Why IP Laws Are Blocking Innovation 348
DrJimbo passes along this quote from Groklaw:
"The White House is asking us to give them ideas on what is blocking innovation in America. I thought I'd give them an honest answer. Here it is: Current intellectual property laws are blocking innovation. President Obama just set a goal of wireless access for everyone in the US, saying it will spark innovation. But that's only true if people are allowed to actually do innovative things once they are online. You have to choose. You can prop up old business models with overbearing intellectual property laws that hit innovators on the head whenever they stick their heads up from the ground; or you can have innovation. You can't have both. And right now, the balance is away from innovation."
Remember the vast innovation in the baroque period (Score:5, Insightful)
No IP was a contributing factor.
Re:Remember the vast innovation in the baroque per (Score:5, Insightful)
No IP was a contributing factor.
I don't know what you people are talking about. There is considerable innovation in America today. The US is the leader in CDOs, derivatives, tax avoidance, and is always coming up with new and innovative schemes to part working people from their money.
No lack of innovation there, it's just misdirected.
Re:Remember the vast innovation in the baroque per (Score:4, Insightful)
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TFA is built on the premise that crime would pay if there weren't patents on the crime methods.
Napster? Really?
Napster wasn't hit with a patent suit for its method of stealing music. It was busted up because it was stealing music.
I couldn't read the rest after it started with that. Someone tell me if it redeemed itself.
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Napster wasn't hit with a patent suit for its method of stealing music. It was busted up because it was stealing music.
If you're going to be anal about terms you should make sure you aren't playing fast and loose with them yourself. Napster didn't *steal* anything.
Patents != Copyright, however IP covers both Patents and Copyright.
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If you enable people to make illegal copies of their copyright material, and to find more people to make illegal copies from, and you make money from it, how is that not stealing?
The prosecutor can be more distinctive about the term he wants to use, but since the money you collected belongs to the copyright holders, it doesn't matter that you invented the machine that made you that money.
And my point stands. The idea that stifling crime is stifling innovation therefore it shouldn't be a crime is a canard.
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If you enable people to make illegal copies of their copyright material, and to find more people to make illegal copies from, and you make money from it, how is that not stealing?
Napster was no more stealing than the person who wrote the first FTP client and server was stealing.
Re:Remember the vast innovation in the baroque per (Score:5, Insightful)
If you enable people to make illegal copies of their copyright material, and to find more people to make illegal copies from, and you make money from it, how is that not stealing?
You cannot 'steal' a digital bit. It simply exists and is copied or erased. But you cannot 'take' or 'steal' it in any way.
Napster is a bad example but for a different reason. Napster was busted for violating the copyrights of the music they were allowing to be traded.
How about Guitar Hero being killed because the copyright holders of the songs demanded ridiculous amounts when the game amounts to free advertising for them? They are certainly in the rights to do so, but it doesn't mean that 'innovation' isn't being stifled by it.
Patents are the bigger problem. Specifically software patents, but patents in general too. That Tivo can be sued because someone patented a completely vague idea without actually building their idea hurts everybody. Vonage also got sued over really technical things that Verizon (I think) purchased patents for and then sued Vonage. Worse, 'Patent Trolls' - companies that literally don't make anything purchase lots of patents solely for the purpose of suing companies who actually create things - *that* stifles innovation significantly.
I'm not advocating illegal sharing of copyrighted works. I am advocating that the current mindset of today's 'media' companies is very short sighted and backwards. Digital copies, instead of being a 'product' like a CD, are now the 'advertising' they should be using to drive people to buy things that aren't available in infinite supply. (This is not saying that because it's illegally available they should just give up).
Digital copies can be made in infinite numbers at just about zero cost. Say I'm selling apples and one day, someone comes and, without taking any apples, creates an apple tree next to my apple stand. Now apples are available for free right next to me. The value of my apples is lowered. I have not lost anything, nor been deprived of anything. There are simply more apples on the market and that causes value to go down. An infinite supply of apples puts the 'value' of any one apple at zero. I can complain that free apples exist - this is what 'media' is doing today. Or I can shift to having people come to my cart to by my 'worm free' apples. Instead of selling apples, I'm now providing a service of quality apples. I can certainly take apples from the tree too, I just spend time verifying they are worm free; that's the 'value' I am providing.
For the music industry, the 'value' is in live performances and merchandising. You simply can't produce a live performance infinitely, it can only be done at the concert with those musicians for a finite set of people.
But unfortunately we have billions of dollars fighting this basic fact of the digital world. Best description I've heard "Trying to make digital bits not copyable is like trying to make water not wet".
Closer to trespass than to theft (Score:3)
If you enable people to make illegal copies of their copyright material, and to find more people to make illegal copies from, and you make money from it, how is that not stealing?
Infringement of copyright is not stealing because the U.S. copyright statute does not use the word "steal" or "theft" to describe it, except in the (nonbinding) title of the No Electronic Theft Act. It's far closer to trespass than to theft.
