Ha! I didn't get laid until I was nearly 29, didn't drink that much in college, and paid for it with grants and student loans, which I now have to pay back.
You obviously went to the wrong school!
I was in the college of engineering at the University of Illinois (in Champaign-Urbana), not an environment that one would think of as "sex, drugs, rock and roll and no consiquences for four years." Nevertheless, I and many people I know had far more than our share of those, and many other, pleasurable vices.
It is a lifestyle I miss sorely now that I'm in the real world, despite enjoying a lifestyle I could never have afforded on a college budget.
Of course, I too paid for school with grants and student loans which I am still paying back.
You hinted that there could be some laws enacted to prevent this sort of abuse but...you know what, we don't need them. They are already here and are called IP.
We do need them. IP imposes an unacceptably high cost to society in nearly every sense: big government oversight and management of mandated monopolies, invitations to excessive litigation and legal thuggary, higher (usually monopolistic) prices to the consumer that far exceed anything research and development costs could ever justify, lost technologies due to lack of research in areas already fenced off by patents, slowed technological growth for many of the same reasons, and stifled industries (again, due to lack of competition).
IP laws may solve the one problem you describe, but in so doing create a host of others. Your cure is far worse than the disease.
A tax exemption for the inventor for twenty years (vs. a monopoly on use) would do much to level the playing field and address the issue you raise, without imposing a government mandated monopoly and stifling both industry and science.
However, even if we simply scrapped IP altogether and made no provision for protecting the small inventor, the result would be a dramatic net gain for everybody as a whole. This worst case isn't necessarilly what we would want, but it would be far better than what we have now: a system that favors the big players regardless, with an occasional bone tossed to a small player for what amounts to propoganda purposes, and does so at a very high cost to everyone else.
and the only thing that was actually lost were sucker VC's money. Well, it serves the VC's wrong for not doing their homework. And I bet his employees were well compensated.
The employees may or may not have been well paid. I bet they were very underpaid their last couple of weeks (read: they probably didn't get their last paychecks). The stock options obviously didn't pan out either.
Even if what you say were true, and everyone except the VC's (who got defrauded out of their investemnts) prospered, this is very short term prosperity indeed. Now the money has run out, the people are unemployed, and the VCs in question may well never invest in another internet startup again.
This kind of thing makes it more difficult for legitimate small-time startups to get off the ground, and as a result leads to less, not more, prosperity.
It isn't easy having much sympathy for wealthy VCs who throw their money around, particularly when we see really inane startups being so funded, but relishing their being defrauded is highly counterproductive IMHO. Far better to relish this priest finally getting sex the way he wants it for, the next twenty years, from his cell mate, forcefully, from behind.
"the marketplace" as cure-all. Marvellous. Save your kooky far-right economics for the weekly ESR-fan/gun-club meet.
Oh, grow up.
I probably shouldn't feed the troll, but what the hell.
I never said the free market was a panacea[1], and if you'd bother to read any of my other posts, rather than simply responding in a typical, knee-jerk reactionary manner, you would have noticed that my political leanings (not that they have anything to do with the topic at hand) are if anything left of center. (See for example my arguments about how the free market is not at all well suited for services requiring human compassion, such as medicine and care of the elderly).
However, the free market is a much better approach than draconian, government mandated and enforced monopolies which favor a few at the expense of the many, stifle progress and harm entire industries.
Try looking outside of your narrow preconceptions sometime. You might be surprised to discover an entire planet lying beyond the boundries of your little yard.
[1] for our troll of limited vision: panacea ~= "cure-all"
queries get passed up and down to the appropriate level as now for resolution. Peers would only have to cache databases for their level, not the entire internet.
Once reaching the appropriate level (e.g..linux), it is resolved by one of the peers at that level.
Anyone can add a peer, and manage a name within that level as they wish, with conflict resolution using timestamps or some other, reasonably fair appraoch.
Thus, no one has authority over any domain, top level or otherwise, yet everyone can remain certain that, once they have registered a name it is theres.
Possible problems: hijacking of lower level names. E.g. you have a network my.firm, and you want to name all kinds of names like mars.my.firm, venus.my.firm, jupiter.my.firm, but some other jerk has gone around and registered millions of names, eating up most of the usable hostnames.
Possible solution? (This is probably heresy) Introduce a small modification to the standard domain name nomenclature, in which a hostname is seperated from the domain name by a different character than "." Within each domain name each person has complete authority as they do now with standard dns, but without, none.
So, in our example above, some jackass could go on to register mars.my.firm, venus.my,firm, etc., but these point to domains and not specific hosts, which would be resolved as mars:my.firm, venus:my.firm, etc. (a colon probably isn't the best example here, but dashes are out and nothing else springs directly to mind. Maybe commas?)
I don't know if this is at all workable, but it seems to be a better solution than the centralized system we have now with all of its abuses and centers of authority, while still preserving much of the performance gain in a heiarchical system.
So you are advocating change from "almost always" to "always" ? Because , as the original poster explained, that would be the effect of abolishing IP.
No, that is not what I am advocating, nor would that be the outcome of eliminating IP.
The original poster made some good points with respect to how, on occasion, the patent system does protect the little guy.
However, if there were no government enforced monopolies, no one would "win" and no one would "lose," except in the market place. The original inventor would still have the right to persue their invention, persue other ideas to which his/her invention gives rise, etc. And, someone else coming up with the same invention at roughly the same time (a very common occurance historically) would not have the rights to their invention taken from them simply because they lost a footrace to the patent office. Without patents, everyone could play and compete accordingly, and the market, rather than a governmental authority, could decide who "wins" and who doesn't. One of the nice things about the free market is that there are often multiple winners in a given area, a stark contrast to the sole "winner" of a patent.
If the marketplace is too favorable of the big players over the little players, the marketplace can be tweaked with appropriate legislation, the way it was when child labor was rampent, for example. This is the appropriate place to make such adjustments, not granting 20 year monopolies.
Even simpler. 'Zero Level' to the domain system. Think of it like this...
You keep the existing DNS, but fill in around it.
That's an interesting approach, although it does have the disadvantage of allowing the ICANN to retain its domain of authority.
Prehaps competing sets of root servers would be better, each addressable by either a different URL prefix, or a different "one-off" domain (microsoft.com.ican, microsoft.com.alt, etc...).
This assumes we stick with DNS, which might be more practical short term, but not necessarilly what we'd want in the long term.
