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EFF Launches New Patent Reform Project to Defend InnovationEFF Launches New Patent Reform Project to Defend InnovationPosted Jun 20, 2012 1:50 UTC (Wed) by slashdot (guest, #22014)Parent article: EFF Launches New Patent Reform Project to Defend Innovation
Is there any proof or even indication that any existing software would not have been written without patent protection, or that any existing algorithm would not have been conceived without patent protection?
It seems to me that being the first to market is enough incentive to innovate in the software market, and that thus software patents are best abolished.
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EFF Launches New Patent Reform Project to Defend Innovation Posted Jun 20, 2012 2:22 UTC (Wed) by yokem_55 (subscriber, #10498) [Link] While I agree with you, sadly the rest of society gets really squeamish about abolishing anything, especially when "property" interests are affected. If this is put through as a package of reforms that narrows, defangs, and neuters
EFF Launches New Patent Reform Project to Defend Innovation Posted Jun 20, 2012 4:31 UTC (Wed) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
> While I agree with you, sadly the rest of society gets really squeamish about abolishing anything, especially when "property" interests are affected.
Specifically, the vast majority of people tend to believe (incorrectly) that when two groups disagree, the best solution always involves a compromise.
EFF Launches New Patent Reform Project to Defend Innovation Posted Jun 20, 2012 5:11 UTC (Wed) by scientes (guest, #83068) [Link]
Hence why Chomsky talks about the manufacture of fake "disagreements" where BOTH positions make an implicit assumption that in the interests of the media, and generally against the direct interest of the general population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent:_The_...
In My Humble Opinion, it's just that they when people don't know jack about some issue, they generally want to pick the least controversial opinion. This is why there needs to be community cohesion to encourage people to learn about the issues, and form a coherent position.
EFF Launches New Patent Reform Project to Defend Innovation Posted Jun 22, 2012 5:33 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
My humble opinion is that people should be left alone to live the way they want and do what they want as long as it does not constitute a violence against other persons or their physical property.
Running the world through concession is a fundamentally flawed concept and even if wasn't it is not how the world is run now.
One of the most fundamental evil aspects about democracy is that it fools people into not realizing who their rulers are and what are the motivations behind behavior. In the past pre-democracy eras it was obvious to people that the people in charge of their countries were in it for themselves and they knew who to target their resentment at when those people ran the country badly. In modern times this sort of ability to perceive reality in politics is lost due to most people buying into the deception propaganda around democracy. When the governments are behaving badly, refuse to examine issues, and the politicians kowtow to their higher authorities at the expense of their populations... it is all of a sudden 'our' problem that 'we' need to have 'community cohesion'. Instead of directing our anger, effort, and derision against the people responsible it all of a sudden becomes a educational issue. It becomes everybody's fault that the system is taking huge shits all over individuals.
On top of that what makes it worse is that people believe that if they buy into the system and are able to twist it to their advantage then they can profit massively, even if it is at the expensive of everybody else. All in all it means that either people are not aware of their systems of controls or are generally unwilling to change the system of controls because they think they can manipulate that system to their own personal benefit.
Sorry for the rant, but the whole situation is supremely irritating.
The direction of technology and the success or failure of companies shouldn't be based on who has the largest budget for lawyers, lobbyists and political campaign contributions.
EFF Launches New Patent Reform Project to Defend Innovation Posted Jun 22, 2012 8:54 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] In modern times this sort of ability to perceive reality in politics is lost due to most people buying into the deception propaganda around democracy.To be honest, this sort of thing is hardly a secret (though most people express it in a less conspiratorial fashion: no conspiracies are required for this, just self-interest). After all, people have been regularly pointing this out in the UK in a biweekly magazine since the 60s and in two major TV series in the 1970s , and it was of course suppressed by the rulers. Oh wait, no, not only were Private Eye and Yes [Prime] Minister not at all suppressed, senior people in government *contributed* to both of them, particularly the latter, and reference them on a regular basis. So your propaganda is notably ineffective: there is at the very least superb counterpropaganda available. Sure, we probably need more counterpropaganda, but the problems of democracy in advanced nations are hardly unknown... more generally, any society not under severe stress is going to be biased towards not changing systems already in place, because all change is risky: refusal to examine issues is just a consequence of this and of normal human cognitive biases. Sometimes this means that really stupid things persist, or that interest groups manage to extend stupid ideas into areas where they are really stupid (see software patents). In the end, either enough fuss will be kicked up that the thing will be fixed, or technological development will stagnate until it is. That's tough for those of us trying to do that development, but to be honest the average voter never even notices it. And society is, in the end, run in such a way as not to anger the average voter, no matter how much other groups may be profiting from it in the meantime.
