RMS On How To Fight Software Patents 259
rimberg writes "Richard M. Stallman has a article on NewsForge talking about ways to fight software patents. It mentions the Public Patent Foundation (and why it's a good idea), but argues that fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria." (Newsforge, like Slashdot, is part of OSTG.)
I agree with the article (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I agree with the article (Score:5, Insightful)
RMS wrote (or had EM write) the GPL at a time that I and many other techies thought it was just a bunch of lawyering interfering with code fragments we were just posting on usenet with no copyright/license info. Now the GPL probably helped Linux beat BSD (since companies wouldn't have shared as much if the GPL didn't encourage them to), and may be important to protecting Linux survive.
RMS wrote The Right To Read [gnu.org] back in 1997 at a time when DRM was a relatively new technology, and I dismissed him as being paranoid again. Note this was before the DMCA (1998). Long after, when the e-book DRM issues started I remembered his article. Now in the day of the increasing RIAA and MPAA presence, his article is more scarry than ludicrous.
If I were to read this article, I'm sure I'd think he's paranoid again; only to once again see 5 years later that he was actually just years ahead of me again.
I agree with the article-Deep Root. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I agree with the article-Deep Root. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think your parent post answered that.
We treat him as a paranoid nutcase because he sees these trends in intellectual property law about 3-5 years before they affect us users of the system. Since we don't have the same context, we don't understand what he's saying.
For example, he probably wrote The Right to Read back when the DMCA was being drafted; and he probably had some exposure to the debates that were part of its drafting. We, on the other hand, didn't know anything about the DMCA when we first read the article. Without this context it sounded quite paranoid. Only after the DMCA passed as law did the popular media (/.) notice the law, and only after that point did RMS's article make sense.
Re:I agree with the article-Deep Root. (Score:2, Funny)
It tricked me for years but it was because i wasn't stepping into your shoes. Now I am as paranoid as you, and i can see what you're doing.
Rock on.
Not sure (Score:3, Interesting)
1) The really dangerous patents (say, required to interop with Microsoft software) may be vulnerable to court-ordered licensing in terms useable by the competition as per anti-trust law. (Again
We must fight them.. otherwise it will come true! (Score:5, Interesting)
This article appeared in the February 1997 issue of Communications of the ACM (Volume 40, Number 2).
(from "The Road To Tycho", a collection of articles about the antecedents of the Lunarian Revolution, published in Luna City in 2096)
For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in college--when Lissa Lenz asked to borrow his computer. Hers had broken down, and unless she could borrow another, she would fail her midterm project. There was no one she dared ask, except Dan.
This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help her--but if he lent her his computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that you could go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books, the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had been taught since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and wrong--something that only pirates would do.(poisoning of our school system, remember BSA?)
And there wasn't much chance that the SPA--the Software Protection Authority--would fail to catch him. In his software class, Dan had learned that each book had a copyright monitor that reported when and where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing. (They used this information to catch reading pirates, but also to sell personal interest profiles to retailers.) The next time his computer was networked, Central Licensing would find out. He, as computer owner, would receive the harshest punishment--for not taking pains to prevent the crime. (DRM-OS! Any takers for palladium?)
Of course, Lissa did not necessarily intend to read his books. She might want the computer only to write her midterm. But Dan knew she came from a middle-class family and could hardly afford the tuition, let alone her reading fees. Reading his books might be the only way she could graduate. He understood this situation; he himself had had to borrow to pay for all the research papers he read. (10% of those fees went to the researchers who wrote the papers; since Dan aimed for an academic career, he could hope that his own research papers, if frequently referenced, would bring in enough to repay this loan.)(Per use licensing! Bill Gates and the RIAA hoos probably masturbate to this every day!!!)
Later on, Dan would learn there was a time when anyone could go to the library and read journal articles, and even books, without having to pay. There were independent scholars who read thousands of pages without government library grants. But in the 1990s, both commercial and nonprofit journal publishers had begun charging fees for access. By 2047, libraries offering free public access to scholarly literature were a dim memory.(The OTHER 1984)
There were ways, of course, to get around the SPA and Central Licensing. They were themselves illegal. Dan had had a classmate in software, Frank Martucci, who had obtained an illicit debugging tool, and used it to skip over the copyright monitor code when reading books. But he had told too many friends about it, and one of them turned him in to the SPA for a reward (students deep in debt were easily tempted into betrayal). In 2047, Frank was in prison, not for pirate reading, but for possessing a debugger.(Well well.. INDUCE ACT?)
