theodp writes "In a move that would do pre-makeover Ebenezer proud, Amazon.com's 1-Click lawyers put the USPTO to work on Christmas Eve. On Dec. 24th, the USPTO acknowledged receipt of yet another round of paperwork submitted by Amazon's high-priced legal muscle, the latest salvo in Amazon's 3-year battle to fend off a patent reexamination triggered by the do-it-yourself legal effort of actor Peter Calveley. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' 1-Click patent is also under attack on another front — on Dec. 23rd, the USPTO received $810 from Amazon's attorneys together with a request that the agency invalidate Patent Examiner Mark A. Fadok's final rejection of 1-Click patent claims on the grounds of obviousness. On the bright side, patent clerks — unlike Bob Cratchit — get the day after Christmas off!"
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday December 25 2008, @06:34PM (#26232251)
Negative PR? Only with the tiny audience that reads slashdot or sites like it. That's not a slam of slashdot, but you have to admit this is not anything like a mainstream news site.
Pushing this absurd patent is costing Amazon more in negative PR than the patent could possibly be worth.
Negative PR with who? The people that already feel questionably about Amazon? Because the truth is no one outside the Web world (that's us) cares, and we represent a very tiny part of Amazon's customer base, and most of us will keep on buying things from Amazon anyway (though I try to buy from Powells [slashdot.org] when I can).
My point is that hoping Amazon gets "embarrassed" about this isn't going to happen, and your statement simply isn't true.
Because the truth is no one outside the Web world (that's us) cares, and we represent a very tiny part of Amazon's customer base
There are NO Amazon customers outside the Web world...
But, point well taken: you're quite right. This is a non-issue for nearly all Amazon customers anyway. We software patent opponents do care a lot (though not all of us would avoid using Amazon because of this silly patent), but we're an insignificant minority of their customer base.
What's religion got to do with it? OK, sure. There are still those who maintain religious traditions around this time of year. And that's fine. But much of what we celebrate as Christmas is secular.
Looking around my household, I only find one religious trapping; a figurine of an angel reaching for a star. It is far outnumbered by the reindier, wreaths, nutcrackers, canycanes, snowmen, santas, christmas trees, and other assorted decorations. I haven't attented church in years. We didn't even say grace
take part in Christian-American culture? hah, that's a good one...
or maybe it's all the Christians (including those non-American 'copycats') who are lying to themselves, pretending they're not celebrating a pagan holiday (a Roman festival mixed with elements of Yule-tide [wikipedia.org]) and practicing a syncretic religion based primarily on Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, and Mystery cults, with its mythology heavily borrowed from pre-Judeo-Christian cultures like the Sumerians/Babylonians, ancient Egyptians, ancient Greeks, et
If you pay your respects to Jesus/Santa/Novi God then you are taking part in a religious celebration whether you believe in it or not.
Please feel free to point out what in my description depicted religious ceremony. And please - are you really implying that Santa Claus is a god?
Again - there are underpinnings of Christianity in many Western Christmas traditions. Sure. But then, there's also lots of underpinnings of other religions as well. Just because one follows such a tradition, does not make one a participant of that religion. If it was otherwise, Christmas as most Westerners observe it would present some serious problems for devout Christians (who are pretty uncomfortable with the idea of practicing multiple religions).
I should also note that I do not claim to be an athiest. My religious beliefs are, frankly, nobody's business but my own. The point isn't that Christmas is some Atheist field-day but rather you do not have to be religious to participate in the holiday.
I know that upsets the "reason for the season" folks. They'll have to get over it (they won't).
Who ever said that practicing "law" or anything to do with it is a gentleman's game?
On contrary... You got a way to put that extra pound of pressure on your opponent, you use it. As long as it is legal and/or you don't get caught.
Heck... If duels were legal you can bet your ass that lawyers would start hiring people as proxies to challenge the members of opposing legal team prior to trial.
