intellectual property and patents are two fundamentally different things.
No. "Intellectual property" is used generally about exclusive rights to information in some form. See for instance the annex to the EU directive proposal on IP enforcement. It mentions copyright, trademarks, biopatents, denominations of geographical origin, semiconductor topography etc. Oh well, perhaps it's used differently in the US.
Mission based command placed the authority to act in the hands of the soldiers on front line
Very nice, if the soldiers and the leader share the mission. Saddam recently did his best to discourage "mission based command" because most Iraqi soldiers had the mission "survival for me" - not "survival for the Dear Leader".
Sharing objectives with yours soldiers/workers/developers is the key to great leadership. It's just very hard to achieve.
Anyway, we're off-topic and defying Godwin. We should stop here.
While it may be a BS patent, it's nice to see a large corporation get screwed by a patent for once.
Rather short-sighted. I personally don't care whether corporations are large or small, as long as they make nice products without ruining things for the rest of society (such as environment, legislation, etc.)
There are no winners in the BS patent game, except perhaps patent attourneys. Seeing people punished for trying to do productive work makes me feel sick and sad.
Anyway, they'll probably start suing from the low end, so wipe the grin off your face.
If you follow some of Kop Killa's usenet posts, you should run across some of his not wrong at any cost threads.
No thanks, my life's too short for such "debates". I just thought you were somehow on principle against using code from people you disagreed with. I'd still call that "stupid", but your motivation seems to be different and respectable.
There are only two possible conclusions: he is purposefully trying to hurt people, or he is insane and/or very stupid.
I don't have the time to check your claims, but other posters seem to agree with them, so I'll assume them true for the sake of argument.
you need to trust the person/company offering the code. Cinege cannot be trusted.
I admit I hadn't seen that angle of the question. If that was the point of LinuxGeek's post, I retract my criticism.
On the other hand, IIRC the LRP had a rather strong mailing list with contributors who would probably have a good chance of spotting trojans etc. That should offer some security. Of course, it would be preferable to have code from such unreliable persons going through extra strong auditing. That probably didn't happen since he was maintainer, strong mailing list notwithstanding:-(
Besides, unless someone's trolling this thread, there are other people believing his code should be quarantined for "moral reasons" whatever that is..
If I had realized that Dave 'kill a cop' Cinege was the force behind the Linux Router Project, I would have never used it.
Stupid. What does the world gain from you not using his code?
I've always thought one of the beauties of open source was that people with completely different political and religious ideals could still share code. There are no sinister spiritual (or terrorist) forces hidden in that header file. Just function declarations. Really.
These are patent applications, not granted patents.
Ok, didn't know that. Not that it changes anything. It's stupid that otherwise productive persons have to dig through such a pile of crap before they go to work. (Note that I didn't pick these examples specifically, they're a pretty random sample of the search results for "computer program")
In Europe, the right to a patent application is with the applicant, not with the inventor
No difference to the developer. He's still wasting time and money instead of developing.
A design around is a good idea, but try to consult your patent attorney.
No, it's not a good idea. It means the developer will have to spend time building a stupid kludge instead of just using the simple solution. And I definitely think he should spend his money on pizza and paragliding rather than paying some shaman to chant magic spells against the evil spirits. This advice is of course wrong from a business perspective, but only because we have stupid laws.
EUR 50.000 is a lot of money, but with a good business, you can afford. And it is the top
Ok, cool, we'll leave all development up to the "good businesses". It's just pretty sad that we lose the vitality of an industry where everyone with a computer in a basement has a chance to start out small to become a "good business" some day. Not to mention free software - about the only competitor to Microsoft they haven't killed. (Till now)
You also neglect to mention the cost if the court actually finds against the developer. IBM has 10^N patents, and if I annoy them, they're bound to find something infringing. On second thought I'd rather settle.
As a bonus, you get a competent neutral judge who is specialised
Oh, i see. We could have made the developers pay obscene amounts of money to argue in front of a nitwit bastard. By royal grace we shall grant them the opportunity to pay a merely painful sum for appearing before a neutral specialist. Woot.
There are no submarine patents in Europe, everything is published
Ok, I think we're using "submarine" in two different senses. I don't doubt that your usage is the right one. I meant patents that are somehow overlooked, and where the holder simply waits for infringing products to become really popular before he pulls the gun.