An ideal situation would be an approach where no central authority exists to say "yeah" or "nay" to a domain name, where anyone can simply register a name, such as "jean-michel.smith" and, if no one else already has it, you get it. Any legal action is betwen you and whoever, as only you can change it (with your secret key, presumably -- this already assumes a slightly more sophisticated appraoch than the current DNS heiarchy.)
This doesn't necessarilly mean no heiarchy. One idea might be to have a hybrid system, in which each heiarchical level is peer to peer (with automated conflict resolution via timestamp or some other reasonably fair methodology), such that anyone can set up a root server in cooperation with other root servers, anyone can set up a.microsoft server, and so forth.
This would mean that Micrsoft wouldn't control all names within the.microsoft heiarchy, but once they registered a name (e.g www.microsoft) no one could take it away from them short of a court order presented to the owner of the name, who has sole power (in a technical sense) to remove it.
There are other issues which would need to be fleshed out, such as what to do if someone forgets or loses their private key (or claims they did) and so forth, but you get the idea.
As another put it, power and responsibility both reside with the individual registrant, to whom other parties and the legal system could turn if legal remedies were called for.
Including that default option was explictly one of the points I made in my original post. I agree, most users wouldn't bother to type alt:// if http:// were the default.
Even those who do not change their default to alt:// could be led there, via URL links of the form "A HREF="alt://myantimicrosoftsite.microsoft.com".
The notion is that the most common application of DNS today is with respect to the web. This solution does not address issues with respect to shell accounts, telnet, ssh, ftp, etc., although a more comprehensive, alternative name resolution system is probably called for.
As for techies forgetting about Internet NEwbies and AOL dorks, well, why not? They can educate themselves, just like the rest of us.
Yes, it would be neat if we could type "alt://" and have different addresses resolve by using a Gnutella-like system, therefore eliminating the need for ICANN. Is it feasible? Well, let's see, no one's even addressed that.
So, according to you, in order to even be permitted to express an idea in this or any forum, one must have already worked out all of the technical specifics, else said ideas should be ignored and derided?
Please.
Hacking a browser to call an alternative domain resolution service in response to an URL beginning with alt:// would be fairly simple. There are already modules to deal with ftp:// (FTP), mailto:, etc. Most of the code needed for the alt:// appraoch is already present, one needs to simply rip out the DNS resolution code and replace it with whatever the alternative approach would be.
As for a gnutella type system, if you'd even bothered to read my original post, you would have seen my suggestion to use the existing DNS software, perhaps running on a different port, with different root servers. Not that a more distributed and less top-down approach, a la FreeNet, wouldn't necessarilly be as good. Some technical robustness against hoards of lawyers might actually be worth a performance tradeoff, particularly in today's climate.
Comon folks, at least think about the actual content of some of these comments before you moderate them up.
Some of us do think. Perhaps you should do likewise before going off half-cocked. (HINT: Actually reading the post you're replying to helps).
Different rules apply if you have a monopoly, which the ICANN Does with respect to allowing companies to register domain names in the.com,.net, and.org heiarchies.
If what they are accused of is indeed what happened, they broke the law and should be punished accordingly.
Of course, I think a better solution would be to simply stop paying attention to the ICANN and develop our own method for mapping names to ip addresses.
Well, no one else seems eager to take on this bit of US Patent Office propoganda, so I guess I'll stick my neck out. This will have to be brief, as I've work to do and can't spend the entire afternoon replying to slashdot.
The Patent system is a lot like the Lottery.
A few small people win big, get rich, and become poster children for the status quo. (e.g. the historical examples cited in the previous post. Alas, for many of the poster children, the honor is posthumus, for many had their health ruined and indeed even died from the stress of fighting a battle against terrible odds.)
A great many more small people are directly harmed in the process. (e.g the many who lost thier battles to better funded, larger commercial interests, such as those inventors who lost all rights to their inventions to Thomas Eddison, who claimed both historical credit for work which wasn't his, as well as monetary gains, all facilitated by the US Patent System. Another example is of course the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of small businesses stillborn due to government enforced monopolies. Other costs, such as inventions never realized because the base ideas are locked down, have been discussed elsewhere).
In the end, poster children aside, the system is designed to favor the large players, again at the expense of the little guy. (Lotteries bring most of the money they generate into state coffers, not the pockets of "winners" or the "little guy." So to, most patents are owned by corporations. Most legal conflicts between small inventors and large corporations end up being resolved in favor of the large corporation, for they have more capital and more lawyers to present their arguments.)
In one respect the patent system is even less fair than the lottery. At least anyone can buy a lottery ticket, even with the same winning number as another, and the two lucky poster children can share their tiny slice of the pie. Not so with patents. Its a winner takes all system, and the winner is almost always the large, well funded and well represented corporation, not the little guy.
Even granting the premise that ICANN violated their bylaws in not approving Afternic's application, so what? Since when it is the job of the federal courts to hear cases about corporate bylaws brought by outside parties, not by employees, officers or stockholders?
Oh, since about the time people started bandying the word "justice" about.
It is called illegal restraint of trade, and it will get your ass fined and a substantial portion of your assets handed over to the offended party in this country if you are found guilty. If the ICANN did indeed do what they are accused of, there is a very good chance they are guilty and will have to make financial ammends for their behavior.
As much as we gripe about the justice system here in the US, it often appears to be the only functioning branch of government left, where there is at least some semblance of justice, occasionally, at times. The Legislative and Executive branches are, to all appearances, already a lost cause. The leading question is, of course, how long can a government stand on only one good leg (or branch).
Lawmakers should be kicked out of office and new elections called when they propose and pass blatently unconstitutional legislation. Likewise for the president who signs such a bill into law.
Both are violating their oath to their office to "uphold" the constitution and should be immediately removed for either (a) violating that oath or (b) gross incompetence.
The political problem is trying to overcome the F.U.D. that will be kicked up by the powers that be when a system is created that cannot be 'sued' and from which names cannot be revoked because they are offensive, or because some stupid corporation is scared of them
This FUD is easilly gotten around.
Hack Mozilla and other browsers to recognize a different prefix as html, but using the new Name Service. Perhaps something like "alt://" instead of "http://" Allow the user to define one or the other as the default.
