I tend to view bad tech support as one manifestation of how some software publishers prefer to foist the burden of dealing with problems caused by their bug-ridden code and shoddy testing onto the consumer.
UCITA is another example. It's no surprise Microsoft fields lobbyists to tout the virtues of UCITA - a law that permits software publishers to sidestep fundamental warranties (like the implied warranty of merchantability, which simply means that a purchased product should act as it is supposed to) and disclaim liability for damages caused by software sold containing known defects.
The war on drugs (at least in my mind) is the worst sort of self-perpetuating, interminable game.
Roblimo's game metaphor adequately describes many of the absurdities of the drug war. But let's reflect for a moment. If the war on drugs is a game, who are the winners?
- Short-sighted legislators who willingly swap constitutional liberties for "hard on crime" rhetorical jingoes such as "zero tolerance" and "mandatory minimums."
- The increasingly privatized and profitable prison industry. In some states, new prisons are welcomed with open arms as "growth industries" requiring lucrative construction contracts and hundreds of jobs for correctional staff and support personnel.
- The tabloid media, including such glossy shitrags as TIME magazine and superficial "in-depth" reporting shows like 20/20. Just think about how many hysterical articles/broadcasts these paragons of journalistic objectivity have devoted to perils of Ecstacy tainting the purity of our nation's red-blooded youth.
I wasn't really serious either -- that's why I used the word "choad" (which is a nebulous word with at least 4 different definitions, depending on what culture/ region your from). Choad is a word I use lightly when I'm kidding around with someone.
Your post didn't irritate me at all - it was the anonymous troll after you.
The current edition of the European "Netzkultur" magazine, Telepolis features an article discussing the vulnerability of the the Dutch Internet infrastructure to a single, well-placed attack, according to a recent report issued by the Dutch Ministry of Traffic and Waterways:
One well-placed bomb could wreck the entire Dutch Internet, the report states.The physical protection of (fiber optic) cables at critical network and ISP junctions is almost none, TNO claims. It is very easy to find out where exactly the cables are located and they can easily be approached. 'For now the chances of a deliberate
disruption of the cable network by activists or terrorists are low. But as the importance of the Internet is growing, we fear that criminals, activists or terrorist will see the cable infrastructure or other critical infrastructure
as targets in the near future.'
The possibilities for paper-thin are endless (depending, of course, on cost). Imagine:
- Ever been to a large protest or demonstration? Groups with axes to grind are typically under-funded, and habitually rely on tinny Radio Shack megaphones to "get the word out" - a marginal improvement over shouting, given ambient street noise. With these speakers, a dissident group could easily seed a crowd with plastic amplifiers taped to their ubiquitous posterboard placards.
- Pack a stack of these piezo-electronic sheets in your backpack, find an abandoned warehouse and a tube of super-glue and voila! Instant rave!
- Promotional companies that currently wheat-paste metropolitan walls with repetitous movie/concert fliers might find a way to paint their advertisements on sheets of the aforementioned plastic film with a flat EEPROM backing, thereby augementing their garish displays with short bursts of sound. Wait, I should patent that idea.
One night (when I was in high school) my parents kicked me out of their suburban house. To blow some steam, I went walking through Baltimore's ghettoes.
Learned several things that night, one about pay phones -- I tried to use one outside a liquor store to request evac (unsuccessfully...but that's a different story).
Ghetto pay-phones (at least the ones in Charm City) are a quirky testament to survival in the 'hood. Instead of sporting several rows of shiny, rectangular buttons, ghetto phones have tiny, cylindrical metal nubs (perhaps stealing numbers is a Baltimore pastime). Not only are such instruments swaddled in extraneous layers of steel armor, two thick steel bars are welded to the front to discourage folks from coveting the fistful of quarters within. The coin orifaces on these behemoths were miniturized to defelect wanton crow-bars.
Media pundits frequently refer to latter-day school shootings as a freak phenomenon of the Internet Age. They ignore the fact that childhood insurrections have long been a part of American's glorious history. Here's one little-known example.
I grew up in a suburb of Baltimore, MD called Catonsville. There is a small church/ school in Catonsville called St. Timothy's Episcopal.
A hundred years or so ago, a young man named John Wilkes Booth was a pupil at St. Timothy's -- which was called St. Timothy's Hall Military Academy.
