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In Defense Of Patents and Copyright
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu May 10, 2007 02:46 PM
from the just-a-little-bit-biased dept.
from the just-a-little-bit-biased dept.
Romer!can writes "C|Net Editor Michael Kanellos offers a potentially contentious opinion piece about patents and copyright on the CNet site. Highlights of the fairly biased piece include: a cheap shot dismissing open source projects as existing only to act as a foil for Microsoft, blatantly equating copyright infringement with stealing, and an embarrassing failure to even casually mention the current term lengths of patents and copyrights as a driving factor behind popular dissatisfaction. Instead, he wades through obscure humor and emotional appeals characterizing patent trolls as the guy next door. 'Nearly every so-called [patent] troll turned out to have a somewhat persuasive story. Intellectual Ventures, a patent firm started by former Microsoft chief scientist Nathan Myhrvold, was staffed with fairly renowned scientists who didn't fit the profile of people trying to make a quick buck in court. Another man, criticized as one of the most litigious people in the U.S., had a great explanation for his behavior. He had only sued people who had signed--and then violated--nondisclosure agreements.'"
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So if it is a biased piece... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, ok, maybe not really, but it sure does seem to keep people busily coming back for more...
Re:So if it is a biased piece... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:So if it is a biased piece... (Score:5, Insightful)
The place has always had drawbacks: spamming; crapflooding; Shoeboy; ACSII art; goatse links; Jon Katz; Michael Sims.
Most of the 'debate' is the same record being played over and over. This article so far is, and certianly will continue to be, no exception. No new ground will be broken and the comments will be nearly identical to what went up during the Napster debate. Despite the lameness filters and low karma post restrictions, Slashdot has far more actual trolling than it ever did when Adequacy crowd was here.
I am here now, subscribing, because there are a small minority of users who actually not only know their stuff but actively participate in fields that are relevant to many of the submissions that go up. There aren't many places one can go on the internet and have a discussion with an actual attorney who actually defends RIAA cases. Bruce Perens doesn't show up just anywhere and comment on FOSS issues. There was some article on here a few days ago about carbon nanotubes, and I don't know carbon nanotubes from cans of paint so I may have been getting hoodwinked, but there seemed to be people posting who actually had more than just cursory knowledge about the things.
Anyway, enough emo about Slashdot. I don't think it has or ever had much credibility as a serious news site but it certianly offers something unique. If you can sift through the massive amount of drivel it makes visiting worth the time.
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Slashdot is not a news site. Slashdot doesn't report the news, it reports that someone else has reported the news. Slashdot is a discussion site. It provides a place for the nerd elite and nerd wannabes to come together and discuss the stories which interest them most (firehose++, even if it does have many shortcomings and annoyances.)
In addition, you must ALWAYS check ALL news from ALL sources to see if it is a bunch
Re:So if it is a biased piece... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Here is the mantra I have been hearing for a while. Free Speach for all who beleave in the same values as me. To the moderation dungion if you disagree. We only want stories telling how Patents and Copyrights are bad and evil. Explaining how they can be good makes the story bad.
Re:So if it is a biased piece... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not trolling:
This is:
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Re:So if it is a biased piece... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:So if it is a biased piece... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:So if it is a biased piece... (Score:5, Insightful)
- Make them available now at a reasonable price.
- Allow certain fair-use rights to everyone.
- Let them fall into the public domain eventually.
The 'pro-copyright' lobby has not been playing fair recently, by blocking fair use with DRM and blocking the public domain with copyright term extensions. Similarly, the 'anti-copyright' lobby hasn't been playing fair either, by simply refusing to respect copyright at all.Parent
Re:So if it is a biased piece... (Score:5, Insightful)
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So, which are you?
Treat it as a troll (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's his goal, don't give him the satisfaction. Don't read it, don't comment, don't reply.
Which is not about "winning" some argument, it's just about not letting media people get paid for the almost mindlessly easy job of drumming up fake controversy. Same as ignoring all the cable TV and radio "shock jocks". Let them all work for a living, do some investigative reporting, find out some new facts (you know, "news"?) to fill up their sites with.
Not just, as Jon Stewart said about 'Crossfire', "theatre".