Then, whenever someone tries to look up alt://fucktheicann.com they'll get the anti-icann site, while http://fucktheicann.com isn't resolved because the ICANN has "reserved" it. (Disclaimer, the previous example is entirely fictional, I have no idea if such a domain exists or how ICANN would respond to it if it did).
One could go a step further, in inviting all of the country code TLDs to participate in both systems, such that the integrity of.us,.de,.uk, etc. remains intact even while.com,.org,.net are subverted and countless new TLDs emerge.
This could probably be hacked using the existing DNS system, or an improved version with better security features. Names could be given on a first come, first serve basis (automated), with no provisions for arbitration whatsoever (take it up with the other party, if you get a court order, send the police to there house, don't bother us).
The argument that the poor, overworked and largely incompentent staff of the patent office is underpaid and that the office is woefully underfunded and should therefor be forgiven for its gross negligence and incompentence is, indeed, hogwash.
If the patent office is unable to perform its constitutionally assigned task (however misguided that task may be), then the ethical and appropriate thing for it to do is to shut its doors until it gets the necessary funding and staff.
Destorting markets, hampering industried, and destroying small competative businesses by handing out government mandated and enforced monopolies willy nilly the way it is doing right now is immoral, unethical, reprehensible, and destructive.
The US Patent Office is single handedly gutting the very industry that is arguably responsible for our current record setting economic boom. This cannot and will not go on without serious detrimental economic repercussions. Of course, whoever is president and whichever party is percieved at being in poewr at the time will take the blame, not the patent office, so maybe they (correctly) feel they do not have to care.
So, there is no perfect system that will protect the inventor and won't stiffle innovation at all simultaneously.
Agreed. That is why IMHO the pretecting the inventor must take a back seat to promoting innovation. Alas, even if the current system does protect the small inventor from time to time, it often does not. Thomas Edison stole many inventions from others and ended up owning the patents - in his case and numerous others the patent system has actually been worse for small inventors than having nothing at all.
At least without a patent system the person who created the invention would have still had the right to use it (even if, in my scenerio, he or she didn't get the tax break or the historical credit).
But the existing one is IMHO biased in favor of the inventor too much, and this bias need to be lessened, but not abolished completely. Otherwise the big guys will be able to copy everything they like, and every street will be called Microsoft Way:-(
First, the existing system does favor the big guy. Patents are resolved today through litigation, which inherently favors deep pockets, which in turn inherently favors the big guy over the little guy. The current irresponsibility of the patent office only makes this more obvious, with the issuing of numerous, often overlapping or conflicting, patents.
Without a system of patents the big guys would be able to copy an idea from a smaller inventor, but they wouldn't have the tax break, which would be designed to offset that and give the little guy a leg up in competing. In addition, neither would have a government enforced monopoly with which to stifle the competition. Ending up with every street named Microsoft Way is IMHO far more likely under the existing regime of IP law than it would be if such notions were either abolished or at least seriously revamped. Microsoft is now patening file formats, for crying out loud. Can you say "incompatability forever" (or at least the next 20 years)?
I am sure you can cite example where the patent system has worked properly and done good. If it hadn't done any good whatsoever I doubt it would still exist. I would submit, however, that we as individuals and as a society have paid a far greater price than it was worth.
The internet was founded under public contract, designed for the defense department.
Even then, the Department of Defense required that it be open, with source code available, and threatened to pull defense contracts if the contractors did not comply.
This set the foundation for the modern internet, which was created using open protocols, an open standards process (IETF), and open software.
The internet may have been jump started by an expensive government contract for which a monopolist company happened to win the bid, but it was built collaboratively by developers from numerous universities in a manner which is almost precisely what the open source/free software folks employ today.
Brush up on your history before claiming that the internet was your creation or even created using your methods.
Boy, you must be bitter. What's the matter, MSFT stock options not what you would have liked? Nowhere did I claim to have created the internet, I leave such claims to Al Gore and Bill Gates.[1]
It was not. The internet was created by Big Busines
No. The internet was founded by Big Government spending taxpayer dollars, then built in its modern form by universities collaborating in an open manner using what today is referred to as the "free software" or "open source" paradigm.
Brush up on your history. I've been using the net for 13 years and have had the privelege of watching much of this happen, and your characterization is completely inaccurate and misleading.
[1]Bill Gates actually claimed to have invented the PC during an inverview. He often makes claims to have invented internet services that have been present as free software in one form or another for over a decade.
To encourage inventors to apply for patents, and give them a competetive advantage, they could be granted a tax exemption for X number of years after the patent is approved, while their competitors (whether re-inventing the wheel or simply reverse engineering it) would enjoy no such tax incentive.
That should be more than sufficient financial reward for being the first to come forward with an idea.
Let's take an example in biotech or medicine industry. Patents are everything there. It is an ability to reap reward for a huge investment in research. And what is that reward? just an ability to fund the further research!
I think we need to seriously re-examine how we fund expensive research, particularly in areas of biotech and medicine. What you have described could also be used to describe the life of a serf, or a serf's Lord, or anyone else in any economic endeavor: the status quo allows them to reap a reward for an investment (of time, money, energy). And what is that reward? Survival and tha ability to continue the struggle.
Patents are costing us far too much in terms of lost opportunities, stifled technologies, and squandered economic opportunities. Not to mention the parisitical aspects, such as the tax dollars spent on the patent office, the cost of patent attourneys and the litigation they bring, etc. If we took even a fraction of the cost saved by scrapping the system as it now exists we could probably fund ongoing research in those areas which have come to rely upon it far more generously than they are funded now. However, even if we can't, I think the gains we as a society would get far outweigh the costs.
The patent system as it now stands does not fulfill its constitutional mandate to promote progress, indeed it stifles it. The only two legitimate purposes for a patenting system are to encourage publishing of inventions (so the knowledge isn't lost) and to assign someone with credit for having invented something.
This could easilly be accomplished by allowing someone to submit a patent application with all the necessary specifications, which is the sealed from public view for a period of time (17 year, 20 years, whatever). That person is then acknowledged in the public record as having invented X on date Y.
However, that person is not granted an exclusive monopoly on the invention. The government and the inventor treat the invention as a trade secret for a given, limited period of time, after which the information becomes public knowledge. If, before that time, someone else reverse engineers the invention, or comes up with it independently, they are free to use that knowledge, they do not however get credit for the invention (as it is already registered).
That IMHO is all the patent system we need. Government enforced artificial monopolies are absolutely unnecessary and destructive.
