a very flexible licensing model, in which the burden for the innovation of the world wide web had been shared across the whole user community in a very fair and reasonable manner, with a modest contribution for everyone for this wonderful innovation, it would have enabled enormous investment in turn in further basic research. And that is the sort of flexibility that is built into the intellectual property system. It is not a rigid system...

What he says is that *if* the web had been able to be patented, (which is not clear), and *if* you could find a flexible licensing model which is fair (which is certainly not clear to me, though he doesn't seem to make an opinion), then you could spend any money received from licensing on basic research.

He does not state that the web should have been patented. He even goes so far as to say that he's not sure it could have been patented. He's simply discussing how money received from licensing could be used. I don't really want to download a 240 meg video just to clear up this issue, but just looking at the wording it's clear that he's responding to something about licensing fees. My guess is that somebody commented that the purpose of patenting the web would be to get rich. I'd appreciate it if someone who's seen the video could comment.

Anyway, I'm rather rabidly anti-software patent. But this kind of bullshit "reporting" doesn't do us any good. Whipping up a frenzy over a non-issue just makes us look stupid.

Re:No he didn't

[Overzeetop]

No, you have to read between the lines. It's clear that he is trying to pander to his audience with the promise (or admonishen) that, had they patented it, they would all be taking treasure baths right now. And he justifies it by saying that proper management would have fleeced every single user on an ongoing basis in an amount that was small enough that everyone would be willing and able to pay it.

It's classic evil genius. Just remember - the easiest way to tell if a lawyer is lying is if his lips are moving.

Re:No he didn't

[AmElder]

No, Cory Doctorow gets it right. I've watched the video and, to promote my own posts for moment, I summarise above, but he's responding to comments by both Rolf-Dieter Heuer and Lynn Saint-Amour. You can see when he starts to compose his response, it's at 44:10 on the video just after Lynn Saint-Amour says "if it [the web] was patented, the internet community would have found a way to route around it." His remarks also reply to Rolf-Dieter Heuer, who asserted that patents, as a commercial tool, do not serve as a way to measure the basic research which produces "substantial change" instead "incremental change" (13:40) Therefore primary research serves, Heuer believes, as the most important driver of innovation.

In this context, Gurry is speaking up for the idea that traditional IP instruments should be used as the primary tools to drive innovation and to measure it. Don't be fooled by the mild tone of these kinds of meetings, it really is a tunnel-vision view. He's disagreeing with everyone who spoke before him.

Re:No he didn't

[martin-boundary]

There are some "what if" scenarios that just make you look stupid if you voice them out loud.

Example: If we could develop better coal mining equipment, then we might be able to cut in half the round trip to Mars. It makes no sense. Just like what this WIPO guy is imagining. He deserves the ridicule that he gets for bringing this up in public.

Re:No he didn't

[Stuarticus]

You missed out the saxophone bit! I personally would like it much better if the internet was as awesome as a saxophone.

The real problem ...

[rambling]

The real problem lies elsewhere. It lies in a system in which a congress or a parliament or another national assembly is allowed to invent new laws. This system is only possible because the population believe that newly-invented laws can be legitimate. This is how (corrupt) politicians managed to invent intellectual property laws and impose them upon your hapless self. I am simply going back to the old stuff. The only person or thing allowed to create laws to restrict my freedom, is something which may not even exist (God). All other stuff is illegitimate; aka, the First Commandment. If a few hundred goat shepherds manage to make exactly that point, against an entire NATO military deployment, it can't be that hard a point to make, can it?

Re:The real problem ...

[tehcyder]

The real problem lies elsewhere. It lies in a system in which a congress or a parliament or another national assembly is allowed to invent new laws. This system is only possible because the population believe that newly-invented laws can be legitimate. This is how (corrupt) politicians managed to invent intellectual property laws and impose them upon your hapless self. I am simply going back to the old stuff. The only person or thing allowed to create laws to restrict my freedom, is something which may not even exist (God). All other stuff is illegitimate; aka, the First Commandment. If a few hundred goat shepherds manage to make exactly that point, against an entire NATO military deployment, it can't be that hard a point to make, can it?

So all laws are illegitmate restrictions of your freedom, except the First Commandment, which is to believe in a god that you're not even sure exists?

Fuck me, you're a retard.

Hey Mr. UN guy...

[toriver]

... the UN, through the ITU-T, already has its own set of protocols (X.400 et al) it can play around with, instead of giving bad advice to people inventing internet protocols and specifications. The internet does not need you, you are damage.

Where do they find these guys...

[Delgul]

For some reason, we always succeed to plant clueless people in positions like this. If it wasn't so very dangerous it would be funny...

NOT a Good point though

[eddy]

No, it's not a good point, because if the basic Internet was such encumbered, it would never have grown as fast, and that delay would would be a real cost on the REVOLUTION that instant global communication brought not only to "basic research and development", but the world.

We might have been ten years behind, with people still using dial-up while companies paid through the nose for the ability to email. The idea that a global system of levies would get pumped back into basic research is LAUGHABLE. There'd be HUGE overhead in collecting, and all the money would go right back to 'enforcement' and shit that has nothing to do with research or the betterment of human kind.

This is a joke. The whole idea is pure idiocy.

Re:NOT a Good point though

[Overzeetop]

This. The adoption of the internet was, in part, because it was practically free advertising. Businesses are acutely aware of return on investment, and the early internet was not an obvious play to many conservative types. Still, when getting a presence on was a few hundred dollars and the IT guy was so jazzed about it he would do the coding as part of his regular job, the response often was "why not?" The acceleration of relevance of the internet was staggering.

