I'd go one better. If the taxpayers pay for it, the taxpayers own it. There's something cynical and wrong imho that a university can take federal dollars for basic research, then turn around and charge those same taxpayers for the right to use the inventions stemming from that research. If you want to lock up the discoveries, don't take federal dollars.
The whole point of Bayh-Dole was to address the issue that federal agencies were amassing thousands of patents, and simply sitting on them without licensing them to anyone. What good is a patent owned by "we the people" if no one uses it? So Bayh-Dole permitted universities to hold patent rights for federally funded research, in the hope that they might actually use the patents. Patent awards increased significantly after Bayh-Dole... whether that actually corresponds to innovation is another issue, but it's important to understand the reasoning behind Bayh-Dole.
PS, your comment about pharmaceutical research is spot-on. Not only do many pharma companies spend more on marketing than they do on research (thought they claim this "marketing" is making doctors aware of available medications), but "research" means primarily clinical trials. I typically see figures of 15-17% of expenditures thrown about for research; but actual basic research is something more like 1-2%.
It doesn't disturb me me that university owns the patent instead of the student, but what does disturb me is that the university owns the patent for research paid by public tax dollars.
Right, and before Bayh-Dole, that wasn't the case - the funding federal agency would own the patent, and could license it to people.
The Bayh-Dole act was created because so few of those government-held patents were actually being licensed - the government was just sitting on them, partially because practically every agency had different rules for licensing, etc.
It's well documented that after the Bayh-Dole act, the number of patents granted to universities did increase significantly. However, the more serious question is whether "number of patents granted" is truly related to innovation.
Also, Bayh-Dole includes march-in provisions for the government, so that in theory an agency could license the patent to someone else without the university's permission, but I don't believe the march-in provisions have ever actually been used.
Think of it as kind of how the GPL works - if you don't accept the GPL contract and redistribute the work, then you are guilty of criminal copyright infringement.
Uh, I thought copyright infringement was generally a civil issue, and that it only became criminal when you were really going at it, say pressing hundreds of copies of discs or something.
When copyrights become an issue according to the European Court of Human Rights (or similar authorities), like they did for the UK DNA database [slashdot.org], then you can claim it's a "moral case."
FYI: From the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, Article 15, Number 1: "The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone... To benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author."
There is a lot of debate over the meaning of Article 15, but many pro-IP people take it to mean that copyrights are a human right.
When your wife finds out you spent $5 on a perfect diamond that was made in a lab instead of by the Earths natural and loving embrace, you will find out how loving and warm your couch is...
That's why you tell her in advance, like I have.
Cultured diamonds (use the fancy word "cultured", like pearls, instead of "synthetic" which just sounds like a euphemism for "fake") are guaranteed to be conflict-free, which is also attractive. Besides, you can still spend the same amount of money, and just end up with a bigger, clearer, better quality diamond than what you'd get naturally.
Remember copyright is what protects FOSS... That's why I am a big fan of copyright.
FOSS would do just fine without copyright. The success of FOSS is because of dedicated communities of volunteers and commitment to principles of openness and sharing.
Copyright helps FOSS in the sense that someone can't just scoop up a GPL'd project, modify it, and start selling it without releasing their modifications, but even if they could, that doesn't mean the project wouldn't exist in the first place.
So you support someone from making disparaging remarks about an establishment and now that establishment has to prove those remarks as wrong? Isn't our society based on "innocent until proven guilty"? How about the folks who posted those comments show proof (e.g. pictures, audio recordings, etc)?
"Innocent until proven guilty" would mean that the people who made the comments are innocent of defamation/slander until they are proven guilty. The burden of proof is going to be with the person who is bringing the charge, and that's the way it should be. Otherwise, you'd have some very chilling effects on free speech. Someone would simply have to claim defamation regarding any statement they didn't like, and it would be up to the accused to defend themselves.
Seriously. If telcos want start to throttle Google, all Google has to do throw up a web page for the affected users with something like the following:
"Dear Google/YouTube user: Your ISP, ISP_NAME, doesn't believe that you should be able to access the web sites and services that you want to, such as Google or YouTube. If you don't feel that this is fair, please contact ISP_NAME at ISP_PHONE_NUMBER and let them know how you feel. You may also want to consider switching to another ISP, such as one of the following in your area: (insert auto-generated list of ISPs that don't throttle Google)"
Well, according to one of the slides, "an indie association" is one of the members. However, slide 7 also claims that this approach is supported by the EFF and Public Knowledge. Is this true?
