Sorry but really I don't get it. Clearly the first sentence of article 2(b) defines "technical" and the second "contribution". They do not give different meanings to the same thing. The rest of the article makes even the point clearer by stating Without a technical contribution, there is no
patentable subject-matter.
Same for the first sentence of article 3, which states that to be patentable a computer-implemented invention must "make a technical contribution" (there is a and in the sentence, not or). The rest of the article defines, again, the "inventive step", but it does not weaken the first requirement, does it ?
I agree with the weirdness of the end of the article which defines the "inventive step" by taking into account non-technical features. That means that you can put together some old technical stuff in a package with some new non-technical stuff and patent the whole. How can it be that absurd ?
"technical contribution" means a contribution to the state of the
art in a field of technology. The technical contribution is the set of
features by which the scope of the patent claim as a whole is
considered to differ from the state of the art. The contribution must
be technical, that is, comprise technical features and belong to a
field of technology. Without a technical contribution, there is no
patentable subject-matter. The technical contribution must fulfil the
conditions for patentability. In particular, it must be novel and not
obvious to a person skilled in the art.
I know I have problem understanding legalese, but doesnt this article state very clearly that the constribution has to be in the field of technology (and thus involve natural science) ? Why do you say that it states everything new is technical ? Note that FFII's comments are pretty positive about that article.
For article 3, I read
In order to be patentable, a computer-implemented invention must be
susceptible of industrial application and make a technical
contribution. The inventive step is assessed by considering the
difference between all of the technical and non-technical features of
the patent claim and the state of the art.
Again, I must miss something since yours and FFII's comments are pretty negative. Doesn't this article states that the computer-implemented invention has to be technical and make a contribution ? How comes this article allows business methods to be patented ?
The Financial Times summarizes the event as a major victory for the bad guys (to make it short). Still, the summary given on FFII's page states that the definition of field of technology as the field of applied natural sciences (and not exact sciences) excludes clearly software patents.
Also, Rocard's phrasing was to characterize what is patentable vs. what is not by considering if it requires or not the use of natural forces. All the good guys (to make it short) seem to agree with that characterization.
Can someone explain why it is a "major blow" ? And more precisely what is patentable with natural sciences which is not with natural forces ?
I never understood that argument. I agree that from a pure quantitative perspective it is easier to make the hardware operate out of the authorized specs if you do have the driver source code. However, any more-than-average hacker can decompile a binary driver and replace the adequate values directly in the code. Hacking the source requires very similar programming skills.
Is there some jurisprudence somewhere which states that if you provide source instead of binary to someone, you are breaking the law if that person can later on change the source code to break some regulations ? That would be damn precise and subtile from our beloved law people.
1/ Intel chips are definitely not the best (AMD ? Cell ?!)
2/ The switch with the unavoidable compliance problems will piss off customers
3/ Not sharing the same CPU as PC user was a major sell argument.
Just when MS and Sony put a PPC in their consoles ?!
I always thought it was a mistake thinking in term of having the data in a vault somewhere. It is more like a dynamic process: each time you get a new storage technology, you just copy the data on it. There is no question of perennity, I stil have my 1990s files.
The two remaining questions are: failure of the technology you are currently using, and file format. For the former, just triple the backups IN DIFFERENT PLACES (think about fire, tornadoes, flood, angry ex-girlfriend) I personally backup all important data on two CDs + on a remote computer by network. For music I guess you do not need an every-day basis, thus you could just burn two dvds every month and send them by post to you parents / collegues / whoever you can trust. If you really need a lot of space, you can use a fire-wire hard disk or whatever that you can put in a remote location.
Remain the file formats. For those, if you chose standard there should be no problem of playing those sounds, thanks to open-source. The only issue I can see is simply that in 20 years from now your 44.1khz will be pretty rough compared to the standard we'll have. Though if your recording are on 20 years old magnetic tapes, sampling may not be the main problem.
Finally, considering what seems to be at the horizon (100Gb DVD ? 850 Gb DVD ? they may exagerate a bit, but eventually we'll have those), storage will soon not be a problem anymore for music.
I am not a GPL expert, but what you are saying is likely to be incorrect. This would be a major loophole in the GPL (basically, put all your changes in a file my_changes.c, link with it and never give it).
I think you can not distribute a binary derivated from a GPL source code and which is linked (statically or dynamically) with a closed library. There may be exceptions though (or lot of GPL things would not dynamically link on proprietary UNIX).
Researchers write the papers and review the papers for free and pay to read the journal. This is insane. I was once asked to review a paper for a journal for which I did not have access, thus was unable to check the previous issues (I eventually could through my institute's subscription). Also, you do not have the right anymore to distribute your article after it has been published, even if you were not paid for it.
