The USPTO isn't for "inventors" anymore, if it ever was. It's for Lawyers. Lawyers get all the fees for helping to draft patents, search for related patents, provide fake "prior art searches" (ha!), and usually get a piece of the submission fees too. After a Lawyer confuses the Patent Examiner enough, with their particular brand of pseudoscience and gibberish jargon, you're practically guaranteed a rubber stamp on your patent application. The Examiner is urged to move through their checkboxes and on to the next rubber stamp ASAP. The Examiners have a quota after all -- approving dreck and letting the courts handle the fall-out takes much less time than handling appeals and revisions directly. After that, a Lawyer (usually among the same set, if not the exact same as the application Lawyer, or even an ex-Examiner) gets money again any time the rubber-stamped patent is "enforced", which always happens in the courts, usually via settlement. Even in settlements, a lawyer makes money on the defense side too, for helping to draft the settlement. If the case actually goes to court, lawyers on both sides internally scream "I hit the big one!", and bilk both sides for all they can get. They spend the whole time pretending to care about philosophical inanity like "novelty" and "true innovation value", which has nothing to do with their real motives.
I wonder how many ex-Examiners and Patent Lawyers live in East Texas, how many current Judges list that as past experience on their CV, and how many gallons of expensive booze are drank, and cigars are smoked, lit from money printed with many 0's, before being thrown into the fireplaces inside the Judges' chambers.
Does the judge in this case not own a shredder? A dog? A birdcage? Has he never burned paper, even accidentally? Calling a print-out any more permanent than any other medium is luddite beyond the last two centuries. I'm sure even the original clog-throwers would hear this and say "wha?"
Beyond the whole permanent paper argument, all data is as transient as the user wants it to be. Keeping cache history forever, or taking a digital photograph of everything you are ever interested in, doesn't sound so crazy when drives can be had for about a dime per GB. I don't see how that argument has anything to do with copyright infringement.
In this case, why shouldn't a small clipping put in the context of several other clippings from different sources, with some small aspect relating them (like keywords), constitute fair uses like commentary or transformation? Doesn't changing the context like this alter the relative meaning, even if the clips are gathered by automata? Even for just one clip alone, doesn't reducing the work to a single snippet based on keywords fundamentally change the meaning to revolve around those keywords rather than the original author intent? For example, a thorough report about high fructose corn syrup could easily turn into a snippet of corporate history if the article is constrained to just those sentences containing the keyphrase "Coca Cola". It's scary how little selective editing is required to transform a work's meaning. Politicians use this form of transformative editing all the time when quoting each other. Idiot theologians do the same thing all the time when quoting their particular Bible.
@Dark Helmet
"What is the information equivalent of winter?"
I've got one answer now: Michael Jackson's death. Anyone without Internet couldn't get any real news or information for several days, because all the radio and TV broadcasts (they don't deserve to be called networks) would talk about is how even insane plastiformed and drug-addled pop stars are still mortal. What a shame.
It all comes down to standards and competition. Internet providers need to realize they're not old-style broadcast moguls -- they are dumb bit pushers, and should not take any part in what is exchanged over the connection they set up, no matter what any "content provider" claims. Old-style broadcast moguls need to go away, so we can use all the airwaves they've been hoarding for too long, so we can ALL have better connections. They are all series-of-tubes plumbers at best, even according to their best defenders. They should always be deemed replaceable in any market, and should no longer be able to dictate how we use the plumbing we paid for.
In the U.S., if you still think the telcos and cable companies paid to set up the Internet as it exists today, you need to look up the history of "Universal LifeLine" surcharges, and other Congressional give-aways to telcos, that were supposed to be used to give us all direct fiber access. They took our taxes and padded their pockets, and kept their actual infrastructure growth to a minimum. We paid for everything they've ever constructed several times over, via hidden taxes and surcharges (on top of their usual monopoly rents). They get to make us pay again and again, to use the same infrastructure we already paid for. Maintenance does not cost anywhere near what they're charging us every month. Maintaining their massive billing systems costs more than any of their technician labor. I say we take it all back, and don't give them one more dime.