No need to shout. Every form of fuel in the universe is an energy carrier, including the petroleum products you burn in your car.
If you use hydrogen to run your car (instead of gasoline), you end up producing more pollution (in order to make the hydrogen) and spending a lot more money. And there is no safe way to store and handle hydrogen.
Water can be electrolisized using solar energy, wind energe, hydroelectric energy, etc. none of which are polluting.
Honeycomb fuel cells can store hydrogen safely, there are buses on the streets of Chicago burning hydrogen as I type.
Automobiles have been known to explode as a result fo accidents, even fender benders in some cases. Gasoline is dangerous, and explosive over a wide range of concentrations.
Hydrogen is a much more reasonable alternative than fossil fuels are, as is becoming apparent now that enough patents have expired to make the technology available for use.
Free software is good to get things going, but copyright makes it big business and if you look at companies like IBM or Sony, big business can innovate and often does a damn better job than what comes out of somebody's garage.
As others have pointed out, correlation != causation. In the case of the computer boom, one can argue much more plausibly that the commoditization of cheap PC hardware was the primary cause of the boom of computers, and the software which runs on them, than Bill Gates' petty greed or precident setting copyright were. Even before the emergence of Windows as the One and Only Platform sales of PCs were booming, some running DOS, some running MacOS, some running windows, some running Geoworks, etc. etc.
Another counter example is the internet, which was developed with open and free protocols and software implimentations, some in the public domain, some under FreeBSD style licenses, and some under the GLP (all three can reasonably be considered counterpoints to traditional copyright -- they make use of a system they are philisophically opposed to but have no choice in being subject to). None of the software responsible for the infrastructure of the internet, be it USENET news, FTP, IRC, the World Wide Web, or email (SENDMAIL) was commercial. Oh, Sun and others offered commercial clones of some of the products (where the license permitted), but the reference implimentations, and the most widely used versions, were Free. For that matter, they still are, despite overwhelming efforts by various large entities (MS, AOL) to co-opt the net into a distribution channel for their own proprietary products.
The Big Boom in Internet Business appears to be dwarfing the PC boom, stock market fluctuations notwhithstanding. Draconian copyright isn't helping make this happen, it (and other forms of intellectual property such as patents) are actually hampering it and even beginning to threaten it entirely. Examples include Amazon's one click patent vs. Barns and Noble, patents on the RSA algorithm which have seriously hampered the adoption of widespread public key crypto (a prerequisite to online business transactions and contracts), the DMCA and copyright law being used to fragment open standards such as Kerberos, etc.
There is a place for commercial software. I run applix myself, and have used AcceleratedX in the past. I have numerous commercial games, all of which I've paid for. However, that does not mean that IP laws are enhancing progress; indeed to all appearances they seem to be doing the opposite.
I see allot of posts decrying the evils of Rambus and/or its parent companies.
This is silly. The companies are not evil for working within the framework of the law to protect their profits.
The patent system, on the other hand, is evil, if one defines evil to be that which is harmful to progress and the public good.
There are only so many ways to interface memory with data. There are only so many ways to synch memory timing. Each patent provides an entity with what, in terms of computing, amounts to an eternal monopoly. Eternal, because 20 years from the filing date is an eternity in terms of how fast the technology moves. Or, at least, has until now.
I do not think it will be long before every useful method for interfacing one computing component with another, be it memory, mass storage, or what have you, will be patented by someone. Probably several someones, quite likely with conflicting patent claims. What then? No competition, as each entity will have a government enforced monopoly in its domain, which it may cross license to a competitor in the same way Rambus does - at a higher price to make the competitor's (possibly more popular or superior) product less competetive.
Without competition there will be no incentive to innovate.
With less innovation technological progress will be slowed, quite possibly to a crawl.
Then, of course, the patent advocates will proclaim that 20 years from the date of filing is a perfectly reasonable amount of time for a patent, as the technology is still in use 20 years later.
Of course, they neglect to point out that the reason the technology is still in use 20 years later is because progress has been stifled for so long by the very system of patents they advocate.
There is a reason the planes we fly in have 50 year old designs, despite advances in materials and aeronotical sciences. (Only now are some experimental craft finally using comosites and making real progress again -- many of the patents have expired!) There is a reason we are all driving filthy petroleum burning cars despite having had the technology for clean hydrogen burning motors for over forty years. (The oil companies bought up the patents and buried them - only now are a few buses finally burning hydrogen fuel and filling the air with water vapor instead of carcinogens - the patents are expiring.) Now we will begin seeing this same, slow crawl of technology coming to the area of computer science as well - the patent mongers have discovered us, and are locking up all of our ideas.
These areas of research are all characerized by an initial explosion of new technology followed by glacial progress. Not because people are unimaginative, or because all the possiblities have been explored, all the discoveries made. No. It is because all of the fundamental ideas are locked away, privatized into someones property, and further research is thereby severely stifled. Now we have the agonizing displeasure of seeing it happen to our field of endeavor as well.
Patents are bad for software. That much is obvious to nearly everyone here. What is less obvious, and far more insidious, is that patents are bad for hardware as well. In fact, patents are bad for every realm of scientific and technological endeavor: they lock down ideas, lock people out possibilities they might otherwise have explored (and that might have otherwise led to even greater discoveries), they stifle innovation and yes, even economic incentive. One guy gets a monopoly and maybe even gets rich, two or three others with the same idea (and maybe even a better implementation of it) are locked out, and a hundred others are prevented from making their contribution at all.
How much science, how much progress, has been lost to this despicable system? How much better could our lives have been, if only our thoughts and ideas hadn't been treated like land claims in a bad western?
I got an email a few minutes ago from NSI saying basically the same thing, that a domain name I was listed as a contact for (not billing contact) was going to be auctioned off, and that collection proceeding would be brought against me.
Since I don't work for the company in question I fired off a reply telling them so. However, knowing NSI's notorious lack of ethics, I wouldn't be surprised to see my credit rating impacted regardless. Won't make any difference -- I don't pay former employer's bills and they will get nothing from me.
ah, the old "humans are animals too, so anything that an animal does, we can do" argument.
Boring.
But nonetheless true when it comes to dietary practices.
Re:Sources too numerous to mention, here are a cou
on
Why Develop On Linux?
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· Score: 2
Gee, I guess you didn't read my post.
Yes, I have used NT you blithering idiot.
