"Socialists don't have a big thing for freedom, you know."
With the threat of socialism out of the way, most right-wing and center parties seem to have adopted all the socialist policies, albeit for other reasons. Nowadays, our freedoms are taken away from us in the name of anti-terrorism and protection of the multinational that produce our gadgets.
"If I waive my right to copy them then you can copy it all you like and then it wouldn't perish as you say."
Indeed, but that would require an extra effort on your part. How many authors are willing to do that?
"Or maybe I want my copyrighted IP to go away because it was poor."
I would say most works simply get lost because authors cannot imagine that anyone would want them. And those who actually are able to imagine such a thing probably feel that people should pay for what they want.
The fairest system, it seems (and to be honest, it took me a while to come around to this), is one where works need to be registered to continue receiving copyright protection after a certain time. Unfortunately, such a rule would be against the Berne convention and therefor not rapidly enacted.
Philips became what it is through the light-bulb. One economist has theorized that if Philips had had to pay patent licenses, that never would have happened. The reason that Philips did not pay Edison a dime is because at the time, there was no patent system in the Netherlands.
The economist I mentioned is Eric Schiff, an Austrian who emigrated to the USA. The chapter dealing with Philips can be read at the Vrijschrift site (opponents of software patents), at http://www.vrijschrift.nl/softwarepatenten/philips/ (scroll past the Dutch intro to "incandescent lamps").
There are other examples known of companies who made it big thanks to "stealing" "intellectual property". In the Netherlands, Unilever got to be what is because it made margarine without paying its inventor.
Philips, Unilever and Royal Dutch Oil were the three biggest Dutch companies when I was in high-school (I think the latter was number 2 or 3 in the world back then). The start-up of Royal Dutch Oil (better known through their Shell brand) was paid for using government money.
What you get with non-transferability IMO is that big companies will lock inventors in using over-reaching contracts, becoming the sole licensor or something like that. Inventors will have to take out mortgages to guarantee a return on investment.
I wouldn't mind patents so much if they were awarded after the fact, and after the world had profited from them.
Let people publish inventions, and register them. Wait five years. Collect a small percentage of everyone who has used the invention and pay to the first who registered (or the first three, or whatever).
That way you can be fairly sure that the market picked a fair price for the invention.
The office who collects the registration could live off registration fees.
"So, Sir, software patents are not an incentive at all. They are a way to lock the market to keep small structures and individuals out. Anybody saying the opposite is a liar or an idiot."
"If you think the dude does not deserve the3 money don't freaking click the add/link!"
The people opposed to this scheme do not wish to click the ads themselves, they want to stop me from clicking the ads. I suggest that they buy bigger guns, or move to North Korea, where freedom of speech is a four-letter word.
The idea being that the will of the people is what drives democracy, but also that the people sometimes do not know what they want, and generally look for short-term advantages only.
But however you clothe the subject, if the will of the people is not valid on matters of economics, it's not a democracy.
Democracies (or whatever we have that needs to pass for them) generally avoid going the direction of the dumb majority by having all kinds of layers of fat that build inertia into the system.
"The stigma and threat of being caught and spending jailtime is the demotivator in the former case. In the latter, if you can't change the opinions of these people that their actions aren't crimes, and its easy to not get caught, you have to severely up the penalties to keep the same level of demotivation."
You have a really strange notion of democracy.
When people think something is right, there should not be a law outlawing that thing. If copying and sharing are considered good values, the government should look into facilitating these actions. Instead, the government tries to make them harder. Something's wrong there.
"If I were an author, publish, programmer I would want me original creative work to be more protected than just one copy that got the "five finger discount.""
Don't worry: copyright law hardly ever "protects" works. To the contrary, thanks to copyright law lots of works perish every year, because it is illegal to copy them. From the work's point of view copying is a healthy activity, as it will help its dissemination.
"However the theft of a movie before a retail establishment purchases it means it hits the bottom line of the distributor directly."