Just sad

[Uraeus_]

It is just sad how disconnected from reality the patent maximizers are :(

Then stop putting money in these idiot's pockets!

[Alwin Henseler]

The problem is not even this guy, the problem is his opposition. There isn't one. As always, "Yes Prime Minister" has the example. Story: Hacker is given the task of coming up with a new transport policy involving road, rail and air. He soon learns that each sector is represented by a civil servant fighting not for the common good but for HIS sector.

The people that are supposed to support the common good are... politicians, and that's why we have elections. And to some degree they might even do their job. But I'm not naive enough to think that a constant barrage of lobbyists & documents crafted by pro-IP industry groups will leave those politicians clear-headed (or do what their voters want).

Rules to say what lobbyist groups can or cannot do may help, but not enough. Big money & vested interests will find a way to distort reality for those politicians.

Therefore the only way is to stop putting money into the pockets of these industry groups. If you don't like what a business does, stop buying their products (if there's only evil to choose from, choose the least evil). Period. That will give said industry less money to work with, less means to manipulate public opinion & corrupt the system.

Now I'm also not naive enough to think that the general public will do so; most people simply don't give a shit about copyright / patent / trademark issues. Up to the point where it bites them in the ass, hard (at which point it will be too late). But still: voting with your wallet / feet (& red pencil) does make a difference, if enough people do it.

damn...

[mcgrew]

...no mod points today. That was insightful, I wish the poster would get a /. account.

Re:damn...

[griffjon]

The web is indeed probably the best example of a miracle of the commons, where everyone using non-rivalrous goods builds a larger, greater ecosystem that would otherwise be possible.

Re:damn...

[TonyTech]

The web is indeed probably the best example of a miracle of the commons, where everyone using non-rivalrous goods builds a larger, greater ecosystem that would otherwise be possible.

A.K.A., A tremendously inefficient use of resources. (It was and is otherwise possible, by the way).

The perfect expression of conservative philosophy

[dkleinsc]

For your basic corporate conservative, the only things that have value are those things that are owned by somebody. And that's a private owner, not a government.

So, for instance, breathable air is worthless under this philosophy. Worthless, that is, unless you can charge people to breathe it, maybe put it in cans. I wish this were a joke, but the corporations, with the World Bank practically forcing the government's hand, already tried to do the same thing to rainwater.

That's what WIPO want

[petes_PoV]

web might not have grown quite so popular

I expect that would be WIPO's goal. The idea that people give stuff away, particularly intellectual property, undermines their whole existence. That something could become a standard, ubiquitous and free is their worst nightmare and they probably feel that the web's success is their failure.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[roman_mir]

You are right, but it's not just WIPO. If the government officials KNEW what they were getting with the Internet 20 years ago, they would have outlawed the entire thing back then, it was much easier - nobody knew what it was.

The cat is out of the bag. The absolute power corrupts absolutely, and when you are a representative of an organization that is responsible to nobody, that consists of politicians who are there specifically because that type of power is responsible to nobody, realize - they are playing with this 'world government' idea - nobody elected them.

These are little dictators, stealing your sovereignty one step at a time.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[scamper_22]

While I'm always for cynicism, there is a 'basis' for this.

There is a long history, especially in the progressive movement to monetize everything. It's an essential part of modern politics. We must monetize all work so that all work is treated equally. Child-rearing must be monetized. House work must be monetized...

From this context, intellectual property is just a way to monetize the retention and spread of knowledge.

Remember back in the day when the telco monopolies dominated, a lot of R&D was in fact subsidized by telecom service revenue. You got the great bell labs and everything that way... including languages like C++. Most of the open source movement dreams of this era when software was giving out for free... while forgetting it was pretty much all subsidized by being integrated into a telecom monopoly. That provided long term stable cash flow.

With the telco monopoles broken up, how do you fund long term jobs and ensure the money reaches those contributing these products?

Intellectual property. It prevents the products from having their cost drop to 0 and thus keeps money in the system. Would less money be made in the grande scheme of things by fewer downstream products and companies? Who knows... but they do have a rational for their obsession with intellectual property and its the monetization of all work.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[Hazel Bergeron]

You do realise that people elected the representatives of governments which then went on to form the UN, yes?

It's like business only your vote isn't weighted by your material wealth.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[malkavian]

Ok, so all those companies that provide a product for free are going down the pan? High grade support is where the money seems to be for a lot of things.
Sure, some things help to have the IP paid for, but some find other avenues. Knowing the price of everything doesn't necessarily imply you understand the value of anything.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[roman_mir]

money.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[shentino]

Problem with 3 is that you will be crushed by the corporate owned media establishment the minute anyone gets wise to what you're up to.

Said establishment also has held captive the minds of sheeple consumers that don't give a shit about your ideals and who outnumber you a hundred to one, and who will turn on you the minute they get a whisper from their corporate overlords that you're going to ruin their way of life.

People are more gullible than you think.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[Hazel Bergeron]

sex?

Re:That's what WIPO want

[roman_mir]

well, no question that's a major problem. We'll see what happens this time.

Ron Paul 2012.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

The idea that people give stuff away, particularly intellectual property, undermines their whole existence.

You can't give intellectual property away. You can't give it at all. It doesn't exist, not as a tangible, physical thing and not even the law treats it as such.

Basing entire industries and economies on licensing products would lead to the special kind of madness espoused by the WIPO boss in the article. Imagine it, the tremendous and world changing development of the internet shackled and mired by laws, regulations and contracts for the benefit of special interests.