Many journals are struggling because people have realized how absurd this is. Add to this that a journal paper can take up to 18 month between submission and publishing and it is easy to understand why electronic open-journals are taking over.
So what you call "harming OSS" is to make Mr. Corporate understand that if he messes with OSS licence he will be in trouble ?
It is pretty amusing to see (often) comments of that kind which basically state that OSS has to be used in closed software to reach another level of success. This is first grade bullshit.
I haven't seen my current thinkpad or my previous one under debian crashed for years. Thus, no, all operating systems do not crash.
And no, it is not normal to have to click somewhere on a regular basis to avoid leaks about your personal system configuration / documents. It is actually very interesting to see how people seem to accept that new state of facts.
Obviously, with the omnipresent network updates, network authentification, DRM and web-based applications (mail readers or chat), there is a shift in what people consider as their data and their system. In fact, more than interesting, this is disturbing.
1/ Scientific journals work the same way. Researchers actually write the articles, and review others' articles. For free. And the journals cost a pile of cash each month. Does it make sens ? Nope. Things are actually changing (JMLR rules)
2/ There are lot of actual MS-enthusiasts. I can not understand their point of view, but lot of people are able to believe that a corporation is friendly. I can imagine somebody who is fond of Encarta (which seems to be a nice product) and from that considers as natural to participate.
3/ Some are passionated for certain topics and want it to appear to a general audience.
People who write freewares for windows also works for free, as those who post comments on Amazon or imdb, etc. They do it because they like it, and the corporation makes money because their own products become more attractive (though this is a bit more indirectly, but it is very similar).
Microsoft officials called the filing a victory. "Microsoft and the state of New York said we would drive him into bankruptcy, and together we have," said Aaron Kornblum, Microsoft's Internet safety enforcement attorney.
This is not justice. This is a powerful company able to destroy another one even before that other one has been proven guilty of anything.
I am not sure to follow you. Since you reply to the article, your post seems to be against Grokster. But you claim that "p2p is basically publishing". Since making publishing devices is not illegal, you are arguing that Grokster is doing nothing illegal ?
To exchange copyrighted stuff is illegal, but what is at stack here is the right to design something which *can* be used illegally.
The real problem is that the universality of bytes create huge "equivalent classes", and you can not get rid of certain objects which are obviously illegal without prohibiting others which are obviously legal.
Declaring illegal the grokster activity will open the gate to gazillions of lawsuits.
--
Go Debian
The manufacturer looks at the chip's public key and cryptographicly signs that public key.
Ho, ok!
Then I patch my criterion for non-trustable hardware:
A device is non-trustable if it contains a key generated before you become the owner of the device.
I guess this is not precise enough since the key could be generated randomly later on, while being still in a family of keys that the manufacturer knows has trustable since they are specific to his chips. Anyway.
BTW, it seems that there exists simple attacks based on physical stress (exposing the chip to micro-waves, heat, tension under the spec, etc.) so that it mess up its computations and provides information about its private key (for instance, it would mess up a product and makes it far easier to guess the secret prime factors). Are standard chips sold today protected from such attacks? It seems natural for instance to make every computation in several parallel units and to refuse to provide the result if all units do not agree.
More generally, is the belief in the cryptographic community that all this mess is going to actually work ?
Then I am sort of lost. I thought one major point was that the fritz-chip has to be able to send a trustable report about your hardware/software configuration.
If no such private key known by the manufacturer exists, how can they know that I don't just forge such a report with the adequate software ?
If the device includes a private key known by the manufacturer and not known by the customer, the device is trustable by the manufacturer and not anymore by the customer.
There are no user-friendly feature which requires such a key, and there are no way to take your right away without such a key.
Deciding unilaterally that US military forces deserve a better service than other customers (read European govt agencies) can be actually labelled as "bad". It can. I wonder what the genial theoreticians from the WTO think about that ? This is free-market US style. Anyway. Nothing surprising.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry but really I don't get it. Clearly the first sentence of article 2(b) defines "technical" and the second "contribution". They do not give different meanings to the same thing. The rest of the article makes even the point clearer by stating Without a technical contribution, there is no patentable subject-matter.
Same for the first sentence of article 3, which states that to be patentable a computer-implemented invention must "make a technical contribution" (there is a and in the sentence, not or). The rest of the article defines, again, the "inventive step", but it does not weaken the first requirement, does it ?
I agree with the weirdness of the end of the article which defines the "inventive step" by taking into account non-technical features. That means that you can put together some old technical stuff in a package with some new non-technical stuff and patent the whole. How can it be that absurd ?