Furthermore, why should anyone trust a "covenant" not to sue? I'd sure want more assurance than Jim Griffin's word.
the NSERC seems to be a government institution, so all research that they fund is by definition public research. naturally, academic research is going to remain in the control of the academic institution where it was conducted. this is done in order to keep publicly funded research free and open to everyone in the spirit of academic openness and to facilitate scientific collaboration. you can't accept government funding and then turn around and decide you don't want anyone else to have access to your research. it's not fair to taxpayers for them to foot the bill for proprietary research that is not made available to the public.
I'm pretty sure that's completely untrue.
See, e.g., the Bayh-Dole Act. There was also a recent hearing in the House aimed at overturning the NIH's open-access stipulation for publications. Just because something is publicly funded does not mean that it is freely and publicly accessible by any stretch of the imagination, regardless of how much that should be the case.
But maybe I'm completely misunderstanding things...
Maybe I'm being a bit pedantic here, but "ethics" is a professional code - for instance, it is completely ethical by military codes of ethics to kill an armed combatant, but not to kill a civilian.
You're not being pedantic, you're being imprecise. Codes of ethics are one thing, but "ethics" is most certainly not limited to a professional code. Look up the word in a dictionary. I also don't know why you got modded to +5 insightful.
From the OED: ethics: "The science of morals; the department of study concerned with the principles of human duty." That's the primary definition that's listed.
Your post brings back memories of my high school days. I too attended a small private school, and there were about two of us in the high school who had any interest in computers.
Even if no one else at your school is interested in it, you shouldn't hesitate to seek the opportunities to indulge your interests. If you haven't already, explore the possibility of designing independent study courses in topics that interest you. If there's a community college or university nearby, find out about possibly taking computer courses there. If you want to take the the AP computer science tests, you should start thinking about how you can accomplish that now.
Also, if you are so inclined, you may want to push your school's administration toward thinking about making a computing class mandatory. You could make a good case for it, I'm sure, and if you pitch the idea to your school's board, they might actually listen. Aim high, and best of luck!
It's not a joke. I've never had a problem watching video files. You've got a point with DVDs; the default mappings for remote control buttons in xine are idiotic, and in distributions like KnoppMyth, this should probably be reported as a bug and fixed. But really, edit the configuration file one time, and it's done. If it's done properly, you shouldn't have problems navigating DVD menus ever again. (Also be sure to save the config file, in case you ever accidentally overwrite it.)
Oh, and as another poster said, don't use vi if if it's such a pain. I never use it. And if you don't want to have to ever edit text configuration files by hand to get something working, well, MythTV probably isn't the right choice.
Wikis for pending legislation.
Only members of congress ( or their staff ) can make changes, but anyone can add a comment to any change. Use a moderation system like on/. to hide frivolous comments and to ensure that insightful comments rise to the top
I've thought of this before. Though, I wonder about the value of any of it.
/. has a pretty good moderation system, or at least it seems to me. But while it works a lot of the time, it also sucks a lot of the time. Comments that sound right, or that people want to be true, are modded up, regardless of whether they are actually true. Comments on legal matters are probably one of the best examples of this.
Of course, from time to time you'll have a trusted source say something (think NYCL), but there are many instances when I've seen factually incorrect information modded to +5 Informative and stay that way.*
Furthermore, I get the feeling we'll be more likely to see something like this: http://obamacto.org/ than a more complex moderation system. Note that at the time of posting, "repeal the DMCA" is the third ranked suggestion. Of course we all know the problems with the DMCA (anti-circumvention provisions come to mind first), but repealing it would also get rid of safe-harbor provisions. How many people who clicked "vote for" thought of that?
In any case, it's not as if legislators are just going to look at the top five things on the list and implement them. At least, one hopes not.
Where a moderation system would work well is in the thousands of public comments that are submitted to, say, the FCC when they ask for public comment. That way instead of a flood of inane commentary, then can see some highly ranked ideas first.
*If my own comment becomes an example of this, here is a disclaimer:-)
I remember hearing about this story a few months ago on NPR (can't find a link, if someone else can it's worth it to listen to). IIRC, they had an executive from the competing company being interviewed.
