Exactly. It's rather more complicated to reduce the number of steps. Not necessarily enough to be patentable, but the implementation details are much different than 10 click shopping. --
Dude, don't use "prove" in your subject and then say "it's not conclusive".
And no, I don't think that helps the argument tremendously. 35 USC 103 says that to be non-obvious, it has to be obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the field. While I think that's the case, I don't think that 2 patents proves that to be true. --
Notwithstanding any provision of the antitrust laws, any copyright owners of sound recordings and any transmitting organizations entitled to a statutory license under this subsection may negotiate and agree upon royalty rates and license terms and conditions for making phonorecords of such sound recordings under this section and the proportionate division of fees paid among copyright owners, and may designate common agents to negotiate, agree to, pay, or receive such royalty payments.
If so, what's wrong with such a clause? And why the mention of antitrust laws? --
Okay. So far, we have some very good examples of working text interfaces and 2d graphical user interfaces. When we went to a GUI, quite a bit of thought went into designing where things should be placed, how the user would interact, etc...
People have argued a lot about which interface is better-- I believe that 2D-GUIs are better than text for some apps, and visa versa.
Maybe there just haven't been any really good 3D-GUI's developed yet. And maybe when there are, there will be apps that work very well in 3D, and there will still be apps that are more suited to text. --
For years I have been vocal (and largely unrecognized) in my views that VRML was being handled wrongly.. aiming at technical specs rather than what users wanted and what environments to craft that would make it easy for ordinary folks to make 3D spaces. All those 3D modeling tools, however wonderful, will never appeal to a large content community or be able to be used by the ordinary netizen. In addition, and sharing your frustration, the fact that multi user was never treated as a priority was a big problem for VRML and potentially its fatal mistake. Building 3D is fundamentally a social activity (in the real world) and VRML desperately needed a multi user virtual commons where people could come in and kick the tires of new objects or properties, carrying out their development at the level of a real usable visual space. The VRML mailing list approach was a disaster and brought the level of discussion down from the experience of 3D to "text only" code talk and politics. The few multi user vrml spaces made were either not open to the community for development or were efforts too small to drive the development of VRML.
This reminds me so much of Snow Crash.
Of course, the reasons could have been basic things like it was slow and clunky. But the above opinions seem valid too. --
Indeed, it's a common misconception that any IP is inherently rightfully the author's. NPR did a story on the Sony Bono suit, and they played a soundclip of a guy saying that he thinks copyrights should be extended even longer, perhaps indefinitely. "I wrote it, I should be able to control it".
I almost wish that the word "Property" was never associated with information. Information is radically different than physical property. Authors use other authors' information to create new information. Information is easily copied and essentially impossible to restrict in ways that a single piece of physical property is. Yet some people still tend to think of information "property" as the same as physical property.
The fact that nothing has gone into the public domain for a long time just reinforces the cultural idea that authors get to retain control of their works forever. --
Some things that are easy in real life are hard to do on the internet. Sometimes it takes some truly novel ideas to get them to work on the new medium. I can't think of a good example just now.
In general, implementing things on the internet is easier since the restrictions on a VonNeumann machine are less than the restrictions of the real world. But problems come in when you try to make something work with existing software. For instance, being able to do PCAnywhere-like things within DHTML. I think that's pretty darn clever, and maybe almost patentable.
Sometimes the implementation details for "X on the internet" is quite a bit harder than "X in the real world", and if the method in which it's implemented on the internet requires significant novel ideas, then I don't see why the implementation details can't be patented (if one believes that fairly novel ideas are patentable). --
They could concievably patent the encryption/decryption process. Granted, Base64 and such are previous art, but you can patent combinations of obvious ideas, if the combination is novel enough. Given USPTO's current definition of "novel", it could probably be patented. --
It's "threat of legal force" that shut them down. Ignoring a C&D letter doesn't mean you go to jail. Also, some people don't want to spend lots of time or money fighting something they aren't particularly passionate about. --
Do you want your consumer's rights being eroded by companies "loaning" things to you? Do you think that if they figured it out, that they wouldn't try to "loan" everything to you and sell nothing? Do you think it's okay for companies to restrict the right to reverse engineer a product, allowing them to prevent interopability, and thus hindering competition? --
I was simply explaining that the arguments used in my previous comment didn't validate patents in any way.
