'Nerds' Finally Get Their SOPA Hearings Over Technical Impact... But Not At The Judiciary Committee

from the good-to-see dept

While Lamar Smith and the House Judiciary Committee still have refused to hear from the actual technology experts, Rep. Issa has now scheduled a SOPA-related hearing... in his House Oversight Committee, and it will finally allow tech experts to speak about the technological impact of SOPA. It's a good list of speakers including: famed security researcher Dan Kaminsky (who co-authored the paper about problems of SOPA with Paul Vixie and others), Stewart Baker (former DHS/NSA top official, who has warned about SOPA harming internet security), Dr. Leonard Napolitano (from Sandia National Labs, who also warned about the security problems), Michael Macleod-Ball (from the ACLU). And representing the startup world, we've got Brad Burnham (from Union Square Ventures -- probably the most sought after VC firm for startups today) and Alexis Ohanian, the entrepreneur behind Reddit, Hipmunk and Breadpig, and who has been an outstanding advocate for why SOPA is dangerous. Think of this as the hearing that Lamar Smith didn't want you to hear. Update: Reasonable point in the comments: this hearing is extremely one-sided as well. Perhaps that's fitting "counter-balance" for the pro-SOPA hearing that the Judiciary Committee held, but it still would be nice to have at least some "pro-" voices on the hearing. Of course, can you think of an actual, respected technologist who is in favor of SOPA? Yeah... didn't think so...

Filed Under: alexis ohanian, brad burnham, cybersecurity, dan kaminsky, darrell issa, dns blocking, dnssec, leonard napolitano, michael macleod-ball, pipa, protect ip, security, sopa, stewart baker

Yes, SOPA Breaks The Internet: By Breaking The Belief In Trust And Sharing That Is The Internet

from the great-point dept

Venture capitalist Brad Burnham has a brilliant blog post that explains how SOPA really breaks the internet. It isn't just the technical aspects of it. SOPA is an attack on the fundamental belief system that underlies the internet, and much of what makes it successful:

At a dinner earlier this week, Joi Ito, the head of the Media Lab at MIT described the Internet as a “belief system” and I suddenly understood. The Internet is not just a series of pipes. It’s core architecture embeds an assumption about human nature. The Internet is designed to empower individuals not control them. It assumes that the if individuals are empowered, they will do the right thing the vast majority of the time. Services like eBay, Craigslist, Etsy and AirBnB are built on the assumption that most people are honest. Other services like Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube, Wordpress, and Soundcloud assume people will be generous with their ideas, insights and creations. Wikipedia has proven that people will share their knowledge. Companies like Kickstarter show that people will even be generous with their money. This does not mean that there are not bad people out there. All of these companies spend a lot of time and money to battle spam and fraud. The companies are simply betting that there are many more good people than bad. The architecture of the Internet shares this assumption. It could have been designed to prevent bad behavior. Instead its design empowers good behavior.

The entertainment industry does not share this view of human nature.

That encapsulates the point wonderfully. And SOPA is really about suggesting that that "belief system" built on trust and sharing isn't worth keeping around. I think this is a fundamental issue that people who understand the internet fully get: that it's more than the "series of tubes" or the specific technology that holds it together. It's built on a philosophy of openness and sharing. And that is a worldview that some businesses just don't grasp.

Whether you agree with me that the vast majority of people are good or with my friend that given a chance many people will steal is not really important. What is important is that PIPA, and SOPA, the legislation the content industry is currently pushing through Congress, will not allow me to architect a service and build a relationship with consumers that reflects my core beliefs about human nature. If I am a search engine and I remove sites from my index, I am essentially lying to my users. If I am a social media site and I remove links my users have posted to sites that some authority has deemed illegal, I am breaking a promise.

I am sympathetic to the content industries struggles with piracy, but my belief system tells me the answer is to capitalize on the great strengths of the Internet to create a healthy and profitable relationship with their users not to sue them. No matter how strongly I believe that, however, I do not think I have the right to tell them how to run their business. Apparently, they do not feel the same way about our businesses. The current legislation in Congress does not just create an administrative burden, it requires service providers who have built wonderful businesses on a deep conviction about human nature to change their relationship with their users in a way that subverts their core values.

It really is this that's the issue at hand. The "breaking" is of this recognition of the wonderful aspects built on the fact that people really are, for the most part, good. And when you treat them as being good -- rather than treating them as criminals -- you get rewarded for it. Are there some people who take advantage? Sure. But should we break the whole system just to stop those few people, when it will hinder all the wonderful things built on trust? That, unfortunately, appears to be the position the pro-SOPA folks are taking.

