Wait a minute, I didn't think Britian had software patents.
It doesnt. Or to be exact it doesnt have patents on software as such. But if the software produces a so-called 'technical effect', the software + computer may amount in totality to a patentable invention.
"If they have no interest in enforcing the patent, then why not simply defensively publish? Once it's published in a public manor, wouldn't that establish inventorship and bar anyone else from patenting?"
In broad terms, Yes. If you establish the invention as prior art no-one can get a subsequent patent for that exact invention. However there are important technical catches in patent application procedure in relation to timing of the disclosure compared to any patent application; so it may not work in some circumstances.
Also, someone may patent an improvement in your invention: it would be unpleasant if the BBC gave Microsoft a head start - however that would also be so for an offensive patent or by an examination of any non patented Free software.
I spoke to one of the BBC team demonstrating the codec at the London Linuxexpo. They said that the BBC had patented their codec although I was told that they have no real interest in patents. It was said to be a defensive patent whch they implied to me that they would not enforce, however the person I spoke to didnt know the details of the patent or its licencing scheme so it's a little unclear to me how this is going to work.
They also said that while they had no objection to paying licensing fee's per se, and that they did pay MS and Real, these were so inflexible in their licencing that scaling up operations was problematic. Their expressed hope was that with such a codec widely adopted they could massively scale up operations such as streaming without being crippled with licencing costs, or having the administrative burden of unwieldy licensing schemes.
it is still my understanding that the NSA goes to great pains to avoid intercepting any communication that comes from a U.S. citizen. They are strictly prohibited from doing so.
The NSA have a cosy arrangement using Echelon resources whereby they dont need to spy on US citizens. They use their GCHQ bitches (the NSA equivalent in the UK) to do it for them; and then the NSA uses the end product themselves but can legitimately claim it didnt do the interception.
OK, so it's a time of national crisis: a few more system failures and the US goes down the pan. You're going to solve this problem by giving Slashdotters root on DoD and FBI computers?
It's a plan, but I can see a few eensy teeny flaws...
These companies could, frankly, really mess up your life if they decided to do such a thing, or if a hacker broke in and did such a thing.
Crackers and malicious companies are, frankly, the very least of your worries. Bush and Ashcroft are already busily data mining commercial databases, airline records and the rest. They do this because they cannot gather much of this information themselves either for financial legal technical or political reasons.
But Orkut Friendster et. al. even if they havent already been co-opted into the Orwellian vision of the Land of the Free soon will be. All those contact address books you uploaded because it's, like, soooo neat, all the little buttons 'my politics are *anarchist*', 'my sexual orientation is *beastrosexual*', 'my firends are...', 'I am a *muslim*' will go straight into a PATRIOT/FBI database. Yea, neat. Would you even think of emailing Ashcroft with this information? no, but along comes a neat new shiney thing and you all jump. Do you believe their 'privacy' policy will protect you then?
Friends invited me to join Orkut - I did and was horrified. I gave no personal data thank fuck and resigned ASAP. I'd advise you to do the same.
I'm certainly not defending 'bad patents'. In fact I don't even defend 'good' patents - I think they are a very poor way to encourage innovation and have little objective economic justification. And that's European patents - The US patent system is even worst; probably the worst in the western world.
Your point about the USPTO, if I understand you correctly, is right and even they recognise and admit it. The have problems of too few and too inexperienced patent examiners and it's a particular problem in the software arena. The consequences of poor examination do indeed have just the bad effect you complain of: poorly examined patents gives power to the patent licence farms.
What you really need to do is get some practical experience of the law. Its not enough to read/., though all the IANAL's are good for a laugh. Obviously you understand that you typically get one end of the spectrum on this site. Thats not a bad thing and I agree with the policy concerns the majority here express. But its also important to take it from the other end too - understand the paranoia and, yes, greed of business. You should do this because you will virtually never be representing FOSS companies. As a lawyer you are a hired gun and sometimes your firm may ask you to represent some piece of slime like SCO. How are you going to handle that? If you're an associate and keen to progress you aren't going to say to your senior partner "screw you, I'm not on that team." You are or you're out - and out probably means out of the profession - unlike me few lawyers get to choose their clients and even I dont get to choose as often as I would like.