Try "inventing" a web site with a background that doesn't totally interfere with the text, so humans can actually read it. At least I could see the blue text links, which all seem to point to other internal rants, rather than any external or impartial sources. The only view I see on that site is that everyone who disagrees with your viewpoint is wrong. I see no difference there from any other AC poster here -- you didn't have to register any new domains to accomplish that at all.
More Questionable Activity From X Attorneys Wielding X
X could be any form of protectionism, government approved or otherwise. The obvious point is that attorneys tend to specialize, and are paid for their specialty. Whoever has the most money to pay attorney for X gets the most attorney time. In addition to tort reform (frivolous filers should pay back the tax dollars they use up in the court system, for example), the protection racket the attorneys work within requires either reform or abolition. In the case of copyright and patent protection rackets, I vote for abolition.
1. Utility patents, which tend to be applied over-broad to anything of similar "utility" or functionality. I think there's special classes within this, like drug patents specially designed to keep poor people sick and/or dying. The basic point is the patent holder generally gets to troll against any remotely similar/superior products, to keep innovation out of the marketplace, and only in the East Texas courts.
2. Design patents, which nobody uses or cares about, because to violate them you must create a replica so precise that you almost have to hire the same third-world manufacturer as the patent holder, to produce your violating copies.
I'm guessing that the patent is indeed for marketing purposes only (as stupid as that is), and that it's type 2, so that nobody else can look all the same, just putting their logo where the VISA logo and/or hologram are. In this case, trademark protection is actually better legally, and cheaper for them to both register and defend. Maybe trademarks aren't as "marketable" as pending patents to stupid rich people in a hurry?
I've never understood vanity credit accounts. I'd rather have a vanity savings account, with no card and a double-digit interest return rate. Sign me up for my In-the-Black Secret Savings!
I usually hear the economic term externalities used in the negative, as with environmental impact, but the psychology is the same. Coal burners want all the profit from the electricity they sell, yet pay nothing for the impact their coal smoke and ash pools cause to our collective environment. Now we all pay for letting them get away with it, via pollution, fresh water prices, health problems, and global warming. I think this kind of case makes it obvious that externalities should always be calculated from the view of the public impact rather than the private impact. Screw you if you think you missed out on any profits. Screw you big time if you think you deserve to avoid taxes or public impact fees on your profits. I could care less if someone takes "your" product and makes it better, especially if that includes making it free, as in beer or speech. Everyone wants a monopoly and all the rents they can get, but nobody should be able to keep a monopoly nor any of the rents they extort.
This is funny -- claiming the most open search engine in the world is not "transparent enough." The papers Larry Page and Sergey Brin wrote about their PageRank algorithm are PUBLIC. Huge Google innovations like BigTable, MapReduce, and Chubby are both documented publicly and practically Open Source, via projects like Hypertable and Hadoop. Most of their foundational technical literature and Open Source code is also *hosted* by Google. They are incredibly open with internal operational details, like their data center and node hardware designs. If you don't like Google, start your own, with all the benefits of research and ideas created by Google that they make freely available to everyone. You can start here:
Once you understand everything there, you can move on to third-party analysis of further tweaks Google has completed, to deal with problems not dreamed of before 2000, like blog link-spamming distortions of PageRank.
Just remember to be even more open with your business process details when you're done with Google2, you damn anonymous hypocrite. Until then, just repeat this mantra: put up or shut up.
From the Zookz FAQ:
"""
About Log Files and IP addresses
ZookZ tracks all IP addresses that come to the ZookZ website and analyses them for fraud protection purposes. ZookZ maintains log files of every download for every customer. These are utilized to help make the ZookZ customer experience better.
"""
I would be wary of signing up until either they change their logging policy, or the government of Antigua offers some kind of guarantee to protect customers. I understand tracking IP for the initial CC purchase, but logging every download doesn't seem necessary or prudent.
Who cares if someone loses access to their boob tube signal? TV isn't a public good. It stopped being a "public service" a long time ago. It's just another form of monopoly, and the sooner it ends the better. Put it all online, and give that spectrum up to WiFi already. You know it's going to happen eventually, so why delay it with this DTV BS?