If such a regime existed at CERN, would there have ever been an internet or PC boom in the late 1990s? Would there be a PC in every home by now? Would there be a Youtube, a FOSS movement, internet news sites and activism, Amazon, etc? Certainly, there would be none of the innovative high bandwidth web services we enjoy today.

Without exaggeration, humanity itself would have been set back a decade. And for what? So a handful of private companies and lawyers could make a little more money. Greed is not good people.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[Lost Race]

If the government officials KNEW what they were getting with the Internet 20 years ago, they would have outlawed the entire thing back then, it was much easier - nobody knew what it was.

Al Gore had a pretty good idea what he was getting into. He wanted to change the world.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[Anonymous Coward]

UN stuff is several layers away from the general populace casting votes. We voted for members of our legislature, whose members then appointed an ambassador to the UN, whose members then, with one vote per member nation, appointed each other to UN committees such as WIPO.

Remember that game "telephone", where you pass messages around by voice, and the message ends up wildly changing after a few steps? Yeah. It's kind of like that, except it's our individual votes being filtered through a long chain of appointments. The results are often things that would not pass national popular votes or a global popular vote.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[Hazel Bergeron]

It wasn't forced: you always had the alternative of death.

Just like among those dark, satanic mills of C19 capitalist paradises.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[Hazel Bergeron]

So one level of indirection fewer than buying from business, and you never lose the vote to change your mind.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[Kalriath]

Oh, Ron Paul. That explains your blindness to... oh, reality.

Back to this shit again are we?

Re:That's what WIPO want

[SteveFoerster]

I am not a Ron Paul supporter. But I agree that he hasn't always gotten the media attention that he deserves. Actually coverage of primary season is pretty crappy all around, with self-fulfilling statements about who is a serious candidate constantly being made and going unexamined.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[shutdown -p now]

Ok, so all those companies that provide a product for free are going down the pan? High grade support is where the money seems to be for a lot of things.

Most companies that provide a product for free monetize the customer in a different way - showing ads, or mining data. There are very few companies that can actually make the model of "give it away for free & charge for support" work.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[Anthony Mouse]

Intellectual property. It prevents the products from having their cost drop to 0 and thus keeps money in the system.

The saddest thing is that it doesn't. In a competitive market, even with copyright, the price of "intellectual property" still approaches zero, because of interbrand competition. If they had actual competition -- if radio stations played songs based on how good they were rather than payola, or independent filmmakers could get their films on the same number of screens as the big studios -- that competition that would drive the price toward the marginal cost the same as it does in any competitive market.

This especially given the dynamics of the market -- most musicians and filmmakers don't make money and in large companies those losses get made up by huge hits that top the charts. If there were more smaller artists who had equivalent distribution opportunities, the ones that fail and lose a bit of their own money wouldn't be financially liked to the ones who succeed, which would allow the winners to charge a small fraction of what is charged today and still come out ahead. People would then consume more because it would cost less, which would increase the number of works that are profitable (by broadening and flattening the revenue curve) and therefore further increase competition.

The only thing keeping those companies in the black today is their distribution cartel. If they had that and there were no copyright, they would still be doing fine. I mean considering how utterly unenforceable copyright has become in practice, that is essentially the state of things today and they're still making big money. What would do them in is that the lack of copyright would hurt their public image by removing any claim to legitimacy and removing the fig leaf they use to rationalize legislation passed to shore up the distribution cartel -- can't use DRM to thwart people from using non-industry channels to obtain media for their living room TV if there is no law supporting DRM, etc.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[Waccoon]

The idea that people give stuff away, particularly intellectual property, undermines their whole existence.

And yet, there they are.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[Anthony Mouse]

Without exaggeration, humanity itself would have been set back a decade. And for what? So a handful of private companies and lawyers could make a little more money.

And not even that. Locking things up is a pie-shrinking enterprise. The company that does it gets a bigger slice than they would have otherwise, but they only come out ahead if they're the only one doing it. If everybody does it, well, what do you get when twenty different companies each do something that increases their own share by 25% but shrinks the whole pie by 10%?

Re:That's what WIPO want

[tehcyder]

The only thing worse than people who want to make everything into a money-making opportunity is people who use the word "monetize" to describe it.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[Xest]

It kind of helped that at the time the internet was becoming commonplace it was doing so because of the .com boom and so governments were willing to accept it and the new economic brilliance it brought.

The problem for governments is by the time the bubble burst, it was too late for them, really when it came to controlling the net they were wrong footed by their own greed. They were too caught up in the economic benefits to realise it was changing the balance of power somewhat too until it was too late.

Re:That's what WIPO want

[jafac]

Are you kidding? They would have outlawed DIGITAL AUDIO TECHNOLOGY 30 years ago, when Apple engineers named one of the Macintosh system sounds: "Sosume" (So Sue Me) - based on the premise that - if we make it THIS convenient for you to record, edit, and copy audio, then, inevitably, someone's going to get sued. (which, of course, did happen). The recording industry enjoyed the efficiency, cost reduction, and profits that digital technology provided. They didn't want to pass that efficiency, cost reduction, and savings on to the consumer, of course.

Historically, no

[kabdib]

France had MiniTel (expensive, slow, clunky and hard to use). I think they turned it off a few years ago.

Europe had the ISO networking standards. These were intellectual train-wrecks written in ivory towers by architecture astronauts; too complex to implement or use, and by the time people starting implementing then, the "RFC" world had solidly taken over. (We're left with the awfulness of X.500, X.509 and so forth).

This guy isn't necessarily an idiot. But it's who we need to fight.

