Yes, this is true, if you want the President of the United States to advocate for a Total War in the legislature --- one, by the way, which he will lose --- solely for the sake of clearing the way for entertainment content startups.
It used to be that I could sit down at a computer and innovate-up a useful program and no one could say I couldn't. Maybe even try to make a business out of it. Now it's all-but impossible to do that without incurring this large and unknown risk of litigation from holders of patents of wildly varying degrees of novelty.
The system is broken. It needs to be thrown out.
I doubt Obama is the one to do it, he seems to have his head in the status quo as much as any lawyer.
Well hold on now. Don't be too quick to lump things in together. You can still sit down at a computer, innovate a program and make money from it. I do agree that serious help is needed in reforming software patents (as evidenced by Amazon's famous 1-click checkout patent), but IP law is what ensures someone can't hack into your files, steal your proprietary "innovative" programming and re-sell copies of it as their own to the customers you were planning to.
Incidentally, that's why I side with the Sony and the law as referenced in this article. You get to say how your own code is or isn't used. If Sony wants the PS3 opensourced they can go that route, but it's not up to anyone else to take it upon themselves to make that decision for them. If programmers don't like Sony's verdict they can build their own player games. That's how a capitalist free market works.
But patenting covers independent inventions of the same algorithms. And it's frequently used for ideas that are profoundly obvious, like a straightforward application of machine learning techniques to a particular data set (Bilski). So if you think of an idea by yourself, you can be sued for implementing it.
As a developer, it is recommended that I not read patents, as if it is determined that I read a patent that I then violated, it will be triple damages in a lawsuit. So I have no way to avoid implementing somebody else's patent.
Now Sony's lawsuit isn't about software, or patents. It is about certain special secret integers. It so happens that used with readily available software they blow a wide hole in Sony's horrible security system for the PS3.
But Sony doesn't own those integers. It doesn't own the hardware it sold to people under pretenses that it would always run Linux, and it doesn't have the right to control how people would choose to use their hardware and GPU. Hotz never used PSN software or any of Sony's other products.
You're supposed to pay a lawyer his hourly rate to review everything you create and compare it to every patent issued. Apparently this makes a great deal of sense to the lawyers who are elected to pass laws.
I'm not familiar with the particulars of that case, so it's hard for me to make an informed opinion. However, I don't entirely buy a "secret integers" defense, because that could apply to any software, or any media for that matter. For example, any Microsoft operating system can be viewed as one long string of binary code. So, yes, Microsoft would have legally protected rights to that specific combination of numbers. To suggest "secret integers" can't be owned would be to say everyone owns anything anyone creates, even before it's created.
Now, if this person simply devised some code which could crack another system which did NOT involve that system's original code I would agree there should be no prosecution.
We're seeing a nearly chaotic upheaval in how business is done in modern times, largely because technology is progressing so fast. This can confuse many of the issues at hand. However, I think it can help to view things using older more well understood models. For example, let's look at books. Harry Potter is a copyright protected work which appears to have given much value to both readers and author/rights holders alike. Each page of that book enjoys copyright protection; tearing out a page and adding words, making other adjustments etc., then posting the revised product online would violate copyright. If we can see the logic to that then I think it can help us to gain perspective when reflecting on the Sony incident.
There's a good explanation on YouTube (until they're taken down by the gestapo) which is the Fail0verflow team describing their research. They have a section at the beginning describing the history of console hacking and game piracy, or at least their perspective on it. They take pains to point out that most of their research is not even particularly necessary to pirate games but instead to run user-supplied software on the PS3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEFMAP0mTvY
Incidentally, Sony had previously been sued by Certicom for allegedly infringing on patents related to its use of elliptic-curve cryptography.
As for copyright protection, you should reflect on this page:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/index.html
And then this one:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/GeoHot/
To the point with Harry Potter: you can think of a continuum of infringement. If you tear a page out and copy it, you will violate the copyright. If you reuse characters or scenes and use them to create your own work, you are making derived works (JK put her stamp of approval on non-commercial fan fiction by the way). But the farther you get away from the original characters the less you can call it infringement. As the link between the two works becomes more and more abstract and less concrete, the new work is more protected. At some nebulous point it is no longer infringing.