You'll need to develop a thick skin - as this thread shows most will hate you. Many will despise you; some will mean it, some follow the mob, some envy your money. It only ever changes when they need you or if like me you help out Free software users/companies. You have to let it bounce off, and if you can't it's not the job for you.
Practical exposure to the law will help: ask law firms if there are any prospects for temporary work, internships, offer to work free for a couple of weeks, whatever - you'll be really really lucky if you succeed. Or try a free legal advice project anything to get a handle on real law. It's enough to convince some people the law is not for them - for others it cements the motivation. By the way I recommend pro bono work for FOSS groups or digital campaign groups; it's a great antidote to regular clients & just feels good.
Once you've done that google & start reading a wide variety of stuff; but dont confine yourself to rant pages like/., Lessig has done some very thoughtful policy essays. But also hang out in the inventors & business Usenet forums and ask them: you need a variety of views and user objectives. Contrary to what/.'ers think its not ALL about megacorps screwing over the little man. As for reading material if you want to get a handle on policy you'll find that you wont understand the best texts until you have a good grounding in IP law. At the same time the 101 course materials tend to be a bit dry so I dont have any good suggestions - but the USPTO site is quite interesting.
The professor raises the other important point which is finance. Its an expensive long process to undertake and the competition is ferocious. Lots of people burn out and some get there only to wish they hadn't. Understand that you might also find yourself practising in an area you hadn't intended: you might want to be an IP lawyer but you might wind up doing crime or corporate finance crap because that's all you could get; it's happened to a few friends of mine. yech.
Good luck!
What I've told people in the past about this case is that it is not a real threat. Your right to directly import music for personal & private use is unaffected by this action and such behaviour remains lawful and authorised by UK legislation. Any/.'er in the UK can ring up Johnny Wu's CD shop in Hong Kong give a credit card number and import a CD. Thats legal - no if's no but's, legal - period.
This action relates to commercial entities importing and reselling works, "issuing infringing works to the public" in the legal lexicon, that are exclusively licenced to other UK companies - i.e. the grey market. What is worrying however is that CDWOW, if their version is correct, were not importing themselves. They were acting as a brokers on behalf of customers: gathering their orders via web site and forwarding them to a legally seperate CDWOW in Hong Kong for processing. The Hong Kong and UK companies were legally distinct and it was the Hong Kong company doing the exporting and transacting with the UK clients. The BPI's case is, I presume, that this was a charade and that the UK company was in effect the importer not a mere broker. It may be that the day to day operation was less clearly drawn between CDWOW UK and CDWOW HK than it should have been and it was this that gave the BPI 'wiggle' room for their lawsuit. Dunno.
Clearly a company like Amazon with deeper pockets should be able to see off the intimidation of the BPI. If they have their operational and legal structure audited by an IP lawyer (please call me Amazon:) I would think that they would be OK.
Any entrepreneurs should not be put off of this idea. Conceptually it is fine and it could work. You just need the balls and the money. You provide the balls I'll take the money. Just as long as the BPI gets screwed rather than the UK consumer - it would make a nice change.
I contacted them multiple ways, with no answer "ever."
Did you tell the Apache Foundation/the authors and/or the FSF?
If you are not a user or author you have no rights. They do however and they should be made aware so they can act. It isnt enough to contact them and complain on/. if you get no response.
GPL viability as a licence is enhanced if abusers fear that if they do copy GPL code a few eyeballs among millions of users will catch them eventually.
not a very viable concept... if the relationship has so little trust between parties that a third party needs to be brought in, then the developer may very well not put a full copy of everything in escro
On the contrary it is a viable concept. I draft escrow agreements for clients of mine and the situation you describe is well anticipated. It is dealt with by me or a consultant going to the source provider and building the binaries and then validating the binaries produced against the normally supplied system - e..g md5 sums, functionality tests etc.
