I'll tell you what is "fundamentally wrong"; The US patent system is fundamentally wrong.
I am in total agreement that the patent system needs to be reformed, and issues such as obviousness, and the term length for subject matter like software and business method patents needs to be addressed. However, advocating for the abolishment of the patent system (as I suspect you are) would lead to a fundamentally worse situation then the current one.
First, the patent system, regardless of its flaws, does encourage disclosure of inventions and eventually makes them public domain. In 20 years, regardless of how the owner has used, not used, or abused the patent, the invention claimed in that patent will be public domain, and usable by all with no royalties or restrictions. And even during those 20 years, society can still use that knowledge for further experimentation, or improve on the original invention.
Second, and on a related note, abolishing the patent system will encourage the hoarding of knowledge. Currently the patent system gives the inventor two economic choices, (1) disclose the invention and get a 20 year monopoly on it, OR (2) keep the invention secret and try to make money off of it until its rediscovered or secrecy is lost (this is enforced by 35 USC 102(b) statutory bar, which prevents anyone who commercially uses an invention for more then a year from obtaining a patent on that invention). Abolishing the patent system leaves the inventor with these two economic choices, (1) disclose invention and have everybody copy it, OR (2) keep the invention secret and try to make money off of it until its rediscovered or secrecy is lost. Clearly in the no-patent world, choice (2) is the better choice for the inventor. For society though, I think it is probably the worst choice, since everyone is effectively deprived of the knowledge behind the invention for as long as the inventor can keep it hidden. That definitely does not encourage innovation.
As for your specific concerns:
Why? Because it is a system that guarantees that anyone but the 1st to the gate is hammered;
You are wrong here, the US Patent system is the only major system in the world that gives priority for a patent to the first to invent. The EU and Japan both give priority to the first to file. There has been debate over moving to a first to file system in the US, and IMO it has merit, because one of the most expensive parts of patent litigation is determining the date of invention. Also setting the invention date at the date of the filing would encourage faster disclosure of inventions since there would be an incentive to filing earlier, and not try to keep an invention secret.
because it is a system that guarantees that anyone without deep pockets cannot actually be protected (read, encouraged) by the system;
I agree here, patent litigation is inherently expensive and does favor those with deep pockets, but unless you want to do away with the patent system entirely, I see no way around this.
because it discourages innovation.
I would like to see some proof here. Patent applications over time have been continuously increasing. Source. The USPTO had a record number of applications last year. Source. One would figure that if innovation was negatively affected, we would not have seen over a two fold increase in applications over the last 20 years. I would also refer back to my earlier concerns over a no-patent world.
The number of devices/programs you can actually create without running smack into someone's fool patent is very near zero. So much for encouraging innovation.
I would argue that if someone is creating something and keeps running into blocking patents, the
Re:Call me a stickler for language...
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DRM Causes Piracy
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· Score: 1
What would you say if it said "Cancer causes death" instead? It's assumed that piracy would still exist without DRM, just like it's assumed that death would still exist without cancer.
Causation, as is pertinent here means "anything that produces an effect; cause." Source. Given this, I would have to say that saying "cancer causes death" is an incorrect use of the word in its proper sense. If I get lung cancer, it will not produce the effect of death. It might make me 10 times more likely to die than a person without lung cancer, but it is not a certainty that I will die from it.
Put another way, saying "cancer causes death" is like saying "if you get cancer, then you will die." We know this is not true for all types of cancer. If you were to take the negation of that statement it would be "if you do not die, then you do not have cancer." Again we know that to be true as someone is perfectly able to have cancer and not die from it.
Not to sound pedantic, but I think you are making the mistake of thinking of causation in the past tense. For example, if you had said "his death was caused by cancer," then your logic make sense, assuming that you could eventual trace the cause of his death back to the fact that he had cancer.
This misuse of "causation" was precisely the problem I had with the article's summary. It confuses the concept that an increase in probability A will occur if B is present with the concept that A will occur if B is present.
Call me a stickler for language...
on
DRM Causes Piracy
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· Score: 3, Interesting
But the article asserts that DRM causes more piracy. The summary of the article in the blurb does great injustice to the article by implying that but for the existence of DRM, there would be no piracy. That is frankly false. Piracy has been a problem since well before DRM (that's why they created it), and it would probably be one if DRM ceased to exist.