Dan would later learn that there was a time when anyone could have debugging tools. There were even free debugging tools available on CD or downloadable over the net. But ordinary users started using them to bypass copyright monitors, and eventually a judge ruled that this had become their principal use in actual practice. This meant they were illegal; the debuggers' developers were sent to prison.(Up to 10 years for downloading a mp3 today under the PIRATE act, 'nuff said!)
Programmers still needed debugging tools, of course, but debugger vendors in 2047 distributed numbered copies only, and only to officially licensed and bonded programmers. The debugger Dan used in software class was kept behind a special firewall so that it could be used only for
It's very easy, actually. (Score:5, Insightful)
This involves watching public affairs and politics closely, however, not an easy thing to do now that croporations have managed to make democracy look bad during the last 20-25 years...
Re:It's very easy, actually. (Score:5, Insightful)
Even that isn't really enough. Many of the people who will be voting on this don't really understand the issue. Furthermore, the people who are pushing for software patents are being very deceptive. I have had correspondence with politicians who seem to honestly believe that they are voting for restrictions on software patentability when they are doing no such thing.
The important thing is to educate the politicians. Make them understand why the issue is so important and make them understand what the legislation before them really says.
A great battle was won when the European Parliament amended the Commission's directive, but there is still a lot more to do if we are to see final victory.
Get writing!
Re:It's very easy, actually. (Score:4, Insightful)
More important still is to educate the electorate to vote for educated politicians.
A younger me thought politicians were the horse, and the electorate the cart.
We do far too little to promote leadership of any kind in _any_ party, as evidenced by the lack of any substantial debate from anyone in the US presidential farc^H^H^H^Helection.
You don't get it. (Score:4, Insightful)
That comment reveals a major misconception. You assume that if the pols knew what was best for the country, they'd do it.
It's very difficult to get elected to Congress. The rewards for getting elected are huge, so there's a lot of competition (at the stage where it matters - getting nominated by the incumbent party). You have to be very smart to succeed.
You may be thinking, "But pols are always saying stupid things, so how can they be smart?" Understand the answer to that question, and you will understand a lot about modern politics.
What a politician says has nothing to do with what he/she believes. A politician says whatever is most likely to result in re-election.
Educating pols is pointless. They're smarter than you, and better informed. Your only chance is to persuade voters to vote for better pols. That's extremely difficult, because corporate dollars are always against you. But it's always harder to do something effective than to do something pointless.
Re:It's very easy, actually. (Score:3, Informative)
BTW if you live in America you live in a REPUBLIC, if we lived in a democracy we would directly elect the president.
Re:It's very easy, actually. (Score:2)
Re:It's very easy, actually. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's only an either-or proposition when you're playing Civilization. Here in the real world we aren't restricted to a single adjective when describing governmental systems. The US is a democratic republic; the UK is democratic, but not a republic; China is not democratic, but it is a republic.
In the ancient world, the citizens of a democracy voted on laws directly. No one practises this anymore
Re:It's very easy, actually. (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmmm...
You might want to read about Direct Democracy in Switzerland [swissworld.org]. Why does it seem so inconceivable here? Well, (from the second link there), "the extensive choice of media play a decisive role in ensuring the proper functioning of this particular form of State." [admin.ch]
Re:It's very easy, actually. (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't know if there are any anime fans here, but if you want Kino's Journey there was an episode that is exactly like this. So people all vote on issues, and there are disagreements, and eventually, what did they do?
They start voting to have the minority executed.
Eventually there is only a couple and a man left, and the couple voted to have that man killed. Th
Re:It's very easy, actually. (Score:2)
That is bascially why the founding fathers of the US created a republic.
Re:It's very easy, actually. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parlimentary monarchy. A wee difference between the Queen being an all-powerful tyrant and a mere figurehead. For your information, we happen to have 4 major political parties and a few small ones. Minority governments are possible (we have one presently). Although people always complain, I take this system any night and day over the "one two-headed horse race" you got going over there since ... well ... basically day one. Which seemed to bother noone, only until recently, when it is became apparent that both of these entrenched choices are getting desperately lame. USA was extremely fortunate for most of its history that this Democrat/Republican farce did not go bad much earlier.
Re: It's very easy, actually. (Score:3, Informative)
If by "leadership" you mean invading foreign countries, I concede American dominance here.