Who ever said that practicing "law" or anything to do with it is a gentleman's game?
On contrary... You got a way to put that extra pound of pressure on your opponent, you use it.
As long as it is legal and/or you don't get caught.
Heck... If duels were legal you can bet your ass that lawyers would start hiring people as proxies to challenge the members of opposing legal team prior to trial.
I'm surprised they haven't challenged Calveley to a duel.
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday December 25 2008, @06:29PM (#26232217)
It just shows how little some people know about the patent system. A request for continued examination can be filed with the electronic system on Dec 23rd, and very few humans would see it, if any, until the docket clerk looks at it. The examiner won't be looking at it for quite some time, so they aren't working overtime for Bezos. Further, they aren't asking for an invalidation of the final rejection, they are asking for reconsideration on the merits, and a withdrawal of the rejection (very different things). If you know about the system, the summary the submitter put forward was good for a laugh, but nothing else.
Indeed. Most of the/. verbiage on patents is amusingly uninformed.
Not understanding the difference between a patent application and a granted patent is a common feature of articles and commentary here. Given that level of ignorance, it is inevitible that most denizens of/. fail to comprehend the procedures in prosecuting an application, and the associated dialog between applicant's attorneys and the examiner.
Hint: I hold 12 granted US patents, and have a few applications being examined. I have some f
Not understanding the difference between a patent application and a granted patent is a common feature of articles and commentary here.
Most people on Slashdot believe that an alarmingly large percentage of patent applications are granted. The number of outright stupid patents that are granted is often exaggerated into the "application == patent" phenomenon you mention. Sadly, some of the time, they're right.
Loosely translated means they filed the paperwork online and the whole thing was accepted automatically. So if anything, it was Amazon being Ebenezer making its lawyers work Xmas eve, the USPTO didn't have to do anything.
Loosely translated means they filed the paperwork online and the whole thing was accepted automatically. So if anything, it was Amazon being Ebenezer making its lawyers work Xmas eve, the USPTO didn't have to do anything.
Yeah, no kidding. I mean, we're talking government employees here.
Way back in the day, nobody could even figure out how to do credit card processing, much less buy anything online. I have a vague recollection of one of the backbone providers in the Northeast or Midwest trying to prohibit commerical traffic over their network.
One-click buying was pretty radical. Even buying stuff online was pretty unbelievable. I mean, think about this: some company you never heard of would store your credit card number and other information so you could buy stuff without entering in all t
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday December 25 2008, @06:37PM (#26232267)
one click buying was as obvious as n[anything], it starts off with a bunch of steps and slowly gets optimized to the minimum, which is a very logical progression.
see 'one click recording', 'one button printers' and so on. Eventually all technology gets optimized to the minimum number of interfaces required to make it work.
Not only is this an obvious patent, it is part of a special class of obvious patents, the ones that are destined to happen anyway, no matter who patents them.
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday December 25 2008, @06:52PM (#26232357)
I have a vague recollection of one of the backbone providers in the Northeast or Midwest trying to prohibit commerical traffic over their network.
You're thinking of NSFNET [wikipedia.org], which was more-or-less the bridge between the original ARPANET and the commercial Internet we know today. The non-commercial limitations were inherited from ARPANET, and had to do with government funding of the backbone.
Um no it was not. People had been buying via Mail order for 200 years previous. Sears Roebuck were accepting checks and money by mail for over a century by then. and they were acceptng credit cards cince they existed.
Online buying was no different no innovative in any way. You're making the silly assumption that doing something normal "on the internet" is innovative.
so should TV commercials have been patented because before TV was invented "advertising on TV" was a very radical concept?
Amazon didn't invent e-commerce. they only popularized it. and even if they had been the first to implement one-click check out, it's still not a patentable non-trivial/obvious invention.
if businesses are allowed to patent trivial features like saving a customer's credit card information, then you risk destroying the software development industry. within a few years any software development firm would have to license 99% of all of their products' features because everything from autosave to file menus would have been "pretty unbelievable" at some point in time.
