"unless they modified 35 USC 102(f), which requires the applicant to, in fact, be the inventor of the subject matter for which the patent is sought."
European company invents "Magic wheel 2000". US patent scam company comes later to patent office with "Wonder wheel 3000", which they simply designed by looking at Magic Wheel 2000, understanding how it worked and writing a patent.
You have no way of telling that they are NOT the inventor, because you could never know if they read up on the "Magic Wheel 2000" before time. You cannot read minds.
At the moment you have a crude test, the "Invention date", if they can show they invented it first, then they could not have simply copied the Magic Wheel 2000 because time flows forward.
You are about to remove the only test (and it is a piss poor test at that) that the person is the inventor.
"You mean that Europe does not check who invented something first before awarding a patent for it?"
Before the patent officers started screwing around with patents it worked like:
1. You have to keep your invention secret. (NDAs etc.) 2. You have to be the first to file for the patent. 3. If the invention has already been disclosed it cannot be patented, even if you can show you are the inventor. 4. If you don't patent it promptly you can't patent it.
"Ah, more zealotry. The entire planet is first-to-file EXCEPT the US,"
Not true, the entire planet is first to file ONLY IF THE INVENTION IS NOT DISCLOSED BEFOREHAND. The USA on the other hand doesn't require you to keep the invention secret before filing.
European company X invents something but discloses it. American patent scam company Y comes along and patents it in the US.
The only thing preventing this now is that American company Y has to be able to show they are the first to invent it, and anyone can point to the European companies product as prior art. This would remove that obstacle permitting non inventors to receive patents for things they didn't invent.
1. So they'll have a whole department sitting like hawks watching the patent office and challenging everything remotely connected to their markets, and you and I will not have a department challenging every BS patent Microsoft submits. When you come to challenge it, they'll say "well he didn't challenge it within the alloted time...."
2. "Another major change would be to award a patent to the first person to submit their paperwork to the Patent Office. Currently, patents are awarded to the first person who concocted the invention, a timeframe that can be difficult to prove."
No need to invent now, just have to have a patent office ready and waiting to patent other peoples invention! And best of all its completely legal!
So the content distribution business will churn cover versions forever and we'll forget what a song writer is?
Seems to be a strong disincentive to write new songs because the distribution business finds it cheaper to repackage songs they already own! Why pay a writer?
Or will it become like art museums, where every generation goes to see the Picasso or the Turner and the only new art is weird art that isn't in a Turner style.
Imagine the future: "and here we have the work by the famous artist Kylie who lived two centuries ago and was inspired by the drama of her earlier career as a professional actress".
* Duration of patents changed per field of invention.
The whole point of patents is to reward an inventor when the barrier to copying his invention is low, but the cost of the making the first invention high. It's designed to give him a window in which to make money that otherwise wouldn't exist.
So the duration should be set like that, for a back of the napkin business process idea, the invention cost is negligable, so the duration of patents in that field zero.
For something that requires billions in development, it should be set longer, For example for the pharmaceuticals industry. Estimate the returns from past major drugs, estimate their development cost and from that calculation a period of protection.
* Inventions that are proven only.
How many times have you seen a patent for something that could never work?! The patent should be restricted to inventions that can be shown to work. It also means IP only companies shouldn't be able to get patents, because their cost is nothing. They haven't taken the risk in developing their idea through to a working form, and without risk there is no reward.
* Patent protection excluded from cases where prior art can't be determined. An example would be where the prior art is usually protected by trade secrets. What is the point of giving patents to non inventors? Software has this problem.
and
A shift of the benefit of Copyright/Patent/etc. back to the creator, artist etc. I don't know quite how it could be done, but it seems to me that the distribution channel usually benefits instead of the creator/inventor etc.
They ask questions then frame the options to restrict the reply.
"Theme Three: The public domain and open access models of information creation: at odds with the intellectual property system or enabled by it? "
Gee a multiple choice question: 1. Is the public domain against Copyright? 2. Or does it depend on copyright?