Basically, his complaint boiled down to the argument that it wasn't fair that the bus company had to comply with a bunch of expensive regulations, but that a carpooling service didn't.
What does her wealth have to do with it?
I was not aware that society's subjective judgment of whether someone has made "enough" money from one's intellectual property was a factor in copyright law. Either there's a copyright infringement or there isn't. Rowling's wealth and success are irrelevant.
I remember seeing this comment in the earlier discussion some time back.
While wealth might not be a factor in whether there's an infringement or not, wealth is relevant to the theory of copyright law. Copyright doesn't exist to make people lots of money. It exists to provide incentive for people to create things they otherwise wouldn't have created.
In terms of economics, paying a dollar more than is required to provide that incentive, or providing a day more copyright, is inefficient. If the author would have created it without that extra little bit, then that extra little bit is a waste. Society is overpaying for creativity.
Of course, determining the exact amount of incentive in each case isn't feasible, so there will always be some overpaying. However, the point is that if copyright were making every rights holder wealthy, it would probably indicate that society was in general overpaying for its creativity. And, as in the case, if one rights holder becomes very wealthy, society is probably overpaying in that instance.
Would Rowling still have written her books if the work only got her half her current earnings? Probably. A quarter or a tenth? Still probable. Would she have written the books if copyright only lasted 15 years, instead of decades? Probably. Society is undoubtedly overpaying for this creativity.
Then it shouldn't be a valid patent. Further evidence that the patent system in the US needs to be scrapped and rebuilt from scratch.
The GP probably means that the legal claims section is the only part that matters in court. Patents also contain detailed descriptions and illustrations which you don't always need to be a lawyer to understand.
Slashdot Mirror
It's like eskimos and words for "snow".
Ah, that tired myth: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004003.html
I'd go one better. If the taxpayers pay for it, the taxpayers own it. There's something cynical and wrong imho that a university can take federal dollars for basic research, then turn around and charge those same taxpayers for the right to use the inventions stemming from that research. If you want to lock up the discoveries, don't take federal dollars.
The whole point of Bayh-Dole was to address the issue that federal agencies were amassing thousands of patents, and simply sitting on them without licensing them to anyone. What good is a patent owned by "we the people" if no one uses it? So Bayh-Dole permitted universities to hold patent rights for federally funded research, in the hope that they might actually use the patents. Patent awards increased significantly after Bayh-Dole... whether that actually corresponds to innovation is another issue, but it's important to understand the reasoning behind Bayh-Dole.
PS, your comment about pharmaceutical research is spot-on. Not only do many pharma companies spend more on marketing than they do on research (thought they claim this "marketing" is making doctors aware of available medications), but "research" means primarily clinical trials. I typically see figures of 15-17% of expenditures thrown about for research; but actual basic research is something more like 1-2%.
It doesn't disturb me me that university owns the patent instead of the student, but what does disturb me is that the university owns the patent for research paid by public tax dollars.
Right, and before Bayh-Dole, that wasn't the case - the funding federal agency would own the patent, and could license it to people.
The Bayh-Dole act was created because so few of those government-held patents were actually being licensed - the government was just sitting on them, partially because practically every agency had different rules for licensing, etc.
It's well documented that after the Bayh-Dole act, the number of patents granted to universities did increase significantly. However, the more serious question is whether "number of patents granted" is truly related to innovation.
Also, Bayh-Dole includes march-in provisions for the government, so that in theory an agency could license the patent to someone else without the university's permission, but I don't believe the march-in provisions have ever actually been used.
Think of it as kind of how the GPL works - if you don't accept the GPL contract and redistribute the work, then you are guilty of criminal copyright infringement.
Uh, I thought copyright infringement was generally a civil issue, and that it only became criminal when you were really going at it, say pressing hundreds of copies of discs or something.
Care to clarify?
FYI, since this is a thread about education, and you were using Latin...
it's in loco parentis, not semper parentis.
That should probably be semper parens.
When copyrights become an issue according to the European Court of Human Rights (or similar authorities), like they did for the UK DNA database [slashdot.org], then you can claim it's a "moral case."
FYI: From the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, Article 15, Number 1: "The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone... To benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author."
There is a lot of debate over the meaning of Article 15, but many pro-IP people take it to mean that copyrights are a human right.