EFF Launches New Patent Reform Project to Defend Innovation Posted Jun 20, 2012 7:13 UTC (Wed) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
Most probably. Software is a wide field. My first guess would be around audio/video codecs, seeing there are companies started just to develop one algorithm which has some clear incremental improvement on established ones with the clear goal of licensing it out. But is the presence of these businesses enough evidence to support software patents? Most certainly not.
EFF Launches New Patent Reform Project to Defend Innovation Posted Jun 20, 2012 16:03 UTC (Wed) by dashesy (subscriber, #74652) [Link] In designing codecs (and places where advanced math techniques are required to solve a practical problem with limited resources) at least a certain degree of real innovation is required. It is similar to hardware techniques really, only that with current technology, hardware and software can sometimes be mixed and matched. For example a certain Viterbi algorithm can be written all in software, or have a chip to do the same thing faster (or with less power consumption), or one may write an FPGA software to do that on programmed hardware. The problem with such true innovations is that standards start using them, and at some point we all have to pay taxes. IMO, the real problem however is with clear to software community, not so clear to patent officers, pseudo-innovative ideas, specially through hired pseudo-innovators, people with advanced degrees that sit in a cubicle and come up problematic software patents. Then lawyers obfuscate the wording to an extent the original author will not understand a word. Unfortunately, sometimes companies with general policy against software patents need those professionals just to come up with defensive patents. I do not know a small company could have afforded to defend against some of those obviously stupid patents (such as pop-up), let alone something like recent Oracle vs Google over Java API.
EFF Launches New Patent Reform Project to Defend Innovation Posted Jun 20, 2012 17:58 UTC (Wed) by tterribe (✭ supporter ✭, #66972) [Link]
> In designing codecs (and places where advanced math techniques are
> required to solve a practical problem with limited resources) at least a > certain degree of real innovation is required.
Speaking as someone who designs codecs for a living, I'm going to have to call BS here. I'll just quote http://wiki.xiph.org/A_Digital_Media_Primer_For_Geeks_%28...
"Digital media, compression especially, is perceived to be super-elite, somehow incredibly more difficult than anything else in computer science. ... This is bunk. Digital audio and video and streaming and compression offer endless deep and stimulating mental challenges... just like any other discipline."
Personally, I don't claim to have ever done anything innovative in my entire career. _Everything_ I've done has been small, "obvious", incremental steps built on top of someone else's work, just like in every other software field. And most actual patents in this space are for exceptionally narrow "innovations" that have very little value themselves (it's usually trivial to accomplish the same things in a slightly different manner), but gain their value solely because they happen to cover the exact thing done in some standard.
The concept is called "patent hold-up". We discuss it extensively here: http://xiph.org/press/2011/ftc/
For an excellent summary of how standards production itself is harmed, not helped, by patents, see http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/theora/2010-April/003769....
EFF Launches New Patent Reform Project to Defend Innovation Posted Jun 21, 2012 10:29 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>Speaking as someone who designs codecs for a living, I'm going to have to call BS here. I'll just quote http://wiki.xiph.org/A_Digital_Media_Primer_For_Geeks_%28...
BTW I heartily recommend this to anyone who hasn't seen it yet; it's a really good introduction.
Still waiting for the promised episode 2 :P.
EFF Launches New Patent Reform Project to Defend Innovation Posted Jun 20, 2012 16:21 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> But is the presence of these businesses enough evidence to support software patents?
The software codecs are used to create consumer products that are cheaper and more effective. People would of paid to have those, or equivalent, codecs created in order to sell more devices and media folks would of still standardized them in order to sell more media. All of this would of happened regardless of patents.
In fact, in all likelihood we would be much better off with better codecs and more innovation because it would of removed the financial incentive for companies like Apple (and the rest of the MPEG-LA folks) to squash open standards in favor of trying to force people to use expensive codecs they controlled through patents.