For instance, Harry's story and appearance is superficially similar to an earlier work called The Books of Magic, a comic series by Neil Gaiman. You can read his take on it here:
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/04/fair-use-and-other-thi...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Books_of_Magic
Essentially he throws up his hands and says "borrowing is a fact of life in genre fiction. Deal with it, I did."
How does this apply to computer code? Well, the farther away you get from the original copyrighted code, the less infringing it is. There are extremely limited protections for derived works that amount to Person B having a copy of Person A's code in front of them and editing it.
What those Touretzky pages from CMU show is that there is no such thing as a continuum from computer code to an uncopyrightable abstraction. It is abstraction, mathematics, numbers all the way down. In fact, it is speech that is protected by the First Amendment and suppressing it is a constitutional issue with narrow exceptions.
So no, you can't use a book model for code. It is not the same thing at all. Executable ideas, math, algorithms, just don't exist in the fiction publishing industry.
Apparently not random enough!
They essentially used this algorithm for their key material: http://xkcd.com/221/
The free market works such that after a product is sold, the seller has no rights it any more. They cannot remotely disable features after the sale. They cannot dictate what you can and can't do with it.
The PS3 hackers didn't "open source" any of Sony's code, that's ridiculous. Their goal is to bypass it and load their own. They reverse engineered it for the purpose of enabling compatibility with other stuff and extending. This has a long tradition in the US.
Perhaps you're old enough to remember when Ma Bell claimed it was illegal for anyone to plug in a home answering machine or for anyone else to make compatible telephones? After 70 years of R&D you had a choice of three kinds of home phones in one of several colors. The only leg that argument had to stand on was that they were a regulated monopoly and as such deserved protection from the free market. The US decided we'd had enough of that approach and told them otherwise.
I don't even have space to list the choices in communications we gained since that that monopoly was broken up. That's how a free market works dude.
I agree 100% (unless such special use terms were part of the sale upfront, see pay tv channels).
They cannot dictate what you can and can't do with it.
Not for personal use, no, and I should insist not. However, if I sell you a book I wrote, while you're quite free to read or burn your copy of it, I don't want you to scan copies and widely distribute it.
The PS3 hackers didn't "open source" any of Sony's code, that's ridiculous. Their goal is to bypass it and load their own. They reverse engineered it for the purpose of enabling compatibility with other stuff and extending. This has a long tradition in the US.
If they only took actions for their own personal use I have absolutely no objection. Quite the contrary, I'd encourage it.
I can't say I remember the telephone incident, but I agree with your sentiments on that entirely.
The problem is that current laws now allow someone else to force me to stop using my own code. Which is really a more dangerous threat as far as I'm concerned.
Well, no, not exactly. Your reply is talking about patents, which I've agreed need reform. However, you're perfectly free to use and sell your own code, as long as it doesn't duplicate some function which enjoys patent protection. (the problem here is over broad or obvious patents, like Amazon's 1-click checkout) But even then you simply have to do away with the infringing portion. For example, there was a recent post on how storenvy.com just raised funding. Well, they might have had 1-click checkout as a web store function. In the worst case they would have to eliminate that and/or find an even more innovative way for ecommerce customers to check out, but it would not likely mean the end of their business.
I'm transitioning my career from commercial software development to data security research/hacking. There's appreciation for innovation there, the business models are new and fluid and the lawyers haven't figured out how to attack them yet.
I'm sorry you feel so constrained. To me that signals the current system is not optimum, but that's probably a lucrative decision either way.
I'm pretty sure breaking into someone's computer system like that is illegal regardless of IP laws, and history appears to show that understanding what you're selling gives a rather large advantage.
But it's often a much better strategy to wait for a company to accumulate profits for a few years and then sue for damages retroactively.
This is one of the fundamentally unfair parts of the system: the innovator makes all the investment and takes all the risk, while the patent holder files some paperwork and obtains the option to sue or not on his own timing.
The deck is stacked.
Do you consider Google Books, JSTOR, Wikipedia, etc. to be entertainment content startups?
JSTOR sells content so that's also a red herring.
