They are a rather small fraction of society who have a rather large vested interest. One of the big problems in this area is PTO who have a highly unbalanced view of the world due to the people they are exposed to every day. A bit like regulatory capture.
who have innovative technologies
By who's definition? I certainly hope not the PTO's!
I want to see objective, scientific evidence, not vested interest's talking points, about why we should block the free speech of billions of people so that a very small fraction of society should have additional benefit.
Just for a start; until the PTO take independent reinvention seriously, can separate the invention of words from the invention of ideas and has a reasonable definition of what an invention is rather than some minor tweak, they are not to be taken seriously.
---
I own it therefore I get to decide what happens to it is a meaningless tautology. Ownership by definition is the right to control. The more interesting question is who owns it?
Of course, without strong ip laws there's no reason to innovate.
Stop lying. You know full well it's potentially "... less reason to innovate", not "... no reason to innovate".
Patent proponents continue to push this line even though it's obviously wrong which suggests they are either engaging in fuzzy thinking or are bad faith actors.
In any case protection may only be needed when the necessary "innovation quantum" is sufficiently large to require a significant investment to make the leap. When innovation can be gradual, as it is in software and many fields, first mover advantage is all that's needed to reward those gradual innovative steps. As with business in general.
---
Patents and copyrights - blocking billions of peoples' free speech so that one person can have increased profit.
... or was discontinued, or the claim relies on details only provable by looking at the source code but the product is closed-source, etc.
Or it's the same concept but with a different name/label. Until the PTO can cope with natural language, the invention of words and how this is different from the invention of underlying concepts then the PTO is just handwaving. Not to mention their ongoing empire building by saying that ever more insignificant conceptual differences are significant.
Seeing the flurry of comments mocking the submitter of his copying Tetris makes me realize how successful the corporations have been in their propaganda.
It's mainly astroturf and sock puppets. Some marketers are so full of themselves that they think this is okay.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
Smart OEMs paid the extra $5 for OEM copies of Windows and didn't have to bundle Windows with each computer sold.)
Sensible OEM's were forced to pay an extra $5 because of M$'s market manipulation.
The price to produce windows is basically the same in all cases. The price that it is sold at however is all about M$'s monopoly market manipulation.
This is 95% M$'s fault and your marketing spin attempting to shift the blame is typical of M$'s alley cat ethics. Like finger pointing children in a schoolyard "he did it first!".
And that's leaving out the worthless read-write "restore partition" instead of providing the OS on known good read-only media that the customer can be confident has not been virus infected. And please, no nonsense about it being cheaper to produce. Yeah, 20c cheaper to produce for hugely degraded experience in the long term.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work. It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons. Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
to be fair, there is valid need for some features for certain level of users.
To be fair, these features should be designed for their target audience, protecting them as appropriate. Windows just engages in a UI version of truthiness.
If all features are useless and crap Windows would not have maintained the huge market share as it currently does.
If the market is not well informed you mean. M$ has been manipulating people with pretty icons, and buggy function, for decades.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
hasbara. Make sure to read links further down the list.
Israel has been paying for large scale propaganda for decades. They're doing a lot of behind the scenes stuff too including successfully directing US foreign policy.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
with the express purpose of shielding these people from losing everything they own in event of their business failure.
Which is unfair to others.
Corporations are no more evil and dehumanizing than any human organizations, including governments, political parties, ideology activist groups, etc.
Actually because of the law, which treats them specially, they are. In particular, they insulate many people from risk that they should be responsible for and distorts the market. Risk doesn't just simply disappear, it is unfairly transferred to those who deal with the corporation - buyers, sellers and junior employees.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work. It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons. Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
excuse for all the folk who, ultimately, just want to have their cake without paying for it.
... who, ultimately, think artificial scarcity is a crock. Sharing, particularly by those who would be unable to/don't want to waste money is a perfectly sensible thing to do.
People have been sharing since the dawn of time and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The fact that some vested interests are in denial about that reality is a large part of the problem.
Then why download?
Because it is a sensible thing to do that makes the world a better place and harms no one.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work. It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons. Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
If it happens to save human lives, somehow no one should profit from it?
No artificial scarcity actually. It is beyond stupid that 6,900,000,000 people should be blocked from doing something life saving so that one tiny group can have increased profit.
