and c) you probably have better thing to do with your money (if you've actually got enough) than mount a lawsuit against the record industry. But that doesn't mean someone (or a group of people) with resources couldn't shell out the extra $$ for premium-quality DSL service and give it a shot.
A hyperlink in the eyes of the masses is similar, not to a footnote that says "go look in the June issue of Time", but to actually HAVING the June issue of Time stapeled on the back of the paper
To most people, a hyperlink is as convenient as having the document stapled to the back of the paper. But there are fundamental differences that even your average Joe can understand (and certainly a judge.) One difference is that the 'publisher' of the linked-to document retains control; if they need the document taken down (or are ordered to take it down), they can do it themselves at the source. Whereas nobody can control a paper clipping from Time once it leaves your hand. With that fundamental difference clarified, the rest of the decision revolves around a simple question of convenience, and there it's hard to draw any sensible lines. If you happen to be reading a paper document in a library, resolving a written bibliographic reference is a question of walking a few yards through the stacks (or grabbing piece of microfilm.) I find it hard to believe that a judge would ban references in that case.
The AMA is a good example of an "impartial" scientific organization. But they themselves have a lot of connections with big industry. If you were an individual or a small company with a case against a large medical corporation, would you want put all your faith in an "unbiased" expert witness whose motives may not be completely unbiased?
One of the problems is that many judges, whether through inexperience with the medium or deliberate intent, really want to see technology as an excuse to rewrite basic law. As just one example, including a hyperlink to a page is little different from providing a bibliographic reference in a paper document-- but recent decisions draw make the former a potential crime.
While many cases would be helped by a judge who understands the issues (particularly in the area of patent infringement), a large percentage of the important cases before the courts rely on very subjective interpretations by judges who will probably never "get it", no matter how well they are re-educated.
This is going to fundamentally change the approach scientists are taking toward understanding the genome. Instead of mass-replicating a particular segment, then seeing what protein it expresses (something they're getting quite good at), suddenly we have a notion of instructional code, telling the DNA how to express a protein. It seems to me the eventual solution to this problem is going to rely almost exclusively on computer processing techniques. At some point, genetics may become one specialized field of computer science. Too bad for the biologists, who were making nice headway with PCR and knockout-mice, among other techniques.
>> Will people dare to fall in love with, and mate with, a clone?
Stupid people won't. That's okay; more potential partners for the rest of us.
And I can tell you, I'm dying to get with some of those stupid people!
Re:That's not what they mean by "unique."
on
Who Owns Your Body?
·
· Score: 2
When you tell sick people that you're trying to turn their suffering into a treatment they don't ask us whether we're going to make money from it, how much it will cost or what share of the profits they're demanding.
Apparently (the article mentions) one of the concerns with the Tristan da Cunha case was that there was a language barrier, and certainly an understanding barrier that might have prevented those individuals from truly understanding how much money might be made from their genes.
That aside, I would argue that most patients simply don't understand how the system works. As this becomes more common, and more money is made off of those patients (and drug prices remain high), look for the "thanks for healing me" attitude to change. Not to mention that an increasing number of discoveries will be coming from people who aren't actually sick themselves, and therefore aren't receiving any benefit from the development of treatments. Finally, while most people are grateful that a treatment is being created, they often don't realize that many of their fellow sufferers will be priced out of the cure. I think that the current model will work as long as these occurrences are few and far between. When they become the norm, people will suddenly begin objecting in larger and larger numbers.
Re:That's not what they mean by "unique."
on
Who Owns Your Body?
·
· Score: 2
And you people think it's unfair that the people who contributed tissue samples don't collect royalties? They're getting a treatment for their condition -- or the satisfaction that at least someone else won't suffer as they have.
From reading that article, it seems that there are quite a few cases where that's simply untrue. Once the tissue samples leave your control (almost instantly, according to today's laws), biotech companies can do anything they want with them. They don't have to treat you. They don't have to offer you the drugs at anything approaching an affordable price. Take the example of the people on Tristan da Cunha who probably will never be able to afford the drugs that their unique genes created.