What I say still stands, NT's security model is an abomination. 95 and 98 don't have a security model to speak of. Etc. etc. etc. with references provided.
I am through feeding the trolls, forage elsewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
Ha! I didn't get laid until I was nearly 29, didn't drink that much in college, and paid for it with grants and student loans, which I now have to pay back.
You obviously went to the wrong school!
I was in the college of engineering at the University of Illinois (in Champaign-Urbana), not an environment that one would think of as "sex, drugs, rock and roll and no consiquences for four years." Nevertheless, I and many people I know had far more than our share of those, and many other, pleasurable vices.
It is a lifestyle I miss sorely now that I'm in the real world, despite enjoying a lifestyle I could never have afforded on a college budget.
Of course, I too paid for school with grants and student loans which I am still paying back.
:-)
You hinted that there could be some laws enacted to prevent this sort of abuse but ...you know what, we don't need them. They are already here and are called IP.
We do need them. IP imposes an unacceptably high cost to society in nearly every sense: big government oversight and management of mandated monopolies, invitations to excessive litigation and legal thuggary, higher (usually monopolistic) prices to the consumer that far exceed anything research and development costs could ever justify, lost technologies due to lack of research in areas already fenced off by patents, slowed technological growth for many of the same reasons, and stifled industries (again, due to lack of competition).
IP laws may solve the one problem you describe, but in so doing create a host of others. Your cure is far worse than the disease.
A tax exemption for the inventor for twenty years (vs. a monopoly on use) would do much to level the playing field and address the issue you raise, without imposing a government mandated monopoly and stifling both industry and science.
However, even if we simply scrapped IP altogether and made no provision for protecting the small inventor, the result would be a dramatic net gain for everybody as a whole. This worst case isn't necessarilly what we would want, but it would be far better than what we have now: a system that favors the big players regardless, with an occasional bone tossed to a small player for what amounts to propoganda purposes, and does so at a very high cost to everyone else.
and the only thing that was actually lost were sucker VC's money. Well, it serves the VC's wrong for not doing their homework. And I bet his employees were well compensated.
The employees may or may not have been well paid. I bet they were very underpaid their last couple of weeks (read: they probably didn't get their last paychecks). The stock options obviously didn't pan out either.
Even if what you say were true, and everyone except the VC's (who got defrauded out of their investemnts) prospered, this is very short term prosperity indeed. Now the money has run out, the people are unemployed, and the VCs in question may well never invest in another internet startup again.
This kind of thing makes it more difficult for legitimate small-time startups to get off the ground, and as a result leads to less, not more, prosperity.
It isn't easy having much sympathy for wealthy VCs who throw their money around, particularly when we see really inane startups being so funded, but relishing their being defrauded is highly counterproductive IMHO. Far better to relish this priest finally getting sex the way he wants it for, the next twenty years, from his cell mate, forcefully, from behind.
"the marketplace" as cure-all. Marvellous. Save your kooky far-right economics for the weekly ESR-fan/gun-club meet.
Oh, grow up.
I probably shouldn't feed the troll, but what the hell.
I never said the free market was a panacea[1], and if you'd bother to read any of my other posts, rather than simply responding in a typical, knee-jerk reactionary manner, you would have noticed that my political leanings (not that they have anything to do with the topic at hand) are if anything left of center. (See for example my arguments about how the free market is not at all well suited for services requiring human compassion, such as medicine and care of the elderly).
However, the free market is a much better approach than draconian, government mandated and enforced monopolies which favor a few at the expense of the many, stifle progress and harm entire industries.
Try looking outside of your narrow preconceptions sometime. You might be surprised to discover an entire planet lying beyond the boundries of your little yard.
[1] for our troll of limited vision: panacea ~= "cure-all"
heiarchical, but peer to peer at each level.
.linux), it is resolved by one of the peers at that level.
queries get passed up and down to the appropriate level as now for resolution. Peers would only have to cache databases for their level, not the entire internet.
Once reaching the appropriate level (e.g.
Anyone can add a peer, and manage a name within that level as they wish, with conflict resolution using timestamps or some other, reasonably fair appraoch.
Thus, no one has authority over any domain, top level or otherwise, yet everyone can remain certain that, once they have registered a name it is theres.
Possible problems: hijacking of lower level names.
E.g. you have a network my.firm, and you want to name all kinds of names like mars.my.firm, venus.my.firm, jupiter.my.firm, but some other jerk has gone around and registered millions of names, eating up most of the usable hostnames.
Possible solution? (This is probably heresy) Introduce a small modification to the standard domain name nomenclature, in which a hostname is seperated from the domain name by a different character than "." Within each domain name each person has complete authority as they do now with standard dns, but without, none.
So, in our example above, some jackass could go on
to register mars.my.firm, venus.my,firm, etc., but these point to domains and not specific hosts, which would be resolved as mars:my.firm, venus:my.firm, etc. (a colon probably isn't the best example here, but dashes are out and nothing else springs directly to mind. Maybe commas?)
I don't know if this is at all workable, but it seems to be a better solution than the centralized system we have now with all of its abuses and centers of authority, while still preserving much of the performance gain in a heiarchical system.
What do you think?
So you are advocating change from "almost always" to "always" ?
Because , as the original poster explained, that would be the effect of abolishing IP.
No, that is not what I am advocating, nor would that be the outcome of eliminating IP.
The original poster made some good points with respect to how, on occasion, the patent system does protect the little guy.
However, if there were no government enforced monopolies, no one would "win" and no one would "lose," except in the market place. The original inventor would still have the right to persue their invention, persue other ideas to which his/her invention gives rise, etc. And, someone else coming up with the same invention at roughly the same time (a very common occurance historically) would not have the rights to their invention taken from them simply because they lost a footrace to the patent office. Without patents, everyone could play and compete accordingly, and the market, rather than a governmental authority, could decide who "wins" and who doesn't. One of the nice things about the free market is that there are often multiple winners in a given area, a stark contrast to the sole "winner" of a patent.
If the marketplace is too favorable of the big players over the little players, the marketplace can be tweaked with appropriate legislation, the way it was when child labor was rampent, for example. This is the appropriate place to make such adjustments, not granting 20 year monopolies.
Even simpler. 'Zero Level' to the domain system. Think of it like this...
.microsoft server, and so forth.