Otherwise, there is Canada's efforts for a peaceful resolution to the Suez Crisis, for which Prime Minister Pearson won a Nobel prize.
Canada has played a role far out of proportion to its population in U.N. peacekeeping operations, and a maj
Re:It's very easy, actually. (Score:3, Funny)
Craporations?
Copro-ations?
Crop-rotations?
Crap-of-nations?
Score -1, misspelling and (bonus!) grammar error.
Score +1, but the mispelling is so funny.
--Rob
The system makes this impossible (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's very easy, actually. (Score:3, Interesting)
Alot of people like to blaim politicians being bought out on the free market (often trying to use the term capitalism, as if they are one and the same). The problem of becoming too democratic is that the most powerful few (tyrrany of the minority/of the wealthy elite) and those of the greatest numbers (tyrrany of the majority) can influence the law to
Re:Mosquitos, Malaria, and Bill Gates. (Score:4, Interesting)
Mean anything?
Yep, it means that Bill Gates is paying the same percentage of his income as a million other concerned citizens. As far as it goes, a good thing and my congratulations to him.
I find it interesting that he really only got started donating to significant non-M$ benefiting causes when he met Melinda. She appears to have been a positive influence.
In any case M$ is still taxing the world $35,000,000,000 per year for about a dozen programs mostly written more than a decade ago with the most complicated bits (the device drivers) being largely written by third parties. That's wrong, the market isn't working and the law needs to be fixed.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
Re:It's actually even easier. (Score:2)
Da Bomb. (Score:2, Funny)
May I helpfully suggest tactical nukes?
Re:Da Bomb. (Score:4, Funny)
Masquitoes (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Masquitoes (Score:2)
Obscure Gauntlet video-game reference (Score:3, Funny)
LOL... See, this is the kind of weird shit that stallman says that makes people outside the tech industry go:
"What the fuck is that guy talking about?".
Geek Analogy (Score:5, Funny)
But you'd get a lot more experience points if you leave the generator running and ambush the monsters one-by-one as they emerge.
And this Stallman guy thinks he's a geek. Sheesh!
Patent Generators (Score:5, Insightful)
Fighting and pointing out the absurdities of patent abuse are a very good first step.
BTW, I suspect the typical car has more than 300 patents involved in its creation and manufacture. However, the shear number of patents developers face is a good method to show the problems faced by small businesses...as it is next to impossible to design any idea without touching on a patent of some sort.
Re:Patent Generators (Score:3, Insightful)
Congratulations on defending "property rights" for mental processes.
The "revolution" here is not in opposing software patents. The "revolution" was when the dumb-ass US reversed it's own proper and well established rules and violated well established global patent rules to extend patents to software in the 80's. Virtually every patent law in the world has/had rules prohibiting patents on math and thought proces
Re:Geek Analogy (Score:2)
Software patents (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Software patents (Score:5, Interesting)
Some guy even proved [juergen-ernst.de] using lambda calculus that because of this property, several assumptions about the patent system are in contradiction with each other when applied to computer programs.
Try and patent the Turing machine (Score:4, Interesting)
- The patent is accepted and you can invalidate all patents that follow (as they cover ground your patent now owns). No more software patents!
- The patent is rejected because of prior art. Subsequently, all software patents that follow that piece of prior art should also be invalidated. No more software patents!
The only thing you have to prove is that your patent for the turing machine describes all other possible software patents....Re:Try and patent the Turing machine (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that the attorneys and appeals courts couldn't give a rat's ass about that fact. If you look at first-attempt applications, you'll find claims for the very same limitations for stuff like "a computer with computer readable medium, said medium comprising executable instructions to perform a method comprising:" and "a data signal embodied in a carrier wave, said data signal initiating a computing device to execut a method comprising:" and similar bullshit.
The examiners issue patents according to the existing law and previously decided court cases with the idea that having their work dragged through the appeals courts is a Bad Thing. If you don't like software patents, you'll have to fight it out between the attorneys and the appeals courts. The examiners are just trying to do their job the "right" way, and the "right" way is decided by judges who don't know why solving one NP-Complete problem in polynomial time would by historic.
Re:Try and patent the Turing machine (Score:2, Informative)
I really don't know wtf you're trying to say. Because many hundreds of thousands of applications are defeated by the examiners. I don't even know if we're speaking to the same subject...