A patent is currently a legal defense against building a similar device. If DC had a patent on the "decryption" process, it would be illegal for us to write a decryptor of our own, be that morally right or wrong.
I have an ideological problem with a company "loaning" its hardware out so that it can take away a consumer's rights such as fair use. I believe that competition can only occur if interoperability is allowed, so reverse engineering is necessary. I believe that DC's arguments are in conflict with those beliefs (and the law). I'm hoping that their EULA will be invalidated and severely violated if ever tested in court. So I personally (my opinion, not necessarily slashdot's or anyone else's, I take responsibility if I'm wrong) think it's morally okay for me to use a CueCat driver.
Granted, authors of IP like to place some restrictions on their work, OSS or otherwise. But what DC is doing is "loaning" hardware to people who have an expectation that they own it (because no other freebie is loaned, and because of "fair use") and then not informing them of their obligations. When you get GPL'd code, you know up front that it's GPL'd...?.....?? --
Well, I find patents offensive, but DC can't even get one of them despite the fact that everyone else is getting them for trivial things. Maybe they're paying the lawyers too much and not bribing the patent office enough.
Patents, when granted for truly innovative things like they were in the Good Old Days(tm), seem less offensive. Though in those cases, I'd hope that the company would have cheap licenses so they could benefit society as much as possible. Recoup the R&D money, make a little profit, and then put it in the public domain. That probly makes me a communist. --
Either DC is legally correct or they're not... the second paragraph is largely inconsequential. I was just ribbing them for skewing the facts, and I don't want to counter-skew (though it does sound kind of fun). --
Rather than sending cease-and-desist notices, the company sent less serious "notification of infringement" letters.
Except they didn't notify as to what IP was being infringed upon, funny that.
"People can't expect to take one of our devices and run it through their own engine," he said. "There are boundaries.... It must still do what it was built for, but they can extend its functionality."
Ahh, we're supposed to only use the device in the way they want us to? Okay, then they should only use our private usage information in the way we want them to. (okay, I'm just being inflamatory, but this is fun)
In an attempt to encourage developers, Digital Convergence put together what Davis called a "mostly open-source" license just a few days after the first Linux driver appeared. According to Davis, the $20 license is fairly liberal...
Yeah, and I bet that if they were pressed, they'd give developers $20 just to get them to sign one of these so they could sue them when developers don't do what DC wants. Without such an agreement, it doesn't look like they have a leg to stand on.
--
"Just because I give you the Cat scanner, it does not immediately give you the right to go into business against me with my own technology,"
Yes it does, unless you've patented your technology. Otherwise, there's things called "free market" and "competition" which assume that there exists interchangable products so they can be incrementally optimized by companies trying to gain market share.
And anyway, no one is going into business, nor are the efforts competing with DC's products very much. Most linux hackers want to scan stuff they already have, DC's use is for things that people want to buy. --
Actually, someone suggests just that here. But trademarks conflict sometimes... the same name in different industries or different countries. So it'd either have to be hierachical (company.industry.country.tm) or it would have to include its full address (company.road.zipcode.country.tm). --
But then you'd have the same problem as porn blockers... not everyone has the same definition of "spam" or "porn". Granted, the S/N ratio would greatly improve if the ones that qualify under the lowest common denominator definition would be relegated to.ads, but that wouldn't be a complete solution. --
Mojo is time-weighted. I'm suggesting voting-infrequency-weighted, because if a person hardly ever marks a story down as OT, the times that they do mark it down, they're more likely to be right than a person who marks half of the stories down as OT.