Personally, I think the key issue with piracy is not DRM, but the fact that piracy and copyright infringement are becoming an acceptable to increasingly commit. The result of this is a situation where the laws of society are arguably out of sink with its values. Situations like this are hard to maintain because we depend as much on societal stigma as we do on criminal punishment to deter most crimes. When stigma is lacking or low, we often try to make up for this by adding criminal punishment to increase deterrence.
The problem with this, of course, is that it creates a paradoxical situation where we punish people more for crimes we care less about (another example, non-violent drug offenses). Thus you end up with a situation where people are morally outraged, even fearful, at the threat of having the book thrown at them for a crime they do not consider "bad" at all.
The biggest problem though for copyright infringement is that society normally deals with "lesser" crimes like these by imposing fines on the violator like with speeding for instance. People speed, and when they get caught they pay the fine, go to traffic school, and continue speeding. To most, the fine and traffic school are just the transactional cost of speeding to them.
However, infringement is inherently tough to solve with fines, because it is an economic crime, not a behavioral one. A reasonable fine, the cost of purchasing the infringed material, would have at best a neutral effect on infringement society-wide. People would just infringe, take their chances, and worst case pay up if they get caught. However setting fines too high, as the current system arguably has them, has an even worse effect though, since your average infringer will tend to infringe more than otherwise, the logic being that "if getting caught for a little infringement is going to bankrupt me, I might as well get my money's worth by infringing a lot." Unreasonably high fines also create a situation where the infringed party inherently knows that the infringer is likely judgment proof (cannot pay the fines), further pissing them off. At this point, society tries criminal penalties as well as fines, which leads us to the current system we have.
Obviously solving this problem is a toughy. We could kill copyright infringement as a crime, much as we repealed Prohibition, but that could create other problems, such as disincentivizing creativty, or encouraging tighter DRM, as creators deal with the ramifications. I offer no solutions, but this is the problem as I see it.
Double standard. Hardly, countries such as Mexico regularly refuse to extradite persons to the US if that persons faces the death penalty. Source 1, Source 2, Source 3. The Wikipedia article also points out that many European countries regularly refuse to extradite their own citizens. The most famous case is that of Roman Polansky, whom France refused to extradite to the US after he fled the country following a conviction on the charge of child rape.
As for you assertion that the US disproportionately denies extradition requests, I would like to see some data to back it up. The only data I could find was published by the Australian government, the country from which the accused was extradited, for the 2004-05 year. Source. According to the document, they did not have a single request denied by the U.S.
Also, just for clarification, the US did not go in and "take" him. The summary clearly points out that the US spend three years in proceedings before the order was finally given to extradite. The following article also clarifies that the accused with in Australia during the entire ordeal. Source. I hardly call that "waltzing over."
Please, you make it sound like the Republican bogeyman is responsible for everything that is wrong in Cuba. Here are some facts:
The embargo as we know it was first enacted via executive order by John F. Kennedy
The embargo was codified into US law in 1992 in a bill authored by Robert Torricelli, a democrat from New Jersey, and passed by a Democratic majority in both the House and Senate
Bill Clinton is responsible for one of the larger increases in the scope of the embargo in the last ten years (in part to make for his botching of the Elian Gonzales fiasco)
While I agree with you that embargo is hypocritical and should be lifted, it's not an issue that cuts across party lines. As long as Florida is a key state in Presidential elections, and as long as Cuban voters in Florida vote as a block, neither party is going to touch the embargo.
Second item would restore patents to individuals. The concept of patents was not designed or intended to foster large portfolios wielded by legal entities with mountains of cash and armies of lawyers. It was not even designed with Edison in mind. Restore patent holding to the actual living, breathing inventors, and let their employers have first refusal on any patentable item developed with company funds.
A quick note, in the US only individual persons can hold a patent. That person can then assign the patent (giving the assignee the right to use/enforce the patent) by law to anyone (including corporations).
As for your idea, I think it is horrible. First, by restricting patents to individual inventors you are restricting development in industries where the economies of scale prohibit individuals from inventing. The easiest example of this is the biotech industry. It takes years, and hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a drug. Very few individuals (save the independently wealthy) have time to go out and develop cures to diseases by themselves on their own dime.
Second, Letting employees have rights of first refusal would basically discourage companies from funding inovation. What company is going to give their employees resources to invent, if that employee is then going to turn around and take the invention for himself or license it to a competitor for more money then the company can offer. That's just bad business.
Third, business moves a lot faster than it did 50, 100, 200 years ago. Allowing patents to last 20 years is absurd in today's market.
Only in some industries. Look at the pharmaceutical industry as per above. As another post said, imagine the costs of new drugs if the drug companies only have 5 years to recoup their investment versus 20 years.