Validation is an expensive add on option to an escrow for this reason.But if the client wants to pay me for their paranoia thats fine. There are cheaper ways of obtaining less solid verification.
One of the great advantages FOSS is not having to deal with this. Makes me less money so its not all good.
Thats not an entirely unreasonable view, however archeologists frequently gain important insights into an ancient culture by looking at dross. Near the burial sites of pharaohs were found carved complaints by workmen about poor conditions. in Greece (I think) notes were found n a ceremonial spot with curses aimed at neighbours and slutty wives. Gossip title-tatle for sure but quite informative and used to get a feel for the society.
In 5000 years archeologists will learn so much about us from blogs & archives of/. They will learn Natalie Portman was a fertility goddess worshipped by the mysterious use of a dish called 'hot grits'
Well, in the short run, loan referrals are STILL worth $50, so spamming a spammer who is doing that will result in an insane windfall for said spammer. And if the reverse attack isn't sustained... well, it just pays for a new boat and house in Tuscany for the spammer.
You could tell the mortgage company what you are doing: "I'm wasting your time because you employ spammers to waste mine. I never had any intention of dealing with a company employing spammers."
That would have the plus of losing them money since a.0005% response rate can be handled by 10-20 staff, say, but if the response rate goes up to 1% they either have to employ lots more people to filter the crap or retain the same staff numbers and let the few legitimate sales leads be buried in noise, or suffer huge backlogs.
It really is a reverse DDoS attack. Might work. Worth a try if everyone does it.
Applicant: "So tell me about the job." Lab HR: "you jerk off animals all day" Applicant: "oh God!" Applicant: "erm, what's the money?" Lab HR: "$10,000 a year"
Applicant: "Ok, I'll do it... but you'll have to give me time to raise the $10,000"
Europe faces NO threat from ever being attack by the US.
This is such a laughable assertion that I could write a book discrediting it. American has spent 100 years threatening and enacting diplomatic economic and military warfare against those who threaten its private interests. It is not unique in that of course, we British did the same for the past 200 years when our empire was the pre-eminent one. The US is now the pre-eminent empire and it bullies those countries who offer a challenge to its authority. Such attacks are of course justified as necessary to defend 'freedom, democracy and international order', as it defines it. Non-one is fooled for a moment - well, ok, you are apparently.
However, two brief and far from unique examples suffice to prove you wrong:
1.the Bush 'Hague Invasion Act'. If a US soldier commits a war crime and the Hague International Criminal Court convict and imprisons him the US will attack the Hague. The Hague for your information is a part of Europe (old Europe of course).
2. After the Second World War (c. 1946) the US threatened Italians that if they voted into power the communists they would attack them with the residue of their WW2 forces in the rest of Europe in order to overthrow them. Naturally this was to 'defend freedom'; poor simple Italian peasants didnt know what was best for them so you threatened to invade to persuade them to do the 'right' thing; which just coincidentally matches your global
plans for freedom.
Italy is also a part of Europe (old Europe).
the US has threatened Europe at many different levels, including militarily, in the past. Since we pose an actual threat to US power and influence it is not hard to imagine that in the future more threats will arise.
If Europe ever threatens US global corporate interests it will be bullied and threatened with attack - this is the demonstrable pattern of US imperialism. Only if we are not dependant on American military technology can we ever have the option to do defend ourselves against it if the need arises. Only a fool would deny himself even the option of self defence against a tyrant - even if the tyrant is one who currently pats you on the head and says 'good boy, good faithful boy'.
Since Americans are parochial and not very sophisticated let me put it in terms you might understand: would you like to rely for your national defence on Gallileo?
The only agenda the US has is a world were all countries have some form of democratically elected government and a homegrown form of capitalism.