If it's not obvious, why do children reinvent it every day?
Don't believe me? Go into a toy store and watch spoiled children. They'd point to a toy and say "I want that" and then say "I want that" and then say "I want that", etc, before their parents gather up their requests and go to the cashier.
The 1-click patent is not not only obvious, it has prior art in spoiled children. The key reason few people did online shopping before amazon is that http standards, and in particular encryption, wasn't common enoug
Sorry, youngster, you are not giving those of us who were building e-commerce web sites "way back in the day" before there was an Amazon.com nearly enough credit. One-click was obvious even before they did it; the reason no one else offered it is because it's stupid.
All e-commerce sites I built before Amazon.com existed (and before "e-commerce" was the widely accepted term for them) stored account details that were pre-populated in the checkout forms after successful authentication. It was common as dirt, and even those customers who were beyond the reach of 56k dial-up expected it to work that way.
Yes, indeed, it was obvious even "way back in the day".
It was not radical at the time of the original patent application. This patent is circa 1998-1999 and there were tons of online retailers pre-1998. The difference was they were small. In fact, Netscape created cookies for the purposes of e-commerce. Lastly, just look at the 1997 RFC. There was gobs, and gobs, and gobs of prior art on this patent. That's why everyone went so bonkers about the patent being awarded.
This
context might be used to create, for example, a "shopping cart", in
which user select
What's REALLY needed is a law which prohibits the storing of people's credit card numbers. The only people who need access to your credit card info are you and your bank.
That would moot this stupid patent, but who cares.
What's REALLY needed is a law which prohibits the storing of people's credit card numbers. The only people who need access to your credit card info are you and your bank.
That would moot this stupid patent, but who cares.
Well, that won't happen as long as credit card issuers are responsible for any fraud. The thing is, sometimes they screw you over anyway.
Okay, let me rephrase that: so long as consumers are only responsible for the first $50 of any fraudulent transaction, nothing is likely to change. We don't care so long as we don't get stuck with the bill, and merchants simply roll their losses into their pricing structure. We all pay in the end, in higher prices.
There are certainly risks involved with letting people store your credit card number, but I don't think the government needs to babysit us quite that much. That said, there are some similar measures I would support:
1. Minimum standards for the secure storage of those numbers. The most obvious requirement, if one doesn't yet exist, being that they can't be stored clear-text. There should probably be requirements about where it can be stored (eg, not on laptops), who can access them, etc as well.
2. A law requiring that the storage of your CC number be optional, and even default off. Too many services simply don't let you tell them not to store the number if you want to use that service, and even those that do tend to store it until you remove it. I don't think the government should be making our decisions for us--it certainly is more convenient to check out if the number is stored--but they should do what they can to let us make those decisions for ourselves if we believe the rewards outweigh the risks.
...and probably more, though that's what comes immediately to mind.
The CC companies took it upon themselves to make up their own rules. They are pretty stringent. CISP [merchant-a...rvices.org] requires a yearly audit.
When I last looked in depth at this there was a per card theft fine of 10,000. Obviously the huge credit card thefts from some of the big merchants have never paid anywhere near that per card. But as a small business it was a deciding factor on changing our rebilling process.
Storing of credit card number is prohibited, the only way in wich credit cards may be stored or transmitted is like this
($card_info + $merchant_name + $date) encrypted with the public key of $card_issuer
That would eliminate a large part of possible fraud. companies could still offer to reuse old credentials, but it would be transparent when they do this.
You should patent "a system and method for storing people's credit card numbers as part of an E-commerce system" and then demand insane license fees. Please do.
Actually, Microsoft is to be applauded in that regard: they patent many stupid, customer-hostile ideas and thereby save the world from other companies actually implementing that trash. If only Microsoft enforced its patents (and copyrights) more vigorously.