Not to mention many university researchers double-dipping and generally acting quite dishonestly, being precisely the greedy capitalists and attention whores you imply they are not.
---
Copyright rewards distributors (copiers) far more than creators.
But just throwing around the vague concept of "open" without the real context doesn't help the discussion...
Open is just fine as a descriptive term. The problem is certain vested interests are engaged in an dishonest astroturfing campaign trying to subvert the definition so they can misapply it and trick people. In this case by making the decoder cheap and the encoder expensive so that consumers will not realize they are subsidizing it via higher cost products. They know full well that if people realize they are dealing with a proprietary standard they will try to avoid it.
Can I use H.264 as I please? No? Then it's not open, it's proprietary.
No matter how much some people try to spin it.
---
There are many corporate shills on social media sites like slashdot fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Make these scums' life hell.
The notion of absolute neutrality is a fallacy and anyone who claims to be 100% neutral is fooling themselves.
If you think that means that two messages are equally valid and worthwhile then you need your head examined.
I prefer the agenda of people who are doing their best to inform and enlighten me and make me aware of all the alternatives that they are aware of and think are worth knowing.
I detest people who have an agenda of maximizing their profit, regardless of the cost to me.
---
There are many corporate shills on social media sites like slashdot fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Make these scums' life hell.
Published and usable under reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms is a very common definition of an open standard.
This is a definition used by assorted proprietary player's marketing departments trying to redefine reality for their own profitable ends. Not by the vast majority of people and not until relatively recently.
See most ISO standards.
ISO is the opposite of what you are trying to claim. Most ISO standards are completely free to use though it may be necessary to pay for the standards document. That payment is for the document and to help maintain the standards body, not for the use of the standard. Nothing stopping you reading somebody else's copy (e.g. in a library) to make many implementations though and many regard even the payment for the document as onerous.
The requirement to be free to implement is a relatively new addition to the definition (within the last 10-15 years).
Not really. Open means free to use and has always meant free to use. Just because a proprietary standard is owned by a cartel and not by an individual company doesn't mean you can redefine open.
I'm not free to use the H.264 standard as I please without paying somebody some money for the privilege and that makes it proprietary. Not open. End of story.
---
How many million man hours has unsolicited the advertising industry cost today?
I don't know if I would go so far as to call it a matter of "ethics."
Fraudulently pretending to be an objective third party for financial gain. That's ethics alright and the government should come down on them like a ton of bricks. Such people should be in jail if they make a habit of it.
Think it doesn't matter? If it didn't agents would be happy to announce their affiliation. For some strange reason they don't. Why would that be I wonder?
Apart from anything else company legal structures require accountability because they act as proxies for real people and when company agents can be anonymous there is no accountability.
But less government invading the lives of the private sector the better.
In general true but not when there is this amount of fraud going on.
---
How many million man hours has the advertising industry cost today?
In Minnesota an in classroom system called DISCOURSE had this in the early 90's -- should be an easy patent to knock down.
Unfortunately probably not since the PTO is finding increasingly insignificant differences are significant. When all you've got is a hammer everything begins to look like a nail.
---
The patent system. The whole edifice is based on handwaving.
Artists have a right to set a price for their work.
Your reasoning is circular. You are saying that artists have a right to set a price for their work because they have a right to set a price for their work. That's bogus. Ownership, by definition, is the right to control something.
Instead, try giving numerical, scientifically justified reasons why they should be allowed to blocking billions of people from copying, their free speech, so that one (1) person can have extra profit.
And that's ignoring the whole problem of copy-right rewarding distributors (copiers) much more than artists (creators). In the current system it is far more profitable to control distribution channels than to control artistic works.
---
I own it therefore I get to decide what happens to it is a meaningless tautology. Ownership by definition is the right to control. The more interesting question is who owns it?
Look at all the "Anonymous Coward" corporate shills that have replied to you trying to neutralize your message! As usual deliberately trying to confuse the law with ethics. You're perfectly correct of course.
---
I own it therefore I get to decide what happens to it is a meaningless tautology. Ownership by definition is the right to control. The more interesting question is who owns it?
Some people, possibly you, are fanatics who can't cope with the fact that slashdot hosts people with many and diverse points of view.