Re:Historically, no

[kabdib]

The US had online communities (Compuserve, Genie, a number of others). Not much commerce, I'll grant you that. It took a mandate of congress to forbid the telephone companies from having a monopoly on modems to make even this much of the business happen.

I had accounts on computers on the Arpanet in 1978, back when there less than 100 hosts. After the TCP/IP switchover in 1984 or so there were thousands. Getting the protocols out of the hands of government organizations let networking expand very rapidly.

Getting the government and the control freaks out of positions of power is the best thing that happened to networking. It wouldn't have happened if this guy had been in charge; we'd have 2400 baud modems and be paying through the nose by the kilobyte, just like the phone companies wanted in the 70s.

Apply for the job

[frisket]

The guy is delusional and an asshole, but then he was employed to be delusional and an asshole, for an organisation full of delusionals and assholes, pursuing objectives set by assholes, for assholes; and he satisfies the requirements perfectly.

The job of Director of WIPO is still open for applications (closes 18 Oct): https://erecruit.wipo.int/public/hrd-cl-vac-view.asp?jobinfo_uid_c=25114&vaclng=en

And never forget that your government that you elect[ed] is in favour of all this crap. If you don't like it, the proper remedy is to take the matter up with your friendly local pubic representative.

Re:Apply for the job

[CobaltBlueDW]

"pubic representative."

tee hee.

No, but seriously, you have a good point.

Re:Then stop putting money in these idiot's pocket

[ifiwereasculptor]

I'm so tired of seeing this argument. Politically voting with your wallet almost never works, precisely because of what you have already noticed: not enough people will do it. Mostly because they don't care, but even if every single person bothered to become moral buyers 100% of the time, it still wouldn't work. You have a very limited amount of time to concern yourself with researching everything you buy, so while you're avoiding Sony products because of the PS3 Other OS debacle and Apple for their excessive and anticompetitive litigation, what about orange juice? Do you buy it from a company that pay their employees a decent salary? One that itself buys oranges from a farm that does not hire illegal immigrants so they won't be able to complain about work conditions? Do they use renewable energy if possible or just go with the cheapest? Are the oranges they use genetically modified and patented? Is the package fully recyclable, in practice? There' a plethora of things you should care about and if every purchase of every item requires interviewing and investigating eight or nine different companies, you'll quickly die of thirst before you're able to buy the damned orange juice before even finding out if the thing is actually made from real oranges.

And then there's the second highly impractical part of voting with your wallet: there aren't that many parties to choose from. The Onion puts it better than I do, with an article that's probably supposed to be funny but ended up being too truthful: "The nerve of you people. Treating a longtime patron with so little respect, like I'm just another walking dollar sign. If that's what passes for customer service around here, you sadly leave me with no choice but to have the exact same experience at another giant soulless multinational corporation somewhere else. Maybe one that knows how to rob its customers of a fraction less dignity." Here's the full article, if you want an excuse to start drinking early today: http://www.theonion.com/articles/well-i-guess-ill-just-take-my-business-to-another,21357/

They already tried this.

[Namarrgon]

More than once - they called it CompuServe, GEnie, and AOL. Remember them?

Re:They already tried this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook

Re:They already tried this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo you made the real point. Nobody is preventing anyone from creating a new HTML type concept, or network and patenting it. Even before HTML, CompuServe, and the likes of AOL there were alternative networks, protocols and technologies for delivering, displaying and navigating and interacting with data, such as the early BBS's.

The Internet and open formats like HTML have been winning and most likely will continue to win because of people like us.
I think it just chaps their hides these smart nerds with no business plans and not financially driven has given away billions of man hours for free and thus slowly infiltrated and taken over their world.

They don't understand us and we despise their ways, lets just make sure we are the ones who keep WINNING!

Re:They already tried this.

[tehcyder]

I think it just chaps their hides these smart nerds with no business plans and not financially driven has given away billions of man hours for free and thus slowly infiltrated and taken over their world.

I really don't think that the rich power elite are too bothered if you want to spend your free time creating software that you give away to let people make money more easily.

MSN would have replaced the Web

[evanh]

M$ would've had the leverage needed to crush any WWW that was based around a profit making company.

By the late 1990's everyone would've been posting on MSN. Yahoo would have been gobbled up in short order and Google would never have existed at all. Apple would've carried on dying in the corner and never even finished OS X. ...

Re:MSN would have replaced the Web

[Richy_T]

+1 Interesting/insightful

Patent Trolls

[CobaltBlueDW]

Don't hate the playa', hate the game.

Small minds

[Arancaytar]

An invention that has never been protected by patent, copyright or trademark has changed the present and future of humanity in a vast and previously unimaginable way forever. It has reformed societies and toppled tyrants, revolutionized old cultures and inspired new ones. This was twenty years ago: If it were protected by patent, it would only just now have entered the public domain - at the earliest.

Meanwhile, the small minds that preach the value of imaginary property invent nothing but combinations of buzzwords that bamboozle the patent office, and cannot conceive of the value of an idea that is not locked away, or of the profit humanity gains from it.

Re:Small minds

[tehcyder]

[HTML/the web} has reformed societies and toppled tyrants

No, people moving their physical feet onto the streets have toppled tyrants.

The French and Russian Revolutions managed OK without mobile phones or Twitter.

Can you say Gopher???

[cs668]

And who uses that now?

Blind

[koan]

They see with eyes of greed so they see nothing.

What, like BTX?

[SlothDead]

What he describes just sounds like the German predecessor to the WWW, the BTX network: http://www.daniel-rehbein.de/btx-bundespost.html
The BTX network was centralized (main server owned by the German postal service), you had to pay per page view, you couldn't run your own web server, you weren't allowed to use anything else than the standard modem...