Yes, bring all your money to me. IANAL, I am a patent attorney. My tariff is even higher
Thanks for telling me, I feel much better now.
as an MSc, at least I know what I am talking about.
SARCASM OFF: Good. I'm grateful that your spend your time sharing some of that knowledge. Your perspective is not that well represented on Slashdot, so I've "befriended" you to help me notice what you're saying.
Now, let's get at the root of the issue at hand: do you really think software patents are useful to society?
Yeah, and her opinions, as before, will be wrong, wrong, WRONG!
But instead of presenting them as "an industry representative" she'll sneak them in as uncontested truths seen from the birds eye view of the expert commentator. Not what I'd call progress...
Nahhh, on the other hand, just drop developing, and become lawyer yourself (or take advantage of our generous social system, if being a "productive member of the society" is not your cup of tea)
The Yahoo story and the slashdot blurb have both been (intentionally) misled. Under this directive
anything "technical" can be patented. Programs running on a computer are technical. Business methods implemented "with a computer network" are technical.
In the future, european businesses will compete, not on programming, but on paying patent lawyers. Remember: just because you wrote a program yourself doesn't mean you'll be allowed to distribute it. The result? Punishing innovation.
Company X's response is in the form of an extremely large file [...]
My hosting company kindly then sends me a bill
The draft says the precise rules should take into account "the technical specificities of on-line media". This includes the possibility of linking, and "There should be flexibility regarding the length of the reply since there are less capacity limits for content than in off-line media."
It is clear that they have not done away with "capacity limits" at all, they're just saying that a 5 page reply to a half page article is not the problem for a web page it'd be for a newspaper.
Whatever, I'm still inclined to be against the proposal. Hope to gain some insights from the/. discussion.
Arlene sounds pretty reasonable. She isn't. With one hand she writes articles like this one, with the other one she is relentlessly pushing the patent inflation damaging innovation and competition. The European Patent Office has for many years granted illegal patents on software and business methods, and now they want EU to bless this practice. (Never mind hurting innovation)
Let me point out a couple of points:
First, the EU directive is not proposing to patent all software, it is limited to genuine inventions.
Too late. Robert Millikan ceaselessly bragged about his famous experiment to measure the electron mass. In the end, some witty soul came up with the idea of a unit for self-plugging named "kan", the most common derivative being the "millikan".
I'm think you're wrong. The GPL says all patents covering the distributed code must be "licensed for everyones free use".
Now what happens if you extend the OpenTV code (covered by "free-for-all" patents i, j and k) to do something covered by OpenTV patents X and Y? Do you get a free license for X and Y as well? I think not. I suspect it is this case the (rather involved) legal statement is covering:
neither OpenTV nor the GPL licenses you [...]
under any OpenTV patents that cover the Modifications and/or Derivatives
(my emphasis)
EU Software patents (slightly OT)
on
Copyright Defeats?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The EU commission (lobbied by patent lawyers and big corps) are trying to expand patentability dramatically. Public protest has delayed the process, which is now entering the final phase, where amendments will be voted upon. Next election is june 2004 You still have time to write your MEP!
What "actions" would that be? Downloading music I cannot buy in stores? Recording SNL from public TV broadcasts?
If you stop there, I don't have a big problem with it. As far as your post goes, I had the definite impression that you wouldn't. You mentioned "Matrix Reloaded" in passing. Who could produce movies so expensive without copyright?
how does a new artist, who doesn't have the benefit of a "mainstream" 20 year back catalog, get known? [...] they could whore themselves to a publisher who will take every penny they make
You give excellent examples of artists doing good outside the established publishing system. I'm all for that, especially since it may very well be better for both artists and listeners. It's just that I think the artists should by and large get a chance to decide for themselves. If they really want their CD shared all over the net it's great, Creative Commons is there to help write a license. If not, I think we should be wary of making business decisions on their behalf. (Collective management makes good sense in many situations, though)
A side note: You mention your "direcTV tivo" and "no pay tv". DirecTV.com says they broadcast pay tv. What am I missing?