Of course the companies paid for the research... But a diamond-mining company pays for the cost of digging up and polishing the stones. That doesn't mean you have no right to a portion of the (not inconsiderable) profits, if you own the mine. (Before anyone responds with a treatise on diamond mining, it's just an off-the-top-of-my-head example. Please feel free to substitute a more appropriate one.)
The worst thing about the current system, is that if people ever do wake up to their lack-of-rights on a grand scale, it could lead to large numbers of people "sequestering" their genes. Religious groups, for instance, might kick off the trend, as there are many who probably find this to be a frightening possibility (with some good reason.) Society as a whole would suffer as a result.
If RAMBUS implemented these technologies first, they're rightfully theirs.
The primary issue here is not whether Rambus' patents are valid by themselves. The issue is that Rambus may have violated contractual obligations to JEDEC and its members. The JEDEC member rules specifically prohibit what Rambus allegedly did (sitting on patents while allowing them to become standards), and presumably if it's determined that Rambus violated those rules... then lots of penalties could be applied. I don't know what they might be (I don't know if they could actually invalidate the patent, or just force Rambus to pay huge settlements.)
There's no point in JEDEC having a set of rules for just this purpose if they can't be enforced. It seems that if Rambus really did violate them, they should be punished. Otherwise, standards organizations simply can't function, as long as for-profit members can get away with breaking the rules and producing tainted standards.
The other allegation, which is harder to prove, is that Rambus may actually have "stolen" ideas brought up duruing the JEDEC meetings. If that's the case, their claims on the patents may be illegitimate.
In the early part of this century, there were companies who tried to offer music service in the city via dedicated lines for a subscription fee. At some point, broadcast radio became common and affordable. Naturally, broadcasters couldn't demand a fee from their listeners-- the technology didn't exist, to state the obvious. But radio was more convenient than the dedicated line model, so that industry was virtually wiped out. Radio eventually figured out a way to make money, and nowadays broadcast radio and television are a cornerstone of our entertainment economy.
If Bill Joy had been alive in those days, he would perhaps have vigorously advocated legislation to stop radio broadcasting, on the theory that "free" radio could would wipe out the promising commercial business of the dedicated-circuit Music companies. It's a very limited view, and it overlooks the fact that entire industries develop from the ashes of some older, untenable business model.
P2P is here to stay. It's no great technological revelation; it's simply the next, obvious step in the development of the mainstream internet. There are millions of machines on the net, with vast amounts of bandwidth connecting them. People will share information, and the only way to stop them is to impose draconian measures on their personal machines or network connections. That would be a disaster for our computer industry, and I sincerely doubt that such policies could ever be viable. But I'm an optimist.
That's an interesting perspective for a guy like that to have. Think of all the things nerds built "just because it was cool", and how essential they are to the economy Bill Joy is so eager to defend.
Congress shall have power... to promote the progress
of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times
to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their
respective writings and discoveries....
What's interesting about the dissent is that it specifically addresses the majority's reason for determining that the constitution's language is irrelevant. In other words, although the constitution specifically says copyrights should only be granted for "a limited time", the majority found that Congress isn't bound by it.
They made this decision based on Mitchell Bros. Film
Group v. Cinema Adult Theater, which dealt with the issue of whether a copyrighted work needed to promote the 'useful arts' (whatever that is!), also mentioned in the same sentence as the "limited time" requirement. The decision of that court was that, as the 'useful arts' stuff comes early in the the sentence, and is really very introductory and hard-to-define, 'usefulness' was not a binding requirement for copyright. This case is slightly different, though, as the "limited time" bit is a requirement and is right at the heart of the sentence. However, the judges writing the majority seem to be using the earlier decision as a means to rule that more or less any portion of the language in the copyright portion of Article 1 can be ignored. This would more or less allow congress to do whatever they wanted, without concerning themselves with the details. Am I understanding this decision correctly?
Sure, but what did challenging this one patent cost? B&N isn't saying, but with a case that has stretched for years with no chance of a decision until at least the end of this year, it must be costing hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. There aren't enough deep pockets interested in knocking out these other patents. The legal system may triumph in this one situation, but has it really worked?
