I would think a software creator would prefer a copyright over a patent because copyrights last much longer even though they are not as encompassing
Copyrights are not enough. If X is the new innovative piece of code within a program, a competitor can buy the program, fire up a debugger, and look at the disassembled code for X. Once he understands how it works (reverse engineering), he can then recreate that code in a higher language, say C. Copyright does not work here. Then there are cases where the code is not that hard, and you can copy the idea by just looking at the end product. Therefore having patents is necessary.
LOL. "Good Enough" is euphemistic code for average, mediocre, unimportant. So expect all future consumer products to exhibit that quality. Oh wait, most products already do, compared with products from 10 to 15 years ago: cars, software, movies, books etc. Is Windows 7 significantly better than the almost 10-year old XP? Other than its new GUI, it has nothing to offer other than slow, bloatedness. So why the hell should humanity improve technology if we don't get to use it while big, fat, CEOs use cheap materials and labor to increase their profits?
If you support open source, good enough will be the norm, as in, "Linux is good enough for my software needs, I don't need/want anything else." Since open source products have less competition (hard to compete with a $0 price tag), the need to improve the product will be almost non-existent. In contrast, with closed source, there is constant competition to deliver better products as each competitor works hard to improve his product and steal his competitor's profits.
it's sad that a monetary incentive is necessary for people to create cool, useful stuff
But it's also about fairness. You want everyone to work to benefit you, but are unwilling to benefit them back in any manner. Let's keep the world free, and not force/guilt/manipulate people into working for free.
Now if only the USA would follow suit and end this madness.
As if social networking, video games, porn, alcohol and smoking have not done enough damage to the human mind and body. Let's also add drugs to the mix so we can have people waste their entire lives away in worthless, degenerate activities. We should have vending machines in schools dispensing cocaine, so kids can taste what their parents missed out.
If stored on a computer, that DNA will be accessible to both business and government, at a certain level they are one and the same. First they test the athletes. A few years pass, then they start testing all citizens and nobody will question them, because everyone is so used to it. We don't want to create a new frickin' law, invading everyone's privacy, just because one woman looks like a man.
So athletes have to hand over their DNA to participate in a race? No way. Enough big brother garbage; govt is not god and citizens must have rights to some privacy, including protecting their DNA. Only criminals should be subject to such intrusion.
Well, what the hell is [Microsoft] supposed to do? Allow [Netscape] to provide [a] key service of its product: [web browsing]? That's like Pepsi shipping Coke inside their bottles. [Netscape] should promote their service in their own product, not encroach into [Microsoft]'s turf.
That's a poor analogy. Web browsers were not a key service of Windows when Netscape Navigator was released. The primary function of iPhone is the phone service. If Apple allows Google to change that, it would be like allowing Microsoft to change the Linux kernel or Linux hackers changing Windows kernel or its GUI, a bad thing, obviously.
Well, what the hell is Apple supposed to do? Allow its competitor to provide the key service of its product: phone calls?
That's like Pepsi shipping Coke inside their bottles. Google should promote their service in their own product, not encroach into Apple's turf.
Relatively few copyright works last beyond 50 years. Try finding recordings that are more than 50 years old.
Ancient history, they did not have cheap recording technology we have now. So any valuable copyrighted work stored on disk today is unlikely to disapper in 50 to 100 years. It would probably go on some RAID server backed website the minute its copyrights expire.
In my view, software shouldn't be copyrightable at all.... not executable binaries and most certainly not encrypted data.
Right, let's start pirating software, music and movies boldly. And screw the companies who spent millions building the product.
By having binary executables copyrighted, the work is most certainly lost in the future and will never enter public domain the agreement of copyright is supposed to guarantee.
You're heading into dangerous territory here. The public benefit is privilege offered by the author, not a right. That's because the creator of a product is a free entity or individual, not a slave to society. Freedom is gained by securing rights of all individuals justly, not screwing some individuals to benefit a bigger majority (mob rule). And how can the binaries not enter public domain when millions of people have copy?