Re:Remember the vast innovation in the baroque per (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a bit sad, considering the amount of energy spent on Slashdot discussing IP and innovation, that a sweeping and incorrect generalization like "No IP protection in the Baroque" that is still considered "Insightful." You would have hoped that people would have spent a fraction of the time writing and ranting instead reading.
There were of course considerable legal efforts used to keep smart people in place and harvest their output. This was an era when monopoly rights were routinely granted to restrict competition and the wealthy were obsessively worried about secret knowledge.
If you were, say, a glassblower in Venice, it would be impossible to take that knowledge and use it elsewhere within Venice; risky to use it outside Venetian control; and downright fatal if you did use it outside Venice and then returned home. By comparison, a patent lawsuit where most of the time you split the profits is downright encouraging.
In the arts, Handel basically had to defect from Hannover to compose in England.
This is not to over-dramaticize; states were weaker and their understanding of what could be considered a "valuable innovation" much more limited. I don't know how you could reasonably compare "IP" restrictions and say one era was better or worse; they were just very different. It would depend what you were trying to do.
I'm afraid my own opinion is fairly bland--clearly IP laws hurt innovation and clearly IP laws help innovation. (I could give personal examples of both--projects killed because an invention was patented but not developed by a competitor; projects not considered because you couldn't establish exclusivity and thus saw no path for ROI.) They have different effects in different industries. The proper balance between freedom, basic fairness and innovation is tricky.
Re:Remember the vast innovation in the baroque per (Score:5, Informative)
you needed a the support of the Church or a wealthy patron to make a living as an artist.
How is that different from today, where the wealthy patron is a mainstream publisher? Try to do it yourself and risk getting sued for plagiarism.
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Maybe IP is just yet another tool that large, established concerns can use to raise entry barriers for new competitors.
Coincidentally, I just read an article today -- Rethinking IP [mises.org] -- that suggests doing away with the concept of IP, entirely:
"We must start by taking a close look at the traditional libertarian assumption that IP is, in fact, a legitimate type of property right. And it turns out that advocates of the free market have made a mistake all along. Patent and copyright, to take the two worst manifestations of IP, are nothing but state monopolies that violate property rights. IP is antithetical to capitalism and the free market."
Re:Remember the vast innovation in the baroque per (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine a world where cooking wasn't covered by IP law you'd never be able to set up your own restaurant!
Why would a chef ever come up with a new recipe?
Surely if he came up with a good one then McDonalds would just steal it and include it in their own chain and lock that chef out.
As soon as you came up with a good idea, theme or dish someone would just swoop in , copy your ideas and push you out of business.
Nobody would ever even try!
We'd all be stuck without anything good to eat!
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I wish I hadn't blown all my mod points to increase the visibility of a couple titty jokes. You should have got one.
Even the jokes need their patrons.
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"You should have got one."
They usually come in pairs.
Re:Remember the vast innovation in the baroque per (Score:5, Insightful)
And the worst offender is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Patents. Bloody software patents, and fat cats using patents to bludgeon little guys. IIRC, the intention was pretty much the opposite - patents were supposed to be a way to put the law on the side of the little guy. Where did it all go wrong?
As for copyright - no more damn extensions. Indeed, ratchet back.
Re:And the worst offender is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Where it went wrong is when the "big guys" were allowed to pull tricks like patent-slamming and overwhelm the patent office.
That and when the rules were changed so that a corporation, rather than an individual, got to own the patent.
Absurd patents have always existed, but now they're allowed to destroy industries - and not just the software patent. When Wizards of the Coast [thefreelibrary.com] was granted a patent on card games, for instance, the patent NEVER should have been granted. It's a motherfucking joke [patentstorm.us].
A copy of Mr. Hoyle's Games Complete, circa THE YEAR 1750, offers every single mechanic WotC's patent describes that could possibly be counted as a nontrivial change. The idea of a "trading card game" in the patent ought to have been invalidated by, to name one early example "The Base Ball Card Game", produced by the Allegheny Card Company in the year 1904.
But some dope-on-a-rope in the patent office, overworked and underbrained, granted the patent to WotC. Sheer lunacy but the patent-slammers prevailed yet again.
And before you say "well but you could sue to have the patent invalidated" - NO. The point is that crap like this should never be granted. Most of the competing CCG-makers simply folded up shop after WotC started demanding royalties. It took until years later for Wizkids to finally offer a lawsuit to try to invalidate WotC's patent, and then it got settled without judgement [icv2.com], meaning WotC can still bully and make asses of themselves on an obviously invalid patent.
Re:And the worst offender is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And the worst offender is... (Score:4, Informative)
Where it went really wrong is when some moron in the PTO decided that the proper metric for measuring the efficiency of appraisers was to look at how many patents they *grant*. What exactly do you think is going to happen? Yep, any border case that can't be negatively resolved in 5 minutes of patent search gets approved.
I work for the patent office.
The efficiency metrics that the PTO uses to evaluate Examiners boils down to 1) how many applications they process (regardless of whether they are allowed or rejected) and 2) what percentage of their allowances and/or rejections are mistakes, with a "mistake" being either improperly rejecting or improperly allowing a patent.