Corporations have learned how to leverage their large legal budgets to stifle innovative competitors. It is not who produces the best product that wins the market, it is how has the ability to exploit the legal system the best.
This can't help but cause things to be worse off for most everybody. (unless they are a patent attorney, member of the big corp, or the government bureaucrats they have to sway to their side)
EFF Launches New Patent Reform Project to Defend Innovation Posted Jun 20, 2012 10:31 UTC (Wed) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] any existing algorithm would not have been conceived without patent protection?I think the real question is not conceiving, but publishing...
EFF Launches New Patent Reform Project to Defend Innovation Posted Jun 20, 2012 16:03 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> Is there any proof or even indication that any existing software would not have been written without patent protection, or that any existing algorithm would not have been conceived without patent protection?
Seeing how the vast majority of the innovation that ever happened in computer science happened long before people started patenting software AND that since software patents the field has largely stagnated...
Then I have to say that software would of still been possible without patents.
Lack of patent protection did impede progress Posted Jun 21, 2012 0:26 UTC (Thu) by jreiser (subscriber, #11027) [Link] Is there any proof or even indication ... would not have been conceived without patent protection?Yes, there is, if you consider the aspects of reduction to practice, publication and dissemination. Prior to the late 1970s, method patents via software were difficult to obtain, and special-purpose hardware was very expensive in time and money. This significantly impeded the publication and dissemination of new ideas, methods, and algorithms in software during those years. For instance, what is now known as LZ77 was described in detail by Ziv at least eight years earlier, but suppressed from publication because patent protection was effectively unavailable.
Lack of patent protection did impede progress Posted Jun 21, 2012 1:06 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Come on. LZ-like algorithms were invented separately multiple times - there's nothing complex in the idea of a sliding window. Huffman algorithm was published in freaking 1951, and it leads directly to an idea of the dictionary with a sliding window.
Hell, _I_ invented one variation in high school absolutely independently for my game on ZX-Spectrum and that means there's nothing complex in that.
Lack of patent protection did impede progress Posted Jun 21, 2012 1:57 UTC (Thu) by jjs (guest, #10315) [Link]
?? It was described in IEEE Proceedings in 1977. do you have proof Liv invented it 8 years earlier?
Lack of patent protection did impede progress Posted Jun 21, 2012 2:56 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Maybe he did. But if he did and then decided to keep a secret because he couldn't get a patent for it all it proves is that it's possible to be really smart and really damn stupid at the same time.
Lack of patent protection did impede progress Posted Jun 21, 2012 13:38 UTC (Thu) by jreiser (subscriber, #11027) [Link]
In 1969 I was a student of a professor who received a copy of the private preprint of Ziv's paper.
Lack of patent protection did impede progress Posted Jun 21, 2012 13:43 UTC (Thu) by gioele (subscriber, #61675) [Link]
>> Is there any proof or even indication ... would not have been conceived without patent protection?
> Yes, there is, if you consider the aspects of reduction to practice, publication and dissemination. Prior to the late 1970s, method patents via software were difficult to obtain, and special-purpose hardware was very expensive in time and money. This significantly impeded the publication and dissemination of new ideas, methods, and algorithms in software during those years.
Does this mean that the drawers of European universities are full of unpublished algorithms waiting to be patented?
Lack of patent protection did impede progress Posted Jun 21, 2012 13:53 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
It means drawers of Earth's universities and schools are full of every single algorithm that will or will not be patented in the next 100 years. And that is *why* software patents are pure evil and pure B.S.
Lack of patent protection did impede progress Posted Jun 21, 2012 14:56 UTC (Thu) by gioele (subscriber, #61675) [Link]
Let me rephrase that. (Where is the "Edit comment" button?)
>> Is there any proof or even indication ... would not have been conceived without patent protection?
> Yes, there is, if you consider the aspects of reduction to practice, publication and dissemination. Prior to the late 1970s, method patents via software were difficult to obtain, and special-purpose hardware was very expensive in time and money. This significantly impeded the publication and dissemination of new ideas, methods, and algorithms in software during those years.
Does this mean that the drawers of European universities are full of beautiful algorithms left unpublished because they cannot be patented? It is hard to believe.
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