My only beef with Brad's piece is that he claims "the content industry" doesn't believe in the internet of trust and sharing. I disagree with that. I am a a part of the content industry. As is Brad. The new content industry absolutely gets it. It's why it embraces these platforms, uses them to create, distribute, promote, connect and monetize. It's the old gatekeepers who don't believe in this view of the internet.

Filed Under: brad burnham, culture, internet, sharing, sopa, trust

VC Explains How Damaging Software Patents Can Be

from the thank-you dept

Despite claims that no VCs would ever invest in companies without patents, we've been seeing more and more VCs moving over to the side of recognizing that patents are more often hindering their portfolio companies rather than helping them -- and these are some of the most respected VCs around these days. Brad Burnham, who has already called for an independent invention defense for patents has responded to Nathan Myhrvold's ongoing campaign to legitimize patent shakedowns. Burnham has written up a detailed post on how and why software patents are so damaging. It comes back to the same point that we've been making for years: truly inventive people don't need a patent as incentive to invent: they just need a need in the marketplace and they go and create. And, when there's a need, plenty of people are probably coming up with similar solutions -- but why do we limit the market to just one?

Burnham talks about the experiences with his portfolio companies. First, in explaining why the software industry took off, he points out that Myhrvold is wrong in suggesting that it was intellectual property protection that resulted in software becoming an industry:

The real reason the independent software industry emerged is that operating systems and APIs made it possible for independent software vendors to develop applications independently. They no longer had to ask permission of the hardware vendors. This same characteristic of permissionless innovation led to the explosion of independently created services on the internet. The rampant abuse of the patent system has created the opposite condition for the creators of software and web services today.

Not only is it becoming impossible to invent new services on the web without the permission of a patent holder who claims to own the intellectual property embodied in your invention, it is impossible to know who you need to ask permission of.

From there, he puts to rest the myth put forth by our favorite patent supporters in the comments that every tech company should just do a simple patent search and they'll be "safe" by pointing out how unrealistic that is. An entrepreneur, who Burnham knows, gave this example:

I hired several firms to search for patents that our service might infringe. Each of them came back with completely different patents and each time I sent them back to do it again, they came back with still more different patents. When I searched myself in the patent database, each time I entered the same search query, it would return different results. None of these patents seemed to cover what we did, so I eventually gave up.

But the real issue here is the total myth that tech companies infringing on patents are "stealing" ideas from others. Time and time again, the actual details of lawsuits have shown that it's almost never the case that a company accused of infringing ever actually knew about the original patent. Instead, it's almost always an independent invention. And yet, Myhrvold persists with the myth that techies are going out and "stealing" the ideas of others. Burnham points out how rare this seems to be:

I have been investing in software and web services since 1993 and have worked in venture backed startups since 1985. I have never met the people Nathan is describing here. I have never been a party to a discussion about ignoring someone's intellectual property rights for the sake of market share or to free up expansion capital. If anyone can point me to the clear cut abuses that Nathan is describing, I'd be grateful. My experience has been the opposite. As I described in this post, the companies I work with invest a huge amount of time and energy creating a service from scratch only to find after they have launched and become successful that a patent holder they have never heard of, operating (if they operate at all) in an entirely different market claims that our company has stolen their property.

Indeed. This is the key sticking point. Patent system supporters love to create this false imagery of the independent inventor who had his "idea stolen" by some big company. And, there's no doubt that there are very rarely stories of some company copying an idea from someone else -- but it's pretty rare -- and usually it just happens in the course of traditional competition. When McDonald's launches chicken nuggets, should that mean that Burger King cannot do the same? That's the nature of competition and it's what leads to greater and greater innovation. What Myhrvold is pushing does not lead to greater innovation at all, but to the hoarding of information and to the limitation on the necessary process of experimentation and competition that result in real, and necessary, innovation.

Filed Under: brad burnham, innovation, patents, software patents

Well Respected VC Firm Comes Out In Favor Of Independent Invention Defense Against Patent Infringement Lawsuits

from the good-news dept

Seeing as we were just talking about claims from a patent attorney that no legitimate VCs can be against software patents, it's good to see that one of the most respected VC firms in internet-related issues, Union Square Ventures has come out strongly in favor of an independent invention defense against patent infringement. This is great. I have no idea if I helped to make this come about, but a year ago, Union Square partner Fred Wilson had spoken out about how patents were harming his portfolio, and suggested some ways to fix the system (not including an independent invention defense). I responded with a post suggesting he consider an independent invention defense beyond his proposals, as it would really solve a lot of the problems. So it's really fantastic to see the firm take a stand on such an important issue -- proving once again what a lie it is to claim that VCs require patents. From Union Square partner Brad Burnham's post:

Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls. Is it possible that one third of the engineering teams in our portfolio unethically misappropriated technology from someone else and then made that the basis of their web services? No! That's not what is happening. Our companies are driven by imaginative and innovative engineering teams that are focused on creating social value by bringing innovative new services to market.