How about the 3rd option: 3. Or does copyrighted material DEPEND on the public domain?
Imagine if you had to re-invent a sorting algo, an indexing algo, a wheel, a cog, a lever, every time you wanted to make anything. Obviously it wouldn't work, to build new things you have to use public domain things.
WIPO are writing everything in terms of Copyright as the important thing, its not its *CREATION* most of which is public domain.
That also means:
4. Is copyright material bad for creation?
If I have to license something at great cost to make something new then that is a barrier to creating something new. If the content distribution business can simply churn the same product for each generation there is no incentive to create new content.
True, yet there are already rules defined in the system based on the current DLS rules for each zone.
I can calculate time down to a fine grain for UTC and that will not change, so why not calculate UTC to a fine grain? I can convert from UTC to the expected local time using the currently expected DLS rules set, again so why not? The only I can't do with confidence is calculate a local time to a fine grain in the far future. But I can hold the UTC and keep doing the UTC->LOCAL conversion whenever I need to check it, so that as the rules update, the LOCAL time stays correct.
More to the point a lot of 32 bit code suffer a Y2038 problem when it is trivial to code around.
Seriously, give it to Google to add an extra 126K to the Open source funds they're funding.
You can reasonable expect that they will distribute it with ethics rather than dip into it in expenses. If you appointed any other (read poor/legal/accountancy) administrator you would risk it being eaten in expenses.
Personally, I'd like to see Linux date and time libraries improved. I'd like to be able to convert from arbitrary time zone to arbitrary time zone, down to the nano second from any reasonable year up to 99999 AD. Go spend it on that, even Windows time libraries don't handle this correctly (they don't handle day light saving properly) and its something I miss for a server.
My view is that critical systems should be kept on different Physical Nets like they are now rather than routed through the Internet.
These 'cyber' attack strategies assume that Akmed in Iran can attack via the Internet and so talk of bringing down power grids & phone exchanges is worthless because he can't get a physical connection to those networks.
"Crash the network of your local 911 and see how many people die because the operator isn't able to find the address of a heart patient who can't speak well enough during the attack to give thier address."
Is that you're terror attack strategy? Try to break into the 911 network just as someone who doesn't speak very good English, is having a heart attack?
It's not that simple, as everyone knows the $5 a month that isn't going to Yahoo, goes to fund global terrorism. Some of our finest thinkers have concluded this:
Napster was the cause of 9-11. Think about it, all that rampant thieving of peoples copyrighted thoughts that occurred during Napster was bound to result in something terrible.
Without the DMCA anti circumvention clause, Terrorists would have Neutron bombs by now!
Al-Qaeda was a direct result of pirating Weird Al Yankovic songs.
So its not the $5, its what you do with it. You can't let teenagers keep $5, or they'll only do drugs, blow up stuff or go undermine democracy with it. Duh!
I can't see why they would bother, XBox wasn't a big success, and the games that were sold for the XBox are the same ones being sold for the new one.
Call of Duty *2* Quake *4* Tiger Woods PGA Tour *06* NBA *2K6* Project Gotham Racing *3* Anal sluts *9*
I reckon they just can't admit it, without killing off sales of the XBox so they talk vague. Whose going to support the XBox if its an end of line product like the Dreamcast?
"There is nothing to require anyone receiving code that's given away at no financial cost to honour the requirements of the creator, and thus no incentive for the creator to release the work in the first place."
I'd prefer to keep the 'financial' aspect in place since it makes it clear what is and is not fair use. As far as I can see all thats needed to enforce GPL is a click-through license to be able to use basic contract law.
Surely its not copying that causes the GPL violation, its distributing a modified version of the result as part of your own product. So I don't see how that definition of fair use would break the GPL.
The idea of non-monetary gain is worth considering, what would you consider as valid in place of money? e.g. You can use this code, but have to let me have enhancements -> reward in kind.