In general, reform the entire system to be oriented toward individual inventors, rather than Corporate innovation squatters.
If Congress does anything about this, it won't be caused by any domestic forces. The EU is gaining strength in these areas and pushing lots of reforms through. If the US wants to continue trading with Europe, many of America's draconian laws will have to be updated, including patents.
The European system is not oriented to help the individual inventor. Both Europe and Japan allow corporations to hold patents directly. Both of them also have a first-to-file system of granting patents. This means that priority for patents goes to the first person/company to file the application, the the first to actually invent the invention. The US has a first to invent rule. This benefits corporations a lot more than the individual, as they are the ones with time and money for lawyers, and already have internal mechanisms in place for filing more efficiently.
I think peer review does merit consideration, but I have two big concerns with any implementation of it.
The first concern is time. A peer review period will increase the time it takes to get a patent. The USPTO already has a huge backlog of applications, and the average time to get a patent is two years. Increasing the wait time further would both increase the backlog and delays, which in turn would disincentivize people from applying for patents.
The second concern I have is ensuring fair peer review. The main problem with peer review is the significant risk that peers will abuse the nonobviousness requirement when judging a patent application.
First there is the problem of hindsight. Many improvements seem obvious with the benefit of hindsight. For example its very easy to sit back now and say that pipelined architecture CPU's were an obvious evolution from single instruction execution architectures, but that would be ignoring all of the time and effort put into designing and building one. An invention has two parts, the conception of the idea, and its reduction to a working model. A patent should reward both and the effort put into the latter is often lost in hindsight.
The second big issue I have is in the potential for peers to abuse the review process to deny patents specifically for commercial gain. If IBM, AMD, and Intel were in an arms race to invent some new processor technology and AMD built it first, should IBM and Intel be able to protest the nonobviousness of the invention merely because they were also developing it, but failed to come up with a working model? Or for that matter, would a company be willing to risk publicizing their invention through the patent process if it were likely to be struck down on peer review? They would be better off keeping it secret (if possible) and trying to utilize it secretly in order to recoup their investment. Part of the benefit of patent laws is that society gets the benefit of knowledge entering the public domain after the patent period expires. I'm not sure a system that potentially encourages secrecy of knowledge is in the best interest of society.
"Fair use" is a well-established legal principle, not just a Slashdot mantra. While not its primary goal, DRM does its best to contradict our established rights by preventing even fair use of legally purchased material.
You are right, fair use is an established legal principle, and DRM does tend to offend it in most of its implemented forms.
However, it is a fallacy to think that fair use is a guaranteed fundamental right under the Constitution like freedom of speech. It is a statutorily codified legal doctrine that arose from the common law. Nothing in the Constitution guarantees or implies a right to fair use and Congress, if it wanted to, could nullify the doctrine tomorrow.
the US is already behind pretty much the rest of the world
While probably is true, I think this statement is a gross over generalization. Broadband is available in all major urban areas. The fact that rural areas lack broadband skews the statistics.
France for example has a density of 110 people/sq. km. link. Germany has a population density of 232. The US, by contrast has a density of 31. In terms of broadband coverage, it's going to be a lot easier to connect a dense country like Germany or France than it would be to cover the US. The amount of cable/fiber alone needed to connect all of the rural populations could probably completely wire a couple medium sized countries with dense populations.
I could not find any statistics, but a better measure would be what percentage of the urban population has access to broadband.
Well I think that's exactly what they are offering right now. They only difference is that instead of outwardly limiting bandwidth, most ISP's reserve the right to cut you off if you are engaging in excessive use. It allows them more discretion, and doesn't piss of consumers as much.
If more ISPs would let us use even our measly aDSL uplinks (that we pay for) . ..
If you want to run a server, buy a commercial package. ISPs typically oversell their bandwidth for home use so that they can charge cheaper rates. This works since they ISP only has to keep enough dedicated bandwidth on hand to meet peak usage demands, which are usually less then the theoretical max throughput of all of their users. If we had everyone running around with dedicate servers, ISPs would need to up this minimum bandwidth to achieve a reasonable QOS. That in turn would leave us paying $300-500 a month for a 1.5Mb DSL line, which is about what you pay for dedicated commercial-grade bandwidth. This is why they do not allow you to run a server, not because they want to sensor your speech.
If you look carefully at your service agreement, you see that you do not actually pay for full bandwidth usage 24/7. You instead pay for "reasonable" usage of their service. Examples:
AT&T DSL Service Agreement: "You understand and acknowledge that the Service is intended for your periodic and legitimately active use." (emphasis added) link.