The fact that most of those points of view disagree with the copyright fundamentalists is the fanatic's problem, not the slashdot readership's. The "hive mind" or similar accusation is usually done by trolls, the simple minded or shills. They should all get a life.
---
Like software, intellectual property law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.
People at the bottom also tend to forget how much they need people at the top.
The science is in. There is close to zero correlation between executive performance and salary. All of the people you mention are easily replaceable. In some cases it would be a major improvement.
why don't they choose cheap labor over costly labor?
Jobs for the boys. CEO market failure.
But to create value for a company and economy you need to pay people for the services they're doing (for lack of a better word, for their minds).
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
p>Yes. And in the case of CEO's that pay is vastly inflated. The market has failed.
My best advise would be to find an integrated suite and avoid having a big hodgepodge of different crap that has to be glued together with third party applications.
"Integrated" is just vendor code for "we own all the pieces, we own you".
In addition it blocks you from using the best tools for the job and being agile and responsive to new requirements.
That "hodgepodge" you are talking about is due to bad management and has nothing to do with using independent, well written, best of breed tools with good interfacing options.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Anonymous commercial speech should be illegal.
The USPTO has a special proceeding - called an interference - that is all about determining which of two or more inventors was the first one to invent something and is thus entitled to a patent.
And not about determining whether independent reinvention means the patent[s] are obvious. Funny that.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
In general, the lawyer's ethical responsibility is to represent his/her client.
No, the lawyer has many ethical responsibilities. The client is just one that may be easily outweighed by other ethical responsibilities.
and can refuse to represent the client
You said it. Only if they are coerced would they have no ethical responsibility.
they can file on their own (known as filing "pro se")
And the client will then be responsible and the lawyer not.
Sorry, but however you try to spin it the lawyers have some responsibility. You can argue over the proportion and circumstances but bottom line is they are responsible for much of the harm.
Slashdot Mirror
but from actual patent holders
They are a rather small fraction of society who have a rather large vested interest. One of the big problems in this area is PTO who have a highly unbalanced view of the world due to the people they are exposed to every day. A bit like regulatory capture.
who have innovative technologies
By who's definition? I certainly hope not the PTO's!
I want to see objective, scientific evidence, not vested interest's talking points, about why we should block the free speech of billions of people so that a very small fraction of society should have additional benefit.
Just for a start; until the PTO take independent reinvention seriously, can separate the invention of words from the invention of ideas and has a reasonable definition of what an invention is rather than some minor tweak, they are not to be taken seriously.
---
I own it therefore I get to decide what happens to it is a meaningless tautology. Ownership by definition is the right to control. The more interesting question is who owns it?
Of course, without strong ip laws there's no reason to innovate.
Stop lying. You know full well it's potentially "... less reason to innovate", not "... no reason to innovate".
Patent proponents continue to push this line even though it's obviously wrong which suggests they are either engaging in fuzzy thinking or are bad faith actors.
In any case protection may only be needed when the necessary "innovation quantum" is sufficiently large to require a significant investment to make the leap. When innovation can be gradual, as it is in software and many fields, first mover advantage is all that's needed to reward those gradual innovative steps. As with business in general.
---
Patents and copyrights - blocking billions of peoples' free speech so that one person can have increased profit.
Or it's the same concept but with a different name/label. Until the PTO can cope with natural language, the invention of words and how this is different from the invention of underlying concepts then the PTO is just handwaving. Not to mention their ongoing empire building by saying that ever more insignificant conceptual differences are significant.
---
Has the Least Patentable Unit reached zero yet?
And this AC has a mod of +0 compared to the PP's +5. Funny that.
---
Windows and closed source software. The US intelligence agencies back door to every network connected country and business on earth.
Seeing the flurry of comments mocking the submitter of his copying Tetris makes me realize how successful the corporations have been in their propaganda.
It's mainly astroturf and sock puppets. Some marketers are so full of themselves that they think this is okay.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
and the greedy OEMs that went along with this
Greedy OEM's or greedy MS$?
Smart OEMs paid the extra $5 for OEM copies of Windows and didn't have to bundle Windows with each computer sold.)
Sensible OEM's were forced to pay an extra $5 because of M$'s market manipulation.
The price to produce windows is basically the same in all cases. The price that it is sold at however is all about M$'s monopoly market manipulation.