I'm pushed to see why it should be an offence to make copies without some sort of monetary gain. In GPL case it would be fair use to copy, but breach of contract to modify without disclosure.
'You cannot have a loss that is both "potential" and "tangible". Heck, you can't have a "potential loss" *at all*.'
Don't get too stuck on the word potential:
1. You have a class of things (copyright items) some of which have their earnings already realized -> tangible earnings.
2. Some of that class of things have yet to have their earnings realized -> potential earnings.
I'm suggesting that nobody buys a second copy of a CD as a backup now -> no tangible earnings now, -> no potential earnings in the future -> legal fair use.
If you can suggest a better wording that captures that then please go ahead and suggest it. The point I want to get across is that its all about the money, not the infringement of copyright. If an infringment of copyright doesn't result in a loss of money for the copyright holder (based on previous tangible experiences) then its not a problem and is legal fair use.
"Settle down, tiger. What's with this 'potention income' rubbish ?"
All earnings for copyright are 'potential' not 'real' that's the situation with copyright: Theft is loss of something, it is a *real* loss. Copyright infringement is loss of *potential* future income which may or may not have been realized if the copyright infringement didn't happen.
I'm suggesting use of the word 'tangible' to avoid the intangible claims made for copyright losses as claimed by the MPAA and RIAA. Copyright infringements that result in a situation where the loss of income isn't likely to cause a tangible loss would be declared fair-use.
(Read my comments relating to 'tangible' I made to the AC above.)
Unfair use- any use that results in a tangible loss of potential income from the copyright holder from the sale of the copyrighed material (i.e. not from the carrier or from any appended item*).
So it follows that fair use is anything that doesn't cause a tangible loss of income. Private copies for your own use are fair, transfer between media types are fair. Mix tapes for the wife are fair, mix tapes for distant friends are not fair. Recording TV programs for yourself or close family is fair, recording TV programs and selling them is not fair.
*If they also define it as the copyrighted material itself (not including any carrier) that they earn a profit from, then it stops that Lexmark crap where they attach the copyright material to a toner cartridge and pretending the whole cartridge is the copyrighted material.
" It seems well established that global temperatures have in general been gradually increasing over the past century." True (underlying temps at least).
"It seems well established by that same data that begining in the early fourties there was an extended period of gradually decreasing global temperatures." WAR + aftermath
"It seems well established that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have been increasing throughout this entire period." Prior to 1960 the CO2 numbers are not reliable.
Imagine the end of WW2, you shut down the factories making planes, tanks and ships and start rebuilding your agriculture so you can eventually end rationing. How would the CO2 increase post war? Wouldn't it have dropped till we recovered in the 1950s?
"How do environmentalists account for the two decades of decreasing global temperatures?"
Take a look at the graph here. Notice the upshoot in temperature as the second world war kicked in, then notice the sharp drop at the end of the second world war.
I put it to you that common sense says that humans burning fossil fuels -> makes co2 -> more co2 in atmosphere -> higher temperature.
I also put it to you that its not a problem because oil will run out too soon.
SabadellAtlantico already has a fix similar to this.
You enter a pin number to confirm. It says 'enter number 37 from your magic numbers card'.
You enter it by clicking on a keypad. The location of the numbers on the keys change randomly each time. (I think they are images, but I've only seen it used so I'm not sure)
So even if they record it with a keylogger, they are not sure what the pin number is and anyway next time it will be a different pin number.
Slashdot Mirror
"unless they modified 35 USC 102(f), which requires the applicant to, in fact, be the inventor of the subject matter for which the patent is sought."
European company invents "Magic wheel 2000".
US patent scam company comes later to patent office with "Wonder wheel 3000", which they simply designed by looking at Magic Wheel 2000, understanding how it worked and writing a patent.
You have no way of telling that they are NOT the inventor, because you could never know if they read up on the "Magic Wheel 2000" before time. You cannot read minds.
At the moment you have a crude test, the "Invention date", if they can show they invented it first, then they could not have simply copied the Magic Wheel 2000 because time flows forward.
