I live in Japan. There is a 5% tax built into every price, and when I buy something from the Apple store, or a convenience store down the block, it's taxed. Since I don't see the tax, I don't think about it, and this is the Way It Should Be.
The ONLY way to solve this mess is if Congress makes a national sales tax, overriding state sales taxes. Set it at 8% and guarantee that oly 1-2% will be taken by the federal government, with the rest going right back where it should, to the communities/cities/states.
If you know what bishoujo games are (or as we call them in the US marketplace, "PC dating-sim games"), then you might know my company, JAST USA http://www.jastusa.com/. We are an indies distributor that licenses Japanese bishoujo games and translates them, and in our history, we have had frustrating 4 year-or-so development cycles for games, which really sucked. One game that took a long time for us to release did so because we came out with it right as Windows XP came out, but the engine wasn't compatible -- so we had to rework it with a new engine. In retrospect, it would have been better to skip the work and just move on to new products, but we have a small but dedicated customer base and never tell them something can't be done, if we can handle it. I just try to learn from my mistakes and make things go more smoothly next time.
(Currently at work beta testing a game we announced in 2003 or so...)
I'd like to compare this silly software/idea/IP patenting with cars. I just bought a new Mazda MPV, the cool newly redesigned one that they just came out with in Japan. There were many new features in my new car, including a RFID key that lets me unlock and drive the car without taking the key card out of my pocket, a cool trunk under the back seat, and "business class" style seats.
What does the car industry do right, and the software industry do so terribly wrong, that keeps these nifty inventions coming? Why wouldn't, say, Toyota patent "a method for allowing the reclining of passengers during transport" and then say sorry, we thought of the application of reclining seats in cars. Why doesn't Nissan put the MD player (all cars in Japan come with MD in them, it's horrid) on the left side of the dash instead of the center or the right, then patent it? The answer is, of course, because that is stupid as hell.
Yet the software patent machine has allowed people to patent the click, the concept of a "shopping cart," and a method of plugins for a browser (which is no doubt based on every other plugin system that was ever implemented in software programs). You can't put a palette in your app because, well, Adobe invented those, and therefore the idea of a dockable screen element that allows you to control your image is not open to you (for another 15 years, or whatever it is). If they allowed this in the auto industry, there'd be cats and dogs, living together...mass hysteria. I believe that a concrete, specific idea should be protect-able -- the ZIP algorithm, say, or JPG. But in Japan, I hear that you can patent a "business plan" (as in, come up with a new way to package or sell bananas and you can own that actual idea of doing business that way). That's just not right.
As I grow as a software user, I'm gagging under the weight of Adobe's heavy apps, and the crashing of CS2 (especially GoLive) is really robbing the joy that is my right as a Mac user. Well, maybe I could look for some alternatives from Macromedia, the only other big software company out there....but alas, they are owned by Adobe now. There will be no more innovation in image manipulation, HTML creation, vector image creation or page layout unless it suits one company. All because some idiots in Congress made it okay to say that someone can own a universal idea.
Can anyone much smarter than me critique this and tell me if I'm all wrong, if maybe there is a functional system for protecting of ideas in the auto industry but it works more smoothly (perhaps through industry agreements and pre-set rules)?
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I live in Japan. There is a 5% tax built into every price, and when I buy something from the Apple store, or a convenience store down the block, it's taxed. Since I don't see the tax, I don't think about it, and this is the Way It Should Be.
The ONLY way to solve this mess is if Congress makes a national sales tax, overriding state sales taxes. Set it at 8% and guarantee that oly 1-2% will be taken by the federal government, with the rest going right back where it should, to the communities/cities/states.
Search your feelings, you know it to be true!
If you know what bishoujo games are (or as we call them in the US marketplace, "PC dating-sim games"), then you might know my company, JAST USA http://www.jastusa.com/. We are an indies distributor that licenses Japanese bishoujo games and translates them, and in our history, we have had frustrating 4 year-or-so development cycles for games, which really sucked. One game that took a long time for us to release did so because we came out with it right as Windows XP came out, but the engine wasn't compatible -- so we had to rework it with a new engine. In retrospect, it would have been better to skip the work and just move on to new products, but we have a small but dedicated customer base and never tell them something can't be done, if we can handle it. I just try to learn from my mistakes and make things go more smoothly next time.
(Currently at work beta testing a game we announced in 2003 or so...)
I'd like to compare this silly software/idea/IP patenting with cars. I just bought a new Mazda MPV, the cool newly redesigned one that they just came out with in Japan. There were many new features in my new car, including a RFID key that lets me unlock and drive the car without taking the key card out of my pocket, a cool trunk under the back seat, and "business class" style seats. What does the car industry do right, and the software industry do so terribly wrong, that keeps these nifty inventions coming? Why wouldn't, say, Toyota patent "a method for allowing the reclining of passengers during transport" and then say sorry, we thought of the application of reclining seats in cars. Why doesn't Nissan put the MD player (all cars in Japan come with MD in them, it's horrid) on the left side of the dash instead of the center or the right, then patent it? The answer is, of course, because that is stupid as hell. Yet the software patent machine has allowed people to patent the click, the concept of a "shopping cart," and a method of plugins for a browser (which is no doubt based on every other plugin system that was ever implemented in software programs). You can't put a palette in your app because, well, Adobe invented those, and therefore the idea of a dockable screen element that allows you to control your image is not open to you (for another 15 years, or whatever it is). If they allowed this in the auto industry, there'd be cats and dogs, living together...mass hysteria. I believe that a concrete, specific idea should be protect-able -- the ZIP algorithm, say, or JPG. But in Japan, I hear that you can patent a "business plan" (as in, come up with a new way to package or sell bananas and you can own that actual idea of doing business that way). That's just not right. As I grow as a software user, I'm gagging under the weight of Adobe's heavy apps, and the crashing of CS2 (especially GoLive) is really robbing the joy that is my right as a Mac user. Well, maybe I could look for some alternatives from Macromedia, the only other big software company out there....but alas, they are owned by Adobe now. There will be no more innovation in image manipulation, HTML creation, vector image creation or page layout unless it suits one company. All because some idiots in Congress made it okay to say that someone can own a universal idea. Can anyone much smarter than me critique this and tell me if I'm all wrong, if maybe there is a functional system for protecting of ideas in the auto industry but it works more smoothly (perhaps through industry agreements and pre-set rules)?