I hope he can fight this, perhaps the EFF will step in on his behalf.
Why should the EFF defend scrapers? They are leeches. The author used MTA-created data, and unless it's in the public domain, he should have to pay MTA a portion of his earnings. The $5000 fee at the top is a bit steep though.
This means that *NOTHING* created by artists, musicians, or *ANY* of
the culture created today will move into the public domain in your lifetime
So? That creative work took thousands if not millions of dollars to produce and they are willing to sell it to you for $10 to $50 bucks. But you are greedy, selfish and don't care about the welfare of the people who provide a product/service to make a living off copyright. No, you want everything for free. And I'll bet that once it's free nobody will use it or care about it that much in the same way as libraries are full of interesting books but hardly anybody reads them.
That is absurd. It is not how the intellectual property system was ever
intended to work.
Au contraire, the public is getting a bargain. That copyrighted work will last almost forever, the profit window only a few decades.
Are bus schedules really facts in the same way as history or science? They are not true facts because they change every year or so. Bus schedules are human-created place/time tables so the organization may assert copyright over their data. A lot of video games and useful apps contain large human-crated data tables. Are those not protected by copyright? The question is not whether bus schedules can be copyrighted (because they can), but rather can an organization using public funds to create these schedules claim copyright?
Imagine a world where facts and history are no longer available because some jackass corporation decided not to publish because it's not profitable enough.
Well history books are copyrighted and the author may choose to charge you for accessing that piece of history. The facts (if you really believe history books) will always be available if there is demand for it.
If they did that, i4i would have sued them for copyright infringement, not over patents.
Are you totally clueless? Copyright only protects direct cut-n-paste ripoffs of source code, which only stupid, mediocre programmers resort to. There are hundreds of ways to implement an idea. Sometimes, the code is not that valuable -- any competent programmer can implement it. But the idea behind that code is valuable and needs to be protected by a patent.
Jeez, don't you think it a little disingenuous to write a for profit book based upon the efforts of a bunch of programmers working for free?
Is it any more disingenuous than making profit by using free software? OSS is like throwing money on the street then admonishing people and calling them greedy bastards when they pick it up and use it for food/drink etc. If you don't like other people making money off your free product, don't create the free product.
These stupid, greedy jackals are destroying the patent system with their ridiculously obvious patents. What next? a patent to store cooking recipes using XML and an RDBMS? How do these patents get past the examiner?
Open source is to innovation as Microsoft is to innovation: i.e., both are a bunch of copycats. Innovation usually comes from small companies or individuals. Without patents, if a inventor spends 5 years perfecting an invention, OSS folks will wait until it is successful, then copy it within a few months, thereby reducing profit of the inventor to $0. Patents ensure, OSS or commercial leeches don't destroy innovation.
Some people (me included) think that it is currently not possible to write a non-trivial application without unknowingly infringing a patent.
That is a very legitimate complaint, probably because when the patent system was created, we had less technology and literacy resulting in fewer, more manageable inventions. But that's no reason to simply throw the baby with the bathwater, it needs to be fixed somehow by the USPTO.
Business model and software patents are starting to become "a method for selling can-openers using the internet" and "a can-opener using a touch-interface".
Over broadness is a general problem of all patents, not just software and business ones. Although over-broad claims "cover more ground" and prevent the competitors from entering their turf, they risk being thrown out and invalidated due to prior art, obviousness etc. Anybody claiming an overly broad patent claim has probably invented something great or is a bottom feeder creating obvious patents such as the "can-opener using mobile touch device."
Ha ha, how does anyone inventing a clever solution to a difficult problem take away your freedom? Patents just ensure that people like you and greedy capitalists, with a sense of entitlement to other people's work, don't leech off their genius. But keep acting like a some poor victim, while you've not done any work and want people to hand over the results of their hard work for free.