A few student pranksters at the Academy rounded up some of the headmaster's chickens, slew them, and positioned the gory remains where all could see. Needless to say, the headmaster was irked, and threatened to revoke the weekend privelages of all students if the conspirators refused to come forward (they never did).
In repsonse to the headmaster's threats, a group of Academy students (including Booth and one fellow who later became a Congressman) raided St. Timothy's Academy's armory, gathered rifles, marched out into the woods and formed what's now called a "defensive perimeter" in protest.
The headmaster gave in. No shots were fired, and the students got their way.
I'd like to know how these particular questions were chosen. My impression of the question-selection process was that ten or so questions would be selected from the highest moderated (i.e. +5) potential queries.
While this peer-review process may have merit, I've noticed many of the chosen questions overlap (how do you feel about the DMCA, corporate influence...), in addition to being quite nebulous.
What I find peculiar is that, despite Mr. Boucher's pioneering efforts to reform the patent practices of the U.S. PTO (including co-sponsoring the Business Method Patent Improvement Act of 2000), none of the questions chosen even mentioned software or business method patents. At least one of the potential questions from the +5 pool specifically focused on these topics (allright, I admit I wrote it).
Actually, there has been an extremely important initiative underway to "harmonize" international civil and commercial (not criminal) law, especially involving trans-border litigation arising from the Internet.
The Hague Convention involves some 47+ member nations, including the U.S., EU and China. The object of the convention is twofold:
1. To make foreign judgements recognizable,
and 2. To make foreign judgements enforceable.
This is extremely significant to the techie community, and anyone concerned with the application of law over the internet. Remember the Godfrey v. Dolenga and related cases, where a British physicist sued foreign nationals under the UK's draconian libel laws (where the burden of proof is, paradoxically, on the defendent to prove his innocence)? Godfrey obtained several favorable verdicts against citizens in the US and Canada, but was (at the time) unable to have those verdicts enforced.
Under the Hague Convention, Godfrey might have been able to not only secure favorable verdicts in the UK, but able to enforce those verdicts on others not ordinarily subject to UK libel law.
That's just one example. The Hague Convention does have one loophole (a fundamental public policy exemption) that nations could use to escape the enforcement of onerous verdicts. Libel cases may be an extreme example.
However, factor in Intellectual Property -- such as the precendence laid down in Germany concerning ISPs and Copyright. The Hague Convention would make it much, much easier to corporations to take advantage of disparities between the intellectual property regimes of different nations, secure favorable verdicts by picking and choosing courts to their advantage, and then enforcing such verdicts in other nations.
Imagine what will happen if the Hague Convention is passed (it's in draft-stage negotiations now) and free-software developers in EU countries which don't currently recognize software/business method patents are suddenly liable for patent infringement due to crappy US-PTO issued patents.
I think it is time that the geek community sat up and started paying attention to international legal developments such as the Hague Convention -- the corporations and industry associations (RIAA, MPAA) sure are. If you want to see what they have to say, check these comments recently submitted to the USPTO about the intellectual property aspects of the Hague Convention.
Sorry to distract y'all from the running debate about Michael, but lemme see if I can help answer the original question -- what corporations are in favor of UCITA.
When UCITA came to my home state, Maryland, I was informed by several consumer/library advocates that lobbyists from Microsoft and AOL were in attendence and vocally in favor of UCITA.
Here is some pro-UCITA propaganda its proponents have put up:
The BSA consists of Adobe, Apple, Compaq, Dell, IBM, Intel... and, of course, Microsoft. Here is a list of member companies.
Additionally, if you want a good "Who's-Who" on UCITA, check out the comments filed at the Federal Trade Commission's recent conference on High-Tech Warranties.
If you're interested, here is a site I threw up concerning UCITA and EULAs. I wrote a letter to Maryland governor Glendening opposing UCITA, and here's the nebulous reply I got back.
I've been trolling around the web, looking for some substantive articles about the new European Copyright Directive. Here are some of the more informative ones:
Also, y'all might want to check out Prof. James Boyle's editorial ("Whigs and hackers in cyberspace") in London's Financial Times the other day dealing with the foolishness of re-creating a European version of the American DMCA.