Cox Cable HighSpeed Internet Service Agreement: "In addition to complying with the limitations for specific features, you must ensure that your activities do not improperly restrict, inhibit, or degrade any other user's use of the Service, nor represent (in Cox's sole judgment) an unusually great burden on the network itself. In addition, you must ensure that your use does not improperly restrict, inhibit, disrupt, degrade or impede Cox's ability to deliver the Service and monitor the Service, backbone, network nodes, and/or other network services." (emphasis added) link.
Most other providers have similar language. In sum, I'm all for you running a server, but buy some dedicated bandwidth. Don't advocate a solution that drives the cost of service up for the rest of us "non-server" types.
The main problem I have with public money is that if you fund any project with public money, you create a bureaucracy who's goal is to get more and more money, often at the expense of their set goal. Take the war on drugs for example, do you think the DEA, FBI, Coast Guard, and Boarder Patrol actually want there to be absolutely zero drugs getting into this country? No, because then their usefulness diminishes, their funding gets cut, and they have to downsize.
In the case of a cure for cancer, do you think a government funded agency would do much better. If government funded cancer specialists develop a cure, they'll get no more funding, and none of the profits from the drugs since the government would own the rights to it. They would effectively have a perverse incentive to string out development as long as possible, because unlike a corporation, the government is not going to cut them (as fast) if they fail to produce results.
Personally, if the government has to get monetarily involved, I would rather see them offer a lump sum reward, say $50 to $100 billion dollars to the first company that gets a cure FDA approved. That would take care of the trouble of monopoly, and probably induce an arms race for the cure (assuming the reward is big enough to cover the costs of development).
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
"Science" in this clause has been interpreted to refer to creative works (i.e., copyright), while "useful arts" has been interpreted to include works of utility (i.e., patents). This is due to the changing definition of science, which used to be synonymous with just "knowledge" rather then use of the scientific method with which it is currently associcated.
While this seems trivial, it is relevant if you want to talk about the Framers' original intent. For example, if "useful arts" were interpreted to encompass copyright law, the word "useful" would specifically imply that any copyrightable work had to be useful, which we know is not the case in current law since copyright law encompasses creative works with no requirement of utility. Likewise, if "science" were deemed to grant the authority of patent law, there would be no constitutionally mandated requirement of utility to obtain a patent. That is something I'm sure no one wants to see.
I think the real reason these stories come up so often is because it's just a cheap way for the editors to generate page views. Most people here have an irrationally strong hatred of Creationists, and there's nothing more satisfying then reaffirming one's beliefs on a regular basis, ergo the rehashing arguments. The smug feeling people get here reading this rehash is no different then the smug feeling Creationists get when they tell you that you are wrong for believing evolution and not accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
The museum is costing $25m (£13m) and all but $3m has already been raised from private donations. It is strategically placed, too - not in the middle of nowhere, but within six hours' drive of two-thirds of the entire population of the US.
Yah um, there is no public money being used to this. It's all privately financed. Read the article again.
Yes, because the best way to deal with something is to sweep it under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist. That strategy sure worked in the Middle East after WWII. No troubles there.
Ok, so let me get this straight. A bunch of Bible-thumpers raises private money to build a museum to depict scenes out of the Flintstones, and everyone here is bitching about how these people should be shut up. The 1st Amendment separates church and state, but it also protects freedom of speech. These people aren't directly inciting violence or rebellion They're not spouting libelous falsehoods. Let them be.
You are confusing not supposed to win a majority, which Democrats were supposed to do with which representatives were supposed to win. If you go look at the predictions, you will see that there many Democrats who won in districts where they were not expected to win.
Your version isn't how the Congress works.
Maybe I got my high school civics class wrong, but that still doesn't change the fundamental assertions I made which are (1) money follows power, and (2) newly elected Democrats will not have any in the next Congress. Trust me money will follow the Democrats, and if they hold on for a couple terms, it will start to roll in big. In 10-20 years, depending on how long it takes for the Dems to pork up and sell out, they will be out again. The system doesn't change. We just like to throw out the incumbent party everyone once in a while so that we feel it does.
Even so, Republicans still pulled in much more, two to one. That ration is most certainly "far behind".