When your wife finds out you spent $5 on a perfect diamond that was made in a lab instead of by the Earths natural and loving embrace, you will find out how loving and warm your couch is...
That's why you tell her in advance, like I have.
Cultured diamonds (use the fancy word "cultured", like pearls, instead of "synthetic" which just sounds like a euphemism for "fake") are guaranteed to be conflict-free, which is also attractive. Besides, you can still spend the same amount of money, and just end up with a bigger, clearer, better quality diamond than what you'd get naturally.
Forum of Greek polises (polisi? poli?)
poleis
Remember copyright is what protects FOSS... That's why I am a big fan of copyright.
FOSS would do just fine without copyright. The success of FOSS is because of dedicated communities of volunteers and commitment to principles of openness and sharing.
Copyright helps FOSS in the sense that someone can't just scoop up a GPL'd project, modify it, and start selling it without releasing their modifications, but even if they could, that doesn't mean the project wouldn't exist in the first place.
So you support someone from making disparaging remarks about an establishment and now that establishment has to prove those remarks as wrong? Isn't our society based on "innocent until proven guilty"? How about the folks who posted those comments show proof (e.g. pictures, audio recordings, etc)?
"Innocent until proven guilty" would mean that the people who made the comments are innocent of defamation/slander until they are proven guilty. The burden of proof is going to be with the person who is bringing the charge, and that's the way it should be. Otherwise, you'd have some very chilling effects on free speech. Someone would simply have to claim defamation regarding any statement they didn't like, and it would be up to the accused to defend themselves.
Seriously. If telcos want start to throttle Google, all Google has to do throw up a web page for the affected users with something like the following:
"Dear Google/YouTube user: Your ISP, ISP_NAME, doesn't believe that you should be able to access the web sites and services that you want to, such as Google or YouTube. If you don't feel that this is fair, please contact ISP_NAME at ISP_PHONE_NUMBER and let them know how you feel. You may also want to consider switching to another ISP, such as one of the following in your area: (insert auto-generated list of ISPs that don't throttle Google)"
lesbian fiction in the 1940s.
Um, link?
Well, according to one of the slides, "an indie association" is one of the members. However, slide 7 also claims that this approach is supported by the EFF and Public Knowledge. Is this true?
Furthermore, why should anyone trust a "covenant" not to sue? I'd sure want more assurance than Jim Griffin's word.
Democracy relies on people having access to as much information as possible so they can make wise decisions. Privacy is contrary to democracy.
A bold but vague statement.
Access to information is good, but it should be relevant information. A lot of private information is irrelevant to participation in a democracy.
the NSERC seems to be a government institution, so all research that they fund is by definition public research. naturally, academic research is going to remain in the control of the academic institution where it was conducted. this is done in order to keep publicly funded research free and open to everyone in the spirit of academic openness and to facilitate scientific collaboration. you can't accept government funding and then turn around and decide you don't want anyone else to have access to your research. it's not fair to taxpayers for them to foot the bill for proprietary research that is not made available to the public.
I'm pretty sure that's completely untrue.
See, e.g., the Bayh-Dole Act. There was also a recent hearing in the House aimed at overturning the NIH's open-access stipulation for publications. Just because something is publicly funded does not mean that it is freely and publicly accessible by any stretch of the imagination, regardless of how much that should be the case.
But maybe I'm completely misunderstanding things...
He was making a reference to the Oliver Wendell Holmes quote. See, e.g., http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/quote-of-the-moment-oliver-wendell-holmes-jr-on-taxes/
Maybe I'm being a bit pedantic here, but "ethics" is a professional code - for instance, it is completely ethical by military codes of ethics to kill an armed combatant, but not to kill a civilian.
You're not being pedantic, you're being imprecise. Codes of ethics are one thing, but "ethics" is most certainly not limited to a professional code. Look up the word in a dictionary. I also don't know why you got modded to +5 insightful.
From the OED: ethics: "The science of morals; the department of study concerned with the principles of human duty." That's the primary definition that's listed.
Your post brings back memories of my high school days. I too attended a small private school, and there were about two of us in the high school who had any interest in computers.