You are about to remove the only test (and it is a piss poor test at that) that the person is the inventor.
"You mean that Europe does not check who invented something first before awarding a patent for it?"
Before the patent officers started screwing around with patents it worked like:
1. You have to keep your invention secret. (NDAs etc.)
2. You have to be the first to file for the patent.
3. If the invention has already been disclosed it cannot be patented, even if you can show you are the inventor.
4. If you don't patent it promptly you can't patent it.
"Ah, more zealotry. The entire planet is first-to-file EXCEPT the US,"
Not true, the entire planet is first to file ONLY IF THE INVENTION IS NOT DISCLOSED BEFOREHAND. The USA on the other hand doesn't require you to keep the invention secret before filing.
European company X invents something but discloses it.
American patent scam company Y comes along and patents it in the US.
The only thing preventing this now is that American company Y has to be able to show they are the first to invent it, and anyone can point to the European companies product as prior art.
This would remove that obstacle permitting non inventors to receive patents for things they didn't invent.
1. So they'll have a whole department sitting like hawks watching the patent office and challenging everything remotely connected to their markets, and you and I will not have a department challenging every BS patent Microsoft submits.
When you come to challenge it, they'll say "well he didn't challenge it within the alloted time...."
2. "Another major change would be to award a patent to the first person to submit their paperwork to the Patent Office. Currently, patents are awarded to the first person who concocted the invention, a timeframe that can be difficult to prove."
No need to invent now, just have to have a patent office ready and waiting to patent other peoples invention! And best of all its completely legal!
"What point are you trying to make here?"
Well I think thats p-r-e-t-t-y obvious don't you?! I'm making the point that without coffee I can barely think coherently. Duh!
So the content distribution business will churn cover versions forever and we'll forget what a song writer is?
Seems to be a strong disincentive to write new songs because the distribution business finds it cheaper to repackage songs they already own! Why pay a writer?
Or will it become like art museums, where every generation goes to see the Picasso or the Turner and the only new art is weird art that isn't in a Turner style.
Imagine the future: "and here we have the work by the famous artist Kylie who lived two centuries ago and was inspired by the drama of her earlier career as a professional actress".
And some others from my wish list:
* Duration of patents changed per field of invention.
The whole point of patents is to reward an inventor when the barrier to copying his invention is low, but the cost of the making the first invention high. It's designed to give him a window in which to make money that otherwise wouldn't exist.
So the duration should be set like that, for a back of the napkin business process idea, the invention cost is negligable, so the duration of patents in that field zero.
For something that requires billions in development, it should be set longer,
For example for the pharmaceuticals industry. Estimate the returns from past major drugs, estimate their development cost and from that calculation a period of protection.
* Inventions that are proven only.
How many times have you seen a patent for something that could never work?!
The patent should be restricted to inventions that can be shown to work.
It also means IP only companies shouldn't be able to get patents, because their cost is nothing. They haven't taken the risk in developing their idea through to a working form, and without risk there is no reward.
On a similar theme, I'd like to see:
* Patent protection excluded from cases where prior art can't be determined. An example would be where the prior art is usually protected by trade secrets. What is the point of giving patents to non inventors? Software has this problem.
and
A shift of the benefit of Copyright/Patent/etc. back to the creator, artist etc. I don't know quite how it could be done, but it seems to me that the distribution channel usually benefits instead of the creator/inventor etc.
They ask questions then frame the options to restrict the reply.
"Theme Three: The public domain and open access models of information creation: at odds with the intellectual property system or enabled by it? "
Gee a multiple choice question:
1. Is the public domain against Copyright?
2. Or does it depend on copyright?
How about the 3rd option:
3. Or does copyrighted material DEPEND on the public domain?
Imagine if you had to re-invent a sorting algo, an indexing algo, a wheel, a cog, a lever, every time you wanted to make anything. Obviously it wouldn't work, to build new things you have to use public domain things.