Though you'd start to have a problem if half the stories actually were OT. It's just a simple solution for a hopefully simple problem. --
Amen. His argument seems to go something like this:
Hackers break SDMI
RIAA realizes SDMI is fundamentally flawed
RIAA releases a new copy protection system. This new system is somehow more customer friendly, despite the fact that:
Customers aren't friendly to RIAA, they're happy to use Napster in droves.
RIAA is made up of big companies. Big companies like frightening EULAs
Citizen-friendly copy protection is hard to do. It has to let you carry your music with you... it has to be as easy to use as CD's are, and no more intrusive privacy wise.
Kuro5hin has had story moderation for quite some time.
But yeah... I think readers should be able to vote a story as "old". To avoid trolls from taking over, perhaps preference could be given to people whose ratio of offtopic-votes to comment-posts is lower.
--
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. It's rather more complicated to reduce the number of steps. Not necessarily enough to be patentable, but the implementation details are much different than 10 click shopping.
--
And no, I don't think that helps the argument tremendously. 35 USC 103 says that to be non-obvious, it has to be obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the field. While I think that's the case, I don't think that 2 patents proves that to be true.
--
17 USC 112(e)(1)(D)
If so, what's wrong with such a clause? And why the mention of antitrust laws?
--
People have argued a lot about which interface is better-- I believe that 2D-GUIs are better than text for some apps, and visa versa.
Maybe there just haven't been any really good 3D-GUI's developed yet. And maybe when there are, there will be apps that work very well in 3D, and there will still be apps that are more suited to text.
--
- For years I have been vocal (and largely unrecognized) in my views that VRML was being handled wrongly.. aiming at technical specs rather than what users wanted and what environments to craft that would make it easy for ordinary folks to make 3D spaces. All those 3D modeling tools, however wonderful, will never appeal to a large content community or be able to be used by the ordinary netizen. In addition, and sharing your frustration, the fact that multi user was never treated as a priority was a big problem for VRML and potentially its fatal mistake. Building 3D is fundamentally a social activity (in the real world) and VRML desperately needed a multi user virtual commons where people could come in and kick the tires of new objects or properties, carrying out their development at the level of a real usable visual space. The VRML mailing list approach was a disaster and brought the level of discussion down from the experience of 3D to "text only" code talk and politics. The few multi user vrml spaces made were either not open to the community for development or were efforts too small to drive the development of VRML.
This reminds me so much of Snow Crash.Of course, the reasons could have been basic things like it was slow and clunky. But the above opinions seem valid too.
--
I almost wish that the word "Property" was never associated with information. Information is radically different than physical property. Authors use other authors' information to create new information. Information is easily copied and essentially impossible to restrict in ways that a single piece of physical property is. Yet some people still tend to think of information "property" as the same as physical property.
The fact that nothing has gone into the public domain for a long time just reinforces the cultural idea that authors get to retain control of their works forever.
--
The first thing that any technology is widely used for: pr0n. The internet, DVD's, etc...
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They don't ahve a right to your registration information... you can always choose to not read their information.
--
Accuracy or quality in posting is no longer what's most important. What is most important is being the first to post so you can be moderated up.
--
In general, implementing things on the internet is easier since the restrictions on a VonNeumann machine are less than the restrictions of the real world. But problems come in when you try to make something work with existing software. For instance, being able to do PCAnywhere-like things within DHTML. I think that's pretty darn clever, and maybe almost patentable.
Sometimes the implementation details for "X on the internet" is quite a bit harder than "X in the real world", and if the method in which it's implemented on the internet requires significant novel ideas, then I don't see why the implementation details can't be patented (if one believes that fairly novel ideas are patentable).
--
They could concievably patent the encryption/decryption process. Granted, Base64 and such are previous art, but you can patent combinations of obvious ideas, if the combination is novel enough. Given USPTO's current definition of "novel", it could probably be patented.