Judges should not need to know the technical details. They should be able to rely on qualified examiners to do that bit o
Re:Try and patent the Turing machine (Score:3, Interesting)
One-click (cough!) One-click (cough! cough!) Tab key surfing (hack! wheeze!) Double clicking on a portable device (retch! spitooey!)
For every bullshit application that gets defeated, 100 more slip through. Since you claim to be a bonafide software patent examiner, let me ask the $100 dollar question: WTF are you people
Nothing to see here (Score:2, Insightful)
The patent system didn't cause the collapse of the entire Industrial Revolution due to patent infringement, so it seems more than a bit like crying wolf to assume it will be any more harmful with software.
Other than that point, the article is empty of content other than "Software patents are bad; we must have zero of them"
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Insightful)
There is, however, a very great difference between designing and building a car and writing software. Designing a car requires some fairly expensive machinary and requires a lot of legal hoop-jumping to get it certified as safe. It is very expensive for companies to launch a new range of cars and the patent costs are relatively small in comparison to some of the more capital intensive parts of the project.
With software, there is currently no such barrier to entry. Software can be, and is, written by hobbyists and very small companies as well as the software giants. The introduction of software patents would effectively remove the ability of some of the most innovative workers to compete.
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:2)
but Mozilla isn't hobbyist in it's origin or financing. you could argue with some truth that none of the marquee, brand-name, open source projects really fit that model.
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:2)
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Insightful)
While RMS isn't very explicit about it in the Newsforge piece, one distinction between software patents and mechanical patents to which he alludes is that, arguably, a piece of software of any complexity is likely to involve many more potentially patentable components than a comparable mechanical device. To the extent this is true, it means that it is much more difficult to know when one is infringing a patent when writing software and that it would be much more difficult to set up a system for paying royalties.
It's true that patents don't seem to have prevented the Industrial Revolution, but there may be some critical differences. One is that, it seems to me, patents didn't come to be widely used until a great many fundamentals were already in the public domain. That meant that everybody had a large base of ideas that they were free to work with. Where very basic ideas were patented, those patents did indeed pose a danger to progress. An example is the AT&T patent on the transistor, which the US government forced AT&T effectively to give up precisely because it was such a basic thing that it would have given AT&T a stranglehold on the semiconductor industry.
The other factor is that for much of the Industrial Revolution there were generally fairly large costs and/or specialized skills needed to implement a new idea, and the means of communication were relatively slow. As a result, the duration of a patent was relatively short in comparison to the time needed for ideas to diffuse. In contrast, implementing a new idea in software costs very little and requires no skills beyond those of the average programmer, and communication is very fast. As a result, people can adopt a new idea very quickly. The time for ideas to diffuse is small in relationship to the duration of patent, so patents become a bottleneck.
If this latter idea is correct, it means that the problems with software patents should arise in other areas in which costs of adoption are low and communication rapid. I wonder if genetic technology is not coming to be similar to software in this respect.
Re:Nothing to see here-Stone Cold Ideas. (Score:2)
No, I was entirely right. The point I made was that there were big differences in the spread of the use of an innovation in software today and in areas such as mechanics in the past. These differences lie in the costs of implementation and in the rapidity of communication. In both cases, I was talking about what happens after a new idea is discovered. Whether or not the average programmer is able to make such discoveries is irrelevant to this point.
In any case, although some innovations are unlikely to
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Interesting)
But it may have concentrated power into the hands of very few and slowed it down, and changed its direction to favour the interests of the establishment of the time.
As a mechanical engineer, I detest all patents, not just software ones. You wouldn't _believe_ the stuff engineers aren't allowed to do because of patents, particularly sealed patents (patents that have been indefinitely extended and simultaneously removed in whole or in part from public records for reasons of "national security" - (i.e. corporate cronies requested it) This is intensely irritating - the patent still applies, so you can still be stopped from creating whatever it is you have rediscovered, but unlike with an ordinary patent, you don't know when/if it'll expire (typically when a citizen in another country independently reinvents it and _doesn't_ also keep it secret), and because there's little public record, people think you're being paranoid if you try to fight it.)
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:2, Informative)
Nonetheless, you are RIGHT, such hidden pseudopatents do exist - words like "secretized" and "classified" and "patent" will throw up many google hits, and many conspiracy theorists and free energy nuts acting very, very paranoid.
Usually the secrecy is imposed
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that every time he mentions the word "patent", it is either specified as "software patent", or used in a context that could only mean "software patent".