When the WWW came around it quickly replaced BTX, simply because it was free as in freedom.

Re:I agree.

[91degrees]

Would have been nice. Downside would have been that in a couple of years, we'd still see a sudden influx as soon as the patent expires

WTO, IMF, World Bank Not UN

[Iskender]

WTO, IMF (which I'm guessing you meant) and the World Bank are in no way part of the UN.

Check your facts before blindly blaming anything and everything on the UN. Same goes for the moderators.

Where are the /.'s who said UN should control ...

[perpenso]

(Yes, pedants, I'm aware we don't get to vote for them)

Which is reason enough that the folks in the UN should not be dictating Internet policy.

Where are the /.'s who said the UN should control internet governance a couple of weeks ago in an article regarding such governance? Maybe they will reconsider now.

The same UN that chose North Korea ...

[perpenso]

It takes a monumental denial of reality to say something that stupid ...

Its the United Nations. The same U.N. that chose North Korea to head the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. The same U.N. that chose Gaddafi's Libya to chair the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

Re:The same UN that chose North Korea ...

[perpenso]

The same U.N. that chose Gaddafi's Libya to chair the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

Blah blah blah. You're just repeating the Fox News faux-anger headlines.

Actually I "repeated" the first thing a google search came up with, which was the BBC.
"Libya has been elected chairman of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, despite opposition from the United States. In a secret ballot, Libyan Ambassador Najat Al-Hajjaji was backed by 33 members, with three countries voting against and 17 members abstaining. Human rights groups have been protesting at Libya assuming the chairmanship."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2672029.stm

THINK about the subtle politics of such appointments. Take someone from an oppressive nation and make them chairman of the commission on Human Rights, so that they end-up saying things directly contradictory to their leader's policies. It's a very clever method of instigating change.

I strongly suggest you follow your own advice and think. The oppressive leader ultimately supplied the person who will be the chair. Why would you believe such a person who may also have blood on their hands, may fear reprisal against themselves personally, may have family vulnerable to reprisals back in the home country, ... would say anything the oppressive leader would find objectionable? Why do you think the oppressive leader himself does not say things in public regarding human rights that contradict his actions? Such leaders and their spokespeople often *say* one thing in public and *do* something completely different in private. The strategy you propose is not clever at all, it is naive.

Re:The same UN that chose North Korea ...

[Sumtingwong]

The same UN that releases studies on climate change that states the world is going to end if we don't do something about it.

Patented? Maybe. Licensed? Maybe. For Fees? No.

[drolli]

Indeed, i believe that patenting certain things and licensing them in a java-style agreement could have served the purpose. Something like "if you implement an extension of HTML then you must open the patents and the description so that everybody can implement it" could have served well at some points of the development.

Re:Patented? Maybe. Licensed? Maybe. For Fees? No.

[lolcutusofbong]

That seems vaguely familiar.

Re:Patented? Maybe. Licensed? Maybe. For Fees? No.

[drolli]

Kind of, doesn't it....

Consider my comment more a comment on the discussion on slashdot where the word "patent" triggers a reflex.

From The Folks Who Gave You Perpetual Copyright...

[cmholm]

Dr. Gurry has been in the thick of IP protection for nearly his entire career, and is currently also the head of the UPOV, which promotes IP protection for new plant varieties. His ilk are the sort wrote the Berne Convention on copyrights (most recently via the WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996) which first "gave" us life+50 copyright terms.

As far as he and his peers are concerned, there is no true incentive to create without the promise of collecting long term rents... a concept provably false for products with low capital requirements, such as software development and fashion design.

Gah

[lightknight]

DIAF

The web is the proof of the opposite

[peppepz]

The web, originated by public research and based upon open standards, is a demonstration of the fact that patents are harmful in this context. The web has probably created more jobs and business opportunities than any patented technology ever has. And it has improved our lives in a way that was unimaginable even to those who invented it. All of this wouldn't have happened if the web was patented itself, or based upon patented standards.

The examples are countless: open standards gave us email, closed standards gave us SMS, EMS and MMS. Open standards gave us a packet-switched network where you can toss packets to the opposite side of the world just by paying the people who maintain the wires, while closed standards gave us ATM and the likes, where the service providers decide what services you can use or offer, and for which you pay depending on who you want to communicate with, on where he is, on what service you are requesting to use, on how long you'll be using it... Guess what model has more potential to generate more development?

Re:The web is the proof of the opposite

[PPH]

And that is why WIPO is shitting themselves over it. Had html/http, etc. been patented, they could have claimed victory for their view of IP.

We will never be able to conduct an experiment to test whether the ownership structure of the Web's underlying protocols would have made a difference in its adoption (Imagine a planet in a parallel universe in which Tim Berners-Lee ran to the patent office with his creation). But anecdotal evidence does seem to indicate that, given the choice between proprietary and open systems, open won. Big time.

The whole argument over whether people will stop innovating absent patent protection just gets laughed off the stage when the Web is considered.

Re:The web is the proof of the opposite

[tehcyder]

The whole argument over whether people will stop innovating absent patent protection just gets laughed off the stage when the Web is considered.

Yes, it's a victory for the freedom of humanity that Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire insteead of Tim Berners Lee.

Remember Hyper-G/Hyperwave?

[roskakori]

[I]f the underlying technologies of the web had been patented by Sir Tim (or similar) and licensed then we wouldn't be posting on Slashdot right now because nobody outside of large multinationals would even be *using* the web for anything.