Also, I went to the European Parliament's web site and poked around for some primary documents. Here's a fairly thorough summary of what transpired inside the hallowed halls of the EU Parliament. However, I noticed that the embedded link (supposed to wisk one away to the actual text of the report) seemed to re-direct me to an unrelated discussion about energy in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Has anyone actually found the text the the EU Parliament's Copyright decision?
about your name actually, and I believe he said that you had actually met the fabled Neal Cassady.
I was an English major in college, and still retain a healthy admiration for Beat-Generation literature. Seeing as the great beat heroes have mostly died off (Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs) -- with the possible exception of Gary Snyder -- I'd like to ask you about Cassady.
What impressed you the most about him? According to the numerous depictions I've read (Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, plus the beat canons), Cassady was some sort of human dynamo, radiating nervous energy and constantly spouting reams of poetic prose. So what did y'all talk about?
That's a very insightful clarification -- thanks for pointing it out. I'd like to ask you a question I've been mulling over (please excuse my ignorance):
Does the USPTO have quotas for rewarding examiners who crank out the most approvals -- in other words, does the USPTO have institutionalized ways (including financial bonuses) of encouraging more patents "out the door?"
"In-house
legal counsel advise against routine reading of issued patents because of the risk of treble damages for willful infringement."
In my opinion, such idiosyncracies in the U.S. Patent system only reinforce the probability of the U.S. government handing out specious monopolies.
I spoke to a former patent examiner a few weeks ago. He informed me that (based on his observations working for the USPTO) patent examiners typically spend about 7-8 hours examining individual patents, plus another 7-8 hours doing "other things." Additionally, he confirmed my suspicion that the USPTO rewards its examiners for approving as many patents as possible -- quantity over quality.
At least one/.er asked whether or not U.S. Patents -- especially business method and software patents (which are not awarded by all nations) -- are enforceable abroad.
The answer is potentially.
I'll try to answer this question in two parts.
1. First off, the US PTO has been soundly criticized for granting patents on software and business methods. While the rest of the world guffaws at the US PTO, the US government has been quietly attempting to "harmonize" patent examining procedures abroad.
For instance, on October 24, 2000, the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) drafted a
Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Jordan concerning IP protection. Here is provision #5 of the MoU:
"Jordan shall take all steps necessary to clarify that the exclusion from patent
protection of 'mathematical methods' in Article 4(B) of Jordan's Patent Law does not
include such 'methods' as business methods or computer-related inventions."
In other words, the US government is attempting to export its penchant for granting lousy patents to other nations.
2. Second, consider an international convention is currently being negotiated between representatives of 47 nations. The Hague Conference on Private International Law's "Proposed Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgements in Civil and Commercial Matters" -- or "Hague Convention" is an attempt to render legal judgements between nations enforceable. If the Hague Convention is ratified by member nations, the following scenario may occur:
Multinational Corporation X (native to Britain) patents a fundamental web standard in the United States, where such patents are allowed. X sues its competitors (who reside in nations that do not tend to grant such patents) in a U.S. court, and under the Hague Convention, is able to make the judgement enforceable in other countries -- even if those other countries do not allow patents on web standards. Imagine what the Hague Convention might do to increase the liability of international Free-Software developers.
The U.S. PTO recently solicited comments from the public about the Hague Convention and its effect on patents and intellectual property. You can read the comments here. My organization also has a page on the Hague Convention here.
I hope that helps answer your question about the enforcement of U.S. patents abroad.
Sincerely,
Vergil Vergil Bushnell
...exactly are the patents that sparked this controversy?
CMGI's Nov. 13, 2000
press release mentions that Altavista was awarded "four new patents for search technology" which cover:
"proprietary search technology in the areas of identifying and
eliminating duplicate pages in an index, ranking results by degrees of relevancy, data
structures for searching and indexing, and 'spidering' techniques that crawl the World Wide
Web and play a key role in building an index."
I used the U.S. PTO's patent database, searched for the string "altavista" under the "assignee" field and came up with these two gems:
6,138,113: "Method for identifying near duplicate pages in a hyperlinked database"
and
6,112,203: "Method for ranking documents in a hyperlinked environment using connectivity and selective content analysis"
Has anyone found the other Altavista search engine patents in question? They might have been awarded to a different firm, then licensed to Altavista.
What types of news would you like to emphasize in the future -- i.e. strictly tech news (hardware/OS developments), culture (anime/book and movie reviews), or politics and law (intellectual property, legal challenges to free software, etc)? Or do you envision Slashdot as an all-encompassing forum for all things tech-related?