Article 2b states that by definition everything which is new is technical
In FFII's summary, I read for article 2(b):
"technical contribution" means a contribution to the state of the art in a field of technology. The technical contribution is the set of features by which the scope of the patent claim as a whole is considered to differ from the state of the art. The contribution must be technical, that is, comprise technical features and belong to a field of technology. Without a technical contribution, there is no patentable subject-matter. The technical contribution must fulfil the conditions for patentability. In particular, it must be novel and not obvious to a person skilled in the art.
I know I have problem understanding legalese, but doesnt this article state very clearly that the constribution has to be in the field of technology (and thus involve natural science) ? Why do you say that it states everything new is technical ? Note that FFII's comments are pretty positive about that article.
For article 3, I read
In order to be patentable, a computer-implemented invention must be susceptible of industrial application and make a technical contribution. The inventive step is assessed by considering the difference between all of the technical and non-technical features of the patent claim and the state of the art.
Again, I must miss something since yours and FFII's comments are pretty negative. Doesn't this article states that the computer-implemented invention has to be technical and make a contribution ? How comes this article allows business methods to be patented ?
The Financial Times summarizes the event as a major victory for the bad guys (to make it short). Still, the summary given on FFII's page states that the definition of field of technology as the field of applied natural sciences (and not exact sciences) excludes clearly software patents.
Also, Rocard's phrasing was to characterize what is patentable vs. what is not by considering if it requires or not the use of natural forces. All the good guys (to make it short) seem to agree with that characterization.
Can someone explain why it is a "major blow" ? And more precisely what is patentable with natural sciences which is not with natural forces ?
Cheers,--
Go Debian!
I never understood that argument. I agree that from a pure quantitative perspective it is easier to make the hardware operate out of the authorized specs if you do have the driver source code. However, any more-than-average hacker can decompile a binary driver and replace the adequate values directly in the code. Hacking the source requires very similar programming skills.
Is there some jurisprudence somewhere which states that if you provide source instead of binary to someone, you are breaking the law if that person can later on change the source code to break some regulations ? That would be damn precise and subtile from our beloved law people.
--
Go Debian!
Why Intel !?!?
1/ Intel chips are definitely not the best (AMD ? Cell ?!)
2/ The switch with the unavoidable compliance problems will piss off customers
3/ Not sharing the same CPU as PC user was a major sell argument.
Just when MS and Sony put a PPC in their consoles ?!
Weird.
--
Go Debian!
I always thought it was a mistake thinking in term of having the data in a vault somewhere. It is more like a dynamic process: each time you get a new storage technology, you just copy the data on it. There is no question of perennity, I stil have my 1990s files.
The two remaining questions are: failure of the technology you are currently using, and file format. For the former, just triple the backups IN DIFFERENT PLACES (think about fire, tornadoes, flood, angry ex-girlfriend) I personally backup all important data on two CDs + on a remote computer by network. For music I guess you do not need an every-day basis, thus you could just burn two dvds every month and send them by post to you parents / collegues / whoever you can trust. If you really need a lot of space, you can use a fire-wire hard disk or whatever that you can put in a remote location.
Remain the file formats. For those, if you chose standard there should be no problem of playing those sounds, thanks to open-source. The only issue I can see is simply that in 20 years from now your 44.1khz will be pretty rough compared to the standard we'll have. Though if your recording are on 20 years old magnetic tapes, sampling may not be the main problem.
Finally, considering what seems to be at the horizon (100Gb DVD ? 850 Gb DVD ? they may exagerate a bit, but eventually we'll have those), storage will soon not be a problem anymore for music.
Cheers,
--
Go Debian!
You missed the point. The problem is in using women as furnitures and making them wear ugly supposedly sexy outfits (geeks dig xena).
Wonder if those geniuses really expect to increase their sales with the female audience.
--
Go Debian!
I am not a GPL expert, but what you are saying is likely to be incorrect. This would be a major loophole in the GPL (basically, put all your changes in a file my_changes.c, link with it and never give it).
I think you can not distribute a binary derivated from a GPL source code and which is linked (statically or dynamically) with a closed library. There may be exceptions though (or lot of GPL things would not dynamically link on proprietary UNIX).
--
Go Debian!
Researchers write the papers and review the papers for free and pay to read the journal. This is insane. I was once asked to review a paper for a journal for which I did not have access, thus was unable to check the previous issues (I eventually could through my institute's subscription). Also, you do not have the right anymore to distribute your article after it has been published, even if you were not paid for it.
Many journals are struggling because people have realized how absurd this is. Add to this that a journal paper can take up to 18 month between submission and publishing and it is easy to understand why electronic open-journals are taking over.