Case in point: Hyper-G/Hyperwave. It was developed at about the same time as the WWW. It was technically pretty solid (renaming documents didn't break links, integrated search engine, powerful authoring tools) and even didn't use an abbreviation that took longer to pronounce the the full name.

AFAIR it soon moved out of the academia and was turned into a commercial product, so it basically did what the WIPO head suggested.

These days it doesn't even have an Wikipedia article anymore. According to its homepage, it found a niche for corporate intranets and now competes with SharePoint.

There are plenty of other early hypertext systems comparable to the WWW (going back to the 60ties). I seem to recall that Douglar Engelbart's NLS was heavily patented, though I cannot find a reference for this right now. (Though partially these systems certainly failed because of insufficient technology and lack of a target group. You can't blame everything on patents).

Re:WTO, IMF, World Bank originate in UN

[rubycodez]

check your history, young 'un. for example, the The IMF, also known as the âoeFund,â was conceived at a United Nations conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, July 1944.

The United Nations, and the global banks tied to it, are tools by the elite to usurp national sovereignty and wealth. They should all be destroyed.

Re:WTO, IMF, World Bank originate in UN

[rubycodez]

oops, there's your link with the facts, from IMF itself: http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/glance.htm

By the way, the World Bank was created at the same conference.

Re:The perfect expression of conservative philosop

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think this is accurate at all. A conservative believes in the freedom to do with your IP as you wish. Patent it or give it away, it's the individual's liberty that matters.

What would have happened

[tigersha]

If TBL patended his work and tried to squeeze the cow for a much milkmoney as possible then

a) It would not have paid off because the interest would have been limited
b) Someone else would ahve invented a free system that would have taken off just like the internet did

Example1: Gopher was invented wiht a closed model before the internet. Enyone see any Gopher sites anymore?
Example2: Teletext was invented WAY before HTTP. My dad used it for internet banking back in the eary 80's. Anyone see that being used anymore?

A model that is not being used will just be squeezed out b something that is used. Simple economics

Re:What would have happened

[tehcyder]

Example2: Teletext was invented WAY before HTTP. My dad used it for internet banking back in the eary 80's. Anyone see that being used anymore?

If it's the same teletext that used to give text-only news, TV and sports listings on UK TV, then it died out simply because it wasn't as useful, comprehensive, easy to navigate, interactive or pretty as the web. It was free as in beer though.

Maslow was wrong.

[rjh]

Years ago I had some serious back trouble that could have been addressed quickly with some painful surgery, or slowly with painful therapy. My surgeon (Dr. Charles Grado, and if you're reading this, thank you) was adamant that he wouldn't touch a scalpel until we'd exhausted all other possibilities. I thought that was weird and told him so. He told me that he took an oath to first do no harm, and that surgery stood in opposition to this. You can't claim you're "doing no harm" while you're cutting into flesh: you're clearly, obviously, doing harm. The only question is whether your actions are the least harmful way of restoring health. Doc Grado is one of the best doctors I've ever known.

My father and cousin are both judges. Despite their polar-opposite political views, they're agreed that any lawyer who starts off by saying, "well, let's file some legal papers" is an incompetent. A lawyer's job is to solve your problems, and jumping straight to court is a great way to multiply them instead.

My gunsmith is a career soldier who characterizes his experience in Vietnam as "99% boredom I don't mind remembering and 1% terror I'm trying to forget." Per him, only fools try to solve problems with firearms. You see, if you do that, they might try to solve you right on back with one, and you won't like that at all.

Finally, I'm an ivory-tower academic who left a Ph.D. program because I was convinced I could do better work, more meaningful work, in the private sector. My job nowadays involves taking cutting-edge research and integrating it into real-world production systems. So, "never" a connection to ground level? My own career says otherwise.

tl;dr version: Maslow said when all you have's a hammer the whole world looks like a nail. This is true only until you find nails that explode into shrapnel and maim you horribly when you hit them. Once you hit one of those nails, you get real careful before you swing that hammer again.

Re:Maslow was wrong.

[hitmark]

If only the NRA and its ilk showed the sensibility of your gunsmith...

Re:Maslow was wrong.

[rjh]

Guy's an NRA life member, actually.

Re:Maslow was wrong.

[hitmark]

curiouser and curiouser...

Re:Maslow was wrong.

[ColdWetDog]

Not all NRA members are conceal carrying nutjobs. The rank in file IMHO, is actually fairly reasonable. Unfortunately, like most advocacy organizations, the very polarized individuals tend to be the loudest, tend to be the most political and least willing to cooperate with opposing sides. You see it in the AARP, the Sierra Club, the Boy Scouts and probably in the American Left Handed Dentist's Association.

Re:Maslow was wrong.

[Richy_T]

If only the administration's attorney general showed the sensibility of that gunsmith....

Re:WTO, IMF, World Bank originate in UN

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

You do know the UN didn't exist in1944.

My response

[TheSpoom]

Considering I wouldn't have my current career if this guy had his way, I would just like to say a hearty "fuck you" to Francis Gurry and all that agree with him on this issue.

Re:My response

[tehcyder]

Considering I wouldn't have my current career if this guy had his way, I would just like to say a hearty "fuck you" to Francis Gurry and all that agree with him on this issue.

And of course your career doesn't in any way involve making money.

And without the internet, spammers wouldn't have a career.

Yours is not a very compelling argument.