When analysts look at a technology company (and for now, Amazon remains in that category), one of the first things they want to know is: does the company have patents? So far this patent hasn't netted Amazon a dime (any money they've made licensing to Apple is clearly outweighed by the lawyers' bills), but patents last for decades. Analysts are interested in the patents not for the money they made in the past, they're speculating on the money they might make in the future. This is why Amazon has no desire to give up its claim.
Er, I meant to specifically refer to technical journals... Got lost in there somewhere. But I appreciate it-- you were much more polite than some other posters.
Sorry, I was referring to technical journals in a previous post-- they (normally) can't be taken out of the library. But I do thank you for rapidly pointing out the obvious.
I think you both have a point. Certainly money is lost due to wasted hours, lost material. On the other hand, corporations routinely overstate these costs. For instance, if a paralegal loses 5 hours, I'm certain the loss is recorded at the external rate (the rate the company bills outside customers) even if the paralegal is not working for any particular customer at the time. It'd be too much trouble to get the numbers right, and wouldn't benefit anyone but the virus's creator. This sort of half-sloppy, half-deliberate overstatement is common in hacking cases (lots of books about this) and is encouraged by the authorities because it helps them build cases and get funding.
It was mentioned in a previous reply, and of course I haven't forgotten about libraries. But what libraries can't do is provide multiple copies of an expensive textbook, if sy 50 or 60 people wanted to look at it. They also don't allow you the convenience of reading it in your home. There are music libraries in the world, it should be pointed out, but that doesn't stop Napster.
You're right that it's probably cheaper to buy the paperback than to print the book yourself. But I don't mind reading books off the screen-- and certainly, MS and others are banking on a certain number of people being willing to do so, with their Reader software. And of course, there are hundreds of very expensive books (think textbooks, technical books) that would be worth scanning and reproducing. Come to think of it, I'm surprised university students haven't put together a Napster for textbooks-- think how much money I used to spend for books, only to sell them back for a fraction of the price.
Not that any of this falls into the honest category, just suggesting it.
It's interesting isn't it, that the net seems to have altogether bypassed massive copy-infringment of the written word (which is much less bulky) in favor of more visceral forms of communication (music/movies)? I suppose it certainly is easier to rip CDs than to transcribe books, but I'm surprised we never saw a major wave of bestsellers appearing for free on the net. Or maybe we did, and I missed it.
Depends how the other music corps feel about that. Napster's going to end up owing them all money even if they do voluntarily shut down. Will the other companies be ok with BMI taking things over? BMI's going to have to do a lot of wheeling and dealing to get them to agree to that.
Killing Napster could put a surprisingly large dent in this business. For a while. Gnutella's not-quite-there-yet, Scour's gone (for all intents and purposes), and the other incorporated services are going to be rethinking their business model-- it ain't worth being sued when you know you're gonna lose. Will OpenNapster gain wide-scale acceptance seeing how vulnerable it will be? Maybe offshore sites are the solution.
Slashdot Mirror
and c) you probably have better thing to do with your money (if you've actually got enough) than mount a lawsuit against the record industry. But that doesn't mean someone (or a group of people) with resources couldn't shell out the extra $$ for premium-quality DSL service and give it a shot.
To most people, a hyperlink is as convenient as having the document stapled to the back of the paper. But there are fundamental differences that even your average Joe can understand (and certainly a judge.) One difference is that the 'publisher' of the linked-to document retains control; if they need the document taken down (or are ordered to take it down), they can do it themselves at the source. Whereas nobody can control a paper clipping from Time once it leaves your hand. With that fundamental difference clarified, the rest of the decision revolves around a simple question of convenience, and there it's hard to draw any sensible lines. If you happen to be reading a paper document in a library, resolving a written bibliographic reference is a question of walking a few yards through the stacks (or grabbing piece of microfilm.) I find it hard to believe that a judge would ban references in that case.
The AMA is a good example of an "impartial" scientific organization. But they themselves have a lot of connections with big industry. If you were an individual or a small company with a case against a large medical corporation, would you want put all your faith in an "unbiased" expert witness whose motives may not be completely unbiased?