In short, your assertion that "the PTO decided that the proper metric for measuring the efficiency of appraisers was to look at how many patents they *grant*" is total bullshit.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
are patents, and fat cats using patents to bludgeon little guys.
Yes you used all the correct terms to get an Insightful mod on Slashdot while saying the exact opposite of what really happens. Please name for me the last "little" guy who was sued for patent infringement, especially for software patents..... Usually it's the "little guys" suing Microsoft, Google, etc. etc.
The reason is money. Despite the narrative that Slashdot likes to portray of multi-billion dollar companies suing some open source develop
Re:And the worst offender is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the thing. Sending you a nasty-gram explaining that your product is infringing on the following 27 patents will take 1 company lawyer maybe 1 hour.
That doesn't mean they are suing you. It's not a suit, until it gets to court. We only hear about the big vs big, because they are the only ones who can afford going to court.
You, as a private person or even a small company, does not have the resources to defend yourself against 27 patent infringement claims.
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It went wrong when people started to patent things they had no intention of putting into practice. Such patents are like laying land mines or snares and waiting for someone to set them off.
I think a patent should expire after 6 months if they haven't been utilised in a product.
First to file (Score:5, Insightful)
You fail to patent, or file slowly? That's okay! We will patent for you, and then sue you for violating our patent!
As I understand first to file, prior art published outside a patent application can still invalidate a patent or application. It makes a difference only when two inventors have pending applications on the same thing (e.g. AG Bell and Elisha Gray).
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The only change is that the first party to file for a particular patent gets it. Whereas now it's a lot more complicated than that. You'd still have prior art and the standard methods of getting a patent set aside, it's just that patents would be considered in the order that they're submitted, giving some consistency to which similar patents are approved.
Re:And the worst offender is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Be careful what you wish for.
Copyright is for life + 70 years.
Patents last 17 to 20 years.
The OP had it right. Patent law prohibits patenting ideas or algorithms. Programs are algorithms by definition, and shouldn't be patentable at all. Yet the Patent office has decided to allow software patents in spite of what the law states.
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I would not be surprised if some companies are already planning how they will lobby for patent term extensions.
Of course they are, and they have been for years. The result of that lobbying is the "to 20" part of "17 to 20 years" that only applies to some patents.
The reason why lobbying for patent term extensions has had such modest success compared to copyrights is that there are also considerable moneyed interests lobbying to keep patent terms just where they are, precisely because they profit when patents expire (e.g., generic drug manufacturers); whereas, the only "counter-interest" to copyright term extension
Fanaticism is losing sight of the original goal (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fanaticism is losing sight of the original goal (Score:5, Insightful)
Orson Scott Card had a comment about the impossibility of expecting a bureaucrat (and presumably by extension, lawyer) to be able to understand the spirit of a law. Can't remember the quote offhand, but the gist of it is, if they understood enough about how the world works to be able to understand when to follow and when to ignore the letter of the law, they wouldn't be willing to be a bereaucrat.
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We don't have to ditch patents or copyright to fix the problem, but I do think it's more realistic to push for that than for meaningful reform. What they could do is require that patents be used and that the plaintiff demonstrate a genuine effort to minimize damages when asking for damages. Additionally, measures to bar gatekeeper patents would be important as well.
And, yes I know, easier said than done.
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What kind of communist nonsense is this?
When somebody has done something good, their childrens childrens children* deserve an ongoing income too!!!
* -copyright is life plus 70 years, possibly longer if Disney pays up again to the right politicians
Re:Fanaticism is losing sight of the original goal (Score:5, Interesting)
My two cents:
From Article 1 Section 8 of the US constitution:
The Congress shall have the power...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
No where in that line does it state that a patent or copyright is to grant any persons, natural or otherwise, a way to guarantee PROFITS or STIFLE COMPETITION. It specifically says: "...PROMOTE the PROGRESS OF SCIENCES AND USEFUL ARTS."
PROMOTE != PROFIT
IP Law Results (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IP Law Results (Score:5, Informative)
Prime examples:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5443036.html [freepatentsonline.com]
What is claimed is:
1. A method of inducing aerobic exercise in an unrestrained cat comprising the steps of:
(a) directing an intense coherent beam of invisible light produced by a hand-held laser apparatus to produce a bright highly-focused pattern of light at the intersection of the beam and an opaque surface, said pattern being of visual interest to a cat; and
(b) selectively redirecting said beam out of the cat's immediate reach to induce said cat to run and chase said beam and pattern of light around an exercise area.
2. The method of claim 1 wherein said bright pattern of light is small in area relative to a paw of the cat.
3. The method of claim 1 wherein said beam remains invisible between said laser and said opaque surface until impinging on said opaque surface.
4. The method of claim 1 wherein step (b) includes sweeping said beam at an angular speed to cause said pattern to move along said opaque surface at a speed in the range of five to twenty-five feet per second.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6368227.html [freepatentsonline.com]
1. A method of swinging on a swing, the method comprising the steps of: a) suspending a seat for supporting a user between only two chains that are hung from a tree branch; b) positioning a user on the seat so that the user is facing a direction perpendicular to the tree branch; c) having the user pull alternately on one chain to induce movement of the user and the swing toward one side, and then on the other chain to induce movement of the user and the swing toward the other side; and d) repeating step c) to create side-to-side swinging motion, relative to the user, that is parallel to the tree branch.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein the method is practiced independently by the user to create the side-to-side motion from an initial dead stop.
3. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises the step of: e) inducing a component of forward and back motion into the swinging motion, resulting in a swinging path that is generally shaped as an oval.
4. The method of claim 3, wherein the magnitude of the component of forward and back motion is less than the component of side-to-side motion.
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The problem is that while well known now, there was no published prior art on this 'cat chasing laser exercise' technology back in 1993. Youtube didn't exist until 12 years after the patent was filed so there weren't widely published videos available. Actually, I think this may be a case where the patent system has succeeded. Someone may have seen the patent and learned the technology and then when the patent expired they used and spread the idea to the benefit of cats everywhere.
Seriously though, these
Its intellectual feudalism. (Score:5, Insightful)
a concept is like a bridge. once you give the ownership of the bridge to someone, that someone has the control of that bridge, can use it to do anything, toll anyone, deny access to anyone. and buy more bridges. eventually, most of the bridges get concentrated in the hands of minority, which then end up controlling the social, political and economical aspects of life through their power. its the inevitable result of inheritance-supported, unlimited ownership.
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If you meet a man, and that man reminds you of an old friend, it doesn't follow that he is definitely your old friend's brother.
For some people, this is very true (Score:5, Interesting)
If these patent trolls started losing patents for no proof of concept, that would up the innovation then and there as other big companies would be bringing in people to make a proof of concept so they could own the patent. A 2 for 1 deal and it is super simple. Innovation gets sparked, and patent trolls get smacked in the face. And all we do is force the patent trolls to show proof of concept of every single patent they own.
NPEs buying at fire sales; codec patent pools (Score:2)
Proof of concept, or you lose it.
Perhaps the original inventor had a working model, but a nonpracticing entity bought the patent from the inventor's employer when the inventor's employer went bankrupt.
Besides, a working model requirement wouldn't clear up, say, the video codec situation. Any of the companies holding patents in MPEG-LA's AVC pool probably has the expertise to write its own AVC encoder and decoder.
Re:NPEs buying at fire sales; codec patent pools (Score:4, Interesting)
Stephan Kinsella's "Against Intellectual Property" (Score:2, Informative)
Stephan Kinsella, an IP lawyer, has written an essay basically demolishing the philosophical and empirical reasons for supporting IP:
http://mises.org/books/against.pdf
Highly recommended reading!
Re:Stephan Kinsella's "Against Intellectual Proper (Score:4, Insightful)
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Assuming you think there's anything to libertarianism. I certainly think libertarians have started from a flawed position, and their logic goes off the rails because of their bad starting point.
And what do you think that flawed position is?
I think libertarianism starts from the belief that people are inherently selfish and that rather than try to outright fight human nature - a war that has been and apparently will be fought and lost countless times - we should channel it for the best possible good. But maybe I don't understand the basis of libertarianism, so perhaps you could explain it to me.
Good thesis, poor execution (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, I just think the sheer amount of licensing boondoggles and lawyers required to build any kind of useful tech device these days is completely out of control, and I don't know if the paper made that clear (it didn't to me anyway).
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The thesis "Current IP law stifles innovation" is a good one, however I don't agree with the examples provided in the paper. I think a more persuasive argument would have used company vs company lawsuits are are going crazy right now
From the fine article:
Let's take Android. It's something new and the world is loving it. So what happened once it became a hit? Patent and copyright infringement lawsuits up the kazoo. Is that going to encourage innovation? And it's not just Android. It's any successful technical product. They all have to spend millions in litigation. And it's a drain on the economy too, because when the plaintiffs win, that money isn't a win for innovation, not when the law allows patents to be owned and litigated by entities that make nothing at all but litigation.
Just to be perfectly clear, the lawsuits against Android are actually filed against Google. They are a prime example of the "company vs company lawsuits" that you complain are not in the fine article.
Brevity Fail (Score:2)
I tried to read the link. It was long and rambling. Using Napster as your starting point for a discussion will immediately turn off your target audience. Go back to your unabomber shack you wingnut.
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Exactly my thoughts, he picked the absolute worst example.
I don't get it (Score:2)
Wireless access for everyone will spark innovation? There's someone in a cabin in the woods in Montana ready to build the next Google. If only she had broadband?
Wireless access for everyone will enable residents of rural communities to share videos of their cats with the world. That's it.
What exactly is it, legally? (Score:3)
Current intellectual property laws are blocking innovation.
To be absolutely clear, 'intellectual property' as a term comprises copyright, patents, and which other things that have actual laws and legal definitions? The quote comes from groklaw, but for those not in the know, it might help to be unambiguous about it
Patensts & copyright... (Score:2)
... are too easy to game by way of ignorance and overwhelming the staffs ability to approve them. Not to mention lobbying, bribes and kickbacks. People just do not have the skills to properly assess patents/copyright, I mean come on amazon's 1 click patent and others relating checkout? I mean seriously.