--
It's "threat of legal force" that shut them down. Ignoring a C&D letter doesn't mean you go to jail. Also, some people don't want to spend lots of time or money fighting something they aren't particularly passionate about.
--
- The
:CueCat reader is only on loan to you from Digital:Convergence and may be recalled at any time.
In case you missed it, thePeople don't necessarily read or click "accept" for GPL licenses, yet it's claimed that they're bound by it.
Previous!
--
Do you want your consumer's rights being eroded by companies "loaning" things to you? Do you think that if they figured it out, that they wouldn't try to "loan" everything to you and sell nothing? Do you think it's okay for companies to restrict the right to reverse engineer a product, allowing them to prevent interopability, and thus hindering competition?
--
A patent is currently a legal defense against building a similar device. If DC had a patent on the "decryption" process, it would be illegal for us to write a decryptor of our own, be that morally right or wrong.
I have an ideological problem with a company "loaning" its hardware out so that it can take away a consumer's rights such as fair use. I believe that competition can only occur if interoperability is allowed, so reverse engineering is necessary. I believe that DC's arguments are in conflict with those beliefs (and the law). I'm hoping that their EULA will be invalidated and severely violated if ever tested in court. So I personally (my opinion, not necessarily slashdot's or anyone else's, I take responsibility if I'm wrong) think it's morally okay for me to use a CueCat driver.
Anonymous != falsified name.
--
Granted, authors of IP like to place some restrictions on their work, OSS or otherwise. But what DC is doing is "loaning" hardware to people who have an expectation that they own it (because no other freebie is loaned, and because of "fair use") and then not informing them of their obligations. When you get GPL'd code, you know up front that it's GPL'd. ..? .....??
--
Patents, when granted for truly innovative things like they were in the Good Old Days(tm), seem less offensive. Though in those cases, I'd hope that the company would have cheap licenses so they could benefit society as much as possible. Recoup the R&D money, make a little profit, and then put it in the public domain. That probly makes me a communist.
--
Either DC is legally correct or they're not... the second paragraph is largely inconsequential. I was just ribbing them for skewing the facts, and I don't want to counter-skew (though it does sound kind of fun).
--
Except they didn't notify as to what IP was being infringed upon, funny that.
"People can't expect to take one of our devices and run it through their own engine," he said. "There are boundaries.... It must still do what it was built for, but they can extend its functionality."
Ahh, we're supposed to only use the device in the way they want us to? Okay, then they should only use our private usage information in the way we want them to. (okay, I'm just being inflamatory, but this is fun)
In an attempt to encourage developers, Digital Convergence put together what Davis called a "mostly open-source" license just a few days after the first Linux driver appeared. According to Davis, the $20 license is fairly liberal...
Yeah, and I bet that if they were pressed, they'd give developers $20 just to get them to sign one of these so they could sue them when developers don't do what DC wants. Without such an agreement, it doesn't look like they have a leg to stand on.
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Yes it does, unless you've patented your technology. Otherwise, there's things called "free market" and "competition" which assume that there exists interchangable products so they can be incrementally optimized by companies trying to gain market share.
And anyway, no one is going into business, nor are the efforts competing with DC's products very much. Most linux hackers want to scan stuff they already have, DC's use is for things that people want to buy.
--
Actually, someone suggests just that here. But trademarks conflict sometimes... the same name in different industries or different countries. So it'd either have to be hierachical (company.industry.country.tm) or it would have to include its full address (company.road.zipcode.country.tm).
--
But then you'd have the same problem as porn blockers... not everyone has the same definition of "spam" or "porn". Granted, the S/N ratio would greatly improve if the ones that qualify under the lowest common denominator definition would be relegated to .ads, but that wouldn't be a complete solution.
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Though you'd start to have a problem if half the stories actually were OT. It's just a simple solution for a hopefully simple problem.
--
--
But yeah... I think readers should be able to vote a story as "old". To avoid trolls from taking over, perhaps preference could be given to people whose ratio of offtopic-votes to comment-posts is lower.
--