You cannot "steal" a movie, as it won't be gone after you've taken a copy. Also, there is hardly any proof that file sharing has supplanted sales--the opposite could be argued.
The only "theft" in the area of "intellectual property", is the one caused by the introduction of copyright law. By making copying illegal, many works will perish and thus be stolen from the public that owns them.
"If they were so foolhardy, I'd love to see some civil court judge (or jury) find for the plaintiff and award one dollar damages."
Statutory damages for copyright infringement are US$ 250,000 per incident. Or as Lessig puts it: share two songs with your friend and you will be paying more in damages than the surgeon who amputates the wrong leg.
I doubt, however, that a court would rule this copyright infringement. It would probably be considered fair use.
"We need to have it made law that file formats are not secrets and not patentable, but form as much a part of the specification for interacting with the software as, say, the key bindings."
Why? Why do you need laws to negate something, when that something is not actively enforced by laws? And even if that something is actively enforced by laws, why would you want to have two laws cancelling each other out?
Or, in other words: where does it say that file formats can be secrets? (I take it you mean "trade secrets"; secrets have no legal meaning.) And where does it say that file formats can be patents?
Perhaps I am missing something obvious here, but what right has Microsoft to these formats? Copyrights? Since when can you copyright file formats? A format is not a work. A patent right? Since when is a file format a method or apparatus?
Sure, schemas could theoretically be copyrighted. But I doubt they would pass the originality test, especially in the US. In how many ways can you write a schema?
Just because Microsoft (through publishing "licenses") claims to own something does not make it true. Actually, in civilized countries this should give rise to criminal fraud investigations.
"The fact that more people target Windows does not make it less secure."
Perhaps not, but it does increase the chance that security holes are found. Considering that and the fact that the Windows manufacturer did not until recently seem overly concerned with creating secure OSes it may not be an unwise choice to choose another OS than Windows.
"You mean like that Russian cracker who hacked the Adobe e-book format and even had the gaul to come to a conference here and talk about it. And wow did the slashdot community whine."
The problem the (predominantly American) Slashdot community had was that the Russian cracker guy had not actually broken a law, or done anything immoral.
"Of course he's no different from all those US people who want to know how to break DeCSS or download.mp3s from the internet."
Assuming he is from the USA, yes, it is different. It's the difference between the citizens of a country working to change their own set of rules, and spitting on somebody else's hospitality.
"Why? A lot of comments here (and on some past articles) seem to say something similar. [...] "you probably won't be thrown in jail." [...] But what the hell is so great about it that it's worth the risk, no matter how remote you think it may be?"
You are right to ask these questions. The risk of going to jail is not negligable. As a matter of fact, it would seem that China has the second largest prison population per capita in the world! A shocking 100 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants.
"I can honestly say that the total arrogance displayed here today has lessened any will I had to continue developing for Firefox."
Ah yes, punish Firefox users for the behaviour of Slashdot posters, that so makes sense.
"Show some respect to people once in a while, why doncha. I tried to do that to you all."
If you are the sort that likes to changes people's scroll bar colours, you probably do not know the meaning of the word "respect". You spit in the face of all your users, then whine because of a little rough weather on Slashdot.
Firefox is the "in thing", the "latest rave", the "must have"? You don't get out much, do you?
It's a browser. A browser comes shipped with the OS. People are switching because they hate pop-ups and spyware. In-things happen light years away from the browser market.
Slashdot Mirror
"Socialists don't have a big thing for freedom, you know."
With the threat of socialism out of the way, most right-wing and center parties seem to have adopted all the socialist policies, albeit for other reasons. Nowadays, our freedoms are taken away from us in the name of anti-terrorism and protection of the multinational that produce our gadgets.
"If I waive my right to copy them then you can copy it all you like and then it wouldn't perish as you say."
Indeed, but that would require an extra effort on your part. How many authors are willing to do that?