Jeeeeesus, where to start with this one? (do you work or Bush?) Understand that I dont blame you for your public display of self-delusion. You are a dupe. All that saluting the flag crap you people do at school has indoctrinated you into the belief you are part of a good nation. But ask around the World. Ask the people of S.America who have spent decades of being murdered tortured raped and otherwise subject to US sponsored US organised terrorism by Fascist governments and their Green Beret trained special forces who are taught to electrocute burn and beat. All financed by the CIA in order to protect US banana/oil/rubber/whatever companies.
of course you'll need to browse at -1 Troll to see this since all the yanks mods will regard this comment as clearly unhelpful to freedom.
And if I ever fly to the US I will be detained at guantanamo bay as a "terrorist sympathiser". Another legitimate act of self defence by Bush.
Welcome our new SGR overlords.
I'd like to remind them that as a trusted lawyer I can I can round up Darl McBride and other SCO employees to slave in their salt mines.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes but I calculated it in Excel :)
It doesnt. Or to be exact it doesnt have patents on software as such. But if the software produces a so-called 'technical effect', the software + computer may amount in totality to a patentable invention.
Dont get me started on technical effects.
In broad terms, Yes. If you establish the invention as prior art no-one can get a subsequent patent for that exact invention. However there are important technical catches in patent application procedure in relation to timing of the disclosure compared to any patent application; so it may not work in some circumstances.
Also, someone may patent an improvement in your invention: it would be unpleasant if the BBC gave Microsoft a head start - however that would also be so for an offensive patent or by an examination of any non patented Free software.
They also said that while they had no objection to paying licensing fee's per se, and that they did pay MS and Real, these were so inflexible in their licencing that scaling up operations was problematic. Their expressed hope was that with such a codec widely adopted they could massively scale up operations such as streaming without being crippled with licencing costs, or having the administrative burden of unwieldy licensing schemes.
it is still my understanding that the NSA goes to great pains to avoid intercepting any communication that comes from a U.S. citizen. They are strictly prohibited from doing so.
The NSA have a cosy arrangement using Echelon resources whereby they dont need to spy on US citizens. They use their GCHQ bitches (the NSA equivalent in the UK) to do it for them; and then the NSA uses the end product themselves but can legitimately claim it didnt do the interception.
OK, so it's a time of national crisis: a few more system failures and the US goes down the pan. You're going to solve this problem by giving Slashdotters root on DoD and FBI computers?
It's a plan, but I can see a few eensy teeny flaws...
Crackers and malicious companies are, frankly, the very least of your worries. Bush and Ashcroft are already busily data mining commercial databases, airline records and the rest. They do this because they cannot gather much of this information themselves either for financial legal technical or political reasons.
But Orkut Friendster et. al. even if they havent already been co-opted into the Orwellian vision of the Land of the Free soon will be. All those contact address books you uploaded because it's, like, soooo neat, all the little buttons 'my politics are *anarchist*', 'my sexual orientation is *beastrosexual*', 'my firends are
Friends invited me to join Orkut - I did and was horrified. I gave no personal data thank fuck and resigned ASAP. I'd advise you to do the same.
Your point about the USPTO, if I understand you correctly, is right and even they recognise and admit it. The have problems of too few and too inexperienced patent examiners and it's a particular problem in the software arena. The consequences of poor examination do indeed have just the bad effect you complain of: poorly examined patents gives power to the patent licence farms.
You'll need to develop a thick skin - as this thread shows most will hate you. Many will despise you; some will mean it, some follow the mob, some envy your money. It only ever changes when they need you or if like me you help out Free software users/companies. You have to let it bounce off, and if you can't it's not the job for you.
Practical exposure to the law will help: ask law firms if there are any prospects for temporary work, internships, offer to work free for a couple of weeks, whatever - you'll be really really lucky if you succeed. Or try a free legal advice project anything to get a handle on real law. It's enough to convince some people the law is not for them - for others it cements the motivation. By the way I recommend pro bono work for FOSS groups or digital campaign groups; it's a great antidote to regular clients & just feels good.