A couple of things. First, power in the Congress is wielded by seniority. The longer you've served, the more influence (committee assignments, chairmanships) you wield. Thus anyone who wants to wield power will done to those in position to have it. Thus, why would any interest give money to candidates, who if they defeat the incumbent would still be two or three terms away from having any power? Instead you would donate to the Democrats and Republicans likely to wield power. In this case, even with a Democratic victory, suriving Republicans would still, because of seniority, be in positions on powerful committees. They might not be heading them, but their votes are still just as crucial to getting a bill to the floor for a full House vote.
Second, House races, where most of the money is bieng spent, are nortiously hard to predict. Just go through the list from this current election. There are at least 10 races where the Democrat won when he/she was not supposed to. The Dems that defeated Kelly(NY) and Pombo(CA) are perfect examples. Couple that with the value of seniority, and there is a serious bias against donating to non-incumbents. Give it a couple of terms and I guarantee you will see the money start to shift the other way.
But why is calling someone gay such a terrible declaration?
It's not. But potentially outing someone on national TV has massive consequences for the outee. If he is indeed gay and in the closet, he probably has friends, coworkers, and family that do not know he's gay. Regardless of your feelings on how gay people should be perceived, many people do not share them and would react quite aversely, especially if you are a Republican. Being outed without your consent is a horrible violation of your personal rights. How would you feel if Bill Maher went on national television and said you were into corpophagia?
Slashdot Mirror
-US Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter, defining obscenity (IIRC) FYI, it was Justice Potter Stewart. Source.
I am in total agreement that the patent system needs to be reformed, and issues such as obviousness, and the term length for subject matter like software and business method patents needs to be addressed. However, advocating for the abolishment of the patent system (as I suspect you are) would lead to a fundamentally worse situation then the current one.
First, the patent system, regardless of its flaws, does encourage disclosure of inventions and eventually makes them public domain. In 20 years, regardless of how the owner has used, not used, or abused the patent, the invention claimed in that patent will be public domain, and usable by all with no royalties or restrictions. And even during those 20 years, society can still use that knowledge for further experimentation, or improve on the original invention.
Second, and on a related note, abolishing the patent system will encourage the hoarding of knowledge. Currently the patent system gives the inventor two economic choices, (1) disclose the invention and get a 20 year monopoly on it, OR (2) keep the invention secret and try to make money off of it until its rediscovered or secrecy is lost (this is enforced by 35 USC 102(b) statutory bar, which prevents anyone who commercially uses an invention for more then a year from obtaining a patent on that invention). Abolishing the patent system leaves the inventor with these two economic choices, (1) disclose invention and have everybody copy it, OR (2) keep the invention secret and try to make money off of it until its rediscovered or secrecy is lost. Clearly in the no-patent world, choice (2) is the better choice for the inventor. For society though, I think it is probably the worst choice, since everyone is effectively deprived of the knowledge behind the invention for as long as the inventor can keep it hidden. That definitely does not encourage innovation.
As for your specific concerns:
You are wrong here, the US Patent system is the only major system in the world that gives priority for a patent to the first to invent. The EU and Japan both give priority to the first to file. There has been debate over moving to a first to file system in the US, and IMO it has merit, because one of the most expensive parts of patent litigation is determining the date of invention. Also setting the invention date at the date of the filing would encourage faster disclosure of inventions since there would be an incentive to filing earlier, and not try to keep an invention secret.
I agree here, patent litigation is inherently expensive and does favor those with deep pockets, but unless you want to do away with the patent system entirely, I see no way around this.
I would like to see some proof here. Patent applications over time have been continuously increasing. Source. The USPTO had a record number of applications last year. Source. One would figure that if innovation was negatively affected, we would not have seen over a two fold increase in applications over the last 20 years. I would also refer back to my earlier concerns over a no-patent world.
I would argue that if someone is creating something and keeps running into blocking patents, the
Causation, as is pertinent here means "anything that produces an effect; cause." Source. Given this, I would have to say that saying "cancer causes death" is an incorrect use of the word in its proper sense. If I get lung cancer, it will not produce the effect of death. It might make me 10 times more likely to die than a person without lung cancer, but it is not a certainty that I will die from it.
Put another way, saying "cancer causes death" is like saying "if you get cancer, then you will die." We know this is not true for all types of cancer. If you were to take the negation of that statement it would be "if you do not die, then you do not have cancer." Again we know that to be true as someone is perfectly able to have cancer and not die from it.
Not to sound pedantic, but I think you are making the mistake of thinking of causation in the past tense. For example, if you had said "his death was caused by cancer," then your logic make sense, assuming that you could eventual trace the cause of his death back to the fact that he had cancer.