Administration

[MM-tng]

The biggest mistake in reasoning with a lot of systems like this is that the cost of administrative infrastructure is greatly under estimated.
Cost as in time. Asking for permission, reading a license contacting a lawyer about what the legal boundries are.
Cost as in money. Productive people are instead bogged down in checking and gatekeeping. This loss is doubled, this person could have contributed but is now a burden on the system.
Cost as in enjoyment. When working on something as soon as you have a negative balance in work completing the goal and red tape. People get demotivated. Work progress gets slowed or not compleded at all.

He glosses over in one sentence saying "a sufficiently nice license". This license and the administrative system it requires can never be good enough. This system would be huge, imagine the amount of paper work alone.

Corruption, not misunderstanding.

[boorack]

I suppose those crooks understand all IP issues way better than we do. Just like FED officials, who understand monetary system way better than anyone else and willfuly ignore harm it inflicts on everyone but their cronies from big banks.

What we are dealing with is a bunch of utterly corrupt crooks running WIPO contrary to its stated mission in order to secure warm chairs they sit on and corporate sponsorship they enjoy.

Some UC Berkeley lawyer proposed this for TCP/IP.

[Animats]

Some intellectual property lawyer from UC Berkeley has been quoted as saying that Berkeley should have patented TCP/IP. (Can anyone find this quote). UC Berkeley didn't either design TCP/IP or do the first TCP/IP implementation. They did the fourth or fifth. (BBN, Phil Karn, Dave Mills, and 3COM all had earlier implementations.) They didn't even have the first UNIX implementation; that was 3COM's UNET. What BSD had was government funding to give their implementation away. UNET was about $3K per machine.

Re:WTO, IMF, World Bank originate in UN

[Iskender]

check your history, young 'un. for example, the The IMF, also known as the ÃoeFund,Ã was conceived at a United Nations conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, July 1944.

Yes, I know that. This does not make it a UN agency - UN agencies aren't that through arcane family history, they're UN agencies if they are officially part of the UN.

If you want to hate a lot of international organizations and the UN then that's okay. That still doesn't make everything you hate an UN organization.

So this post is probably going to be trolling

[Kjella]

From what I gather, his point would be that not enough went into basic development of the web. To be honest, I'd be a bit inclined to agree with him as the adoption was massive but in the 1990s Netscape and Internet Explorer were making up proprietary tags by the dozen. Proprietary extensions like Java applets (1995), ActiveX (1996) and Flash (1996) was used to deliver many things the web couldn't deliver. Even now in 2011 we're still not anywhere near a standard <video> tag I can put on my website to show a clip. In an alternative timeline where the web was patented and an organization with funding were to develop it, perhaps we wouldn't have ended up in the mess where IE had 95% market share and almost nothing worked to a standard. Maybe there would be a proper licensing organization that'd ensure compliance and we wouldn't need Firefox to resurrect web standards from the dead.

The discussion reminds me a little of the BSD / LGPL / GPL / dual licensing debate. In that sense, the web was much like BSD, everyone could go off and make their own proprietary extensions and they did. Do you just trust the the pull will be strong enough that everybody wants to put things back into the standard? Or do you want it to be more like Java, if you want to call it Java you must support exactly these functions in this way or it's not Java. Yes, I know I'm mixing standards and implementations and possibly trademarks here, but many of the "do people contribute it back?" questions remain the same. There's no question that around IE5/6 the web was a "de facto" standard made by Microsoft, not whatever Tim-Berner Lee, W3C or a bunch of RFCs said.

Do you need a revenue stream? Well, maybe you don't but a lot of people need to make rent and put food on the table so no doubt it helps, even ideal organizations have paid workers. It's a little like dual licensing, of course if you go BSD or LGPL then people are free to make proprietary software, instantly that's of course a boost to the project. The question is, do those make up for the revenue you make on dual licensing to fund back into developing it? Or does it just slowly wither away while other proprietary products get better? Same with standards, they'd need to evolve otherwise companies would just ignore them or make their own. Honestly if it wasn't for open source software I think the open web standards would have died out in the early 2000s. Fortunately Firefox found their revenue stream...

gopher died because of licensing so would http

[obtuse]

I remember when there were more gopher sites than websites. Gopher's licensing wasn't bad, but they reserved the right to change it, so HTTP took over because it was free.

Hyperlinking isn't rocket science; there would have been a free implementation, and it would have won.

Re:gopher died because of licensing so would http

[dkf]

I remember when there were more gopher sites than websites. Gopher's licensing wasn't bad, but they reserved the right to change it, so HTTP took over because it was free.

No, it took over because HTTP was better at handling HTML and that was better for describing hypertext (I remember when Gopher consisted of pages that were either a bunch of links or a load of plain text; it hadn't occurred to anyone at the time to merge the two) and that (especially with embedded images, and later forms) was engaging for a great many people. The brilliance of the web (i.e., of Tim Berners-Lee) was not HTTP or HTML — the former sucked before 1.0 and still wasn't all that great until 1.1, and the latter is verbose and unpleasant to write — but rather the combination, especially with graphical clients available. I suspect that the web wouldn't have taken off without NCSA Mosaic, even though it sucked in so many ways.

That's not to say that the internet wouldn't have taken off. Email has traced its own path, as has News (and slashdot would have mostly worked in the latter).

Not a not a good idea.

[boulat]

What do you people think the Internet is? Its mostly a collection of Cisco routers and switches. Don't fool yourself if you think its this living breathing emergent organism that has evolved because of open source and Linux and all the techno weenie coders and packet kiddies circle jerking each other on IRC all night long. Its a network evolved BY corporations FOR corporations. The only difference is that they didn't have to pay royalties to any university for the idea.