Our companies are being attacked by companies that were not even in the same market, very often by companies they did not even know existed....

I know of no case where the engineers in one of our companies were aware of the patents that are now being used to attack them. The moral rightness of this screams at me. If, as an engineer focused on solving a problem, I happened to come up with an idea that is in some way similar to yours, then that in itself should suggest that it was obvious and not patentable. Unfortunately, that does not really help. There, the burden of proof is still on the startup and it is still smarter to settle than to burn precious capital on a defense.

If, on the other hand, the troll was required to show the startup had some prior knowledge of their technology, the burden would be shifted to the attacker, and this blatant abuse would come to a grinding halt. If you believe as I do that innovation is key to social progress, please support patent reform. It is a complicated issue, but an independent invention defense is an obvious place to start.

It's really difficult to see how anyone can be intellectually honest with themselves and not be in favor of an independent invention defense. It's difficult to see how anyone could justify the idea that even if someone comes up with something totally independently, they can't use their own inventions.

Filed Under: brad burnham, fred wilson, independent invention, patents, venture capitalists
Companies: union square ventures

When Ideas Are Easy And Execution Is Hard... It Makes Sense To Share Your Ideas

from the be-open,-be-good dept

We've been hitting on the theme that ideas are easy, while execution is hard for a while now -- and a friend pointed me to a worthwhile blog post by Brad Burnham, an experienced venture capitalist, now a partner with Union Square Ventures. Burnham muses that the successful entrepreneurs he's backed tended to be the ones who were the most open about their ideas, not just with him, but with everyone. What it really comes back to is this idea that ideas are easy and execution is difficult. The entrepreneur who is living and breathing the idea (and has probably already tested out a bunch of different related ideas) is likely to gain a lot more from the conversation with an outsider (even a potential competitor) than that other person is going to gain from talking to the entrepreneur. While there is an old-school mentality that you need to keep things secret, history has shown that that tends not to be the best way to grow a successful business. When you do that, you end up making all sorts of mistakes that a few conversations may have helped you avoid.

An interesting parallel to this debate is the discussion we had last year about noncompetes. What the research there has shown is that a big part of the reason for Silicon Valley's success is the fact that noncompete agreements are unenforceable in California. What happened, then, was much more job-hopping, and a much faster dispersion not just of ideas, but of problem solving and innovation across the industry. In AnnaLee Saxenian's book that kicked off this debate, she noted that Silicon Valley culture was such that many engineers here spent plenty of time discussing their biggest challenges with direct competitors, just to get better ideas -- believing that solving the big problems would work out better in the end for everyone, and that holding back ideas didn't solve anything. Amusingly, in that case, Burnham's partner at Union Square Ventures, Fred Wilson, took the other side: favoring noncompetes (though, I get the feeling Wilson's changing his mind as the evidence has been presented).

This also, by the way, goes completely against the theory (chiefly propagated by supporters of a stronger patent system) that without patents, the world would devolve into an innovation-free zone where trade secrecy ruled. That seems unlikely to happen, based on exactly what Burnham and others have noticed. Keeping an idea secret not only is unlikely to be effective, it can often stifle the necessary development. Thus, it will be the companies that are more open and free with their ideas that dominate the market. The key reason why, of course, goes back to what we talked about at the beginning. Ideas are certainly important, but it's execution that's the key to success -- and being more free in sharing your ideas will often help you execute better.

Burnham also asks about whether or not it's possible to "model" this openness -- and I think it is. In fact, in many ways it matches the infinite goods economic model we've been discussing, with the ideas representing the infinite goods, and the execution being the main scarcity. So, in the same way that freeing up music helps expand the opportunities for every other area of the music business, opening up your idea is likely to open up many huge new opportunities for the entrepreneur in how to execute successfully. If you really want to model it mathematically, you could probably build something based on the economic models that made Paul Romer famous (and should eventually net him a Nobel prize), but that might be overkill for what Burnham is looking for. However, if you're familiar with Romer's work, applying it to this scenario should make you see how much more powerful sharing ideas can be vs. keeping them secret. It's not just a small edge -- it can be a huge difference. I've been working on a few simpler models myself that I'm hoping to share (openly and freely!) soon enough, in the hopes that others can improve on them.

Filed Under: brad burnham, economics, execution, ideas, noncompetes, openness, sharing