--
Go Debian!
So what you call "harming OSS" is to make Mr. Corporate understand that if he messes with OSS licence he will be in trouble ?
It is pretty amusing to see (often) comments of that kind which basically state that OSS has to be used in closed software to reach another level of success. This is first grade bullshit.
--
Go Debian!
PJ seems upset to say the least.
All Operating Systems crash.
I haven't seen my current thinkpad or my previous one under debian crashed for years. Thus, no, all operating systems do not crash.
And no, it is not normal to have to click somewhere on a regular basis to avoid leaks about your personal system configuration / documents. It is actually very interesting to see how people seem to accept that new state of facts.
Obviously, with the omnipresent network updates, network authentification, DRM and web-based applications (mail readers or chat), there is a shift in what people consider as their data and their system. In fact, more than interesting, this is disturbing.
--
Go Debian!
So they have to invade your privacy because they did not write a robust OS in the first place ? What an argument!
--
Go Debian!
1/ Scientific journals work the same way. Researchers actually write the articles, and review others' articles. For free. And the journals cost a pile of cash each month. Does it make sens ? Nope. Things are actually changing (JMLR rules)
2/ There are lot of actual MS-enthusiasts. I can not understand their point of view, but lot of people are able to believe that a corporation is friendly. I can imagine somebody who is fond of Encarta (which seems to be a nice product) and from that considers as natural to participate.
3/ Some are passionated for certain topics and want it to appear to a general audience.
People who write freewares for windows also works for free, as those who post comments on Amazon or imdb, etc. They do it because they like it, and the corporation makes money because their own products become more attractive (though this is a bit more indirectly, but it is very similar).
Cheers,
--
Go Debian!
Microsoft officials called the filing a victory. "Microsoft and the state of New York said we would drive him into bankruptcy, and together we have," said Aaron Kornblum, Microsoft's Internet safety enforcement attorney.
This is not justice. This is a powerful company able to destroy another one even before that other one has been proven guilty of anything.
--
Go Debian!
I am not sure to follow you. Since you reply to the article, your post seems to be against Grokster. But you claim that "p2p is basically publishing". Since making publishing devices is not illegal, you are arguing that Grokster is doing nothing illegal ?
To exchange copyrighted stuff is illegal, but what is at stack here is the right to design something which *can* be used illegally.
The real problem is that the universality of bytes create huge "equivalent classes", and you can not get rid of certain objects which are obviously illegal without prohibiting others which are obviously legal.
Declaring illegal the grokster activity will open the gate to gazillions of lawsuits.
--
Go Debian
If assert fails, I abort().
I use assert to detect the problem instead of detecting its byproducts.
--
Go Debian!
Thus, your argument is that copying bytes is equivalent to raping people ?
Let me guess, in real life, people often tell you "yeah, right" and leave when you debate with them ?
--
Go Debian!
The manufacturer looks at the chip's public key and cryptographicly signs that public key.
Ho, ok!
Then I patch my criterion for non-trustable hardware:
A device is non-trustable if it contains a key generated before you become the owner of the device.
I guess this is not precise enough since the key could be generated randomly later on, while being still in a family of keys that the manufacturer knows has trustable since they are specific to his chips. Anyway.
BTW, it seems that there exists simple attacks based on physical stress (exposing the chip to micro-waves, heat, tension under the spec, etc.) so that it mess up its computations and provides information about its private key (for instance, it would mess up a product and makes it far easier to guess the secret prime factors). Are standard chips sold today protected from such attacks? It seems natural for instance to make every computation in several parallel units and to refuse to provide the result if all units do not agree.
More generally, is the belief in the cryptographic community that all this mess is going to actually work ?
--
Go Debian!
Then I am sort of lost. I thought one major point was that the fritz-chip has to be able to send a trustable report about your hardware/software configuration.
If no such private key known by the manufacturer exists, how can they know that I don't just forge such a report with the adequate software ?
--
Go Debian!
If the device includes a private key known by the manufacturer and not known by the customer, the device is trustable by the manufacturer and not anymore by the customer.
There are no user-friendly feature which requires such a key, and there are no way to take your right away without such a key.
--
Go Debian!
I guess one can have different opinion about violating different licences. Is that too complex for you ?
Is it illegal due to the DMCA or are they other reasons ? (this is not rethorical, I am curious)
If we are talking about 4Gb dvd, one Tb is 250 dvds ...
Deciding unilaterally that US military forces deserve a better service than other customers (read European govt agencies) can be actually labelled as "bad". It can. I wonder what the genial theoreticians from the WTO think about that ? This is free-market US style. Anyway. Nothing surprising.
--
Go Debian!