This misuse of "causation" was precisely the problem I had with the article's summary. It confuses the concept that an increase in probability A will occur if B is present with the concept that A will occur if B is present.
But the article asserts that DRM causes more piracy. The summary of the article in the blurb does great injustice to the article by implying that but for the existence of DRM, there would be no piracy. That is frankly false. Piracy has been a problem since well before DRM (that's why they created it), and it would probably be one if DRM ceased to exist.
Personally, I think the key issue with piracy is not DRM, but the fact that piracy and copyright infringement are becoming an acceptable to increasingly commit. The result of this is a situation where the laws of society are arguably out of sink with its values. Situations like this are hard to maintain because we depend as much on societal stigma as we do on criminal punishment to deter most crimes. When stigma is lacking or low, we often try to make up for this by adding criminal punishment to increase deterrence.
The problem with this, of course, is that it creates a paradoxical situation where we punish people more for crimes we care less about (another example, non-violent drug offenses). Thus you end up with a situation where people are morally outraged, even fearful, at the threat of having the book thrown at them for a crime they do not consider "bad" at all.
The biggest problem though for copyright infringement is that society normally deals with "lesser" crimes like these by imposing fines on the violator like with speeding for instance. People speed, and when they get caught they pay the fine, go to traffic school, and continue speeding. To most, the fine and traffic school are just the transactional cost of speeding to them.
However, infringement is inherently tough to solve with fines, because it is an economic crime, not a behavioral one. A reasonable fine, the cost of purchasing the infringed material, would have at best a neutral effect on infringement society-wide. People would just infringe, take their chances, and worst case pay up if they get caught. However setting fines too high, as the current system arguably has them, has an even worse effect though, since your average infringer will tend to infringe more than otherwise, the logic being that "if getting caught for a little infringement is going to bankrupt me, I might as well get my money's worth by infringing a lot." Unreasonably high fines also create a situation where the infringed party inherently knows that the infringer is likely judgment proof (cannot pay the fines), further pissing them off. At this point, society tries criminal penalties as well as fines, which leads us to the current system we have.
Obviously solving this problem is a toughy. We could kill copyright infringement as a crime, much as we repealed Prohibition, but that could create other problems, such as disincentivizing creativty, or encouraging tighter DRM, as creators deal with the ramifications. I offer no solutions, but this is the problem as I see it.
Double standard. Hardly, countries such as Mexico regularly refuse to extradite persons to the US if that persons faces the death penalty. Source 1, Source 2, Source 3. The Wikipedia article also points out that many European countries regularly refuse to extradite their own citizens. The most famous case is that of Roman Polansky, whom France refused to extradite to the US after he fled the country following a conviction on the charge of child rape.
As for you assertion that the US disproportionately denies extradition requests, I would like to see some data to back it up. The only data I could find was published by the Australian government, the country from which the accused was extradited, for the 2004-05 year. Source. According to the document, they did not have a single request denied by the U.S.
Also, just for clarification, the US did not go in and "take" him. The summary clearly points out that the US spend three years in proceedings before the order was finally given to extradite. The following article also clarifies that the accused with in Australia during the entire ordeal. Source. I hardly call that "waltzing over."
- The embargo as we know it was first enacted via executive order by John F. Kennedy
- The embargo was codified into US law in 1992 in a bill authored by Robert Torricelli, a democrat from New Jersey, and passed by a Democratic majority in both the House and Senate
- Bill Clinton is responsible for one of the larger increases in the scope of the embargo in the last ten years (in part to make for his botching of the Elian Gonzales fiasco)
Source.While I agree with you that embargo is hypocritical and should be lifted, it's not an issue that cuts across party lines. As long as Florida is a key state in Presidential elections, and as long as Cuban voters in Florida vote as a block, neither party is going to touch the embargo.
A quick note, in the US only individual persons can hold a patent. That person can then assign the patent (giving the assignee the right to use/enforce the patent) by law to anyone (including corporations).
As for your idea, I think it is horrible. First, by restricting patents to individual inventors you are restricting development in industries where the economies of scale prohibit individuals from inventing. The easiest example of this is the biotech industry. It takes years, and hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a drug. Very few individuals (save the independently wealthy) have time to go out and develop cures to diseases by themselves on their own dime.
Second, Letting employees have rights of first refusal would basically discourage companies from funding inovation. What company is going to give their employees resources to invent, if that employee is then going to turn around and take the invention for himself or license it to a competitor for more money then the company can offer. That's just bad business.