.microsoft heiarchy, but once they registered a name (e.g www.microsoft) no one could take it away from them short of a court order presented to the owner of the name, who has sole power (in a technical sense) to remove it.
You keep the existing DNS, but fill in around it.
That's an interesting approach, although it does have the disadvantage of allowing the ICANN to retain its domain of authority.
Prehaps competing sets of root servers would be better, each addressable by either a different URL prefix, or a different "one-off" domain (microsoft.com.ican, microsoft.com.alt, etc...).
This assumes we stick with DNS, which might be more practical short term, but not necessarilly what we'd want in the long term.
An ideal situation would be an approach where no central authority exists to say "yeah" or "nay" to a domain name, where anyone can simply register a name, such as "jean-michel.smith" and, if no one else already has it, you get it. Any legal action is betwen you and whoever, as only you can change it (with your secret key, presumably -- this already assumes a slightly more sophisticated appraoch than the current DNS heiarchy.)
This doesn't necessarilly mean no heiarchy. One idea might be to have a hybrid system, in which each heiarchical level is peer to peer (with automated conflict resolution via timestamp or some other reasonably fair methodology), such that anyone can set up a root server in cooperation with other root servers, anyone can set up a
This would mean that Micrsoft wouldn't control all names within the
There are other issues which would need to be fleshed out, such as what to do if someone forgets or loses their private key (or claims they did) and so forth, but you get the idea.
As another put it, power and responsibility both reside with the individual registrant, to whom other parties and the legal system could turn if legal remedies were called for.
Including that default option was explictly one of the points I made in my original post. I agree, most users wouldn't bother to type alt:// if http:// were the default.
Even those who do not change their default to alt:// could be led there, via URL links of the form "A HREF="alt://myantimicrosoftsite.microsoft.com".
The notion is that the most common application of DNS today is with respect to the web. This solution does not address issues with respect to shell accounts, telnet, ssh, ftp, etc., although a more comprehensive, alternative name resolution system is probably called for.
As for techies forgetting about Internet NEwbies and AOL dorks, well, why not? They can educate themselves, just like the rest of us.
Yes, it would be neat if we could type "alt://" and have different addresses resolve by using a Gnutella-like system, therefore eliminating the need for ICANN. Is it feasible? Well, let's see, no one's even addressed that.
So, according to you, in order to even be permitted to express an idea in this or any forum, one must have already worked out all of the technical specifics, else said ideas should be ignored and derided?
Please.
Hacking a browser to call an alternative domain resolution service in response to an URL beginning with alt:// would be fairly simple. There are already modules to deal with ftp:// (FTP), mailto:, etc. Most of the code needed for the alt:// appraoch is already present, one needs to simply rip out the DNS resolution code and replace it with whatever the alternative approach would be.
As for a gnutella type system, if you'd even bothered to read my original post, you would have seen my suggestion to use the existing DNS software, perhaps running on a different port, with different root servers. Not that a more distributed and less top-down approach, a la FreeNet, wouldn't necessarilly be as good. Some technical robustness against hoards of lawyers might actually be worth a performance tradeoff, particularly in today's climate.
Comon folks, at least think about the actual content of some of these comments before you moderate them up.
Some of us do think. Perhaps you should do likewise before going off half-cocked. (HINT: Actually reading the post you're replying to helps).
Different rules apply if you have a monopoly, which the ICANN Does with respect to allowing companies to register domain names in the .com, .net, and .org heiarchies.
If what they are accused of is indeed what happened, they broke the law and should be punished accordingly.
Of course, I think a better solution would be to simply stop paying attention to the ICANN and develop our own method for mapping names to ip addresses.
Well, no one else seems eager to take on this bit of US Patent Office propoganda, so I guess I'll stick my neck out. This will have to be brief, as I've work to do and can't spend the entire afternoon replying to slashdot.
The Patent system is a lot like the Lottery.
A few small people win big, get rich, and become poster children for the status quo. (e.g. the historical examples cited in the previous post. Alas, for many of the poster children, the honor is posthumus, for many had their health ruined and indeed even died from the stress of fighting a battle against terrible odds.)
A great many more small people are directly harmed in the process. (e.g the many who lost thier battles to better funded, larger commercial interests, such as those inventors who lost all rights to their inventions to Thomas Eddison, who claimed both historical credit for work which wasn't his, as well as monetary gains, all facilitated by the US Patent System. Another example is of course the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of small businesses stillborn due to government enforced monopolies. Other costs, such as inventions never realized because the base ideas are locked down, have been discussed elsewhere).
In the end, poster children aside, the system is designed to favor the large players, again at the expense of the little guy. (Lotteries bring most of the money they generate into state coffers, not the pockets of "winners" or the "little guy." So to, most patents are owned by corporations. Most legal conflicts between small inventors and large corporations end up being resolved in favor of the large corporation, for they have more capital and more lawyers to present their arguments.)
In one respect the patent system is even less fair than the lottery. At least anyone can buy a lottery ticket, even with the same winning number as another, and the two lucky poster children can share their tiny slice of the pie. Not so with patents. Its a winner takes all system, and the winner is almost always the large, well funded and well represented corporation, not the little guy.
Even granting the premise that ICANN violated their bylaws in not approving Afternic's application, so what? Since when it is the job of the federal courts to hear cases about corporate bylaws brought by outside parties, not by employees, officers or stockholders?
Oh, since about the time people started bandying the word "justice" about.
It is called illegal restraint of trade, and it will get your ass fined and a substantial portion of your assets handed over to the offended party in this country if you are found guilty. If the ICANN did indeed do what they are accused of, there is a very good chance they are guilty and will have to make financial ammends for their behavior.
As much as we gripe about the justice system here in the US, it often appears to be the only functioning branch of government left, where there is at least some semblance of justice, occasionally, at times. The Legislative and Executive branches are, to all appearances, already a lost cause. The leading question is, of course, how long can a government stand on only one good leg (or branch).
Lawmakers should be kicked out of office and new elections called when they propose and pass blatently unconstitutional legislation. Likewise for the president who signs such a bill into law.
Both are violating their oath to their office to "uphold" the constitution and should be immediately removed for either (a) violating that oath or (b) gross incompetence.
The political problem is trying to overcome the F.U.D. that will be kicked up by the powers that be when a system is created that cannot be 'sued' and from which names cannot be revoked because they are offensive, or because some stupid corporation is scared of them
.us, .de, .uk, etc. remains intact even while .com, .org, .net are subverted and countless new TLDs emerge.