Um, no thank you. If you don't want a company storing your card, then don't use them.
I buy from Amazon on a weekly basis, sometimes twice a week, and I would be incredibly frustrated if I had to type in my billing information every time, even if I only had to type in the CVN.
The convinience is precisely why I shop so much at Amazon, and why I always look there first when I want something. On the rare time that I have to shop somewhere else online, I always find myself frustrated by their annoying checkout
As far as I can tell this patent fails the Bilski test. It is neither tied to a particular apparatus or machine, nor does perform a unique transformation.
IANAL, but the test outlined in Bilski seems to make this patent NULL. Anyone can implement a one-click system on any machine connected to the internet.
The obviousness test is also valid in this case - at the time Amazon was pushing this through the USPTO... Well, my boss was handing me work from different clients that wanted a sign-in and one-click ordering system for their commerce sites. I had to tell him it was legally impossible each time.
So failing the "obviousness" test - it was a clearly obvious step to take. To both the people writing the code for commerce sites and to the people paying to have them written... And also seeming, to me (and I repeat - IANAL), failing the tests outlined in the Bilski case... Amazon can fight as much as they want, but this patent is a dud.
Bilski dealt with business methods and not software so the "machine" part of the machine/transformation test never came up. The method failed the transformation test because the data didn't represent anything physical.
I find that an ominous development for software patents. The transformation part of the test is unavailable in the general case. The validity of software patents seem to rest solely on the fact that software runs on machines. Whether or not a computer suffices as a machine as patent law define
Like DerekLyons, I know lots of people that work Christmas Eve. I had to take it off. I don't get what the huge crime is, and I AM a Christian and celebrate Christmas.
One wonders why Amazon bothers spending money on lawyers to defend a patent that's irrelevant now. All loss of the patent means is that competitors can create 1-click features on their sites, something that's far from a selling point in Amazon's favour now. Back in the day when ecommerce was the realm of pornographers, it was a slick feature to offer, but nowadays it would seem almost quaint to tout that as a reason to use one site over another.
If they license (and sue people for) a patent that hasn't been granted yet, make them refund all licensing fees and legal expenses when patent is denied. Simple. A lot less crap would be patented in the first place unless it's truly non-obvious and innovative, and those filing patents would be scared shitless of licensing them to anyone before they're granted, let alone starting a patent lawsuit.
Not every job requires 100% attention 100% of the time. I have a friend, for example, who spends much of his night shift sitting. His duty is making sure none of the juveniles in custody leave through the door next to him. I think he could manage a slashdot post or three and still be doing the job he was paid to do.
You're posting to Slashdot, my guess is that you're *not* working. Unless you're an editor;)
I can't speak for our friend AC, but, as a matter of fact I am an editor, taking a short break now, and I worked all day yesterday (Christmas Eve) until 7am this morning, then crashed and resumed at 2 in the afternoon. It is now 2 in the morning, Boxing Day. Oh, and there is no end in sight.:)
Aside from the usual mismanagement, unions are also one of the biggest reasons US car companies can not compete with foreign auto makers.
Unions do serve an important function in many industries but they are also destroying many of those same industries. In the end, we all pay much, much higher prices for US goods which prices many of them right out to extinction. Simply put, if unions ONLY did their job to ensuring a safe/healthy work environment with fair wages, then there would be nothing
My sister worked for a closing GM plant - and just got laid off. Worked there for over 20 years and her job is union-classified as skilled. Her particular job is being bandied about in the media as paying $71/hour. She gets a bit over a third of that, GROSS, not net. Her pension funding is going south - because they fund more by contingency than by trust accounting, I suppose (I am not an expert).
Now her friends and neighbors are giving her the same $71/hour shit.
This is a lousy business decision. (Score:3, Interesting)
Pushing this absurd patent is costing Amazon more in negative PR than the patent could possibly be worth.