This is 95% M$'s fault and your marketing spin attempting to shift the blame is typical of M$'s alley cat ethics. Like finger pointing children in a schoolyard "he did it first!".
And that's leaving out the worthless read-write "restore partition" instead of providing the OS on known good read-only media that the customer can be confident has not been virus infected. And please, no nonsense about it being cheaper to produce. Yeah, 20c cheaper to produce for hugely degraded experience in the long term.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
to be fair, there is valid need for some features for certain level of users.
To be fair, these features should be designed for their target audience, protecting them as appropriate. Windows just engages in a UI version of truthiness.
If all features are useless and crap Windows would not have maintained the huge market share as it currently does.
If the market is not well informed you mean. M$ has been manipulating people with pretty icons, and buggy function, for decades.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
hasbara. Make sure to read links further down the list.
Israel has been paying for large scale propaganda for decades. They're doing a lot of behind the scenes stuff too including successfully directing US foreign policy.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
with the express purpose of shielding these people from losing everything they own in event of their business failure.
Which is unfair to others.
Corporations are no more evil and dehumanizing than any human organizations, including governments, political parties, ideology activist groups, etc.
Actually because of the law, which treats them specially, they are. In particular, they insulate many people from risk that they should be responsible for and distorts the market. Risk doesn't just simply disappear, it is unfairly transferred to those who deal with the corporation - buyers, sellers and junior employees.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
excuse for all the folk who, ultimately, just want to have their cake without paying for it.
... who, ultimately, think artificial scarcity is a crock. Sharing, particularly by those who would be unable to/don't want to waste money is a perfectly sensible thing to do.
People have been sharing since the dawn of time and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The fact that some vested interests are in denial about that reality is a large part of the problem.
Then why download?
Because it is a sensible thing to do that makes the world a better place and harms no one.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
If it happens to save human lives, somehow no one should profit from it?
No artificial scarcity actually. It is beyond stupid that 6,900,000,000 people should be blocked from doing something life saving so that one tiny group can have increased profit.
Not to mention many university researchers double-dipping and generally acting quite dishonestly, being precisely the greedy capitalists and attention whores you imply they are not.
---
Copyright rewards distributors (copiers) far more than creators.
But just throwing around the vague concept of "open" without the real context doesn't help the discussion...
Open is just fine as a descriptive term. The problem is certain vested interests are engaged in an dishonest astroturfing campaign trying to subvert the definition so they can misapply it and trick people. In this case by making the decoder cheap and the encoder expensive so that consumers will not realize they are subsidizing it via higher cost products. They know full well that if people realize they are dealing with a proprietary standard they will try to avoid it.
Can I use H.264 as I please? No? Then it's not open, it's proprietary.
No matter how much some people try to spin it.
---
There are many corporate shills on social media sites like slashdot fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Make these scums' life hell.
The notion of absolute neutrality is a fallacy and anyone who claims to be 100% neutral is fooling themselves.
If you think that means that two messages are equally valid and worthwhile then you need your head examined.
I prefer the agenda of people who are doing their best to inform and enlighten me and make me aware of all the alternatives that they are aware of and think are worth knowing.
I detest people who have an agenda of maximizing their profit, regardless of the cost to me.
---
There are many corporate shills on social media sites like slashdot fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Make these scums' life hell.
H.264 is an open, international standard.
What part of proprietary, owned by a cartel do you not understand?
Published and usable under reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms is a very common definition of an open standard.
This is a definition used by assorted proprietary player's marketing departments trying to redefine reality for their own profitable ends. Not by the vast majority of people and not until relatively recently.
See most ISO standards.
ISO is the opposite of what you are trying to claim. Most ISO standards are completely free to use though it may be necessary to pay for the standards document. That payment is for the document and to help maintain the standards body, not for the use of the standard. Nothing stopping you reading somebody else's copy (e.g. in a library) to make many implementations though and many regard even the payment for the document as onerous.
The requirement to be free to implement is a relatively new addition to the definition (within the last 10-15 years).
Not really. Open means free to use and has always meant free to use. Just because a proprietary standard is owned by a cartel and not by an individual company doesn't mean you can redefine open.
I'm not free to use the H.264 standard as I please without paying somebody some money for the privilege and that makes it proprietary. Not open. End of story.