Well I think it sounds useful, and my situation's rather common:
I have an account at the university, and I like to work with the files there from home. (or the other way round). It's annoying to scp my files back and forth. (Even though konqueror can show sftp://me@my-uni as "just another folder"). If I can have it completely integrated, I'm all for it - then I could keep the relevant files at my nightly-backed-up university account, and it would seem like a folder on my harddrive at home. (slightly "W00T!")
If everyone did like you, the artists would scarcely get paid. It would hurt the musicians pretty badly, and the film makers even worse. In the end your music collection would again grow less diverse, and worse, our entire culture would lose freshness and diversity.
I therefore think your actions are morally wrong, and should (at least partly) be illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
intellectual property and patents are two fundamentally different things.
No. "Intellectual property" is used generally about exclusive rights to information in some form. See for instance the annex to the EU directive proposal on IP enforcement. It mentions copyright, trademarks, biopatents, denominations of geographical origin, semiconductor topography etc. Oh well, perhaps it's used differently in the US.
Mission based command placed the authority to act in the hands of the soldiers on front line
Very nice, if the soldiers and the leader share the mission. Saddam recently did his best to discourage "mission based command" because most Iraqi soldiers had the mission "survival for me" - not "survival for the Dear Leader".
Sharing objectives with yours soldiers/workers/developers is the key to great leadership. It's just very hard to achieve.
Anyway, we're off-topic and defying Godwin. We should stop here.
While it may be a BS patent, it's nice to see a large corporation get screwed by a patent for once.
Rather short-sighted. I personally don't care whether corporations are large or small, as long as they make nice products without ruining things for the rest of society (such as environment, legislation, etc.)
There are no winners in the BS patent game, except perhaps patent attourneys. Seeing people punished for trying to do productive work makes me feel sick and sad. Anyway, they'll probably start suing from the low end, so wipe the grin off your face.
If you follow some of Kop Killa's usenet posts, you should run across some of his not wrong at any cost threads.
:-)
No thanks, my life's too short for such "debates". I just thought you were somehow on principle against using code from people you disagreed with. I'd still call that "stupid", but your motivation seems to be different and respectable.
Whatever, just use LEAF
There are only two possible conclusions: he is purposefully trying to hurt people, or he is insane and/or very stupid.
:-(
I don't have the time to check your claims, but other posters seem to agree with them, so I'll assume them true for the sake of argument.
you need to trust the person/company offering the code. Cinege cannot be trusted.
I admit I hadn't seen that angle of the question. If that was the point of LinuxGeek's post, I retract my criticism.
On the other hand, IIRC the LRP had a rather strong mailing list with contributors who would probably have a good chance of spotting trojans etc. That should offer some security. Of course, it would be preferable to have code from such unreliable persons going through extra strong auditing. That probably didn't happen since he was maintainer, strong mailing list notwithstanding
Besides, unless someone's trolling this thread, there are other people believing his code should be quarantined for "moral reasons" whatever that is..
If I had realized that Dave 'kill a cop' Cinege was the force behind the Linux Router Project, I would have never used it.
Stupid. What does the world gain from you not using his code?
I've always thought one of the beauties of open source was that people with completely different political and religious ideals could still share code. There are no sinister spiritual (or terrorist) forces hidden in that header file. Just function declarations. Really.
These are patent applications, not granted patents.
Ok, didn't know that. Not that it changes anything. It's stupid that otherwise productive persons have to dig through such a pile of crap before they go to work. (Note that I didn't pick these examples specifically, they're a pretty random sample of the search results for "computer program")
In Europe, the right to a patent application is with the applicant, not with the inventor
No difference to the developer. He's still wasting time and money instead of developing.
A design around is a good idea, but try to consult your patent attorney.
No, it's not a good idea. It means the developer will have to spend time building a stupid kludge instead of just using the simple solution. And I definitely think he should spend his money on pizza and paragliding rather than paying some shaman to chant magic spells against the evil spirits. This advice is of course wrong from a business perspective, but only because we have stupid laws.
EUR 50.000 is a lot of money, but with a good business, you can afford. And it is the top
Ok, cool, we'll leave all development up to the "good businesses". It's just pretty sad that we lose the vitality of an industry where everyone with a computer in a basement has a chance to start out small to become a "good business" some day. Not to mention free software - about the only competitor to Microsoft they haven't killed. (Till now)
You also neglect to mention the cost if the court actually finds against the developer. IBM has 10^N patents, and if I annoy them, they're bound to find something infringing. On second thought I'd rather settle.