The patent system didn't cause the collapse of the entire Industrial Revolution due to patent infringement, so it seems more than a bit like crying wolf to assume it will be any more harmful with software.
During much of the Industrial Revolution, there were most likely no more that a few dozen patents per year issued that could potentially affect any particular product. It took over a century to issue the first 1 million patents.
Since software patents are typically very broad, overlapping and non-novel, each one can have a much larger impact than some patent on an improved shoelace. For the shoelace, only a handful of shoe designers have to worry about the patent. In the software case, every single one of the millions of software developers worldwide have to worry.
If RMS's figure is right and 100,000 software patents issue each year, and you assume that a typical patent has about 10 claims, then each and every day you need to check your entire codebase against more than 2700 additional new claims. That's an incredible burden on the software industry; one that has not been proven to be offset by any gains provided by software patents. The worth of software patents is especially questionable given that most of the major innovations in the software field took place either before software patents were allowed or were introduced as free public standards.
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:2, Insightful)
Not to mention, RMS suggests that one must constantly search one's software for potential infringements. Does anyone really think this is how reality works??
You write your software, and if you find out something significant you're using is probably patented, you check it out and avoid it. If you don't know of anything, you just do it. When someone notifies you of infringement, you check it out, and decide whether you want to avoid it, go to court, or license the patent.
There are so many inaccu
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:2)
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me there is a freedom in programming that is like the freedom in art and that arises from the fact that the full range of abstract mathematics is available to the programmer, rather than just that which will work in the real world and because there is an immediacy of implementation and an intimacy between idea and expression like that which there is between composer and piano keyboard. Software patents are generally directed toward the utilitarian aspects of programming - it's fundamental techniques and ideas, yet strangely it is obvious to everyone that such kinds of patents if applied to literature or cinematography or music would have only a detrimental effect.
It is interesting to wonder if one day artists (or publishers of art) might foolishly decide to embark on a patent land grab as is occurring in the software world. If you think that is not possible because of the technicity/usefulness requirements of patents, consider the Pollock techniques [physics.hku.hk] of splatter painting at a certain constant average fractal dimension, or the Da Vinci [harvard.edu] low frequency technique of causing a sense of elusivity and enigma. (Check out Semir Zeki's book; "Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain" and much other work on the science of perception). Recent work in analysis of music too has resulted in (among other things) researchers claiming to have found techniques for generating 'hit songs' automatically. It can only be a matter of time before one cannot engage in any activity at all without infringing someone else's exclusive right to use the techniques associated with it. :)
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:3, Informative)
The European Patent Office wants to change that. From page 16 of this recent decision [european-p...office.org] of the Board of Appeal of the EPO):
Anyone wants to bet ho
Google to the rescue (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.bitlaw.com/software-patent/ [bitlaw.com]
Ask the USPTO (Score:5, Interesting)
All patent attorneys know that they can take an application to the board of appeals (or higher) if they want to bother. The only reason they wouldn't is if the examiner builds an airtight case that convinces the attorney that it would be a waste of his time to try. The attorneys know that the people who sit on the board of appeals are patent law experts but not software experts.
If you want to stop software patents, you need to lay off the examiners (they agree with half the stuff said on Slashdot and the other half isn't even close to accurate) and focus on the patent attorneys and the appeal process. Any examiner who has been at the USPTO has issued patents for ideas they believe they have rejected but the board doesn't agree that "simultaneous" means the same thing as "doing two things at once" or some garbage like that. So the patent gets issued and from a legal standpoint, it's a perfectly valid patent. The examiner hates to do it, but the examiner doesn't have a choice.
If you want to fix software patents, focus on the attorneys and the appeal process. The examiners are just trying to do their job without being burnt out by the moronic arguments they deal with on a daily basis.
Re:Ask the USPTO (Score:2, Funny)
I do not think it means what you think it means. :)
Re:Ask the USPTO (Score:2)
Sorry, but I don't buy it. The "I'm only following orders" or "I'm only doing my job" arguments went out years ago.
Either the examiners are taking advantage of the system and are as culpable as everybody else in the patent office or they're not, and they've resigned and/or are publically and continuously trying to get the system fixed, both from within the patent office and in public forums including congress. If the attitudes you describe are as common as you suggest why don't you, assuming you're a pate
Re:Ask the USPTO (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed. The most effective thing they could do is allow anyone to patent just about any absurdity, then sit back and watch as the intentionally produced chaos starts rippling back and forth throughout the system. Done right and with enough examiners the entire system is sure to implode, probably spectacularly, in a relatively short amount of time.