While many cases would be helped by a judge who understands the issues (particularly in the area of patent infringement), a large percentage of the important cases before the courts rely on very subjective interpretations by judges who will probably never "get it", no matter how well they are re-educated.
This is going to fundamentally change the approach scientists are taking toward understanding the genome. Instead of mass-replicating a particular segment, then seeing what protein it expresses (something they're getting quite good at), suddenly we have a notion of instructional code, telling the DNA how to express a protein. It seems to me the eventual solution to this problem is going to rely almost exclusively on computer processing techniques. At some point, genetics may become one specialized field of computer science. Too bad for the biologists, who were making nice headway with PCR and knockout-mice, among other techniques.
Stupid people won't. That's okay; more potential partners for the rest of us.
And I can tell you, I'm dying to get with some of those stupid people!
Apparently (the article mentions) one of the concerns with the Tristan da Cunha case was that there was a language barrier, and certainly an understanding barrier that might have prevented those individuals from truly understanding how much money might be made from their genes.
That aside, I would argue that most patients simply don't understand how the system works. As this becomes more common, and more money is made off of those patients (and drug prices remain high), look for the "thanks for healing me" attitude to change. Not to mention that an increasing number of discoveries will be coming from people who aren't actually sick themselves, and therefore aren't receiving any benefit from the development of treatments. Finally, while most people are grateful that a treatment is being created, they often don't realize that many of their fellow sufferers will be priced out of the cure. I think that the current model will work as long as these occurrences are few and far between. When they become the norm, people will suddenly begin objecting in larger and larger numbers.
From reading that article, it seems that there are quite a few cases where that's simply untrue. Once the tissue samples leave your control (almost instantly, according to today's laws), biotech companies can do anything they want with them. They don't have to treat you. They don't have to offer you the drugs at anything approaching an affordable price. Take the example of the people on Tristan da Cunha who probably will never be able to afford the drugs that their unique genes created.
Of course the companies paid for the research... But a diamond-mining company pays for the cost of digging up and polishing the stones. That doesn't mean you have no right to a portion of the (not inconsiderable) profits, if you own the mine. (Before anyone responds with a treatise on diamond mining, it's just an off-the-top-of-my-head example. Please feel free to substitute a more appropriate one.)
The worst thing about the current system, is that if people ever do wake up to their lack-of-rights on a grand scale, it could lead to large numbers of people "sequestering" their genes. Religious groups, for instance, might kick off the trend, as there are many who probably find this to be a frightening possibility (with some good reason.) Society as a whole would suffer as a result.
The primary issue here is not whether Rambus' patents are valid by themselves. The issue is that Rambus may have violated contractual obligations to JEDEC and its members. The JEDEC member rules specifically prohibit what Rambus allegedly did (sitting on patents while allowing them to become standards), and presumably if it's determined that Rambus violated those rules... then lots of penalties could be applied. I don't know what they might be (I don't know if they could actually invalidate the patent, or just force Rambus to pay huge settlements.)
There's no point in JEDEC having a set of rules for just this purpose if they can't be enforced. It seems that if Rambus really did violate them, they should be punished. Otherwise, standards organizations simply can't function, as long as for-profit members can get away with breaking the rules and producing tainted standards.
The other allegation, which is harder to prove, is that Rambus may actually have "stolen" ideas brought up duruing the JEDEC meetings. If that's the case, their claims on the patents may be illegitimate.
If Bill Joy had been alive in those days, he would perhaps have vigorously advocated legislation to stop radio broadcasting, on the theory that "free" radio could would wipe out the promising commercial business of the dedicated-circuit Music companies. It's a very limited view, and it overlooks the fact that entire industries develop from the ashes of some older, untenable business model.
P2P is here to stay. It's no great technological revelation; it's simply the next, obvious step in the development of the mainstream internet. There are millions of machines on the net, with vast amounts of bandwidth connecting them. People will share information, and the only way to stop them is to impose draconian measures on their personal machines or network connections. That would be a disaster for our computer industry, and I sincerely doubt that such policies could ever be viable. But I'm an optimist.
That's an interesting perspective for a guy like that to have. Think of all the things nerds built "just because it was cool", and how essential they are to the economy Bill Joy is so eager to defend.