P.S.
Oh, in response to Serge's question about RobLimo's tropical shirts -- "gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson wore Hawaiian (sp?) shirts, and so did my newswriting professor at UMBC -- must be the unofficial uniform of the 4th Estate.
Scanned through the above TOS, and I don't see any clause purporting to restrict negative reviews. Is it possible that the above TOS, and the TOS that spawned this/. article are different?
I wouldn't be surprised, esp. since it appears that pagecreators fails to date their EULAs, and feels that is the user's responsibility to look for changed contractual provisions.
If anyone has the full text of the pagecreators EULA that contains the clause attempting to constrain negative reviews, please post it or email it to me. I'm collecting egregious EULAs/ TOS's for a page on UCITA.
How does Moot compare to an implementation like Freenet? I'm not well-endowed w/ programming skills, but it seems to me that Freenet inherently sidesteps having to store files locally or in pre-designated "remote locations" by -- in Freenet, files are always in flux, and their precise location is impossible to pin down.
Then again, Moot is (or will be) an OS.
Crappy manufacturing does deserve all the blame flung it's way.
What I find more insidious, however, are the legal intricacies computer (and software) manufacturers employ to shield themselves from responsibility.
Anyone remember Hill vs. Gateway 2000?. In this case (I'm going from memory here), Gateway offered a 10th Anniversary Special computer to consumers that wasn't all it was advertised to be -- i.e. Gateway's ads said the speakers were "surround sound" and they weren't.
Mr. Hill took Gateway to court, and discovered, to his surprise, that the shrinkwrapped EULA inside the computer box prevented him from suing the company, regardless of their bad faith. Instead (according to the EULA) he was forced to submit to arbitration, which inherently negated any class action status for the thousands of other consumers who were blatantly defrauded by Gateway's false claims. Furthermore (due to the nature of arbitration), the verdict was kept secret, preventing anyone else who had been ripped off from benefiting from the arbiter's decision.
I recall a slew of superficial Reader's Digest-type articles in the mid-80's that attempted to scapegoat Dungeons & Dragons as an insidious, soul-sapping plague infecting our nation's youth. This hysteria -- fueled by small-town Parent-Teacher Associations and lazy journalists -- spawned specious allegations of high-school satanists and the ubiquitous urban legend of the college kid who "got too into the game" and disappeared into the steam tunnels.
Seems as if most of the new TLD's either reflect the interests of business groups, or are controlled by business groups. With the possible exception of the museum TLD.
Noticably lacking are any TLD's reserved for criticism of large trademark holders -- i.e. the.sucks proposal that would have allowed legitimate criticism sites to avoid specious trademark infringement lawsuits (remember Verizonreallysucks.com?)
At least it has dawned upon the sage minds of ICANN that 3-4 TLD's constitutes an artificial scarcity. Perhaps today's decision opens the door for future domains that represent broader constituencies.
Slashdot Mirror
UCITA is another example. It's no surprise Microsoft fields lobbyists to tout the virtues of UCITA - a law that permits software publishers to sidestep fundamental warranties (like the implied warranty of merchantability, which simply means that a purchased product should act as it is supposed to) and disclaim liability for damages caused by software sold containing known defects.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
Roblimo's game metaphor adequately describes many of the absurdities of the drug war. But let's reflect for a moment. If the war on drugs is a game, who are the winners?
- Short-sighted legislators who willingly swap constitutional liberties for "hard on crime" rhetorical jingoes such as "zero tolerance" and "mandatory minimums."
- The increasingly privatized and profitable prison industry. In some states, new prisons are welcomed with open arms as "growth industries" requiring lucrative construction contracts and hundreds of jobs for correctional staff and support personnel.
- The tabloid media, including such glossy shitrags as TIME magazine and superficial "in-depth" reporting shows like 20/20. Just think about how many hysterical articles/broadcasts these paragons of journalistic objectivity have devoted to perils of Ecstacy tainting the purity of our nation's red-blooded youth.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
Your post didn't irritate me at all - it was the anonymous troll after you.
Sincerely,
vergil
Vergil Bushnell
What articulate, yet visceral rhetoric!
What deft use of sandbox-cliches!