I will never have an iPhone as long as AT&T retains their monopoly sales channel in the U.S. One point about the U.S. carriers and their phone subsidy system: prices of all phones might come down with a real open market, where the carriers don't have a near-monopoly on the retail channel. Manufacturers all have incentive to inflate their phone prices, in order to get their fair share because they know the carrier will just inflate the "unsubsidized" prices at point of sale anyway, to make multi-year contract slavery look better. The FCC and the FTC need to start doing their jobs and stop this nonsense.
I understand filename extensions, as they provide a sort of visible metadata about the file, before proper filesystem metadata was properly implemented or standardized. TLD extensions NEVER made any sense. If the whole point of URI's is to get rid of the necessity of remembering long IP numbers, as in a phone book for the Internet, why add confusing jargon-based or TLA extensions to label things that should just be called by their proper names? Why ".net" instead of "-network"? Given the distributed nature of DNS servers, why is more than one TLD per country even necessary?
Also, I don't think any one company should be able to own a URL you can't even trademark. Simple domains like "car" should just bounce back an alphabetical listing of all the domains containing the sub-string "car". This would make the transition easier for some older people, who are more used to yellow pages than google. I understand the technical reasons behind omitting whitespace from URL standards, but they also should have made a rule that typed whitespace in an address bar gets consistently converted to another spacer character, like '-' or '_'. "%20" doesn't make any sense, visually or otherwise.
Who the hell gave Experian or any of the other credit "reporting" fascists the right to exchange my personal financial data? They should be paying me directly for the privilege. I didn't vote for them. I don't care if having to notify everyone they track of any transaction, because their system is so insecure that any transaction IS a potential fraud, costs them money. If they lose money on their business model that's their problem. Their lax security and automatic participation in fraud via internal "reporting" schemes is an obvious flaw in their business model, and they should be the only ones to pay the relevant costs.
@batch: It doesn't really matter who was working at Real, then and now. That is the nature of the "limited liability" status of corporations -- the liability is with the corporation, and not the individuals that form that corporation, so current representatives speak for all future representatives.
'It just has this quantum feel to it. Any time anyone tries to get specific and warn about a certain aspect, you can just claim "well, we might not do that." '
It's like you're accusing him of being Schrödinger's cat. :) Maybe call it the "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of bad PR". The answer changes as soon as you ask the question.
Here's my question:
As I understand it, Coruss is a far reaching license system for just about any use of online music. It is online, so it involves International relations, as this data is passed around between multiple nations. So who is the main license enforcer here -- the UN? Did you see the movie "Team America, World Police" and think it was a good idea? If you did see it, did you laugh at all?
While it would be horrible in any case if the MPAA won this judgement, an estoppel ruling kind of gives the judge an easy-out, as such a ruling would not set a precedent for most future such "No DMCA Fair Use" case arguments. To state this case as precedent, the MPAA will have to find a past case where each and every defendant similarly claimed there was "No such thing as a DMCA Fair Use exception." The first defendant who never made this claim (in court previously) has a brand new case, and this one might as well be thrown out of the history books whenever that situation arises.
An estoppel ruling would also set up an interesting legal feedback loop, in that no current content companies who value the DMCA would ever win against someone suing them for a DMCA violation, but everyone outside the DMCA-loving system has a better defense. It would also have a chilling effect on future similar arguments about the DMCA by anyone except the MPAA, which is just fine with me. Also, Real Networks *should* be penalized for blindly embracing the DMCA in the past, but I'm not sure this is the way to do it. The way I have chosen so far is not to buy or use any of their products.
Claiming this was "non emergency" legislation shows nothing but the fact that you are insensitive to the plight of women, who are not receiving equal pay for equal work. Their rights in the workplace have been trampled far too long, and the conservative-activist Supreme Court legitimized related discrimination cover-up practices last year, and fixing that wrong-headed Supreme Court decision WAS an emergency. Obama did the right thing, and in no way violated his stated principals.
On the post: Court Strikes Down Blackboard E-Learning Patent
Lawyer Up, Rubber Stamp, Cash In, in that order
I wonder how many ex-Examiners and Patent Lawyers live in East Texas, how many current Judges list that as past experience on their CV, and how many gallons of expensive booze are drank, and cigars are smoked, lit from money printed with many 0's, before being thrown into the fireplaces inside the Judges' chambers.