Re:Treat it as a troll (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about it. If you come across a guy on a soapbox on the street corner, raving about how he communicates with purple unicorns in the 4th dimension, do you spend a lot of time refuting his arguments in a public forum?
No. Just let it go. Don't legitimize nuttiness by addressing it.
The old saying: "Never get in a fight with a pig. You'll get dirty, and the pig will enjoy it."
Parent
Why isn't it persuasive? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why isn't that a persuasive argument? Isn't that kind of argument used all the time around here? Don't believe me? Have you ever heard:
"Drug companies don't deserve patents/as-lengthy-patents because they spend more on advertising than research."
They're both rank appeals to one's sympathy (or lack thereof) with the patent holder.
Re:Why isn't it persuasive? (Score:4, Insightful)
The argument "used all the time around here" is not:
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In other news (Score:2)
Re:In other news (Score:4, Informative)
Patents are a more complicated issue. For one thing, most people don't really have an opportunity to casually infringe patents. Current patent terms are not that far out of step with what might be considered a reasonable time frame. We see patented inventions pass into the public domain on a regular basis, whereas no copyrighted works have fallen into the public domain in my lifetime. The big problem with patents is that it is generally not obvious what is currently patented and what is not. Even after reading the abstract of a patent, I have no idea what it really covers. I have any number of suggestions for reforming patents, but they're really outside the scope of this post.
Parent
Comparing 95 year Copyright with Open Source (Score:5, Interesting)
Would the binaries be useful at all?
If not, the the copyright duration is effectively infinite.
Now compare the Public domain Windows 2000 of 2095 with ReactOS or Linux in 2095. which is more useful?
But you don't need to wait 95 years to see this result.
How many years of development do you think it takes for ReactOS to surpass Windows2000?
How many years of development does it take for Linux to Surpass an abandoned UNIX, like IRIX?
If for some reason, you wanted to create a DOS system, would you use MSDOS 6, or FreeDOS?
Amusing progression... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then the author immediately describes current "intellectual property." However the current state of "intellectual property" is more of the same: one uses some means (money, lobbying, market domination, bribes, etc.) to persuade the government to create laws that protect your monopoly. Of course instead of concluding that this current incarnation of monopoly-power is just as bad as the previous ones, he goes on to defend it. The analogy with the previous examples is so close that it almost makes me think the entire article is a gigantic joke.
Does the author honestly not see the parallel? At one time, wars and railroad monopolies were certainly considered legitimate business. In 100 years, will our era be looked upon as a similarly barbaric time, where, ridiculously, the citizens were oppressed in the name of profits for a select few elite?
It's easy to win an argument (Score:3, Informative)
Honestly, how many people think there should be no copyrights? Very, very few. I don't dismiss the opinions of those people just because they are a tiny minority, of course, but it is really dishonest to imply that everybody who has a problem with the current copyright system is against all copyrights.
Very few people are entirely against patents either, although quite a few people are against certain categories of patents, which implies at least some more nuanced thought than the emotional rejectionism painted by the author.
The broad consensus among people who create intellectual property for their daily bread is that the system is badly managed and is being extended beyond its reasonable and proper boundaries. The net result is that it is not a "sure path to wealth", but a threat that undermines their ability to earn a living.
That would make anybody "emotional".
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Why should someone own the exclusive right to make copies?
The only sensible reason you could possibly have for such an extreme position like that is that it is somehow to the benefit of every person in society to willingly refrain from copying these works. That's a pretty hard argument to make.
Of course, you don't have to make the argument.. cause the status quo is one of restriction.. which the majority of people just ignore anyway.
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I'm sure a lot of surfers would like there to be a tax which enables them to surf all day and have us flip the bill, but just them expressing their desire is not a reason for us to pay for it.
Patent benefits (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason for the prior (retention) is often equated to their lack of proprietary interest in intellectual property, and the reason for the latter (publicity) is adjoined by the consequences of divulging your technological advantages. While the incentive exists to invent gunpowder (for its usefulness), the incentive and mechanism to publicly retain a collective body of knowledge for such inventions in Chinese society did not exist. Thus, I believe the secret to gunpowder was lost to the Chinese on more than one occasion, only to be re-invented later. (Or perhaps that wasn't gunpowder, but some other set of inventions).