-jcr
Re:This is a lousy business decision. (Score:5, Insightful)
Negative PR? Only with the tiny audience that reads slashdot or sites like it. That's not a slam of slashdot, but you have to admit this is not anything like a mainstream news site.
Parent
Re:This is a lousy business decision. (Score:5, Insightful)
Pushing this absurd patent is costing Amazon more in negative PR than the patent could possibly be worth.
Negative PR with who? The people that already feel questionably about Amazon? Because the truth is no one outside the Web world (that's us) cares, and we represent a very tiny part of Amazon's customer base, and most of us will keep on buying things from Amazon anyway (though I try to buy from Powells [slashdot.org] when I can).
My point is that hoping Amazon gets "embarrassed" about this isn't going to happen, and your statement simply isn't true.
Parent
Re:This is a lousy business decision. (Score:5, Informative)
There are NO Amazon customers outside the Web world...
But, point well taken: you're quite right. This is a non-issue for nearly all Amazon customers anyway. We software patent opponents do care a lot (though not all of us would avoid using Amazon because of this silly patent), but we're an insignificant minority of their customer base.
Parent
Re:This is a lousy business decision. (Score:5, Funny)
Pushing this absurd patent is costing Amazon more in negative PR than the patent could possibly be worth.
-jcr
I think you greatly over-value negative PR.
True. Now, if a video could be shown of Jeff Bezos broiling and consuming a newborn baby ... that might do it.
Parent
Not everyone's Christian... (Score:2)
I'm atheist you insensitive clod.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What's religion got to do with it? OK, sure. There are still those who maintain religious traditions around this time of year. And that's fine. But much of what we celebrate as Christmas is secular.
Looking around my household, I only find one religious trapping; a figurine of an angel reaching for a star. It is far outnumbered by the reindier, wreaths, nutcrackers, canycanes, snowmen, santas, christmas trees, and other assorted decorations. I haven't attented church in years. We didn't even say grace
Re: (Score:2)
take part in Christian-American culture? hah, that's a good one...
or maybe it's all the Christians (including those non-American 'copycats') who are lying to themselves, pretending they're not celebrating a pagan holiday (a Roman festival mixed with elements of Yule-tide [wikipedia.org]) and practicing a syncretic religion based primarily on Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, and Mystery cults, with its mythology heavily borrowed from pre-Judeo-Christian cultures like the Sumerians/Babylonians, ancient Egyptians, ancient Greeks, et
Re:Not everyone's Christian... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you pay your respects to Jesus/Santa/Novi God then you are taking part in a religious celebration whether you believe in it or not.
Please feel free to point out what in my description depicted religious ceremony. And please - are you really implying that Santa Claus is a god?
Again - there are underpinnings of Christianity in many Western Christmas traditions. Sure. But then, there's also lots of underpinnings of other religions as well. Just because one follows such a tradition, does not make one a participant of that religion. If it was otherwise, Christmas as most Westerners observe it would present some serious problems for devout Christians (who are pretty uncomfortable with the idea of practicing multiple religions).
I should also note that I do not claim to be an athiest. My religious beliefs are, frankly, nobody's business but my own. The point isn't that Christmas is some Atheist field-day but rather you do not have to be religious to participate in the holiday.
I know that upsets the "reason for the season" folks. They'll have to get over it (they won't).
Parent
DUH! (Score:2)
Who ever said that practicing "law" or anything to do with it is a gentleman's game?
On contrary... You got a way to put that extra pound of pressure on your opponent, you use it.
As long as it is legal and/or you don't get caught.
Heck... If duels were legal you can bet your ass that lawyers would start hiring people as proxies to challenge the members of opposing legal team prior to trial.
Re: (Score:2)
Who ever said that practicing "law" or anything to do with it is a gentleman's game?
On contrary... You got a way to put that extra pound of pressure on your opponent, you use it. As long as it is legal and/or you don't get caught.