Win-win for them, and we all lose.
On the post: Did European Court Just Make Search Engines Illegal? 11-Word Snippet Can Be Copyright Infringement
Shredder?
Beyond the whole permanent paper argument, all data is as transient as the user wants it to be. Keeping cache history forever, or taking a digital photograph of everything you are ever interested in, doesn't sound so crazy when drives can be had for about a dime per GB. I don't see how that argument has anything to do with copyright infringement.
In this case, why shouldn't a small clipping put in the context of several other clippings from different sources, with some small aspect relating them (like keywords), constitute fair uses like commentary or transformation? Doesn't changing the context like this alter the relative meaning, even if the clips are gathered by automata? Even for just one clip alone, doesn't reducing the work to a single snippet based on keywords fundamentally change the meaning to revolve around those keywords rather than the original author intent? For example, a thorough report about high fructose corn syrup could easily turn into a snippet of corporate history if the article is constrained to just those sentences containing the keyphrase "Coca Cola". It's scary how little selective editing is required to transform a work's meaning. Politicians use this form of transformative editing all the time when quoting each other. Idiot theologians do the same thing all the time when quoting their particular Bible.
On the post: Only ISP In Town Pulling Plug On Suspected File Sharers With No Recourse [Update]
Re: Re: There you go
"What is the information equivalent of winter?"
I've got one answer now: Michael Jackson's death. Anyone without Internet couldn't get any real news or information for several days, because all the radio and TV broadcasts (they don't deserve to be called networks) would talk about is how even insane plastiformed and drug-addled pop stars are still mortal. What a shame.
It all comes down to standards and competition. Internet providers need to realize they're not old-style broadcast moguls -- they are dumb bit pushers, and should not take any part in what is exchanged over the connection they set up, no matter what any "content provider" claims. Old-style broadcast moguls need to go away, so we can use all the airwaves they've been hoarding for too long, so we can ALL have better connections. They are all series-of-tubes plumbers at best, even according to their best defenders. They should always be deemed replaceable in any market, and should no longer be able to dictate how we use the plumbing we paid for.
In the U.S., if you still think the telcos and cable companies paid to set up the Internet as it exists today, you need to look up the history of "Universal LifeLine" surcharges, and other Congressional give-aways to telcos, that were supposed to be used to give us all direct fiber access. They took our taxes and padded their pockets, and kept their actual infrastructure growth to a minimum. We paid for everything they've ever constructed several times over, via hidden taxes and surcharges (on top of their usual monopoly rents). They get to make us pay again and again, to use the same infrastructure we already paid for. Maintenance does not cost anywhere near what they're charging us every month. Maintaining their massive billing systems costs more than any of their technician labor. I say we take it all back, and don't give them one more dime.
On the post: More Questionable Activity From Patent Attorneys Wielding Patents
True Reform?
Try "inventing" a web site with a background that doesn't totally interfere with the text, so humans can actually read it. At least I could see the blue text links, which all seem to point to other internal rants, rather than any external or impartial sources. The only view I see on that site is that everyone who disagrees with your viewpoint is wrong. I see no difference there from any other AC poster here -- you didn't have to register any new domains to accomplish that at all.
On the post: More Questionable Activity From Patent Attorneys Wielding Patents
Attorney principles=money
X could be any form of protectionism, government approved or otherwise. The obvious point is that attorneys tend to specialize, and are paid for their specialty. Whoever has the most money to pay attorney for X gets the most attorney time. In addition to tort reform (frivolous filers should pay back the tax dollars they use up in the court system, for example), the protection racket the attorneys work within requires either reform or abolition. In the case of copyright and patent protection rackets, I vote for abolition.
On the post: The Fact That A Credit Card Is Patented Is A Selling Point?
Which kind of patent?
1. Utility patents, which tend to be applied over-broad to anything of similar "utility" or functionality. I think there's special classes within this, like drug patents specially designed to keep poor people sick and/or dying. The basic point is the patent holder generally gets to troll against any remotely similar/superior products, to keep innovation out of the marketplace, and only in the East Texas courts.