As a bonus, you get a competent neutral judge who is specialised
Oh, i see. We could have made the developers pay obscene amounts of money to argue in front of a nitwit bastard. By royal grace we shall grant them the opportunity to pay a merely painful sum for appearing before a neutral specialist. Woot.
There are no submarine patents in Europe, everything is published
Ok, I think we're using "submarine" in two different senses. I don't doubt that your usage is the right one. I meant patents that are somehow overlooked, and where the holder simply waits for infringing products to become really popular before he pulls the gun.
Yes, bring all your money to me. IANAL, I am a patent attorney. My tariff is even higher
Thanks for telling me, I feel much better now.
as an MSc, at least I know what I am talking about.
SARCASM OFF: Good. I'm grateful that your spend your time sharing some of that knowledge. Your perspective is not that well represented on Slashdot, so I've "befriended" you to help me notice what you're saying.
Now, let's get at the root of the issue at hand: do you really think software patents are useful to society?
Yeah, and her opinions, as before, will be wrong, wrong, WRONG!
But instead of presenting them as "an industry representative" she'll sneak them in as uncontested truths seen from the birds eye view of the expert commentator. Not what I'd call progress...
As far as I know, only two or three EU member nations have modified their laws to comply with the EUCD.
Check the EUCD status wiki
Unfortunately for you, the blurb and the article fell for the propaganda tricks of one of the more useful (to whom?) members of the Parliament.
1) Make sure you don't infringe patents, like
"Use of hyperlinks in a computer program for an automation application and programmed computer for such an application"
"Method and system including a server, client-terminal, computer and computer program, delivering sound data"
"A computer system and a program install method thereof"
2) When you've found the 100 or so patents your program-to-be infringes, get a deal with all the inventors. (If some of them are slippery, you can probably "invent around" their claim in a couple of months)
3) Pay IBM for not starting a lawsuit you can't afford
4) (Minor step) Write your program
5) Sell it (hoping you won't be victim of a submarine patent)
6) PROFIT!!! (for your lawyer)
Nahhh, on the other hand, just drop developing, and become lawyer yourself (or take advantage of our generous social system, if being a "productive member of the society" is not your cup of tea)
Yes, I know people who met tonight for that very purpose. I was too far away, and anyway, I didn't feel like.
After all, when patents claiming all automatized medical diagnosis got through the old system (when illegal), how would you defend yourself against lawsuits now that every idea somehow involving a computer is explicitly patentable?
Not to mention that all commercial developers will have to pay IBM et.al. to avoid million-dollar-lawsuits. No wonder that innovation dwindles
The Yahoo story and the slashdot blurb have both been (intentionally) misled. Under this directive anything "technical" can be patented. Programs running on a computer are technical. Business methods implemented "with a computer network" are technical.
In the future, european businesses will compete, not on programming, but on paying patent lawyers. Remember: just because you wrote a program yourself doesn't mean you'll be allowed to distribute it. The result? Punishing innovation.
Company X's response is in the form of an extremely large file [...] My hosting company kindly then sends me a bill
/. discussion.
The draft says the precise rules should take into account "the technical specificities of on-line media". This includes the possibility of linking, and "There should be flexibility regarding the length of the reply since there are less capacity limits for content than in off-line media."
It is clear that they have not done away with "capacity limits" at all, they're just saying that a 5 page reply to a half page article is not the problem for a web page it'd be for a newspaper.
Whatever, I'm still inclined to be against the proposal. Hope to gain some insights from the
We only have one short Brazilean newspaper report. A lot of devils could be sticking in the details.
/. blurb said they were all going to run Linux. They're still >90% Windows.
I remember when Sun offered StarOffice for free to danish schools and the
This looks very interesting, but don't jump to conclusions.
Arlene sounds pretty reasonable. She isn't. With one hand she writes articles like this one, with the other one she is relentlessly pushing the patent inflation damaging innovation and competition. The European Patent Office has for many years granted illegal patents on software and business methods, and now they want EU to bless this practice. (Never mind hurting innovation)
Let me point out a couple of points:
First, the EU directive is not proposing to patent all software, it is limited to genuine inventions.