They will just be abused endlessly, they should be junked. What really needs to be innovated is the business model, laws that grant legal monopolies would merely force innovation on the business model end,
let's hear from patent holders (Score:2)
The people I want to hear most from are not the IP intellectual discussions about moot points of IP policy, but from actual patent holders who have innovative technologies that have been blocked from innovating by the patent system.
I used to be against most forms of US IP, but now in a position where I may be able to actually capitalise on some of my own IP, I find the system much more friendly than I thought. While I still find my own knowledge lacking, here are the two things I wish were reformed:
-A paten
A great essay to read on the subject (Score:2)
Intellectual Property is all we have left!! (Score:2)
Nearly all industry in the US seem to be either intellectual property or service oriented. Manufacture and agriculture are critically diminished and everything it getting outsourced and sent overseas. What we have left is IP which, as we know thanks to the secret ACTA negotiations, IP has become a matter of national security.
But Obama doesn't want to know the truth. He is in the pockets of those who want to keep their arsenal of intellectual property... and arsenals they are as we see an increase in IP's
We get as much innovation as we want. (Score:2)
My crystal ball, my Magic 8-ball, and my Steve Jackson Tarot deck all agree that the USA has deliberately shackled innovation for the last 10 years. I don't know why. But the signs are unmistakable, even for those who can't sense the aether.
There was no question what would happen when the US Patent Office was changed to fee based financing. The flood of junk patents, and their suppressing effects on innovation are a surprise to no-one. In the intervening years, there has been ample opportunity to revert.
Sim
Let's move on.... (Score:2)
IP = Internet Protocol and Intellectual Property rights as copyright, patents, and trademarks for corporate control of creativity and innovation are the biggest block to innovation.
Open Idea Protection (OIP) for the artist, scientist, engineer... is needed.
1. The artist, scientist, engineer... that is the driving intellect should have exclusive and lifelong rights to their creations and innovations irrespective of any corporate/government investments. Allow artist, scientist, engineer... to contract out r
What Obama will say (Score:3)
We know what we want changed, but what do you think Obama will say? The cynic in me says he's probably going to blame it on the Chinese or something. "We have great ideas, but they keep stealing them away. So we don't have ideas anymore. Bad Dog!" Any competent lobbyist can turn this drive for innovation into a tool to push their agenda.
Lazy, unproductive "talent" (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm going to buck the trend here and say it's NOT patents and copyrights and IP laws that are blocking innovation. No, it's a little more of a direct cause: An unproductive workforce that expects to get paid just for showing up with a degree.
There are a lot of people out there in the professional world, in technical professions, in engineering, in project management, etc. who can talk and talk but can't or won't deliver results. A lot of people full of degrees and education and smooth talk but no actual practical skill or work ethic. All hat and no cowboy as some say. I interview people all the time who bill themselves as hard-core in-the-weeds technical people, but when you actually dig and ask probing questions you find it's all superficial and the person actually isn't really capable of providing much value. For example:
Me: So, you write C++ software and work at XYZ corp, great! We're looking for C++ talent. Tell me about a project that you worked on! ...
Candidate: Well, we developed software that did ABC...
Me: We? No, what exactly did YOU do?
Candidate: Well, I worked on a major sub-component of the software...
Me: OK, so what are some of the algorithms and/or data structures you used while writing the code?
Candidate: Um, well I didn't use much of that. I provided analysis and resolution of major defects...
Me: So you fixed bugs. That's cool. What are some of the common C++ mistakes you have identified?
Candidate: Uhh, I didn't really get deep into the code. I basically facilitated the analysis.
Me: Oh, so you talked to the engineers and wrote bug reports?
Candidate: Well, no, but I ENABLED them to deliver their results by...
Me:
It sounds like the "So what exactly do you do, Bob?" segment in Office Space, but these people are everywhere, and not all of them are interviewing. Many are in nice comfortable do-nothing jobs in corporate division 23 department B in high tech companies everywhere. These people are dragging down our companies and our country and need to go away.
This country has a major talent gap. You guys all deride the government when they talk about the huge shortage of technical talent but it's absolutely true. We have a shit-ton of people with "Engineer" on their diploma. We have a lot of people who claim to be technical but simply sit in meetings and "enable" others who are actually doing the work. We have a very, very small number of actual implementors who know their stuff and can actually innovate.
I don't know what the solution to the problem is, but think I see the symptoms all around me every day.
Are corporations people? (Score:3)
It seems to me it all comes back to the pesky problem of whether a corporation is a person, with the same rights as a person. To me, the anser is an obvious no, but for some people, the answer is yes, and I have yet to figure out why.
But it seems to me, giving corporations personhood is key to what a lot of people are saying here, particularly the poster who pointed out that issuing patents to corporations and not people is a problem. However the Supreme Court has declared that corporations are people. So now what?
Re:Suggestions (Score:5, Interesting)
"Of course, without strong ip laws there's no reason to innovate."
Really. Interesting - innovation seems to predate "intellectual property law" by at least millenia.