Heck... If duels were legal you can bet your ass that lawyers would start hiring people as proxies to challenge the members of opposing legal team prior to trial.
I'm surprised they haven't challenged Calveley to a duel.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't see it (Score:3, Insightful)
Is there an assumption that USPTO has to somehow reply to this latest submission by midnight on same day?
The story seems silly. There is no life or death situation. I would expect no action from USPTO for 3 month or more.
What a ridiculous summary paragraph (Score:5, Informative)
It just shows how little some people know about the patent system. A request for continued examination can be filed with the electronic system on Dec 23rd, and very few humans would see it, if any, until the docket clerk looks at it. The examiner won't be looking at it for quite some time, so they aren't working overtime for Bezos. Further, they aren't asking for an invalidation of the final rejection, they are asking for reconsideration on the merits, and a withdrawal of the rejection (very different things). If you know about the system, the summary the submitter put forward was good for a laugh, but nothing else.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. Most of the /. verbiage on patents is amusingly uninformed.
Not understanding the difference between a patent application and a granted patent is a common feature of articles and commentary here. Given that level of ignorance, it is inevitible that most denizens of /. fail to comprehend the procedures in prosecuting an application, and the associated dialog between applicant's attorneys and the examiner.
Hint: I hold 12 granted US patents, and have a few applications being examined. I have some f
Re: (Score:2)
Not understanding the difference between a patent application and a granted patent is a common feature of articles and commentary here.
Most people on Slashdot believe that an alarmingly large percentage of patent applications are granted. The number of outright stupid patents that are granted is often exaggerated into the "application == patent" phenomenon you mention. Sadly, some of the time, they're right.
Electronic Acknowledgement Receipt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Electronic Acknowledgement Receipt (Score:5, Insightful)
Loosely translated means they filed the paperwork online and the whole thing was accepted automatically. So if anything, it was Amazon being Ebenezer making its lawyers work Xmas eve, the USPTO didn't have to do anything.
Yeah, no kidding. I mean, we're talking government employees here.
Parent
Obvious patent? Not back then. (Score:2, Informative)
Way back in the day, nobody could even figure out how to do credit card processing, much less buy anything online. I have a vague recollection of one of the backbone providers in the Northeast or Midwest trying to prohibit commerical traffic over their network.
One-click buying was pretty radical. Even buying stuff online was pretty unbelievable. I mean, think about this: some company you never heard of would store your credit card number and other information so you could buy stuff without entering in all t
Re:Obvious patent? Not back then. (Score:5, Insightful)
one click buying was as obvious as n[anything], it starts off with a bunch of steps and slowly gets optimized to the minimum, which is a very logical progression.
see 'one click recording', 'one button printers' and so on. Eventually all technology gets optimized to the minimum number of interfaces required to make it work.
Not only is this an obvious patent, it is part of a special class of obvious patents, the ones that are destined to happen anyway, no matter who patents them.
Parent
Re:Obvious patent? Not back then. (Score:5, Informative)
I have a vague recollection of one of the backbone providers in the Northeast or Midwest trying to prohibit commerical traffic over their network.
You're thinking of NSFNET [wikipedia.org], which was more-or-less the bridge between the original ARPANET and the commercial Internet we know today. The non-commercial limitations were inherited from ARPANET, and had to do with government funding of the backbone.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Um no it was not. People had been buying via Mail order for 200 years previous. Sears Roebuck were accepting checks and money by mail for over a century by then. and they were acceptng credit cards cince they existed.
Online buying was no different no innovative in any way. You're making the silly assumption that doing something normal "on the internet" is innovative.
It's not.
Re:Obvious patent? Not back then. (Score:5, Insightful)
so should TV commercials have been patented because before TV was invented "advertising on TV" was a very radical concept?