Once you've done that google & start reading a wide variety of stuff; but dont confine yourself to rant pages like /., Lessig has done some very thoughtful policy essays. But also hang out in the inventors & business Usenet forums and ask them: you need a variety of views and user objectives. Contrary to what /.'ers think its not ALL about megacorps screwing over the little man. As for reading material if you want to get a handle on policy you'll find that you wont understand the best texts until you have a good grounding in IP law. At the same time the 101 course materials tend to be a bit dry so I dont have any good suggestions - but the USPTO site is quite interesting.
The professor raises the other important point which is finance. Its an expensive long process to undertake and the competition is ferocious. Lots of people burn out and some get there only to wish they hadn't. Understand that you might also find yourself practising in an area you hadn't intended: you might want to be an IP lawyer but you might wind up doing crime or corporate finance crap because that's all you could get; it's happened to a few friends of mine. yech.
Good luck!
Post it to the following address:
Adam Davidson or Ashraf T. Hasson
c/o Sinclair Cornell CPA (USAID/IRAQ) OTI APO AE 09335
This action relates to commercial entities importing and reselling works, "issuing infringing works to the public" in the legal lexicon, that are exclusively licenced to other UK companies - i.e. the grey market. What is worrying however is that CDWOW, if their version is correct, were not importing themselves. They were acting as a brokers on behalf of customers: gathering their orders via web site and forwarding them to a legally seperate CDWOW in Hong Kong for processing.
The Hong Kong and UK companies were legally distinct and it was the Hong Kong company doing the exporting and transacting with the UK clients. The BPI's case is, I presume, that this was a charade and that the UK company was in effect the importer not a mere broker. It may be that the day to day operation was less clearly drawn between CDWOW UK and CDWOW HK than it should have been and it was this that gave the BPI 'wiggle' room for their lawsuit. Dunno.
Clearly a company like Amazon with deeper pockets should be able to see off the intimidation of the BPI. If they have their operational and legal structure audited by an IP lawyer (please call me Amazon :) I would think that they would be OK.
Any entrepreneurs should not be put off of this idea. Conceptually it is fine and it could work. You just need the balls and the money. You provide the balls I'll take the money. Just as long as the BPI gets screwed rather than the UK consumer - it would make a nice change.
This is his blog:
frankel blog
Did you tell the Apache Foundation/the authors and/or the FSF? If you are not a user or author you have no rights. They do however and they should be made aware so they can act. It isnt enough to contact them and complain on /. if you get no response.
GPL viability as a licence is enhanced if abusers fear that if they do copy GPL code a few eyeballs among millions of users will catch them eventually.
On the contrary it is a viable concept. I draft escrow agreements for clients of mine and the situation you describe is well anticipated. It is dealt with by me or a consultant going to the source provider and building the binaries and then validating the binaries produced against the normally supplied system - e..g md5 sums, functionality tests etc.
Validation is an expensive add on option to an escrow for this reason.But if the client wants to pay me for their paranoia thats fine. There are cheaper ways of obtaining less solid verification.
One of the great advantages FOSS is not having to deal with this. Makes me less money so its not all good.
"undersea cable severed in the UK"
Rest of the World cut off.
Thats not an entirely unreasonable view, however archeologists frequently gain important insights into an ancient culture by looking at dross. Near the burial sites of pharaohs were found carved complaints by workmen about poor conditions. in Greece (I think) notes were found n a ceremonial spot with curses aimed at neighbours and slutty wives. Gossip title-tatle for sure but quite informative and used to get a feel for the society.
/. They will learn Natalie Portman was a fertility goddess worshipped by the mysterious use of a dish called 'hot grits'
In 5000 years archeologists will learn so much about us from blogs & archives of
I could scare living fuck out of the Bushes security team!