Only in some industries. Look at the pharmaceutical industry as per above. As another post said, imagine the costs of new drugs if the drug companies only have 5 years to recoup their investment versus 20 years.
The European system is not oriented to help the individual inventor. Both Europe and Japan allow corporations to hold patents directly. Both of them also have a first-to-file system of granting patents. This means that priority for patents goes to the first person/company to file the application, the the first to actually invent the invention. The US has a first to invent rule. This benefits corporations a lot more than the individual, as they are the ones with time and money for lawyers, and already have internal mechanisms in place for filing more efficiently.
I think peer review does merit consideration, but I have two big concerns with any implementation of it.
The first concern is time. A peer review period will increase the time it takes to get a patent. The USPTO already has a huge backlog of applications, and the average time to get a patent is two years. Increasing the wait time further would both increase the backlog and delays, which in turn would disincentivize people from applying for patents.
The second concern I have is ensuring fair peer review. The main problem with peer review is the significant risk that peers will abuse the nonobviousness requirement when judging a patent application.
First there is the problem of hindsight. Many improvements seem obvious with the benefit of hindsight. For example its very easy to sit back now and say that pipelined architecture CPU's were an obvious evolution from single instruction execution architectures, but that would be ignoring all of the time and effort put into designing and building one. An invention has two parts, the conception of the idea, and its reduction to a working model. A patent should reward both and the effort put into the latter is often lost in hindsight.
The second big issue I have is in the potential for peers to abuse the review process to deny patents specifically for commercial gain. If IBM, AMD, and Intel were in an arms race to invent some new processor technology and AMD built it first, should IBM and Intel be able to protest the nonobviousness of the invention merely because they were also developing it, but failed to come up with a working model? Or for that matter, would a company be willing to risk publicizing their invention through the patent process if it were likely to be struck down on peer review? They would be better off keeping it secret (if possible) and trying to utilize it secretly in order to recoup their investment. Part of the benefit of patent laws is that society gets the benefit of knowledge entering the public domain after the patent period expires. I'm not sure a system that potentially encourages secrecy of knowledge is in the best interest of society.
You are right, fair use is an established legal principle, and DRM does tend to offend it in most of its implemented forms.
However, it is a fallacy to think that fair use is a guaranteed fundamental right under the Constitution like freedom of speech. It is a statutorily codified legal doctrine that arose from the common law. Nothing in the Constitution guarantees or implies a right to fair use and Congress, if it wanted to, could nullify the doctrine tomorrow.
France for example has a density of 110 people/sq. km. link. Germany has a population density of 232. The US, by contrast has a density of 31. In terms of broadband coverage, it's going to be a lot easier to connect a dense country like Germany or France than it would be to cover the US. The amount of cable/fiber alone needed to connect all of the rural populations could probably completely wire a couple medium sized countries with dense populations.
I could not find any statistics, but a better measure would be what percentage of the urban population has access to broadband.
Well I think that's exactly what they are offering right now. They only difference is that instead of outwardly limiting bandwidth, most ISP's reserve the right to cut you off if you are engaging in excessive use. It allows them more discretion, and doesn't piss of consumers as much.
Then please tell me, how do i not "get it?"
If you look carefully at your service agreement, you see that you do not actually pay for full bandwidth usage 24/7. You instead pay for "reasonable" usage of their service. Examples:
AT&T DSL Service Agreement: "You understand and acknowledge that the Service is intended for your periodic and legitimately active use." (emphasis added) link.
Cox Cable HighSpeed Internet Service Agreement: "In addition to complying with the limitations for specific features, you must ensure that your activities do not improperly restrict, inhibit, or degrade any other user's use of the Service, nor represent (in Cox's sole judgment) an unusually great burden on the network itself. In addition, you must ensure that your use does not improperly restrict, inhibit, disrupt, degrade or impede Cox's ability to deliver the Service and monitor the Service, backbone, network nodes, and/or other network services." (emphasis added) link.
Most other providers have similar language. In sum, I'm all for you running a server, but buy some dedicated bandwidth. Don't advocate a solution that drives the cost of service up for the rest of us "non-server" types.
The main problem I have with public money is that if you fund any project with public money, you create a bureaucracy who's goal is to get more and more money, often at the expense of their set goal. Take the war on drugs for example, do you think the DEA, FBI, Coast Guard, and Boarder Patrol actually want there to be absolutely zero drugs getting into this country? No, because then their usefulness diminishes, their funding gets cut, and they have to downsize.
