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In Defense Of Patents and Copyright
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu May 10, 2007 03:46 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)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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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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)
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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)
This is not trolling:
This is:
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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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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."
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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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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".
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.)
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.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Old Media monopoly again (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh boy (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly, you dont watch much p0rn.
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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.
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Re: (Score:3)
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