What's interesting about the dissent is that it specifically addresses the majority's reason for determining that the constitution's language is irrelevant. In other words, although the constitution specifically says copyrights should only be granted for "a limited time", the majority found that Congress isn't bound by it.
They made this decision based on Mitchell Bros. Film Group v. Cinema Adult Theater, which dealt with the issue of whether a copyrighted work needed to promote the 'useful arts' (whatever that is!), also mentioned in the same sentence as the "limited time" requirement. The decision of that court was that, as the 'useful arts' stuff comes early in the the sentence, and is really very introductory and hard-to-define, 'usefulness' was not a binding requirement for copyright. This case is slightly different, though, as the "limited time" bit is a requirement and is right at the heart of the sentence. However, the judges writing the majority seem to be using the earlier decision as a means to rule that more or less any portion of the language in the copyright portion of Article 1 can be ignored. This would more or less allow congress to do whatever they wanted, without concerning themselves with the details. Am I understanding this decision correctly?
This is the true reason we need to support the MPAA. If they lose money to piracy, tit quality will only go down.
Windows had kernel threads in 1993? Ack. Did you ever try to use them? Wait, did Win32 even exist in 1993?
Sure, but what did challenging this one patent cost? B&N isn't saying, but with a case that has stretched for years with no chance of a decision until at least the end of this year, it must be costing hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. There aren't enough deep pockets interested in knocking out these other patents. The legal system may triumph in this one situation, but has it really worked?
When analysts look at a technology company (and for now, Amazon remains in that category), one of the first things they want to know is: does the company have patents? So far this patent hasn't netted Amazon a dime (any money they've made licensing to Apple is clearly outweighed by the lawyers' bills), but patents last for decades. Analysts are interested in the patents not for the money they made in the past, they're speculating on the money they might make in the future. This is why Amazon has no desire to give up its claim.
Er, I meant to specifically refer to technical journals... Got lost in there somewhere. But I appreciate it-- you were much more polite than some other posters.
Sorry, I was referring to technical journals in a previous post-- they (normally) can't be taken out of the library. But I do thank you for rapidly pointing out the obvious.
I think you both have a point. Certainly money is lost due to wasted hours, lost material. On the other hand, corporations routinely overstate these costs. For instance, if a paralegal loses 5 hours, I'm certain the loss is recorded at the external rate (the rate the company bills outside customers) even if the paralegal is not working for any particular customer at the time. It'd be too much trouble to get the numbers right, and wouldn't benefit anyone but the virus's creator. This sort of half-sloppy, half-deliberate overstatement is common in hacking cases (lots of books about this) and is encouraged by the authorities because it helps them build cases and get funding.
It was mentioned in a previous reply, and of course I haven't forgotten about libraries. But what libraries can't do is provide multiple copies of an expensive textbook, if sy 50 or 60 people wanted to look at it. They also don't allow you the convenience of reading it in your home. There are music libraries in the world, it should be pointed out, but that doesn't stop Napster.
Really? How difficult would this be? No other administrator of a usenet server has performed regular CD-ROM backups over the past six years?
Not that any of this falls into the honest category, just suggesting it.
It's interesting isn't it, that the net seems to have altogether bypassed massive copy-infringment of the written word (which is much less bulky) in favor of more visceral forms of communication (music/movies)? I suppose it certainly is easier to rip CDs than to transcribe books, but I'm surprised we never saw a major wave of bestsellers appearing for free on the net. Or maybe we did, and I missed it.
Depends how the other music corps feel about that. Napster's going to end up owing them all money even if they do voluntarily shut down. Will the other companies be ok with BMI taking things over? BMI's going to have to do a lot of wheeling and dealing to get them to agree to that.
Killing Napster could put a surprisingly large dent in this business. For a while. Gnutella's not-quite-there-yet, Scour's gone (for all intents and purposes), and the other incorporated services are going to be rethinking their business model-- it ain't worth being sued when you know you're gonna lose. Will OpenNapster gain wide-scale acceptance seeing how vulnerable it will be? Maybe offshore sites are the solution.