Vergil Bushnell
One well-placed bomb could wreck the entire Dutch Internet, the report states.The physical protection of (fiber optic) cables at critical network and ISP junctions is almost none, TNO claims. It is very easy to find out where exactly the cables are located and they can easily be approached. 'For now the chances of a deliberate disruption of the cable network by activists or terrorists are low. But as the importance of the Internet is growing, we fear that criminals, activists or terrorist will see the cable infrastructure or other critical infrastructure as targets in the near future.'
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
I work to oppose software patents -- look at the little write up I did a month back on the M$ web poll patent. Know what facetious humor is?
CHoad.
Vergil Bushnell
- Ever been to a large protest or demonstration? Groups with axes to grind are typically under-funded, and habitually rely on tinny Radio Shack megaphones to "get the word out" - a marginal improvement over shouting, given ambient street noise. With these speakers, a dissident group could easily seed a crowd with plastic amplifiers taped to their ubiquitous posterboard placards.
- Pack a stack of these piezo-electronic sheets in your backpack, find an abandoned warehouse and a tube of super-glue and voila! Instant rave!
- Promotional companies that currently wheat-paste metropolitan walls with repetitous movie/concert fliers might find a way to paint their advertisements on sheets of the aforementioned plastic film with a flat EEPROM backing, thereby augementing their garish displays with short bursts of sound. Wait, I should patent that idea.
Sincerly,
Vergil
Cluebot.
Vergil Bushnell
Learned several things that night, one about pay phones -- I tried to use one outside a liquor store to request evac (unsuccessfully...but that's a different story).
Ghetto pay-phones (at least the ones in Charm City) are a quirky testament to survival in the 'hood. Instead of sporting several rows of shiny, rectangular buttons, ghetto phones have tiny, cylindrical metal nubs (perhaps stealing numbers is a Baltimore pastime). Not only are such instruments swaddled in extraneous layers of steel armor, two thick steel bars are welded to the front to discourage folks from coveting the fistful of quarters within. The coin orifaces on these behemoths were miniturized to defelect wanton crow-bars.
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
I grew up in a suburb of Baltimore, MD called Catonsville. There is a small church/ school in Catonsville called St. Timothy's Episcopal.
A hundred years or so ago, a young man named John Wilkes Booth was a pupil at St. Timothy's -- which was called St. Timothy's Hall Military Academy.
A few student pranksters at the Academy rounded up some of the headmaster's chickens, slew them, and positioned the gory remains where all could see. Needless to say, the headmaster was irked, and threatened to revoke the weekend privelages of all students if the conspirators refused to come forward (they never did).
In repsonse to the headmaster's threats, a group of Academy students (including Booth and one fellow who later became a Congressman) raided St. Timothy's Academy's armory, gathered rifles, marched out into the woods and formed what's now called a "defensive perimeter" in protest.
The headmaster gave in. No shots were fired, and the students got their way.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
While this peer-review process may have merit, I've noticed many of the chosen questions overlap (how do you feel about the DMCA, corporate influence...), in addition to being quite nebulous.
What I find peculiar is that, despite Mr. Boucher's pioneering efforts to reform the patent practices of the U.S. PTO (including co-sponsoring the Business Method Patent Improvement Act of 2000), none of the questions chosen even mentioned software or business method patents. At least one of the potential questions from the +5 pool specifically focused on these topics (allright, I admit I wrote it).
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
This treaty is called the Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgements in Civil and Commercial Matters.
The Hague Convention involves some 47+ member nations, including the U.S., EU and China. The object of the convention is twofold:
1. To make foreign judgements recognizable,
and 2. To make foreign judgements enforceable.
This is extremely significant to the techie community, and anyone concerned with the application of law over the internet. Remember the Godfrey v. Dolenga and related cases, where a British physicist sued foreign nationals under the UK's draconian libel laws (where the burden of proof is, paradoxically, on the defendent to prove his innocence)? Godfrey obtained several favorable verdicts against citizens in the US and Canada, but was (at the time) unable to have those verdicts enforced.
Under the Hague Convention, Godfrey might have been able to not only secure favorable verdicts in the UK, but able to enforce those verdicts on others not ordinarily subject to UK libel law.
That's just one example. The Hague Convention does have one loophole (a fundamental public policy exemption) that nations could use to escape the enforcement of onerous verdicts. Libel cases may be an extreme example.