"Or maybe I want my copyrighted IP to go away because it was poor."
I would say most works simply get lost because authors cannot imagine that anyone would want them. And those who actually are able to imagine such a thing probably feel that people should pay for what they want.
The fairest system, it seems (and to be honest, it took me a while to come around to this), is one where works need to be registered to continue receiving copyright protection after a certain time. Unfortunately, such a rule would be against the Berne convention and therefor not rapidly enacted.
There probably are a number of VVD parliamentarians who are as surprised as you are, but who have to follow the party whip.
Head of the European Commission is Frits Bolkestein, from VVD extraction, and I guess that VVD vote what he tells them to vote.
Philips became what it is through the light-bulb. One economist has theorized that if Philips had had to pay patent licenses, that never would have happened. The reason that Philips did not pay Edison a dime is because at the time, there was no patent system in the Netherlands.
s / (scroll past the Dutch intro to "incandescent lamps").
The economist I mentioned is Eric Schiff, an Austrian who emigrated to the USA. The chapter dealing with Philips can be read at the Vrijschrift site (opponents of software patents), at http://www.vrijschrift.nl/softwarepatenten/philip
There are other examples known of companies who made it big thanks to "stealing" "intellectual property". In the Netherlands, Unilever got to be what is because it made margarine without paying its inventor.
Philips, Unilever and Royal Dutch Oil were the three biggest Dutch companies when I was in high-school (I think the latter was number 2 or 3 in the world back then). The start-up of Royal Dutch Oil (better known through their Shell brand) was paid for using government money.
What you get with non-transferability IMO is that big companies will lock inventors in using over-reaching contracts, becoming the sole licensor or something like that. Inventors will have to take out mortgages to guarantee a return on investment.
I wouldn't mind patents so much if they were awarded after the fact, and after the world had profited from them.
Let people publish inventions, and register them. Wait five years. Collect a small percentage of everyone who has used the invention and pay to the first who registered (or the first three, or whatever).
That way you can be fairly sure that the market picked a fair price for the invention.
The office who collects the registration could live off registration fees.
"So, Sir, software patents are not an incentive at all. They are a way to lock the market to keep small structures and individuals out. Anybody saying the opposite is a liar or an idiot."
:-)
Now, now, don't you go calling anyone a liar.
"If you think the dude does not deserve the3 money don't freaking click the add/link!"
The people opposed to this scheme do not wish to click the ads themselves, they want to stop me from clicking the ads. I suggest that they buy bigger guns, or move to North Korea, where freedom of speech is a four-letter word.
The idea being that the will of the people is what drives democracy, but also that the people sometimes do not know what they want, and generally look for short-term advantages only.
But however you clothe the subject, if the will of the people is not valid on matters of economics, it's not a democracy.
Democracies (or whatever we have that needs to pass for them) generally avoid going the direction of the dumb majority by having all kinds of layers of fat that build inertia into the system.
"The stigma and threat of being caught and spending jailtime is the demotivator in the former case. In the latter, if you can't change the opinions of these people that their actions aren't crimes, and its easy to not get caught, you have to severely up the penalties to keep the same level of demotivation."
You have a really strange notion of democracy.
When people think something is right, there should not be a law outlawing that thing. If copying and sharing are considered good values, the government should look into facilitating these actions. Instead, the government tries to make them harder. Something's wrong there.
"If I were an author, publish, programmer I would want me original creative work to be more protected than just one copy that got the "five finger discount.""
Don't worry: copyright law hardly ever "protects" works. To the contrary, thanks to copyright law lots of works perish every year, because it is illegal to copy them. From the work's point of view copying is a healthy activity, as it will help its dissemination.
"However the theft of a movie before a retail establishment purchases it means it hits the bottom line of the distributor directly."
You cannot "steal" a movie, as it won't be gone after you've taken a copy. Also, there is hardly any proof that file sharing has supplanted sales--the opposite could be argued.