I do agree that trivial, obvious, retarded patents like the 1-click patent should not be allowed.
Fuck you for engaging in a game where the rich steal from the poor, because the rich can afford longer law suits.
Yeah, right. Without patents some poor people would have never gotten rich, since the rich have more experience, money and manpower. Patents were created to prevent the rich from stealing commercially valuable ideas from the poor so as to encourage innovation and help mankind as well.
And finally, what's wrong with software patents? Are all software inventions easy, trivial, and ordinary so that their creation deserves no protection while inventions made in other fields such as engineering, chemistry and biology get full protection of the law?
If a mechanical invention consisting of various metallic and plastic parts can get patent protection, why can't a software consisting of different Objects do too?
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Copyrights are not enough. If X is the new innovative piece of code within a program, a competitor can buy the program, fire up a debugger, and look at the disassembled code for X. Once he understands how it works (reverse engineering), he can then recreate that code in a higher language, say C. Copyright does not work here. Then there are cases where the code is not that hard, and you can copy the idea by just looking at the end product. Therefore having patents is necessary.
LOL. "Good Enough" is euphemistic code for average, mediocre, unimportant. So expect all future consumer products to exhibit that quality. Oh wait, most products already do, compared with products from 10 to 15 years ago: cars, software, movies, books etc. Is Windows 7 significantly better than the almost 10-year old XP? Other than its new GUI, it has nothing to offer other than slow, bloatedness. So why the hell should humanity improve technology if we don't get to use it while big, fat, CEOs use cheap materials and labor to increase their profits?
If you support open source, good enough will be the norm, as in, "Linux is good enough for my software needs, I don't need/want anything else." Since open source products have less competition (hard to compete with a $0 price tag), the need to improve the product will be almost non-existent. In contrast, with closed source, there is constant competition to deliver better products as each competitor works hard to improve his product and steal his competitor's profits.
But it's also about fairness. You want everyone to work to benefit you, but are unwilling to benefit them back in any manner. Let's keep the world free, and not force/guilt/manipulate people into working for free.
As if social networking, video games, porn, alcohol and smoking have not done enough damage to the human mind and body. Let's also add drugs to the mix so we can have people waste their entire lives away in worthless, degenerate activities. We should have vending machines in schools dispensing cocaine, so kids can taste what their parents missed out.
If stored on a computer, that DNA will be accessible to both business and government, at a certain level they are one and the same. First they test the athletes. A few years pass, then they start testing all citizens and nobody will question them, because everyone is so used to it. We don't want to create a new frickin' law, invading everyone's privacy, just because one woman looks like a man.
Then create a test that can output only male/female. No other genetic information about the athlete's DNA should be saved into a computer.
So athletes have to hand over their DNA to participate in a race? No way. Enough big brother garbage; govt is not god and citizens must have rights to some privacy, including protecting their DNA. Only criminals should be subject to such intrusion.
That's a poor analogy. Web browsers were not a key service of Windows when Netscape Navigator was released. The primary function of iPhone is the phone service. If Apple allows Google to change that, it would be like allowing Microsoft to change the Linux kernel or Linux hackers changing Windows kernel or its GUI, a bad thing, obviously.
Well, what the hell is Apple supposed to do? Allow its competitor to provide the key service of its product: phone calls? That's like Pepsi shipping Coke inside their bottles. Google should promote their service in their own product, not encroach into Apple's turf.
How come? Any piece of text or numbers that is human-generated, requires intelligence and creativity, is protected by copyright.
Ancient history, they did not have cheap recording technology we have now. So any valuable copyrighted work stored on disk today is unlikely to disapper in 50 to 100 years. It would probably go on some RAID server backed website the minute its copyrights expire.
Right, let's start pirating software, music and movies boldly. And screw the companies who spent millions building the product.