However, factor in Intellectual Property -- such as the precendence laid down in Germany concerning ISPs and Copyright. The Hague Convention would make it much, much easier to corporations to take advantage of disparities between the intellectual property regimes of different nations, secure favorable verdicts by picking and choosing courts to their advantage, and then enforcing such verdicts in other nations.
Imagine what will happen if the Hague Convention is passed (it's in draft-stage negotiations now) and free-software developers in EU countries which don't currently recognize software/business method patents are suddenly liable for patent infringement due to crappy US-PTO issued patents.
I think it is time that the geek community sat up and started paying attention to international legal developments such as the Hague Convention -- the corporations and industry associations (RIAA, MPAA) sure are. If you want to see what they have to say, check these comments recently submitted to the USPTO about the intellectual property aspects of the Hague Convention.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
When UCITA came to my home state, Maryland, I was informed by several consumer/library advocates that lobbyists from Microsoft and AOL were in attendence and vocally in favor of UCITA.
Here is some pro-UCITA propaganda its proponents have put up:
The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA)'s UCITA brief; and here are the SIIA's members.
And my all-time favorite, the Business Software Alliance's Why Software Professionals Should Support [UCITA] (And What Will Happen If They Don't.
The BSA consists of Adobe, Apple, Compaq, Dell, IBM, Intel ... and, of course, Microsoft. Here is a list of member companies.
Additionally, if you want a good "Who's-Who" on UCITA, check out the comments filed at the Federal Trade Commission's recent conference on High-Tech Warranties.
If you're interested, here is a site I threw up concerning UCITA and EULAs. I wrote a letter to Maryland governor Glendening opposing UCITA, and here's the nebulous reply I got back.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
"European Parliament Approves Rules Granting Greater Copyright Protection." (from Quicken.com)
"EU Parliament approves draft copyright law to fight high-tech piracy" (Silicon Valley News)
Also, y'all might want to check out Prof. James Boyle's editorial ("Whigs and hackers in cyberspace") in London's Financial Times the other day dealing with the foolishness of re-creating a European version of the American DMCA.
Also, I went to the European Parliament's web site and poked around for some primary documents. Here's a fairly thorough summary of what transpired inside the hallowed halls of the EU Parliament. However, I noticed that the embedded link (supposed to wisk one away to the actual text of the report) seemed to re-direct me to an unrelated discussion about energy in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Has anyone actually found the text the the EU Parliament's Copyright decision?
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
I was an English major in college, and still retain a healthy admiration for Beat-Generation literature. Seeing as the great beat heroes have mostly died off (Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs) -- with the possible exception of Gary Snyder -- I'd like to ask you about Cassady.
What impressed you the most about him? According to the numerous depictions I've read (Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, plus the beat canons), Cassady was some sort of human dynamo, radiating nervous energy and constantly spouting reams of poetic prose. So what did y'all talk about?
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
I was fishing for more specific information.
v
Vergil Bushnell
Does the USPTO have quotas for rewarding examiners who crank out the most approvals -- in other words, does the USPTO have institutionalized ways (including financial bonuses) of encouraging more patents "out the door?"
Thanks.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
For example, Kahin sagely points out:
"In-house legal counsel advise against routine reading of issued patents because of the risk of treble damages for willful infringement."
In my opinion, such idiosyncracies in the U.S. Patent system only reinforce the probability of the U.S. government handing out specious monopolies.
I spoke to a former patent examiner a few weeks ago. He informed me that (based on his observations working for the USPTO) patent examiners typically spend about 7-8 hours examining individual patents, plus another 7-8 hours doing "other things." Additionally, he confirmed my suspicion that the USPTO rewards its examiners for approving as many patents as possible -- quantity over quality.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
The answer is potentially.
I'll try to answer this question in two parts.
1. First off, the US PTO has been soundly criticized for granting patents on software and business methods. While the rest of the world guffaws at the US PTO, the US government has been quietly attempting to "harmonize" patent examining procedures abroad.
For instance, on October 24, 2000, the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) drafted a Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Jordan concerning IP protection. Here is provision #5 of the MoU:
"Jordan shall take all steps necessary to clarify that the exclusion from patent protection of 'mathematical methods' in Article 4(B) of Jordan's Patent Law does not include such 'methods' as business methods or computer-related inventions."