2. Design patents, which nobody uses or cares about, because to violate them you must create a replica so precise that you almost have to hire the same third-world manufacturer as the patent holder, to produce your violating copies.
I'm guessing that the patent is indeed for marketing purposes only (as stupid as that is), and that it's type 2, so that nobody else can look all the same, just putting their logo where the VISA logo and/or hologram are. In this case, trademark protection is actually better legally, and cheaper for them to both register and defend. Maybe trademarks aren't as "marketable" as pending patents to stupid rich people in a hurry?
I've never understood vanity credit accounts. I'd rather have a vanity savings account, with no card and a double-digit interest return rate. Sign me up for my In-the-Black Secret Savings!
On the post: The Psychology Of Externalities: Only I Can Benefit
Environmental Externalities
On the post: Isn't There Something Ironic In An Anonymous Exec Demanding Transparency From Google?
Look up the Google papers -- they are public!
http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html
Once you understand everything there, you can move on to third-party analysis of further tweaks Google has completed, to deal with problems not dreamed of before 2000, like blog link-spamming distortions of PageRank.
Just remember to be even more open with your business process details when you're done with Google2, you damn anonymous hypocrite. Until then, just repeat this mantra: put up or shut up.
On the post: Zookz! Misinterpreting The WTO To Annoy The RIAA
IP Logging
"""
About Log Files and IP addresses
ZookZ tracks all IP addresses that come to the ZookZ website and analyses them for fraud protection purposes. ZookZ maintains log files of every download for every customer. These are utilized to help make the ZookZ customer experience better.
"""
I would be wary of signing up until either they change their logging policy, or the government of Antigua offers some kind of guarantee to protect customers. I understand tracking IP for the initial CC purchase, but logging every download doesn't seem necessary or prudent.
On the post: A Few Million Homes Still Aren't Ready For Digital TV Transition... But Don't Let That Stop It
TV is not a public good.
On the post: iPhone Owners Discover, Lo and Behold, It's Just Another Cell Phone
One feature ruins the iPhone: AT&T
On the post: Should ICANN Dump The Idea Of Generic Top Level Domains?
TLD TLA never needed.
Also, I don't think any one company should be able to own a URL you can't even trademark. Simple domains like "car" should just bounce back an alphabetical listing of all the domains containing the sub-string "car". This would make the transition easier for some older people, who are more used to yellow pages than google. I understand the technical reasons behind omitting whitespace from URL standards, but they also should have made a rule that typed whitespace in an address bar gets consistently converted to another spacer character, like '-' or '_'. "%20" doesn't make any sense, visually or otherwise.
On the post: Lifelock Found To Be Illegally Placing Fraud Alerts On Credit Profiles
What gives Experian the right
On the post: MPAA Points Out That Real Once Argued Against Fair Use Exceptions To The DMCA
Re: still working there?
On the post: Ask Jim Griffin Questions About Choruss... Along With My Concerns About It
Team America, World Police
'It just has this quantum feel to it. Any time anyone tries to get specific and warn about a certain aspect, you can just claim "well, we might not do that." '
It's like you're accusing him of being Schrödinger's cat. :) Maybe call it the "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of bad PR". The answer changes as soon as you ask the question.
Here's my question:
As I understand it, Coruss is a far reaching license system for just about any use of online music. It is online, so it involves International relations, as this data is passed around between multiple nations. So who is the main license enforcer here -- the UN? Did you see the movie "Team America, World Police" and think it was a good idea? If you did see it, did you laugh at all?
On the post: MPAA Points Out That Real Once Argued Against Fair Use Exceptions To The DMCA
Estoppel cop-out
An estoppel ruling would also set up an interesting legal feedback loop, in that no current content companies who value the DMCA would ever win against someone suing them for a DMCA violation, but everyone outside the DMCA-loving system has a better defense. It would also have a chilling effect on future similar arguments about the DMCA by anyone except the MPAA, which is just fine with me. Also, Real Networks *should* be penalized for blindly embracing the DMCA in the past, but I'm not sure this is the way to do it. The way I have chosen so far is not to buy or use any of their products.
On the post: Obama Administration Fails Its Own Transparency Promise Just Days Later
This was an emergency
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