Re:money buys power

[Alex Belits]

Outside US it's called "corruption".
In US it's the only thing politicians ever did. Except Jefferson, he also did something else.

wow!

[sgt scrub]

This guy needs FLAMEBAIT tattoo'd on his forehead. Surrounded with blink tags.

Re:Here is The video

[jc79]

Thank you AC!

And words are mightier than the hammer

[evanh]

Advise/history, when heeded, can remove that hammer for good.

Of course, words don't stop someone that just wants to be greedy.

It's a foregone certainty...

[mark-t]

That if it had been patented and licensed before it became popular, then it never would have been adopted widely enough to have become popular in the first place.

Ron Paul

[KingAlanI]

I admit Ron Paul seems like a better idea than the rest of the GOP presidential candidate brain trust ... should the guy try a 3rd party run?

Tim Berners-Lee?

[Trogre]

Who cares about that copycat? We all know that Steve Jobs invented the World Wide Web, along with Pixar, the light bulb, fire, I could go on.

Re:WTO, IMF, World Bank originate in UN

[rubycodez]

False, and as for "arcane family history", there are banking cartel families of whom the UN and international banking were and are their pet projects. Learn how your world works, and who has your government in their pockets.

Tie cuts off blood supply

[istartedi]

Tie cuts off blood supply to brain. Film at 11.

The Internet?

[cstacy]

Is that thing still around?

The WIPO is a bunch of shitheads...

[Fusselwurm]

... so, nothing new to see here.

Re:WTO, IMF, World Bank originate in UN

[k8to]

So the statement that the UN created those things is false, and it's reasonable to call people out who claim it.

They do apparently share some relationship in framers and intended goals. That is, to foster regularization of international relations in the hopes of staving off what was currengly going on in the early 40s.

i'll believe a credible story of cooption. That happens all the time. Conspiracy without substance, though..

UNIX

[tehcyder]

It's really lucky that UNIX was always open source and free-as-in beer, or else it would never have become the software backbone of the internet. Oh, wait...

Re:WTO, IMF, World Bank originate in UN

[tehcyder]

The United Nations, and the global banks tied to it, are tools by the elite to usurp national sovereignty and wealth. They should all be destroyed.

National sovereignty and the concept of wealth are themselves concepts used by the elite to maintain their power.

Re:Then stop putting money in these idiot's pocket

[tehcyder]

You have a very limited amount of time to concern yourself with researching everything you buy, so while you're avoiding Sony products because of the PS3 Other OS debacle and Apple for their excessive and anticompetitive litigation, what about orange juice? Do you buy it from a company that pay their employees a decent salary? One that itself buys oranges from a farm that does not hire illegal immigrants so they won't be able to complain about work conditions? Do they use renewable energy if possible or just go with the cheapest? Are the oranges they use genetically modified and patented? Is the package fully recyclable, in practice? There' a plethora of things you should care about and if every purchase of every item requires interviewing and investigating eight or nine different companies, you'll quickly die of thirst before you're able to buy the damned orange juice before even finding out if the thing is actually made from real oranges.

Yes, it's a pity there isn't any easily accessed high speed network of electronic database foe easily checking stuff like this.

Re:The perfect expression of conservative philosop

[tehcyder]

No, the definition of a conservative (except in the US) is a rabidly reactionary right winger who wants the rich elite to continue enjoying their lives free from the burdens of taxation or herd morality, while the poor masses struggle by to produce the wealth that the elite cream off.

Government is an attempt to stop the robber barons from controlling everything, and yes it fucking does restrict their freedom and wealth, and in doing so greatly expands the majority's genuine freedoms (not to starve to death or die of treatable diseases for a start)

Re:The perfect expression of conservative philosop

[Attila Dimedici]

Government is an attempt to stop the robber barons from controlling everything,

Then it is a complete failure, since in today's world it functions to protect them from competition and to transfer wealth from the masses to the elites.

Re:From The Folks Who Gave You Perpetual Copyright

[tehcyder]

As far as he and his peers are concerned, there is no true incentive to create without the promise of collecting long term rents... a concept provably false for products with low capital requirements, such as software development and fashion design.

It'snot a question of cash being the only possible incentive, just an acknowledgement that fashion designersand softwaredevelopers need to earn something to eat.

Surely if they have low capital requirements, that just means that the rents will be lower? I don't see why they would be zero.

BL didn't invent the web.

[ebvwfbw]

We've had html since the 1960s. The US Military created it. He didn't invent the web either. Usenet and many other forms were well in action long before BL came on the scene. He "Invented" putting a picture into a document, which he didn't even do that. Xerox did that first. He just came up wtih tieing it all together in a browser and port 80 instead of the other ports at the time like 1500. Big deal. It was obvious and not patenable because of that.

Am I the only one...

[BMOC]

Who thinks that some forms of non-violent protest need to be directed at the UN?

Statements like these make me wish I get the opportunity someday to meet someone from the UN, just so I can deliberately ignore them.

/I pray it's not a beautiful woman.

Wowe

[lsatenstein]

What is left of humanity, when everything that is of use to humanity should be monotized. Pretty soon they will ask us to pay to walk into an air-conditioned store, because the AC chills the air and gives us a benefit. We must pay. It reminds me of a bobby dillan song.
If you are not busy being born, you are busy dieing. If you are not busy being born, you are busy paying.
 

I must ask...

[Cinnamon Beige]

...what's wrong if she managed to pull a twofer?

Ad for Cory Doctorow

[sglines]

They guy doesn't say anything that's really out of the ordinary except that CERN might have made some money out of the web. This is an ad for Cory Doctorow nothing more.