Then what about an "invention" like converting Win95 filenames to WinNT filenames?
To stop the drift towards the US practice of patenting business methods.
Well, if you had been to this meeting you could have learned how to patent business methods under Arlenes proposal.
this directive will not have any adverse effects on open source software development. Even in the US [Linux] declares a 50% growth
And how about the whole GIF/Unisys/LZW debacle? No "adverse effects"?
From medical inventions to household appliances[...]inventions involving software are increasingly a fact of life.
Yes, and that's why we should let "innovators" blanket patent obvious ideas like using computers for medical diagnosis
This directive will provide legal certainty for European software inventors.
Yes, you can be sure that unless you can take on IBM in court, you will have to pay up to develop your idea.
it depends for its safe operation on the active opting-out of every cell carrying passenger.
At the beginning of flight, tell passengers to turn cell phones off. Have detector listening for the beacon signals from mobile phones. Locate phone.
Why wouldn't that work? (There could be some reason, I just don't know enough about these transmissions)
I propose a new unit of ego: The ESR
Too late. Robert Millikan ceaselessly bragged about his famous experiment to measure the electron mass. In the end, some witty soul came up with the idea of a unit for self-plugging named "kan", the most common derivative being the "millikan".
what about the incentive for those companies that *do* innovate?
How about knowing that their product will be first on the market, without being squashed by the legal team of some corporate mastodon?
is there no benefit of the doubt anymore?
When in doubt, what do you do?
A) Forbid people using existing inventions
B) Allow anyone to make good ideas better
I don't know about you, but I'm like, so option B...
I'm think you're wrong. The GPL says all patents covering the distributed code must be "licensed for everyones free use".
Now what happens if you extend the OpenTV code (covered by "free-for-all" patents i, j and k) to do something covered by OpenTV patents X and Y? Do you get a free license for X and Y as well? I think not. I suspect it is this case the (rather involved) legal statement is covering:
neither OpenTV nor the GPL licenses you [...] under any OpenTV patents that cover the Modifications and/or Derivatives
(my emphasis)
The EU commission (lobbied by patent lawyers and big corps) are trying to expand patentability dramatically. Public protest has delayed the process, which is now entering the final phase, where amendments will be voted upon. Next election is june 2004
You still have time to write your MEP!
More information
Imagine a store, iTMS if you want, where all Artists, be they members of major labels or not, show up on the same page.
Imagine the major labels denying such a store their licensing...
What "actions" would that be? Downloading music I cannot buy in stores? Recording SNL from public TV broadcasts?
;-)
If you stop there, I don't have a big problem with it. As far as your post goes, I had the definite impression that you wouldn't. You mentioned "Matrix Reloaded" in passing. Who could produce movies so expensive without copyright?
many people in this country
* Ahem *, I'm danish
Clue: Russian copyrights mean nothing in the US - just as US copyrights are meaningless in Russia.
You overlook that both countries are signatories to the Berne convention (Note article 3(1))
how does a new artist, who doesn't have the benefit of a "mainstream" 20 year back catalog, get known? [...] they could whore themselves to a publisher who will take every penny they make
You give excellent examples of artists doing good outside the established publishing system. I'm all for that, especially since it may very well be better for both artists and listeners. It's just that I think the artists should by and large get a chance to decide for themselves. If they really want their CD shared all over the net it's great, Creative Commons is there to help write a license. If not, I think we should be wary of making business decisions on their behalf. (Collective management makes good sense in many situations, though)
A side note: You mention your "direcTV tivo" and "no pay tv". DirecTV.com says they broadcast pay tv. What am I missing?
Well I think it sounds useful, and my situation's rather common:
I have an account at the university, and I like to work with the files there from home. (or the other way round). It's annoying to scp my files back and forth. (Even though konqueror can show sftp://me@my-uni as "just another folder"). If I can have it completely integrated, I'm all for it - then I could keep the relevant files at my nightly-backed-up university account, and it would seem like a folder on my harddrive at home. (slightly "W00T!")
If everyone did like you, the artists would scarcely get paid. It would hurt the musicians pretty badly, and the film makers even worse. In the end your music collection would again grow less diverse, and worse, our entire culture would lose freshness and diversity.
I therefore think your actions are morally wrong, and should (at least partly) be illegal.