---
How many million man hours has unsolicited the advertising industry cost today?
I don't know if I would go so far as to call it a matter of "ethics."
Fraudulently pretending to be an objective third party for financial gain. That's ethics alright and the government should come down on them like a ton of bricks. Such people should be in jail if they make a habit of it.
Think it doesn't matter? If it didn't agents would be happy to announce their affiliation. For some strange reason they don't. Why would that be I wonder?
Apart from anything else company legal structures require accountability because they act as proxies for real people and when company agents can be anonymous there is no accountability.
But less government invading the lives of the private sector the better.
In general true but not when there is this amount of fraud going on.
---
How many million man hours has the advertising industry cost today?
In Minnesota an in classroom system called DISCOURSE had this in the early 90's -- should be an easy patent to knock down.
Unfortunately probably not since the PTO is finding increasingly insignificant differences are significant. When all you've got is a hammer everything begins to look like a nail.
---
The patent system. The whole edifice is based on handwaving.
Artists have a right to set a price for their work.
Your reasoning is circular. You are saying that artists have a right to set a price for their work because they have a right to set a price for their work. That's bogus. Ownership, by definition, is the right to control something.
Instead, try giving numerical, scientifically justified reasons why they should be allowed to blocking billions of people from copying, their free speech, so that one (1) person can have extra profit.
And that's ignoring the whole problem of copy-right rewarding distributors (copiers) much more than artists (creators). In the current system it is far more profitable to control distribution channels than to control artistic works.
---
I own it therefore I get to decide what happens to it is a meaningless tautology. Ownership by definition is the right to control. The more interesting question is who owns it?
Look at all the "Anonymous Coward" corporate shills that have replied to you trying to neutralize your message! As usual deliberately trying to confuse the law with ethics. You're perfectly correct of course.
---
I own it therefore I get to decide what happens to it is a meaningless tautology. Ownership by definition is the right to control. The more interesting question is who owns it?
Because on the slashdot in *my* universe,
Some people, possibly you, are fanatics who can't cope with the fact that slashdot hosts people with many and diverse points of view.
The fact that most of those points of view disagree with the copyright fundamentalists is the fanatic's problem, not the slashdot readership's. The "hive mind" or similar accusation is usually done by trolls, the simple minded or shills. They should all get a life.
---
Like software, intellectual property law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.
People at the bottom also tend to forget how much they need people at the top.
The science is in. There is close to zero correlation between executive performance and salary. All of the people you mention are easily replaceable. In some cases it would be a major improvement.
why don't they choose cheap labor over costly labor?
Jobs for the boys. CEO market failure.
But to create value for a company and economy you need to pay people for the services they're doing (for lack of a better word, for their minds).
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
p>Yes. And in the case of CEO's that pay is vastly inflated. The market has failed.
My best advise would be to find an integrated suite and avoid having a big hodgepodge of different crap that has to be glued together with third party applications.
"Integrated" is just vendor code for "we own all the pieces, we own you".
In addition it blocks you from using the best tools for the job and being agile and responsive to new requirements.
That "hodgepodge" you are talking about is due to bad management and has nothing to do with using independent, well written, best of breed tools with good interfacing options.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Anonymous commercial speech should be illegal.
The USPTO has a special proceeding - called an interference - that is all about determining which of two or more inventors was the first one to invent something and is thus entitled to a patent.
And not about determining whether independent reinvention means the patent[s] are obvious. Funny that.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
In general, the lawyer's ethical responsibility is to represent his/her client.
No, the lawyer has many ethical responsibilities. The client is just one that may be easily outweighed by other ethical responsibilities.
and can refuse to represent the client
You said it. Only if they are coerced would they have no ethical responsibility.
they can file on their own (known as filing "pro se")
And the client will then be responsible and the lawyer not.
Sorry, but however you try to spin it the lawyers have some responsibility. You can argue over the proportion and circumstances but bottom line is they are responsible for much of the harm.
---
Has the Least Patentable Unit reached zero yet?
These two sentences are contradictory.
No. A lawyer is a person who does "lawyering".
How can you blame a tool for the way it is used? How can the tool itself be unethical?
A lawyer has volition and thus responsibility. They are not a tool themselves but use the tools of their trade.