If what you're looking for is a way to hopelessly bollix the system and fo
Make more prior art (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Make more prior art (Score:5, Informative)
You won't know it when you're cited in an examiner's rejection of a patent, but I promise you that many times an examiner finds a great piece of art on the internet that they would love to use except it isn't dated. There are mountains of people's research papers in PDF form that are on the internet but do not clearly display a date. If it doesn't have a date, it's useless to the examiner.
This is the number one thing that "everybody" can do to help prevent questionable patents and it only takes a tiny bit of time.
Re:Make more prior art (Score:3, Interesting)
That friend has several patents on the best selling chip of the time (Am/FM radio chip). He also has a patent on using morse code to talk to a device even though it had been patented nearly
prior art patent busting wiki? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Make more prior art (Score:2)
You are playing into the hands of patent parasites.
Lack of prior art is necessary but not sufficient evidence of inventiveness.
Many patents should not monopolise ideas because the idea is trival and obvious to somebody in the field, because the patent examiner is an incompetent who can't recognise a change in terminology and not substance, or because it is an idea who's time has come with many people/companies coming across it simultaneously and no one person/company entitled to monopolise the rewards.
Re:Make more prior art (Score:2)
If you'd like to explain to me the basis for the quoted statement,
See for example the non-obvious section described here [bitlaw.com].
Note that I am not a lawyer and sometimes argue from ethical as well as legal considerations.
as well as the assertion that a givern patent examiner is incompetent and can't understand a change in vocabulary, I'd love to reply to that.
Sorry if I've caused offence, I may have expressed that badly.
What I meant to say, and this is a problem for all software engineering and resea
Derailing the train (Score:5, Interesting)
A good eg of what is current in Australian patents:
> Australian Application Number 2004205327
> Title Programming interface for a computer platform
Through this we can hopefully prove that patents should simply not apply to software methods. It makes no sense, stifles innovation, and is an anti-competitive too of the most scary dimensions
Re:Derailing the train (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Derailing the train (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Derailing the train (Score:3, Interesting)
One lawyer would starve (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps you should collect data on how all the lawyer expenses are just a ball and chain around the industry. Thus, the numbers of $$$ spent on patent attorneys, legal fees, court cases and such.
Then you can argue that other than killing innovation, creating artifi
Whereas... (Score:2)
cheap insecticides like DDT could save hundreds of
thousands of lives each year. Unfortunately donor
nations, such as the U.S., tend to balk at paying
for DDT, which is banned in the U.S. Thus, lives
are lost.
The ideal future scenario is that PubPat should
accumulate a massive arsenal of patents, and then
take legal action against infringers throughout
industry, settling only when they agree to
cross-license their patents to the public at large.
By attacking the mos
Re:Whereas... (Score:2)
If you are being critical of the USA about something it doesn't do (or does), at least try to understand why it is the way it is.
In the case of the ban on DDT, it was for an incredibly good reason as DDT is a substnace that doesn't break down too well, and gets into the food supply of people very quickly and in concentrated amounts. In short, although over the short term it is very effective in killing incects like mosquitos, in the long run it will kill yo
Re:Whereas... (Score:2)
Re:Whereas... (Score:2)
saved through malaria abatement substantially
outnumber the lives lost due to toxicity, in those
areas where malaria is endemic.
I'm not arguing for DDT use in the U.S., where
(1) malaria is not endemic and (2) we can afford
malathion, but in places like Congo or Laos, DDT
is desperately needful.
Are all patents really evil? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Are all patents really evil? (Score:3, Insightful)
Public key cryptography might be a really good idea, but that still doesn't mean it deserves a patent. Certainly as things stand in the EU at the moment it cannot be patented because mathematical methods are not "inventions" [european-p...office.org]. How long t
Re:Are all patents really evil? (Score:4, Interesting)
Frankly I still don't understand any of this. Why was it legal to create the JPEG format, which obviously does the same thing (from a user perspective) as GIF, when it was not legal for Barnes and Noble to implement their own version of one-click?
My gut feel is that all software patents are bad because computer science is just too young a field. The government doesn't need to encourage basic research in software, it will happen anyway.