The only "theft" in the area of "intellectual property", is the one caused by the introduction of copyright law. By making copying illegal, many works will perish and thus be stolen from the public that owns them.
Use the GIMP with the resynthesizer plug-in.
"If they were so foolhardy, I'd love to see some civil court judge (or jury) find for the plaintiff and award one dollar damages."
Statutory damages for copyright infringement are US$ 250,000 per incident. Or as Lessig puts it: share two songs with your friend and you will be paying more in damages than the surgeon who amputates the wrong leg.
I doubt, however, that a court would rule this copyright infringement. It would probably be considered fair use.
"We need to have it made law that file formats are not secrets and not patentable, but form as much a part of the specification for interacting with the software as, say, the key bindings."
Why? Why do you need laws to negate something, when that something is not actively enforced by laws? And even if that something is actively enforced by laws, why would you want to have two laws cancelling each other out?
Or, in other words: where does it say that file formats can be secrets? (I take it you mean "trade secrets"; secrets have no legal meaning.) And where does it say that file formats can be patents?
Perhaps I am missing something obvious here, but what right has Microsoft to these formats? Copyrights? Since when can you copyright file formats? A format is not a work. A patent right? Since when is a file format a method or apparatus?
Sure, schemas could theoretically be copyrighted. But I doubt they would pass the originality test, especially in the US. In how many ways can you write a schema?
Just because Microsoft (through publishing "licenses") claims to own something does not make it true. Actually, in civilized countries this should give rise to criminal fraud investigations.
"The fact that more people target Windows does not make it less secure."
Perhaps not, but it does increase the chance that security holes are found. Considering that and the fact that the Windows manufacturer did not until recently seem overly concerned with creating secure OSes it may not be an unwise choice to choose another OS than Windows.
"You mean like that Russian cracker who hacked the Adobe e-book format and even had the gaul to come to a conference here and talk about it. And wow did the slashdot community whine."
The problem the (predominantly American) Slashdot community had was that the Russian cracker guy had not actually broken a law, or done anything immoral.
"Of course he's no different from all those US people who want to know how to break DeCSS or download .mp3s from the internet."
Assuming he is from the USA, yes, it is different. It's the difference between the citizens of a country working to change their own set of rules, and spitting on somebody else's hospitality.
"Why? A lot of comments here (and on some past articles) seem to say something similar. [...] "you probably won't be thrown in jail." [...] But what the hell is so great about it that it's worth the risk, no matter how remote you think it may be?"
You are right to ask these questions. The risk of going to jail is not negligable. As a matter of fact, it would seem that China has the second largest prison population per capita in the world! A shocking 100 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants.
Of course, if this bothers you, I can only urge you to stay far, far away from the country with the largest relative prison population (seven times as much).
" If it is considered to be found in the "prior art" then it cannot be registered as a patent. Simple."
You nicely summed up the theory. Now what about reality?
Let's say there is indeed prior art. So what?
"Whoa! So the industry the MPAA represents owes its very existence to a bunch of IP Pirates?!!"
Are you surprised? Modern copyright law started with a desire to protect authors from publishers.
Read Lessig's Free Culture, a riveting horror story (and the scariest part: it is all true).
"I can honestly say that the total arrogance displayed here today has lessened any will I had to continue developing for Firefox."
Ah yes, punish Firefox users for the behaviour of Slashdot posters, that so makes sense.
"Show some respect to people once in a while, why doncha. I tried to do that to you all."
If you are the sort that likes to changes people's scroll bar colours, you probably do not know the meaning of the word "respect". You spit in the face of all your users, then whine because of a little rough weather on Slashdot.
You're pathetic.
Firefox is the "in thing", the "latest rave", the "must have"? You don't get out much, do you?
It's a browser. A browser comes shipped with the OS. People are switching because they hate pop-ups and spyware. In-things happen light years away from the browser market.