Amazon didn't invent e-commerce. they only popularized it. and even if they had been the first to implement one-click check out, it's still not a patentable non-trivial/obvious invention.
if businesses are allowed to patent trivial features like saving a customer's credit card information, then you risk destroying the software development industry. within a few years any software development firm would have to license 99% of all of their products' features because everything from autosave to file menus would have been "pretty unbelievable" at some point in time.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If it's not obvious, why do children reinvent it every day?
Don't believe me? Go into a toy store and watch spoiled children. They'd point to a toy and say "I want that" and then say "I want that" and then say "I want that", etc, before their parents gather up their requests and go to the cashier.
The 1-click patent is not not only obvious, it has prior art in spoiled children. The key reason few people did online shopping before amazon is that http standards, and in particular encryption, wasn't common enoug
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Obvious patent? Not back then. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, youngster, you are not giving those of us who were building e-commerce web sites "way back in the day" before there was an Amazon.com nearly enough credit. One-click was obvious even before they did it; the reason no one else offered it is because it's stupid.
All e-commerce sites I built before Amazon.com existed (and before "e-commerce" was the widely accepted term for them) stored account details that were pre-populated in the checkout forms after successful authentication. It was common as dirt, and even those customers who were beyond the reach of 56k dial-up expected it to work that way.
Yes, indeed, it was obvious even "way back in the day".
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What the law should really be doing (Score:4, Insightful)
What's REALLY needed is a law which prohibits the storing of people's credit card numbers. The only people who need access to your credit card info are you and your bank.
That would moot this stupid patent, but who cares.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What's REALLY needed is a law which prohibits the storing of people's credit card numbers. The only people who need access to your credit card info are you and your bank.
That would moot this stupid patent, but who cares.
Well, that won't happen as long as credit card issuers are responsible for any fraud. The thing is, sometimes they screw you over anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:What the law should really be doing (Score:5, Interesting)
There are certainly risks involved with letting people store your credit card number, but I don't think the government needs to babysit us quite that much. That said, there are some similar measures I would support:
1. Minimum standards for the secure storage of those numbers. The most obvious requirement, if one doesn't yet exist, being that they can't be stored clear-text. There should probably be requirements about where it can be stored (eg, not on laptops), who can access them, etc as well.
2. A law requiring that the storage of your CC number be optional, and even default off. Too many services simply don't let you tell them not to store the number if you want to use that service, and even those that do tend to store it until you remove it. I don't think the government should be making our decisions for us--it certainly is more convenient to check out if the number is stored--but they should do what they can to let us make those decisions for ourselves if we believe the rewards outweigh the risks.
...and probably more, though that's what comes immediately to mind.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
The CC companies took it upon themselves to make up their own rules. They are pretty stringent. CISP [merchant-a...rvices.org] requires a yearly audit.
When I last looked in depth at this there was a per card theft fine of 10,000. Obviously the huge credit card thefts from some of the big merchants have never paid anywhere near that per card. But as a small business it was a deciding factor on changing our rebilling process.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, PCI [pcisecuritystandards.org] is fairly stringent. But a lot of merchants aren't there yet.
Re: (Score:2)
Here is an idea:
Storing of credit card number is prohibited, the only way in wich credit cards may be stored or transmitted is like this
($card_info + $merchant_name + $date) encrypted with the public key of $card_issuer
That would eliminate a large part of possible fraud. companies could still offer to reuse old credentials, but it would be transparent when they do this.
patent it (Score:2)
You should patent "a system and method for storing people's credit card numbers as part of an E-commerce system" and then demand insane license fees. Please do.
Actually, Microsoft is to be applauded in that regard: they patent many stupid, customer-hostile ideas and thereby save the world from other companies actually implementing that trash. If only Microsoft enforced its patents (and copyrights) more vigorously.
Re: (Score:2)
Um, no thank you. If you don't want a company storing your card, then don't use them.
I buy from Amazon on a weekly basis, sometimes twice a week, and I would be incredibly frustrated if I had to type in my billing information every time, even if I only had to type in the CVN.