In other words, the US government is attempting to export its penchant for granting lousy patents to other nations.
2. Second, consider an international convention is currently being negotiated between representatives of 47 nations. The Hague Conference on Private International Law's "Proposed Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgements in Civil and Commercial Matters" -- or "Hague Convention" is an attempt to render legal judgements between nations enforceable. If the Hague Convention is ratified by member nations, the following scenario may occur:
Multinational Corporation X (native to Britain) patents a fundamental web standard in the United States, where such patents are allowed. X sues its competitors (who reside in nations that do not tend to grant such patents) in a U.S. court, and under the Hague Convention, is able to make the judgement enforceable in other countries -- even if those other countries do not allow patents on web standards. Imagine what the Hague Convention might do to increase the liability of international Free-Software developers.
The U.S. PTO recently solicited comments from the public about the Hague Convention and its effect on patents and intellectual property. You can read the comments here. My organization also has a page on the Hague Convention here.
I hope that helps answer your question about the enforcement of U.S. patents abroad. Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
CMGI's Nov. 13, 2000 press release mentions that Altavista was awarded "four new patents for search technology" which cover:
"proprietary search technology in the areas of identifying and eliminating duplicate pages in an index, ranking results by degrees of relevancy, data structures for searching and indexing, and 'spidering' techniques that crawl the World Wide Web and play a key role in building an index."
I used the U.S. PTO's patent database, searched for the string "altavista" under the "assignee" field and came up with these two gems:
6,138,113: "Method for identifying near duplicate pages in a hyperlinked database"
and
6,112,203: "Method for ranking documents in a hyperlinked environment using connectivity and selective content analysis"
Has anyone found the other Altavista search engine patents in question? They might have been awarded to a different firm, then licensed to Altavista.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
What types of news would you like to emphasize in the future -- i.e. strictly tech news (hardware/OS developments), culture (anime/book and movie reviews), or politics and law (intellectual property, legal challenges to free software, etc)? Or do you envision Slashdot as an all-encompassing forum for all things tech-related?
P.S.
Oh, in response to Serge's question about RobLimo's tropical shirts -- "gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson wore Hawaiian (sp?) shirts, and so did my newswriting professor at UMBC -- must be the unofficial uniform of the 4th Estate.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
I wouldn't be surprised, esp. since it appears that pagecreators fails to date their EULAs, and feels that is the user's responsibility to look for changed contractual provisions.
If anyone has the full text of the pagecreators EULA that contains the clause attempting to constrain negative reviews, please post it or email it to me. I'm collecting egregious EULAs/ TOS's for a page on UCITA.
Thanks.
Sincerely, Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
Then again, Moot is (or will be) an OS.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
What I find more insidious, however, are the legal intricacies computer (and software) manufacturers employ to shield themselves from responsibility.
Anyone remember Hill vs. Gateway 2000?. In this case (I'm going from memory here), Gateway offered a 10th Anniversary Special computer to consumers that wasn't all it was advertised to be -- i.e. Gateway's ads said the speakers were "surround sound" and they weren't.
Mr. Hill took Gateway to court, and discovered, to his surprise, that the shrinkwrapped EULA inside the computer box prevented him from suing the company, regardless of their bad faith. Instead (according to the EULA) he was forced to submit to arbitration, which inherently negated any class action status for the thousands of other consumers who were blatantly defrauded by Gateway's false claims. Furthermore (due to the nature of arbitration), the verdict was kept secret, preventing anyone else who had been ripped off from benefiting from the arbiter's decision.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
I recall a slew of superficial Reader's Digest-type articles in the mid-80's that attempted to scapegoat Dungeons & Dragons as an insidious, soul-sapping plague infecting our nation's youth. This hysteria -- fueled by small-town Parent-Teacher Associations and lazy journalists -- spawned specious allegations of high-school satanists and the ubiquitous urban legend of the college kid who "got too into the game" and disappeared into the steam tunnels.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
Noticably lacking are any TLD's reserved for criticism of large trademark holders -- i.e. the .sucks proposal that would have allowed legitimate criticism sites to avoid specious trademark infringement lawsuits (remember Verizonreallysucks.com?)
At least it has dawned upon the sage minds of ICANN that 3-4 TLD's constitutes an artificial scarcity. Perhaps today's decision opens the door for future domains that represent broader constituencies.
Sincerely,
Vergil