This FUD is easilly gotten around.
Hack Mozilla and other browsers to recognize a different prefix as html, but using the new Name Service. Perhaps something like "alt://" instead of "http://" Allow the user to define one or the other as the default.
Then, whenever someone tries to look up alt://fucktheicann.com they'll get the anti-icann site, while http://fucktheicann.com isn't resolved because the ICANN has "reserved" it. (Disclaimer, the previous example is entirely fictional, I have no idea if such a domain exists or how ICANN would respond to it if it did).
One could go a step further, in inviting all of the country code TLDs to participate in both systems, such that the integrity of
This could probably be hacked using the existing DNS system, or an improved version with better security features. Names could be given on a first come, first serve basis (automated), with no provisions for arbitration whatsoever (take it up with the other party, if you get a court order, send the police to there house, don't bother us).
The argument that the poor, overworked and largely incompentent staff of the patent office is underpaid and that the office is woefully underfunded and should therefor be forgiven for its gross negligence and incompentence is, indeed, hogwash.
If the patent office is unable to perform its constitutionally assigned task (however misguided that task may be), then the ethical and appropriate thing for it to do is to shut its doors until it gets the necessary funding and staff.
Destorting markets, hampering industried, and destroying small competative businesses by handing out government mandated and enforced monopolies willy nilly the way it is doing right now is immoral, unethical, reprehensible, and destructive.
The US Patent Office is single handedly gutting the very industry that is arguably responsible for our current record setting economic boom. This cannot and will not go on without serious detrimental economic repercussions. Of course, whoever is president and whichever party is percieved at being in poewr at the time will take the blame, not the patent office, so maybe they (correctly) feel they do not have to care.
So, there is no perfect system that will protect the inventor and won't stiffle innovation at all simultaneously.
:-(
Agreed. That is why IMHO the pretecting the inventor must take a back seat to promoting innovation. Alas, even if the current system does protect the small inventor from time to time, it often does not. Thomas Edison stole many inventions from others and ended up owning the patents - in his case and numerous others the patent system has actually been worse for small inventors than having nothing at all.
At least without a patent system the person who created the invention would have still had the right to use it (even if, in my scenerio, he or she didn't get the tax break or the historical credit).
But the existing one is IMHO biased in favor of the inventor too much, and this bias need to be lessened, but not abolished completely. Otherwise the big guys will be able to copy everything they like, and every street will be called Microsoft Way
First, the existing system does favor the big guy. Patents are resolved today through litigation, which inherently favors deep pockets, which in turn inherently favors the big guy over the little guy. The current irresponsibility of the patent office only makes this more obvious, with the issuing of numerous, often overlapping or conflicting, patents.
Without a system of patents the big guys would be able to copy an idea from a smaller inventor, but they wouldn't have the tax break, which would be designed to offset that and give the little guy a leg up in competing. In addition, neither would have a government enforced monopoly with which to stifle the competition. Ending up with every street named Microsoft Way is IMHO far more likely under the existing regime of IP law than it would be if such notions were either abolished or at least seriously revamped. Microsoft is now patening file formats, for crying out loud. Can you say "incompatability forever" (or at least the next 20 years)?
I am sure you can cite example where the patent system has worked properly and done good. If it hadn't done any good whatsoever I doubt it would still exist. I would submit, however, that we as individuals and as a society have paid a far greater price than it was worth.
The internet was founded under public contract, designed for the defense department.
Even then, the Department of Defense required that it be open, with source code available, and threatened to pull defense contracts if the contractors did not comply.
This set the foundation for the modern internet, which was created using open protocols, an open standards process (IETF), and open software.
The internet may have been jump started by an expensive government contract for which a monopolist company happened to win the bid, but it was built collaboratively by developers from numerous universities in a manner which is almost precisely what the open source/free software folks employ today.
Brush up on your history before claiming that the internet was your creation or even created using your methods.
Boy, you must be bitter. What's the matter, MSFT stock options not what you would have liked? Nowhere did I claim to have created the internet, I leave such claims to Al Gore and Bill Gates.[1]
It was not. The internet was created by Big Busines
No. The internet was founded by Big Government spending taxpayer dollars, then built in its modern form by universities collaborating in an open manner using what today is referred to as the "free software" or "open source" paradigm.
Brush up on your history. I've been using the net for 13 years and have had the privelege of watching much of this happen, and your characterization is completely inaccurate and misleading.
[1]Bill Gates actually claimed to have invented the PC during an inverview. He often makes claims to have invented internet services that have been present as free software in one form or another for over a decade.
I forgot to add one concept:
To encourage inventors to apply for patents, and give them a competetive advantage, they could be granted a tax exemption for X number of years after the patent is approved, while their competitors (whether re-inventing the wheel or simply reverse engineering it) would enjoy no such tax incentive.
That should be more than sufficient financial reward for being the first to come forward with an idea.
Let's take an example in biotech or medicine industry. Patents are everything there. It is an ability to reap reward for a huge investment in research. And what is that reward? just an ability to fund the further research!
I think we need to seriously re-examine how we fund expensive research, particularly in areas of biotech and medicine. What you have described could also be used to describe the life of a serf, or a serf's Lord, or anyone else in any economic endeavor: the status quo allows them to reap a reward for an investment (of time, money, energy). And what is that reward? Survival and tha ability to continue the struggle.
Patents are costing us far too much in terms of lost opportunities, stifled technologies, and squandered economic opportunities. Not to mention the parisitical aspects, such as the tax dollars spent on the patent office, the cost of patent attourneys and the litigation they bring, etc. If we took even a fraction of the cost saved by scrapping the system as it now exists we could probably fund ongoing research in those areas which have come to rely upon it far more generously than they are funded now. However, even if we can't, I think the gains we as a society would get far outweigh the costs.
The patent system as it now stands does not fulfill its constitutional mandate to promote progress, indeed it stifles it. The only two legitimate purposes for a patenting system are to encourage publishing of inventions (so the knowledge isn't lost) and to assign someone with credit for having invented something.
This could easilly be accomplished by allowing someone to submit a patent application with all the necessary specifications, which is the sealed from public view for a period of time (17 year, 20 years, whatever). That person is then acknowledged in the public record as having invented X on date Y.