The convinience is precisely why I shop so much at Amazon, and why I always look there first when I want something. On the rare time that I have to shop somewhere else online, I always find myself frustrated by their annoying checkout
Bilski, anyone ? (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as I can tell this patent fails the Bilski test. It is neither tied to a particular apparatus or machine, nor does perform a unique transformation.
IANAL, but the test outlined in Bilski seems to make this patent NULL. Anyone can implement a one-click system on any machine connected to the internet.
The obviousness test is also valid in this case - at the time Amazon was pushing this through the USPTO... Well, my boss was handing me work from different clients that wanted a sign-in and one-click ordering system for their commerce sites. I had to tell him it was legally impossible each time.
So failing the "obviousness" test - it was a clearly obvious step to take. To both the people writing the code for commerce sites and to the people paying to have them written... And also seeming, to me (and I repeat - IANAL), failing the tests outlined in the Bilski case... Amazon can fight as much as they want, but this patent is a dud.
Re: (Score:2)
Bilski dealt with business methods and not software so the "machine" part of the machine/transformation test never came up. The method failed the transformation test because the data didn't represent anything physical.
I find that an ominous development for software patents. The transformation part of the test is unavailable in the general case. The validity of software patents seem to rest solely on the fact that software runs on machines. Whether or not a computer suffices as a machine as patent law define
damn and I thought I was ... (Score:2)
... the only one working xmas eve.
Not impressed (Score:2)
Lots of people had to work Christmas Eve - including my wife (an accountant). So what? Christmas Eve isn't a holiday.
So what? (Score:2)
Why Defend It? (Score:3, Interesting)
One wonders why Amazon bothers spending money on lawyers to defend a patent that's irrelevant now. All loss of the patent means is that competitors can create 1-click features on their sites, something that's far from a selling point in Amazon's favour now. Back in the day when ecommerce was the realm of pornographers, it was a slick feature to offer, but nowadays it would seem almost quaint to tout that as a reason to use one site over another.
Simple legislative fix to this (Score:2)
If they license (and sue people for) a patent that hasn't been granted yet, make them refund all licensing fees and legal expenses when patent is denied. Simple. A lot less crap would be patented in the first place unless it's truly non-obvious and innovative, and those filing patents would be scared shitless of licensing them to anyone before they're granted, let alone starting a patent lawsuit.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I'm working now.
You're posting to Slashdot, my guess is that you're *not* working. Unless you're an editor ;)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Funny)
And even then his work would be questionable at best.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not every job requires 100% attention 100% of the time. I have a friend, for example, who spends much of his night shift sitting. His duty is making sure none of the juveniles in custody leave through the door next to him. I think he could manage a slashdot post or three and still be doing the job he was paid to do.
Re: (Score:2)
I can't speak for our friend AC, but, as a matter of fact I am an editor, taking a short break now, and I worked all day yesterday (Christmas Eve) until 7am this morning, then crashed and resumed at 2 in the afternoon. It is now 2 in the morning, Boxing Day. Oh, and there is no end in sight. :)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unions are great!
Aside from the usual mismanagement, unions are also one of the biggest reasons US car companies can not compete with foreign auto makers.
Unions do serve an important function in many industries but they are also destroying many of those same industries. In the end, we all pay much, much higher prices for US goods which prices many of them right out to extinction. Simply put, if unions ONLY did their job to ensuring a safe/healthy work environment with fair wages, then there would be nothing
You are not insightful (Score:3, Insightful)
My sister worked for a closing GM plant - and just got laid off. Worked there for over 20 years and her job is union-classified as skilled. Her particular job is being bandied about in the media as paying $71/hour. She gets a bit over a third of that, GROSS, not net. Her pension funding is going south - because they fund more by contingency than by trust accounting, I suppose (I am not an expert).
Now her friends and neighbors are giving her the same $71/hour shit.
You can pontificate about unions all you