You're heading into dangerous territory here. The public benefit is privilege offered by the author, not a right. That's because the creator of a product is a free entity or individual, not a slave to society. Freedom is gained by securing rights of all individuals justly, not screwing some individuals to benefit a bigger majority (mob rule). And how can the binaries not enter public domain when millions of people have copy?
Why should the EFF defend scrapers? They are leeches. The author used MTA-created data, and unless it's in the public domain, he should have to pay MTA a portion of his earnings. The $5000 fee at the top is a bit steep though.
So? That creative work took thousands if not millions of dollars to produce and they are willing to sell it to you for $10 to $50 bucks. But you are greedy, selfish and don't care about the welfare of the people who provide a product/service to make a living off copyright. No, you want everything for free. And I'll bet that once it's free nobody will use it or care about it that much in the same way as libraries are full of interesting books but hardly anybody reads them.
Au contraire, the public is getting a bargain. That copyrighted work will last almost forever, the profit window only a few decades.
Are bus schedules really facts in the same way as history or science? They are not true facts because they change every year or so. Bus schedules are human-created place/time tables so the organization may assert copyright over their data. A lot of video games and useful apps contain large human-crated data tables. Are those not protected by copyright? The question is not whether bus schedules can be copyrighted (because they can), but rather can an organization using public funds to create these schedules claim copyright?
Well history books are copyrighted and the author may choose to charge you for accessing that piece of history. The facts (if you really believe history books) will always be available if there is demand for it.
Are you totally clueless? Copyright only protects direct cut-n-paste ripoffs of source code, which only stupid, mediocre programmers resort to. There are hundreds of ways to implement an idea. Sometimes, the code is not that valuable -- any competent programmer can implement it. But the idea behind that code is valuable and needs to be protected by a patent.
Is it any more disingenuous than making profit by using free software? OSS is like throwing money on the street then admonishing people and calling them greedy bastards when they pick it up and use it for food/drink etc. If you don't like other people making money off your free product, don't create the free product.
That's what they'd like you to think.
These stupid, greedy jackals are destroying the patent system with their ridiculously obvious patents. What next? a patent to store cooking recipes using XML and an RDBMS? How do these patents get past the examiner?
Doesn't LGPL prevent that? Why do we need GPL?
Open source is to innovation as Microsoft is to innovation: i.e., both are a bunch of copycats. Innovation usually comes from small companies or individuals. Without patents, if a inventor spends 5 years perfecting an invention, OSS folks will wait until it is successful, then copy it within a few months, thereby reducing profit of the inventor to $0. Patents ensure, OSS or commercial leeches don't destroy innovation.
Over broadness is a general problem of all patents, not just software and business ones. Although over-broad claims "cover more ground" and prevent the competitors from entering their turf, they risk being thrown out and invalidated due to prior art, obviousness etc. Anybody claiming an overly broad patent claim has probably invented something great or is a bottom feeder creating obvious patents such as the "can-opener using mobile touch device."
Ha ha, how does anyone inventing a clever solution to a difficult problem take away your freedom? Patents just ensure that people like you and greedy capitalists, with a sense of entitlement to other people's work, don't leech off their genius. But keep acting like a some poor victim, while you've not done any work and want people to hand over the results of their hard work for free. I do agree that trivial, obvious, retarded patents like the 1-click patent should not be allowed.
Yeah, right. Without patents some poor people would have never gotten rich, since the rich have more experience, money and manpower. Patents were created to prevent the rich from stealing commercially valuable ideas from the poor so as to encourage innovation and help mankind as well.
And finally, what's wrong with software patents? Are all software inventions easy, trivial, and ordinary so that their creation deserves no protection while inventions made in other fields such as engineering, chemistry and biology get full protection of the law? If a mechanical invention consisting of various metallic and plastic parts can get patent protection, why can't a software consisting of different Objects do too?
Also awesome for any text editing... you can now control the scroll speed when using up/down arrow keys.