You could tell the mortgage company what you are doing: "I'm wasting your time because you employ spammers to waste mine. I never had any intention of dealing with a company employing spammers."
.0005% response rate can be handled by 10-20 staff, say, but if the response rate goes up to 1% they either have to employ lots more people to filter the crap or retain the same staff numbers and let the few legitimate sales leads be buried in noise, or suffer huge backlogs.
That would have the plus of losing them money since a
It really is a reverse DDoS attack. Might work. Worth a try if everyone does it.
Lab HR: "you jerk off animals all day"
Applicant: "oh God!"
Applicant: "erm, what's the money?"
Lab HR: "$10,000 a year"
Applicant: "Ok, I'll do it...
but you'll have to give me time to raise the $10,000"
A pompous pretentious official who is really a non-entity; pooh-bah
yappy
This is such a laughable assertion that I could write a book discrediting it. American has spent 100 years threatening and enacting diplomatic economic and military warfare against those who threaten its private interests. It is not unique in that of course, we British did the same for the past 200 years when our empire was the pre-eminent one. The US is now the pre-eminent empire and it bullies those countries who offer a challenge to its authority. Such attacks are of course justified as necessary to defend 'freedom, democracy and international order', as it defines it.
Non-one is fooled for a moment - well, ok, you are apparently.
However, two brief and far from unique examples suffice to prove you wrong:
1.the Bush 'Hague Invasion Act'. If a US soldier commits a war crime and the Hague International Criminal Court convict and imprisons him the US will attack the Hague. The Hague for your information is a part of Europe (old Europe of course).
2. After the Second World War (c. 1946) the US threatened Italians that if they voted into power the communists they would attack them with the residue of their WW2 forces in the rest of Europe in order to overthrow them. Naturally this was to 'defend freedom'; poor simple Italian peasants didnt know what was best for them so you threatened to invade to persuade them to do the 'right' thing; which just coincidentally matches your global plans for freedom.
Italy is also a part of Europe (old Europe).
the US has threatened Europe at many different levels, including militarily, in the past. Since we pose an actual threat to US power and influence it is not hard to imagine that in the future more threats will arise.
If Europe ever threatens US global corporate interests it will be bullied and threatened with attack - this is the demonstrable pattern of US imperialism. Only if we are not dependant on American military technology can we ever have the option to do defend ourselves against it if the need arises. Only a fool would deny himself even the option of self defence against a tyrant - even if the tyrant is one who currently pats you on the head and says 'good boy, good faithful boy'.
Since Americans are parochial and not very sophisticated let me put it in terms you might understand: would you like to rely for your national defence on Gallileo?
The only agenda the US has is a world were all countries have some form of democratically elected government and a homegrown form of capitalism.
Jeeeeesus, where to start with this one? (do you work or Bush?)
Understand that I dont blame you for your public display of self-delusion. You are a dupe. All that saluting the flag crap you people do at school has indoctrinated you into the belief you are part of a good nation. But ask around the World. Ask the people of S.America who have spent decades of being murdered tortured raped and otherwise subject to US sponsored US organised terrorism by Fascist governments and their Green Beret trained special forces who are taught to electrocute burn and beat. All financed by the CIA in order to protect US banana/oil/rubber/whatever companies.
of course you'll need to browse at -1 Troll to see this since all the yanks mods will regard this comment as clearly unhelpful to freedom.
And if I ever fly to the US I will be detained at guantanamo bay as a "terrorist sympathiser". Another legitimate act of self defence by Bush.
Welcome our new SGR overlords.
I'd like to remind them that as a trusted lawyer I can I can round up Darl McBride and other SCO employees to slave in their salt mines.
"Will they hire Boies to prosecute their case?"
They could do that: the DOJ, Napster and Al Gore did.
My guess, however, is that they'd prefer to win. SCO take note.
"If Linux developers had designed the power grid, then..."
SCO would shut down the national power grid?
ooh...