Re:Suggestions (Score:5, Insightful)
Really. Interesting - innovation seems to predate "intellectual property law" by at least millenia.
In ancient Egypt: "Hey, buddy! You in the chariot with the wheels! Pull over! I own the IP for my innovation of the wheel, you owe me license fees. So pay up, or take them off the chariot!"
In the sixteenth century, the Venetians innovated ways to make colored glass. They protected their IP by turning the glass blowing factory into a fortress. Revealing the secrets to folks outside the factory was punishable by death.
The Chinese had a monopoly on silk making, and used similar methods to ensure that no silk worms left the country. Italian monks eventually managed to smuggle some out hidden in hollowed out walking sticks. Hey, ancient Industrial Espionage!
So ancient cultures did understand the value of protecting their innovations. They just used different methods to protect them.
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In the sixteenth century, the Venetians innovated ways to make colored glass. They protected their IP by turning the glass blowing factory into a fortress. Revealing the secrets to folks outside the factory was punishable by death.
The Chinese had a monopoly on silk making, and used similar methods to ensure that no silk worms left the country. Italian monks eventually managed to smuggle some out hidden in hollowed out walking sticks. Hey, ancient Industrial Espionage!
So ancient cultures did understand the value of protecting their innovations. They just used different methods to protect them.
Keeping trade secrets is pretty widely accepted among the End Software Patents crowd.
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Re:Suggestions (Score:4, Informative)
The purpose of IP laws isn't specifically to foster innovation and you're right, innovation occurred before IP laws.
The purpose of IP laws is to foster the sharing of information. In the old days, if you had a really clever idea, you kept it to yourself because that's how you could make money out of it. Sure sometimes really clever people could work out what you'd done, but that's why you formed a guild and beat the crap out of anyone operating in your sector who wasn't a member.
The problem with this of course is that important information doesn't always get to the right people. A guild is highly unlikely to contain many experts from other fields who might take an idea in a new direction and if the only people who know something die it can be lost. See Damascus steel for an example. IP law basically says to innovators, you can have all the benefits you had when you kept everything secret while at the same time letting everyone know what it is you discovered so that it can be built upon and preserved.
If we eliminated IP law, innovation would continue, but information sharing would largely disappear. New discoveries would simply be kept secret.
That's not to say that the current IP system isn't broken and isn't stifling innovation. The system is so complex and so uncertain at the moment that it's pretty much impossible to tell whether something you're developing is covered by a patent or not, or whether there's prior art or not, or whether either of those things actually matters. The system desperately needs to be reformed, but eliminating it won't make information free, it'll just make it secret.
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"See Damascus steel for an example."
Vastly overblown, really. We produce far superior steel today (in terms of strength and ability to hold a fine edge).
"If we eliminated IP law, innovation would continue, but information sharing would largely disappear. New discoveries would simply be kept secret."
And this would be any different from the "fuck you, you will never manage to use it unless you're also a giant corporation" and "fuck you, good luck seeing anything ever enter the public domain, ever" setup we ha
Re:Suggestions (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, without strong ip laws there's no reason to innovate.
LOL.
The 'reason to innovate' is to make money by making better stuff than your competitors.
Or do you really think our ancestors sat around in a cave saying 'you know, I'd really like to invent the wheel, but since I couldn't patent it, what's the point?'
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Wasn't, originally, the idea behind innovation 'making it easier to survive'? Or, in probably more fashionable terms, 'making life more sustainable'?
CC.
Re:Suggestions (Score:5, Insightful)
The fashion industry manages to innovate just fine without strong IP laws for anything but trademarks.
The food industry does just fine without patentst on recipes.
etc
it's a myth.
A myth perpetuated by a horde of business graduates who wouldn't know an original thought if it bit them in the ass and who just accept the idea that patents are utterly essential because the general idea sounds kinda good.
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The food industry is not an innovation industry, it's a manufacturing industry. You might see clever recipes, but what you're paying for is how well they're cooked. You don't need legal protection for talent, only for lack of it, and the fashion industry doesn't require protection because they're business model involves last seasons stuff being worthless anyway so they don't care if anyone copies it or not.
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you can't patent a cake recipie.
you can't patent a roll of pastry.
you can't patent a taste.
you might be able to patent a new chemical additive but that's as close as you'll get.
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How about a policy of "use it or lose it?"
This is well-established in trademark law. But how would it work in copyright or patent law? For example, how would a reformed patent statute distinguish a nonpracticing entity (aka "patent troll" or "lawsuit factory") like Intellectual Ventures from a fabless firm [wikipedia.org] like ARM that designs working implementations but happens not to manufacture them?
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In fact, with a slight modification, this would make patent trolling impossible. All you have to do is change the law so that if a company
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Patent Troll A licenses patent 123456 to Patent Troll B in exchange for a license to patent 234567. Neither Patent Troll A nor Patent Troll B has any intention to use 123456 or 234567, but technically they're actively licensing their patent portfolio.
Now it's easy to tell if two companies are doing this. Tie ten, twenty, thirty companies and dozens of patents together with shell companies and miles of red tape and it'll be much more difficult to tell this is happening.