Re:Are all patents really evil? (Score:4, Insightful)
The truth is that I deliberatly chose not to do so, and I fail to see how patenting a software idea would have ever made me or my employer even one cent more by going through the process of doing the patent filing. It might be valid to have patents for defensive purposes (to ward off attacks from litigous idiots like SCO) and keep the company from going into the ground due to the system, but it won't be a revenue generator. Certainly our competitors could always find a way around what ever patents we could come up with, so even the exclusivity of the algorithm would not matter, unless we wanted to sink the entire industry like others are doing (again like SCO).
The LZW algorithm is perhaps the classic, and even that was worked around. Had Unisys been forthcoming from the beginning that it had the patent and intended to enforce it, there is no way that the GIF format would have been used at all.
The point here is that as a full-time software developer who almost exclusivly makes my financial income from the creation of totally novel and original software ideas, I don't need software patents and they are much more of a nuscance that anything else, and something done by companies who can't innovate or have run out of fresh ideas. In the time and effort it takes to patent something, I can come up with a dozen or more fresh ideas and implement them in actual software where they are being used.
If somebody else who has encountered the same situation ends up writing almost identical software and came up with the same general concept (I've seen it happen more than once), why not let them try to compete in the marketplace rather than in the courts?
While I would agree that the RSA algorithm does take time, R&D effort, and considerable effort that perhaps should be rewarded somehow, I fail to see how a software patent would even then be useful. Other encryption algorithms can and are being developed using alternative methods, so the absolute value is really in question. That the implementors of a successful algorithm would be the first on the market, have (hopefully) fully debuged software implementing the concept, and using it in practical applications would make that company clearly successful financially, particularly if they sold the software implementations at a reasonable price. The more complex the algorithm, the more they would be able to charge for it simply because it would also be that much harder for a 3rd party to make an independent implementation.
Copyright law, on the other hand, is critical, and just for pure ethical reasons, if you are using somebody's software and claiming it as if your wrote it yourself, that is plagurism at best, and should be protected through existing copyright laws. That the terms of the copyright might be way too long for computer software is another issue, but I would at least like the opportunity to be able to release my stuff knowing I can defend my authorship legally.
BTW, If I were able to directly introduce legislation into the U.S. Congress, I would want to change software copyright to about 20 years. I could even live with 10 years. Life + 70 years makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.
Re:Are all patents really evil? (Score:2)
As mathematicians, Rive
Not again... (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't have a problem with RMS and I even agree with him on a lot of issues outside of IP law (where I, in the interest of full disclosure, mostly do not agree with him).
Richard is, despite what many people say, a good speaker and a good rhetoric. That's not the problem. The problem are those analogies and euphemisms that made pretty much anybody outside of IT go 'ummm. yeah... great...".
IT is not a text-based dungeon game and this
Re:Not again... (Score:2, Insightful)
Counterattacking the patent system? (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, a public foundation dedicated to holding patents in the public interest. Anyone with an idea could submit it to them; they would then obtain a patent on it, and license it freely to the public, with the exception of companies who use their patent portfolios offensively.
Also, as an attack against software patents, would it be possible for a free developer to patent their own algorithms/widgets etc, and license it *only* for use in GPL'd software?
Is the above legally possible? There's an obvious problem in that most FOSS developers have neither the time nor the expertise, nor the money to apply for patents, but if an organisation could be formed to do that part, I have no doubt that the intellectual citizens of the world can out-invent the corporations obtaining patents.
[I am personally convinced that patents per se are a very bad thing, in any field of endeavour. They run contrary to the spirit of scientific endeavour, and they create a "tragedy of the commons" on a global scale. They also lead to monopolies. Pragamatically, one might make a special exemption for pharmaceutical patents, on the grounds of the huge investment required up front, but even then, such patents should be unenforceable in the 3rd world on grounds of humanitarian necessity.]
Re:Counterattacking the patent system? (Score:3, Informative)
That wouldn't work, because you can be forced to license your patents out at a reasonable price in court. I can't see a court allowing you to kill a successful rich commercial field of endeavour with your patents in such a w
Re:Counterattacking the patent system? (Score:4, Informative)
That wouldn't work, because you can be forced to license your patents out at a reasonable price in court"
The best the court would do is to invalidate your patent. They can't force you to license it let alone for a reasonable price.
Re:Counterattacking the patent system? (Score:2)
It might not be necessary to GPL everything. At its simplest, we could require any company wanting to use a patent to not use theirs aggressively, and support a political solution to this madness by lobbying for an end to patents.