Patents help alleviate this loss of intellectual achievements to both antiquity and secrecy. However, in our society they have gone to an extreme, whereby we can rightly complain that they stifle innovation, undermine competition, and they may even be unnecessary in light of modern mechanisms for keeping tabs on new IP, notably the internet, and public collaborative projects like open source.
Nonetheless, patents are predictable, and having arisen out of hundreds of years of jurisprudence over the need to retain and publicize useful inventions. They appear to be econommically over-bearing nowadays, and may even be superfluous in light of modern technology for retention and dissemination of intellectual property (i.e. the internet), but they are integrated into our economy in ways that make it superbly difficult (not to mention prohibitively expensive, as in the USA the government may have to compensate patent holders by weakening their rights) to completely do away with the system. They also still serve the purpose for which they were intended, publishing and retaining useful innovations, but they have side effects which now make us question their value.
While we can and should criticize the patent system for its failures, we should also bear in mind the consequences of going too far in the opposite direction. Too few discussions of patent reform have an intelligent, informed and balanced basis in the purpose and benefits of the current patent system, with suggestions for either balanced reform across all arenas where patent law is applied (drugs, software, hardware, automobiles, etc.), or any sound alternative that is not subject to the same criticisms that are inherent to what we have now.
(That being said, I think the idea of patenting software strikes me as wholly inappropriate, the problems of publicity and retention long having been solved by the internet and open source projects, and the value software patents provide to the public is virtually nil in almost every way.)
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not to mention prohibitively expensive, as in the USA the government may have to compensate patent holders by weakening their rights
Why? If the government weakens the rights of patent holders, it will probably be because the system has flaws. Why should they be compensated when the government corrects those flaws?
we should also bear in mind the consequences of going too far in the opposite direction.
There is no chance of that happening, so why should people bear this in mind?
Too few discussions of patent reform have an intelligent, informed and balanced basis in the purpose and benefits of the current patent system
Maybe because the current patent system is anything but balanced, but rather tilted to the extreme in favor of the patent holders (especially big companies).
Perspective and individual details are important (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a lot of talk about getting rid of patent trolls, but little consensus as to what a patent troll is. Very few companies will say "yes: we're patent trolls." At best, they're willing to tolerate being called patent trolls [com.com].
What makes a patent troll? Does a company that develops a new technology but licenses it because it does not have the capital or market position to exploit the technology count as a patent troll? What about IBM? They produce products, but they license their patents [ibm.com] for use by others in products that don't compete with IBM's products. Does that make IBM a patent troll? Would they have to be making competing products to be on morally solid ground?
There are definitely companies out that abuse the patent system (e.g., by filing continuation applications or requests for reexamination during which the applicants try to stretch the claims of their patents to read on subsequent innovations). But this author has a point that distinguishing the bad guys from the good guys is not easy. Many companies out there see themselves as just legitimately trying to leverage their full rights. Is that significantly different from consumers trying to maximize their rights as consumers by engaging in activities that aren't clearly legal (e.g., using direct music and movie clips for new works without seeking permission, creating libraries of MP3s and copying them to multiple systems, etc.).
Activities that push the limits of the law create risk. Patent applicants pay significant fees and must spend a lot of time in their efforts, resulting in a guaranteed loss. Certain uses of a patent can raise anti-trust concerns or result in loss of the patent. Consumers pushing the boundaries of "fair use" often play a lottery in which the winner loses a nasty law suit. And there is always the risk that Congress or the courts may react by changing the law or interpretation of the law to minimize questionable activities.
But those who are engaged in those activities probably believe that all they are doing is playing by a valid interpretation of the rules.
so.. (Score:2)
After reading that "summary" I assumed it was a submitted blog. I can't believe garbage like that makes it on to the front page.
hey, he believes in hydrogen powered vehicles too (Score:2)
LoB
Obviously NOT a creative brain type (Score:2)
The point would be to get the nightmares out of my head, you idiot! Fighting Microsoft or even earning money is a distant motivator in comparison to actually fixing something that needs fixing and that I know how to do.
There is no defense. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why Microsoft ignores software patents. Even they, the richest company on the planet, have no alternative. And that's also why they're getting hit with a few 9-figure verdicts already. But they still play the game and pretend they're legitimate, because they somehow think they'll benefit, in the end, using them to crush current and potential competition with multi-million legal actions and the threat thereof.