In the case of a cure for cancer, do you think a government funded agency would do much better. If government funded cancer specialists develop a cure, they'll get no more funding, and none of the profits from the drugs since the government would own the rights to it. They would effectively have a perverse incentive to string out development as long as possible, because unlike a corporation, the government is not going to cut them (as fast) if they fail to produce results.
Personally, if the government has to get monetarily involved, I would rather see them offer a lump sum reward, say $50 to $100 billion dollars to the first company that gets a cure FDA approved. That would take care of the trouble of monopoly, and probably induce an arms race for the cure (assuming the reward is big enough to cover the costs of development).
"Science" in this clause has been interpreted to refer to creative works (i.e., copyright), while "useful arts" has been interpreted to include works of utility (i.e., patents). This is due to the changing definition of science, which used to be synonymous with just "knowledge" rather then use of the scientific method with which it is currently associcated.
While this seems trivial, it is relevant if you want to talk about the Framers' original intent. For example, if "useful arts" were interpreted to encompass copyright law, the word "useful" would specifically imply that any copyrightable work had to be useful, which we know is not the case in current law since copyright law encompasses creative works with no requirement of utility. Likewise, if "science" were deemed to grant the authority of patent law, there would be no constitutionally mandated requirement of utility to obtain a patent. That is something I'm sure no one wants to see.
I think the real reason these stories come up so often is because it's just a cheap way for the editors to generate page views. Most people here have an irrationally strong hatred of Creationists, and there's nothing more satisfying then reaffirming one's beliefs on a regular basis, ergo the rehashing arguments. The smug feeling people get here reading this rehash is no different then the smug feeling Creationists get when they tell you that you are wrong for believing evolution and not accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
Yah um, there is no public money being used to this. It's all privately financed. Read the article again.
Yes, because the best way to deal with something is to sweep it under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist. That strategy sure worked in the Middle East after WWII. No troubles there.
Yah, and atheists are such saints:
Religious Persecution in Soviet Russia
The Killing Fields of Cambodia
People can be motivated to kill by just about any ideology, religious or otherwise.
Ok, so let me get this straight. A bunch of Bible-thumpers raises private money to build a museum to depict scenes out of the Flintstones, and everyone here is bitching about how these people should be shut up. The 1st Amendment separates church and state, but it also protects freedom of speech. These people aren't directly inciting violence or rebellion They're not spouting libelous falsehoods. Let them be.
OK I'm sorry but since when is a snide comment stating an opinion considered informative?
Informative, adj. Serving to inform; providing or disclosing information; instructive.
Mod it Funny, Insightful, Flamebait, whatever, but please Mod it correctly people.
You are confusing not supposed to win a majority, which Democrats were supposed to do with which representatives were supposed to win. If you go look at the predictions, you will see that there many Democrats who won in districts where they were not expected to win.
Maybe I got my high school civics class wrong, but that still doesn't change the fundamental assertions I made which are (1) money follows power, and (2) newly elected Democrats will not have any in the next Congress. Trust me money will follow the Democrats, and if they hold on for a couple terms, it will start to roll in big. In 10-20 years, depending on how long it takes for the Dems to pork up and sell out, they will be out again. The system doesn't change. We just like to throw out the incumbent party everyone once in a while so that we feel it does.
A couple of things. First, power in the Congress is wielded by seniority. The longer you've served, the more influence (committee assignments, chairmanships) you wield. Thus anyone who wants to wield power will done to those in position to have it. Thus, why would any interest give money to candidates, who if they defeat the incumbent would still be two or three terms away from having any power? Instead you would donate to the Democrats and Republicans likely to wield power. In this case, even with a Democratic victory, suriving Republicans would still, because of seniority, be in positions on powerful committees. They might not be heading them, but their votes are still just as crucial to getting a bill to the floor for a full House vote.
Second, House races, where most of the money is bieng spent, are nortiously hard to predict. Just go through the list from this current election. There are at least 10 races where the Democrat won when he/she was not supposed to. The Dems that defeated Kelly(NY) and Pombo(CA) are perfect examples. Couple that with the value of seniority, and there is a serious bias against donating to non-incumbents. Give it a couple of terms and I guarantee you will see the money start to shift the other way.
It's not. But potentially outing someone on national TV has massive consequences for the outee. If he is indeed gay and in the closet, he probably has friends, coworkers, and family that do not know he's gay. Regardless of your feelings on how gay people should be perceived, many people do not share them and would react quite aversely, especially if you are a Republican. Being outed without your consent is a horrible violation of your personal rights. How would you feel if Bill Maher went on national television and said you were into corpophagia?