No matter how many licenses we have for defensive use, we may still b
Not necessary (Score:2)
This isn't necessary. All you have to do to accomplish this is to publish the information. In a paper, on the net, wherever, as long as it's dated.
Once published, something can never be patented.
Like Should Exist? (Score:2)
Should Exist [shouldexist.org] might interest you.
Re:Counterattacking the patent system? (Score:3, Interesting)
Video game comparisons ? (Score:3, Funny)
Perhaps I should send this guy a screenshot of a Versalife bathroom ( Deus Ex ) filled with bodies of every killable NPC in the Chinese area. I should really apply this attitude to my current Icewind Dale II game. Those damn shopkeepers and town guards just wanted to cheat me anyway!
Was anyone else confused when they saw "RMS"? (Score:4, Funny)
RMS will have to trademark those three letters soon, or cede their use to his favorite software giant.
Any tin-foil hatters out there want to say that MSFT chose those three letters on purpose?
Re:Was anyone else confused when they saw "RMS"? (Score:2)
retoric, or how you write it... (Score:2)
To tell us that its not what the subject or a patent application is but rather how it is written out, how it is made to appear or sound novel and all the other things that are required to qualify as a patentable object.
SOOOO.... and likewise, writting the same subject out in a manner using terms of that which is not patentable can invalidate patents. This can go as far as root or core subjects in software that ca
Yea right. (Score:3, Funny)
Not if I activated the god code!
laws like software? (Score:2, Funny)
That actually looks a lot like a software program to me, the only difference being the language it's written in.
Now, wouldn't there be patents that describe algorithms that are actually used in the lawbooks too? That way, you could either make the lawmakers see that patenting software is like patenting lawmaking, or, if the lawmakers argue that the important thing here is the different language the laws are written in,
The best way to fight software patents (Score:4, Insightful)
RMS started the free(dom) software movement because he was losing a lifestyle he cherished.
Big money corporate players are starting to use their influence on the goverment to curb open source. The only way the free(dom) and open source people can stop this is to get strengt in numbers......ordinary people.
Ordinary people are not acquainted with all of this stuff and if they were they don't have a non-abstract reason to care. It is just not part of their world.
The best way to get them to care..........enough to yell at their representatives if the government pulls a fast one..........is to give them software that they love.
That means easy to use.........not what a geek considers to be "easy enought"....and user support communities without an attitude about people who have no desire to make computers their avocation.
Re:in case it gets slashdotted (Score:2, Funny)
Copyright 2004 Richard Stallman.
Fool.
Hmmm.... wait..... Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.
Uh, hmm..... er.... cannot comprehend this use of copyright...
[corporate head explodes]
Re:in case it gets slashdotted (Score:2, Informative)
Note the "European Transvestite Parliament" bit? That's not usually what we call them, and although what they may do on their own time is their own business, I know most of them were conventional attire for their sex at parliamentary sessions.
And note also that we are European, we're not likely to give a fuck if some guy does happen to wear a dress on a hot summer's day anyway.
Re:in case it gets slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)
*Sigh* RMS isn't that undiplomatic. While AFAICT the rest of the article is a verbatim copy, this is a good reminder of why you shouldn't trust these "in case it gets slashdotted" copies.
Re:in case it gets slashdotted (Score:2)
Re:Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant (Score:2, Insightful)
The only reason the disaster mightn't get to europe is BECAUSE people like RMS and the thousands of europeans supporting the FFII DON'T "shut the fuck up" and DO work to fight the encroaching evil. And, being normally functioning adult humans for the most part, we can do that part-time and continue to code too, funny
RMS focuses on what he knows: computer software. (Score:5, Informative)
RMS speaks quite carefully with respect to focusing on patents that cover algorithms used in computer software. If you read what RMS says about software patents, you'll see that he recognizes how, for example, automobile patents don't have the same social effect as software patents. Software programmers don't have to deal with all the complexities of physical product designers all the time.
Part of what he says about patents in other fields versus software patents [gnu.org]:
He doesn't think the same things about all patents. Read more [gnu.org] or hear him talk about patents in other fields and you'll find that he focuses on his expertise.
Re:if you can't beat em', join em (Score:2)
The problem is that your employer may have the final say.
I am cynical enough to wonder as well how many of the developers here would be so generous if, against the odds. they came up with a clearly patentable, clearly marketable idea.