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But a patent licenser is just a patent troll who got what he wanted. The entire reason people seek licenses is so they can implement the technology without getting sued. Right?
Re:Suggestions (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, without strong ip laws there's no reason to innovate.
Innovations are made in spite of and not because of strong IP laws. The amount of ideas popping out of your mind doesn't increase if you can make one innovation or magnum opus and then live happily on it for the rest of your life. That actually stifles innovation.
Force the innovators to continue innovating, by taking away their exclusive rights after a time short enough that they can't rest on their laurels.
And make copyrights and patents non-transferable and only licenseable for a year at a time.. If the company who hires you only have access to your innovations as long as they still pay you, the bright minds who come up with the ideas would be rewarded much more than the fat cats who reap the profits from other people's ideas.
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Of course, without strong ip laws there's no reason to innovate."
I work in web shop developing software for WordPress. Before we switched our license to GPL, we found that copyright was essentially worthless. People did whatever they wanted with our software, and there was very little we could do to stop it. In essence, we would have to litigate the world if we wanted to create a feeling of protection. Even then, it would have no effect on the actual infringement.
I guarantee that this is exactly the feeling that the media industry has. They know that they can never win t
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Strong IP laws?
There is no such thing as IP. There are only liens on pieces of the intellectual commons (which is stupid). There were originally supposed to only be liens on pieces of the market commons.
Make the liens relatively short, according to the subject and the market.
70 years for copyright might as well be a grant of nobility for the author^H^H^H^H^H^H publishing company.
20 years is too long for patents in a fast moving industry like computers. 3 years is almost a grant of nobility in computer hardw
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That wouldn't be a problem if corporate morons weren't so naive as to assume that the Chinese weren't doing it. If they limited outsourcing to countries with better records it wouldn't be a problem. But then the costs would make it largely inefficient to outsource.
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That wouldn't be a problem if corporate morons weren't so naive as to assume that the Chinese weren't doing it.
It's still a problem because overseas manufacturers (not just China) move fast. Anything that they can copy and which sells well gets copied. For example, I have a friend who runs a US business selling a certain small plastic product. Only two things currently protect his business: 1) he's too small to get noticed by potential overseas competitors who could easily enter his market, and 2) the US-side competition is really stagnant. He has a patent on the product so that provides some defense against US comp
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Why is it OK to block innovation and commerce with environmental laws, racial preference laws, licensing laws, union preference laws, unreasonable liability laws, international trade laws, and thousands upon thousands of regulations?
Who said that's OK?
And it's worth noting that those regulations have resulted in a huge amount of business moving out of those highly-regulated nations to places like China which couldn't care less about them.
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Probably because people who say that are full of it. With the possible exception of international trade law you're completely wrong on all counts. Nice hedging on "unreasonable liability laws" it's bad form to use a phrase like that without any hint as to the actual meaning.
The issue is that those things don't bar innovation, in fact most of those things you list are powerful tools of innovation. Imagine how much innovation would have happened if you looked at all the innovations that have been contributed
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Firstly, many people are against all those, so that's not an argument for IP laws.
Secondly, even those who aren't may say that innovation is only one factor and that the benefit of those regulations outweigh that factor, while the benefits of IP laws don't.
Re:Welcome to the real world, hippies (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. Remember what happened the last time the President used the internet to ask the people what they wanted? The most popular response, by a long shot, was marijuana reform. The President came out and laughed, as if tens of thousands of people in jail were some sort of joke. I don't expect patent reform to be taken any more seriously.
Oops (Score:4, Funny)
All those votes were probably from me. I just got really high and forgot that I'd already voted.
Sorry about that.
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All those votes were probably from me. I just got really high and forgot that I'd already voted.
Sorry about that.
Does that still count as Chicago politics if you don't remember that you voted often?
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I can hear it now, him chuckling away as he glibly dismisses the entire issue.
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But they feed the 'prison-industrial complex'!
Quote: "Correctional officials see danger in prison overcrowding. Others see opportunity. The nearly two million Americans behind bars—the majority of them nonviolent offenders—mean jobs for depressed regions and windfalls for profiteers"
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/12/the-prison-industrial-complex/4669/ [theatlantic.com]
Take note of the year!
CC.
Re:Welcome to the real world, hippies (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, there's no reasoning with pure authoritarianism. If the law is the law because it's the law, and breaking the law is bad because it's against the law, the law is always right, tautologically. Any sane individual (and most insane ones!) will realize that there are just and unjust laws. People imprisoned for possession of marijuana are victims of a repressive regime. There is absolutely no reason why that should happen, the punishment should fit the crime.
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Well, I see the laces on someone's jack-boots are just a bit too tight...
Re:Welcome to the real world, hippies (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not implying that you are a fascist or totalitarian thug. I'm directly accusing you of it based on immediately obvious observations. Your willingness to do violence to random third parties for consuming substances you dislike in private is clearest, but the real clincher is the law-worshipping mentality evident in your original post: you regard law as defining ethics, and identify yourself with its enforcers. It's the classic authoritarian submission trait identified by Theodor Adorno [wikipedia.org].