However, that person is not granted an exclusive monopoly on the invention. The government and the inventor treat the invention as a trade secret for a given, limited period of time, after which the information becomes public knowledge. If, before that time, someone else reverse engineers the invention, or comes up with it independently, they are free to use that knowledge, they do not however get credit for the invention (as it is already registered).
That IMHO is all the patent system we need. Government enforced artificial monopolies are absolutely unnecessary and destructive.
No need to shout. Every form of fuel in the universe is an energy carrier, including the petroleum products you burn in your car.
If you use hydrogen to run your car (instead of gasoline), you end up producing more pollution (in order to make the hydrogen) and spending a lot more money. And there is no safe way to store and handle hydrogen.
Hydrogen is a much more reasonable alternative than fossil fuels are, as is becoming apparent now that enough patents have expired to make the technology available for use.
Free software is good to get things going, but copyright makes it big business and if you look at companies like IBM or Sony, big business can innovate and often does a damn better job than what comes out of somebody's garage.
As others have pointed out, correlation != causation. In the case of the computer boom, one can argue much more plausibly that the commoditization of cheap PC hardware was the primary cause of the boom of computers, and the software which runs on them, than Bill Gates' petty greed or precident setting copyright were. Even before the emergence of Windows as the One and Only Platform sales of PCs were booming, some running DOS, some running MacOS, some running windows, some running Geoworks, etc. etc.
Another counter example is the internet, which was developed with open and free protocols and software implimentations, some in the public domain, some under FreeBSD style licenses, and some under the GLP (all three can reasonably be considered counterpoints to traditional copyright -- they make use of a system they are philisophically opposed to but have no choice in being subject to). None of the software responsible for the infrastructure of the internet, be it USENET news, FTP, IRC, the World Wide Web, or email (SENDMAIL) was commercial. Oh, Sun and others offered commercial clones of some of the products (where the license permitted), but the reference implimentations, and the most widely used versions, were Free. For that matter, they still are, despite overwhelming efforts by various large entities (MS, AOL) to co-opt the net into a distribution channel for their own proprietary products.
The Big Boom in Internet Business appears to be dwarfing the PC boom, stock market fluctuations notwhithstanding. Draconian copyright isn't helping make this happen, it (and other forms of intellectual property such as patents) are actually hampering it and even beginning to threaten it entirely. Examples include Amazon's one click patent vs. Barns and Noble, patents on the RSA algorithm which have seriously hampered the adoption of widespread public key crypto (a prerequisite to online business transactions and contracts), the DMCA and copyright law being used to fragment open standards such as Kerberos, etc.
There is a place for commercial software. I run applix myself, and have used AcceleratedX in the past. I have numerous commercial games, all of which I've paid for. However, that does not mean that IP laws are enhancing progress; indeed to all appearances they seem to be doing the opposite.
I see allot of posts decrying the evils of Rambus and/or its parent companies.
This is silly. The companies are not evil for working within the framework of the law to protect their profits.
The patent system, on the other hand, is evil, if one defines evil to be that which is harmful to progress and the public good.
There are only so many ways to interface memory with data. There are only so many ways to synch memory timing. Each patent provides an entity with what, in terms of computing, amounts to an eternal monopoly. Eternal, because 20 years from the filing date is an eternity in terms of how fast the technology moves. Or, at least, has until now.
I do not think it will be long before every useful method for interfacing one computing component with another, be it memory, mass storage, or what have you, will be patented by someone. Probably several someones, quite likely with conflicting patent claims. What then? No competition, as each entity will have a government enforced monopoly in its domain, which it may cross license to a competitor in the same way Rambus does - at a higher price to make the competitor's (possibly more popular or superior) product less competetive.
Without competition there will be no incentive to innovate.
With less innovation technological progress will be slowed, quite possibly to a crawl.
Then, of course, the patent advocates will proclaim that 20 years from the date of filing is a perfectly reasonable amount of time for a patent, as the technology is still in use 20 years later.
Of course, they neglect to point out that the reason the technology is still in use 20 years later is because progress has been stifled for so long by the very system of patents they advocate.
There is a reason the planes we fly in have 50 year old designs, despite advances in materials and aeronotical sciences. (Only now are some experimental craft finally using comosites and making real progress again -- many of the patents have expired!) There is a reason we are all driving filthy petroleum burning cars despite having had the technology for clean hydrogen burning motors for over forty years. (The oil companies bought up the patents and buried them - only now are a few buses finally burning hydrogen fuel and filling the air with water vapor instead of carcinogens - the patents are expiring.) Now we will begin seeing this same, slow crawl of technology coming to the area of computer science as well - the patent mongers have discovered us, and are locking up all of our ideas.
These areas of research are all characerized by an initial explosion of new technology followed by glacial progress. Not because people are unimaginative, or because all the possiblities have been explored, all the discoveries made. No. It is because all of the fundamental ideas are locked away, privatized into someones property, and further research is thereby severely stifled. Now we have the agonizing displeasure of seeing it happen to our field of endeavor as well.
Patents are bad for software. That much is obvious to nearly everyone here. What is less obvious, and far more insidious, is that patents are bad for hardware as well. In fact, patents are bad for every realm of scientific and technological endeavor: they lock down ideas, lock people out possibilities they might otherwise have explored (and that might have otherwise led to even greater discoveries), they stifle innovation and yes, even economic incentive. One guy gets a monopoly and maybe even gets rich, two or three others with the same idea (and maybe even a better implementation of it) are locked out, and a hundred others are prevented from making their contribution at all.
How much science, how much progress, has been lost to this despicable system? How much better could our lives have been, if only our thoughts and ideas hadn't been treated like land claims in a bad western?
I got an email a few minutes ago from NSI saying basically the same thing, that a domain name I was listed as a contact for (not billing contact) was going to be auctioned off, and that collection proceeding would be brought against me.
Since I don't work for the company in question I fired off a reply telling them so. However, knowing NSI's notorious lack of ethics, I wouldn't be surprised to see my credit rating impacted regardless. Won't make any difference -- I don't pay former employer's bills and they will get nothing from me.
ah, the old "humans are animals too, so anything that an animal does, we can do" argument.
Boring.
But nonetheless true when it comes to dietary practices.
Gee, I guess you didn't read my post.
Yes, I have used NT you blithering idiot.
What I say still stands, NT's security model is an abomination. 95 and 98 don't have a security model to speak of. Etc. etc. etc. with references provided.
I am through feeding the trolls, forage elsewhere.