It is impossible to tell if any piece of code infringes. By the way, have you read many of these things? Almost every line of code does infringe.
Every line written is a ticking patent timebomb. Every player has to ante up and make their own "patent portfolio" which they can then apply against whoever sues them. If that sounds like it excludes everyone but a few rich, dominant corporations... now you're getting the idea. Only minor fly in the ointment: those patent shell companies that actually don't do any work except suing people, therefore can't be hit with a retaliatory claim. Ooops. And yet even after getting whacked by a few, MS is still winking and continuing to play the game. Shows you how much they hate honest competition.
Software Patents are currently ignored by almost everyone. But to the extent they are enforced, they will categorically end the American software industry, and software will continue to be a business in Europe, Asia, and... well basically every other civilized nation, who have soundly rejected this silly game and are by the way laughing their asses off at us.
Hello? (Score:2)
And frankly, without them, most open-source projects would rapidly wither away: without an intellectual property behemoth like Microsoft to fight, what would be the point?
Maybe to produce truly good software, rather than just lie about doing so in your marketing, perhaps? The author seems not to understand that some people create things for the sheer beauty of it; more often than not, OS projects have nothing to do with Microsoft; in fact, if OS was out to "get Microsoft", it is doing a pretty poor j
Help me with my conflict (Score:3, Insightful)
OTOH, the key innovation in the liberal western revolution (liberal in the Adam Smith sense of the word) has been the ability, due to lax legal and societal restrictions, of the individual to use their ingenuity to better their condition.
Said differently, absolutely all of the progress of society in the last 300 years comes not from the owners, or from the workers, or such strange Marxist notions, but from the ideas and ability to make good on them.
The progress of humanity western society is based in the ability of the individual to profit from their own intellectual labor - not their lower back strength.
So how does one resolve this apparent conflict? It is man's mind, not his back, which creates wealth, progress, and an easier life. Yet the current implementation of intellectual property laws is broken, causing many to question even the valididty of intellectual property as a concept?
I'm familiar with Jefferson's quote, but i don't think it can credibly used as an argument for dismissing the concept of intellectual property entirely.
So what does a world look like where people are still compensated for the labor of their mind but which has a rational / sane legal framework around that compensation?
a meandering editorial (Score:3, Informative)
First of all, "almost everyone" isn't "everyone". I'd like to hear about those that didn't have a persuasive story too. And there's no way we can tell from this piece if his sampling of the "trolls" is in any way characteristic of the group as a whole or if his selection was pre-sorted by political or economic bias. The article contributes nothing to the public debate on this issue and therefore deserves to be dismissed with dignified scorn.
"...go ahead and reprint this for free." (Score:3, Funny)
Uh, okay ... wait a minute...
Hmmm, so should we believe the last line of the page, or the second to last line of the page?
Fuck it...
This reminds me of two things.... (Score:3, Interesting)
It also reminds me of the final scene in the Hitchhiker's Triology, where survivors of the B ark burned down all of the trees so they could use the few remaining leaves as currency. He tries to justify the same thing - trying to create an artificial scarcity on things which are plentiful and easy to reproduce.
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That is NOT IT (Score:2, Insightful)
There is a distinction for a reason. I suggest you might study the history of copyright, you fucking dumb ass.
Old Media monopoly again (Score:3, Insightful)
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Mike Masnick [techdirt.com] covers all this quite nicely in his attempt to explain how Old Media "should encourage people to get their content for free". Old Media does not have to die at the hands of the "whiners", as you eloquently put it, though some may choose (business) suicide rather than change. To quote from Mr. Masnick's summary:
Re:Oh boy (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly, you dont watch much p0rn.
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Whether or not
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it IS stealing as our current law defines it
It is neither stealing in actuality or as defined by law. Stealing something deprives the owner of the object being stolen. What it is is copy infringment.
Movies, I suppose, are the rub - these really do cost a tremendous amount of money to create
Not all movies cost a lot to make. For instance The Blair Witch Project [imdb.com] was made by some college students for a project and they didn't have the money of a major studio yet in All-Time Worldwide Box office [imdb.com] r
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I'm a far cry from the richest
So called intellectual property does need protection in order to encourage invention and innovation, but after a point (20 years at most), that protection starts having a sti
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Sounds like a good idea to me.