This is, of course, a complementary to the authoritarian aggression trait: you assuage your psychological insecurities by identifying with established power, and express your sadistic tendencies vicariously through its violent enforcement, which is why you find criticism of that structure so threatening. Really, people like you are the slime of humanity; merely pathetic when encountered singly in a context like this, but lethally dangerous in sufficient numbers.
Oh, and for the record: I'm more of an LSD sort of girl.
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Are you an American citizen? If so you are subject to more than 40,000 pages of local, state, and Federal law. You may rest assured you've broken more than one of those laws today, probably before you finished your breakfast. You just haven't been caught.
Sometimes the problem is the law. That's the case with the War on (Some) Drugs.
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How can the summary (and presumably article too) say that you can't have both [innovation and prop up old business models], but then talks about a balance between the two? A balance would be somewhere in between, allowing for *both*...
Oh well.
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Politicians need money to win the next election. Corporations have the money to give. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the connection and obvious solution to the problem, remove the need for money.
1) Pass a constitutional amendment that states that money does not equal speech.
2) Give all the candidates equal and free access to the public airwaves. If the cable, satellite and TV companies don't like it revoke their license. Someone else will gladly take it over.
3) Let the US Government printing office provide print materials for mailing their fliers, signs,...
4) Post office provides free, or paid by the treasury (new election tax) services.
5) Forbid any candidate to spend a cent on their election.
FINI.
Swift Boaters and the like then show up to do all the dirty work that the candidate can't do themselves any more. There are plenty of huge and powerful interest groups not directly connected to the politicians willing to speak for them.
I call Bullshit (Score:3)
... but the article is less about "reform" and more about gutting Intellectual Property. The author isn't for, say, a 20-year or a 10-year copyright, but is against copyright at all.
Please show where the article suggests we do away with copyright law. You can't because it doesn't. PJ is a big fan of the GPL and she knows very well that the GPL only works because of copyright law.
If you disagree with what she says, fine, that is your prerogative, but why do you just make up crap like this?
Re:Getting it wrong (Score:4, Informative)
When pirates harm a creator's profitability, then pirates are undermining innovation.
That statement assumes a great deal that is not true. It is terribly loaded. Competition harms a business' profitability. Should we therefore ban competition? Of course not! We recognize that competition (within limits-- don't want rival businesses murdering each other's employees) is what made the West great. But lately there's been confusion on this point, a tendency to ascribe our success to capitalism rather than competition. In the 19th century robber barons showed us that capitalism alone isn't sufficient, for the most profitable thing they could do, as many of them shrewdly saw, was eliminate all the competition. And that's not only the competition from rival producers, but employers as well, so that workers will have little choice but to take employment at the only company in town, at a very low pay rate of course. Therefore we now have some protections from all this in the form of labor and antitrust laws.
But creating monopolies is what current IP law does. You write as if the only way to profit from an innovation is to grant the innovator a monopoly on it. Then you scream about evil pirates whenever anyone intentionally or inadvertently infringes. And how they're undermining the system, and will ruin it if they aren't stopped! Well, the system is already dead. It just looks alive in the same way a zombie looks alive. Consider that piracy is unstoppable. Our attempts to quash it are ludicrous. Even if the Internet was shut down and we gave up the immense value it has brought us all, piracy would still be unstoppable. Why cannot we just pay the innovators? And stop wasting all this effort on futile enforcement and DRM that at best serves only to enrich IP lawyers? And at worst causes almost all innovation to grind to a halt? I'll hit back with another loaded statement: Do you want the West to fall behind China? All because anything other than patents and copyrights somehow isn't fair enough, and the poor starving innovators and artists might not get their due? But you see, the current system fails miserably at getting them their due now. And we know the "starving artists" line is a joke, what with the industry's long history of ripping off artists worse than pirates ever allegedly did, and so prevalent is it that we have this term, "Hollywood Accounting".
But don't be mislead into thinking that cleaning up the corruption will make the current system work well. Even if there was no unfair bargaining, and the patent office massively tightened up the standards, and terms were drastically shortened, even then, the system would still do a poor job. And that's because of a fundamental difficulty, stated so well in the very term "Intellectual Property". It tries to treat the intangible as "property" that can be held, sold, and traded like material goods. It almost totally fails to account for the biggest difference, that ideas are infinitely copyable, by simply declaring that by legislative fiat, copying is not allowed without permission! It treats ideas like they are mining claims. And so we have thousands of people out there staking and trying to defend claims. Too easy to spend more time fighting over claims than innovating, and many of our businesses have been doing that. And the disease has spread into our universities. It's worse than mining claims because at least boundaries of mining claims can be clearly established. Ideas cannot be so neatly bounded, and so it's never easy to decide when claim jumping has occurred.
Your comparison of Encyclopedia Britannica with Wikipedia is too simplistic. You overlook that Wikipedia's expenses are way, way lower. Wikipedia does not pay contributors, and does not pay all the expenses associated with paper editions, things like printing and distribution. Wikipedia is a HUGE win for the public. More information than Britannica can ever hope to cram into a paper edition, at a fraction of the cos