WIPO are writing everything in terms of Copyright as the important thing, its not its *CREATION* most of which is public domain.
That also means:
4. Is copyright material bad for creation?
If I have to license something at great cost to make something new then that is a barrier to creating something new.
If the content distribution business can simply churn the same product for each generation there is no incentive to create new content.
True, yet there are already rules defined in the system based on the current DLS rules for each zone.
I can calculate time down to a fine grain for UTC and that will not change, so why not calculate UTC to a fine grain?
I can convert from UTC to the expected local time using the currently expected DLS rules set, again so why not?
The only I can't do with confidence is calculate a local time to a fine grain in the far future. But I can hold the UTC and keep doing the UTC->LOCAL conversion whenever I need to check it, so that as the rules update, the LOCAL time stays correct.
More to the point a lot of 32 bit code suffer a Y2038 problem when it is trivial to code around.
Seriously, give it to Google to add an extra 126K to the Open source funds they're funding.
You can reasonable expect that they will distribute it with ethics rather than dip into it in expenses. If you appointed any other (read poor/legal/accountancy) administrator you would risk it being eaten in expenses.
Personally, I'd like to see Linux date and time libraries improved. I'd like to be able to convert from arbitrary time zone to arbitrary time zone, down to the nano second from any reasonable year up to 99999 AD.
Go spend it on that, even Windows time libraries don't handle this correctly (they don't handle day light saving properly) and its something I miss for a server.
My view is that critical systems should be kept on different Physical Nets like they are now rather than routed through the Internet.
These 'cyber' attack strategies assume that Akmed in Iran can attack via the Internet and so talk of bringing down power grids & phone exchanges is worthless because he can't get a physical connection to those networks.
"Crash the network of your local 911 and see how many people die because the operator isn't able to find the address of a heart patient who can't speak well enough during the attack to give thier address."
Is that you're terror attack strategy? Try to break into the 911 network just as someone who doesn't speak very good English, is having a heart attack?
It's not that simple, as everyone knows the $5 a month that isn't going to Yahoo, goes to fund global terrorism. Some of our finest thinkers have concluded this:
http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1011727157.html
Napster was the cause of 9-11. Think about it, all that rampant thieving of peoples copyrighted thoughts that occurred during Napster was bound to result in something terrible.
Without the DMCA anti circumvention clause, Terrorists would have Neutron bombs by now!
Al-Qaeda was a direct result of pirating Weird Al Yankovic songs.
So its not the $5, its what you do with it. You can't let teenagers keep $5, or they'll only do drugs, blow up stuff or go undermine democracy with it. Duh!
I can't see why they would bother, XBox wasn't a big success, and the games that were sold for the XBox are the same ones being sold for the new one.
Call of Duty *2*
Quake *4*
Tiger Woods PGA Tour *06*
NBA *2K6*
Project Gotham Racing *3*
Anal sluts *9*
I reckon they just can't admit it, without killing off sales of the XBox so they talk vague.
Whose going to support the XBox if its an end of line product like the Dreamcast?
"There is nothing to require anyone receiving code that's given away at no financial cost to honour the requirements of the creator, and thus no incentive for the creator to release the work in the first place."
I'd prefer to keep the 'financial' aspect in place since it makes it clear what is and is not fair use. As far as I can see all thats needed to enforce GPL is a click-through license to be able to use basic contract law.
Surely its not copying that causes the GPL violation, its distributing a modified version of the result as part of your own product. So I don't see how that definition of fair use would break the GPL.
The idea of non-monetary gain is worth considering, what would you consider as valid in place of money? e.g. You can use this code, but have to let me have enhancements -> reward in kind.
I'm pushed to see why it should be an offence to make copies without some sort of monetary gain. In GPL case it would be fair use to copy, but breach of contract to modify without disclosure.
'You cannot have a loss that is both "potential" and "tangible". Heck, you can't have a "potential loss" *at all*.'