Even if no one else at your school is interested in it, you shouldn't hesitate to seek the opportunities to indulge your interests. If you haven't already, explore the possibility of designing independent study courses in topics that interest you. If there's a community college or university nearby, find out about possibly taking computer courses there. If you want to take the the AP computer science tests, you should start thinking about how you can accomplish that now.
Also, if you are so inclined, you may want to push your school's administration toward thinking about making a computing class mandatory. You could make a good case for it, I'm sure, and if you pitch the idea to your school's board, they might actually listen. Aim high, and best of luck!
It's not a joke. I've never had a problem watching video files. You've got a point with DVDs; the default mappings for remote control buttons in xine are idiotic, and in distributions like KnoppMyth, this should probably be reported as a bug and fixed. But really, edit the configuration file one time, and it's done. If it's done properly, you shouldn't have problems navigating DVD menus ever again. (Also be sure to save the config file, in case you ever accidentally overwrite it.)
Oh, and as another poster said, don't use vi if if it's such a pain. I never use it. And if you don't want to have to ever edit text configuration files by hand to get something working, well, MythTV probably isn't the right choice.
Wikis for pending legislation. Only members of congress ( or their staff ) can make changes, but anyone can add a comment to any change. Use a moderation system like on /. to hide frivolous comments and to ensure that insightful comments rise to the top
I've thought of this before. Though, I wonder about the value of any of it.
/. has a pretty good moderation system, or at least it seems to me. But while it works a lot of the time, it also sucks a lot of the time. Comments that sound right, or that people want to be true, are modded up, regardless of whether they are actually true. Comments on legal matters are probably one of the best examples of this.
Of course, from time to time you'll have a trusted source say something (think NYCL), but there are many instances when I've seen factually incorrect information modded to +5 Informative and stay that way.*
Furthermore, I get the feeling we'll be more likely to see something like this: http://obamacto.org/ than a more complex moderation system. Note that at the time of posting, "repeal the DMCA" is the third ranked suggestion. Of course we all know the problems with the DMCA (anti-circumvention provisions come to mind first), but repealing it would also get rid of safe-harbor provisions. How many people who clicked "vote for" thought of that?
In any case, it's not as if legislators are just going to look at the top five things on the list and implement them. At least, one hopes not.
Where a moderation system would work well is in the thousands of public comments that are submitted to, say, the FCC when they ask for public comment. That way instead of a flood of inane commentary, then can see some highly ranked ideas first.
*If my own comment becomes an example of this, here is a disclaimer :-)
I remember hearing about this story a few months ago on NPR (can't find a link, if someone else can it's worth it to listen to). IIRC, they had an executive from the competing company being interviewed.
Basically, his complaint boiled down to the argument that it wasn't fair that the bus company had to comply with a bunch of expensive regulations, but that a carpooling service didn't.
What does her wealth have to do with it? I was not aware that society's subjective judgment of whether someone has made "enough" money from one's intellectual property was a factor in copyright law. Either there's a copyright infringement or there isn't. Rowling's wealth and success are irrelevant.
I remember seeing this comment in the earlier discussion some time back.
While wealth might not be a factor in whether there's an infringement or not, wealth is relevant to the theory of copyright law. Copyright doesn't exist to make people lots of money. It exists to provide incentive for people to create things they otherwise wouldn't have created.
In terms of economics, paying a dollar more than is required to provide that incentive, or providing a day more copyright, is inefficient. If the author would have created it without that extra little bit, then that extra little bit is a waste. Society is overpaying for creativity.
Of course, determining the exact amount of incentive in each case isn't feasible, so there will always be some overpaying. However, the point is that if copyright were making every rights holder wealthy, it would probably indicate that society was in general overpaying for its creativity. And, as in the case, if one rights holder becomes very wealthy, society is probably overpaying in that instance.
Would Rowling still have written her books if the work only got her half her current earnings? Probably. A quarter or a tenth? Still probable. Would she have written the books if copyright only lasted 15 years, instead of decades? Probably. Society is undoubtedly overpaying for this creativity.
Then it shouldn't be a valid patent. Further evidence that the patent system in the US needs to be scrapped and rebuilt from scratch.
The GP probably means that the legal claims section is the only part that matters in court. Patents also contain detailed descriptions and illustrations which you don't always need to be a lawyer to understand.
CNN has a searchable, text-based transcript here.
I count six "maverick" instances by Palin.
+1 en vino veritas?
s/en/in/