Don't get too stuck on the word potential:
1. You have a class of things (copyright items) some of which have their earnings already realized -> tangible earnings.
2. Some of that class of things have yet to have their earnings realized -> potential earnings.
I'm suggesting that nobody buys a second copy of a CD as a backup now -> no tangible earnings now, -> no potential earnings in the future -> legal fair use.
If you can suggest a better wording that captures that then please go ahead and suggest it.
The point I want to get across is that its all about the money, not the infringement of copyright.
If an infringment of copyright doesn't result in a loss of money for the copyright holder (based on previous tangible experiences) then its not a problem and is legal fair use.
"Settle down, tiger. What's with this 'potention income' rubbish ?"
All earnings for copyright are 'potential' not 'real' that's the situation with copyright:
Theft is loss of something, it is a *real* loss.
Copyright infringement is loss of *potential* future income which may or may not have been realized if the copyright infringement didn't happen.
I'm suggesting use of the word 'tangible' to avoid the intangible claims made for copyright losses as claimed by the MPAA and RIAA. Copyright infringements that result in a situation where the loss of income isn't likely to cause a tangible loss would be declared fair-use.
(Read my comments relating to 'tangible' I made to the AC above.)
" then you'd have to pay in order to have two copies in different formats"
Except you wouldn't, just like Australians rip their recordings into MP3 format now, even though its technically illegal to do so -> no tangible loss.
"listen to the same CD for ever"
Again, people take backup copies even though its technically illegal -> no tangible loss.
Thats why I included 'tangible', it has to be a real world loss, not some imagined number pulled from a PR executives ass.
They should define unfair use and work from that.
Unfair use- any use that results in a tangible loss of potential income from the copyright holder from the sale of the copyrighed material (i.e. not from the carrier or from any appended item*).
So it follows that fair use is anything that doesn't cause a tangible loss of income. Private copies for your own use are fair, transfer between media types are fair. Mix tapes for the wife are fair, mix tapes for distant friends are not fair.
Recording TV programs for yourself or close family is fair, recording TV programs and selling them is not fair.
*If they also define it as the copyrighted material itself (not including any carrier) that they earn a profit from, then it stops that Lexmark crap where they attach the copyright material to a toner cartridge and pretending the whole cartridge is the copyrighted material.
Its not just that they use a keypad, its also that they use a challenge response system.
You have a transaction card, the computer asks for transaction number X, you lookup X to get Y and enter Y using the keypad.
So even if the phisher captures the screen it will be different on the next transaction.
Its not a smartcard, its a printed plastic card with lots of numbers on it.
Something like:
01 2943
02 3955
03 2048
Its just a 4 digit number used to confirm the transaction used in addition to the login and password.
" It seems well established that global temperatures have in general been gradually increasing over the past century."
True (underlying temps at least).
"It seems well established by that same data that begining in the early fourties there was an extended period of gradually decreasing global temperatures."
WAR + aftermath
"It seems well established that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have been increasing throughout this entire period."
Prior to 1960 the CO2 numbers are not reliable.
Imagine the end of WW2, you shut down the factories making planes, tanks and ships and start rebuilding your agriculture so you can eventually end rationing. How would the CO2 increase post war? Wouldn't it have dropped till we recovered in the 1950s?
"How do environmentalists account for the two decades of decreasing global temperatures?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
Take a look at the graph here. Notice the upshoot in temperature as the second world war kicked in, then notice the sharp drop at the end of the second world war.
I put it to you that common sense says that humans burning fossil fuels -> makes co2 -> more co2 in atmosphere -> higher temperature.
I also put it to you that its not a problem because oil will run out too soon.
SabadellAtlantico already has a fix similar to this.
You enter a pin number to confirm. It says 'enter number 37 from your magic numbers card'.
You enter it by clicking on a keypad. The location of the numbers on the keys change randomly each time. (I think they are images, but I've only seen it used so I'm not sure)
So even if they record it with a keylogger, they are not sure what the pin number is and anyway next time it will be a different pin number.