Google Books is relevant. Their business model is based on not only stealing, but selling without permission content they don't own. This is criminal and unethical.
edit: downvoters please state your case. Is it that you agree that corporations should be able to steal content from those of us who actually create things, as Google is doing with Google Books?
That's simply false. There is tons of public domain content in Wikipedia, for example the entire 13th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica was used as the starting point for many of the original articles. And the only reason why there isn't more public domain content like this incorporated is because there isn't any more public domain content; everything after 1926 is under copyright.
The only possible issue here is the non-public domain content, so that is what I mentioned. That is contributed under a CC license and that which is not is removed. So it is a red herring. There isn't a problem with Wikipedia.
If you believe the public domain content represents some IP controversy, it is up to you to establish that. I have never seen that argument presented so it's up to you to establish what it is.
The point is that if copyright were 14 + 14 years instead of life plus 70 years, then everything published before 1997 or 1983 would be public domain, instead of only content published before 1926. This means that there would be exponentially more public domain material that could be added to Wikipedia, so not only is copyright term not a red herring, it's basically the central issue.
That's different from the "pillage and plunder" model you are promoting in your response.
I realize that we went to life+70 in order that the artists' children might be supported all their life. I do not understand why a fixed term of similar length applies to corporately owned works, nor why artists' children are somehow more privileged than any others. I do not pay my teacher's children all my life, though I owe my teachers far more for the ideas they passed to me. Nor do I pay the plumber's children for every flush, however grateful I might be for benefiting from their work.
Even if state enforced rent may has a place, but current practice has abandoned the original purpose of promoting the progress of science and useful arts and become distorted into a form of economic protectionism where dollars are more important than innovation.
But at least Sony's kids will be taken care of, right?
Accordingly, I release what software I can as FOSS and have put other works into the public domain. In one case, I assigned the copyright on something I wrote to a university so that they could use it in one of their classes, for free, of course.
If this is all a game, I'm doing my best to play it so that everyone wins.
Every time copyright is about to run out on Mickey Mouse, they extend the length of copyright. So far, it's gone from 14 years to 70 years plus the lifetime of the creator.
It is obscene.
However, anyone who wants to place their content into the public domain is free to do so. I have done so myself many times. And those who do not wish to do so, that is their right as well.
What I would like to see in reform is moral rights of creators respected like they do in many other countries.
I've heard tell that it's almost impossible to currently, in the US, place anything in the public domain, so I'd love, love, love to see the process to do so. I'd do it myself for some software I've written.
I don't remember all of them, but you can't disclaim some things like moral rights (usually not applicable, but they relate to things like vandalism of the work & the right to attribution as the author and vary by jurisdiction), with some works like music, you can end up with the licensing organizations collecting royalties on it without your authorization, there are always trademark issues to consider, doubly so for some special trademarks like that of the Red Cross and the Olympics which are enshrined in laws that implement international treaties, and probably a host of other things, including strange things like common law copyrights (there was a case in NY about what should have been public domain music falling back under copyright a few years back).
So... yeah, you can disclaim your work into the public domain, but there are still gotchas out there and you need proper legal advice to avoid them even when you're using what should be copyright-free works, because there are all sorts of weird formalities like the requirement in the USA that copyrights can't transfer without a "written memorandum of transfer."
If you just want people to be able to use your software, I'd probably just use a BSD license instead of the public domain. It's permissive enough that it shouldn't create problems for anyone.
Once upon a time five philosophers came for dinner to eat fish. But there was no fish, or utensils to eat the fish. This was a sad day for the five philosophers. A servant boy was sent to buy five fine bowls of spaghetti and five plastic forks. The servant boy quickly succeeded at his mission, returned, and set the table for the five philosophers. They sat down and were about to start eating when one of the philosophers said, "Stop, no one touch a thing. This is a trap."
Public domain mark FAQ from the CC people.
You'll probably want to look at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC0_FAQ which is the disclaimer from copyright (CC0) FAQ.
An excerpt from the later:
"How does it work?
A person using CC0 (called the “affirmer” in the legal code) waives all of his or her copyright and neighboring and related rights in a work, to the fullest extent permitted by law. If the waiver isn’t effective for any reason, then CC0 acts as a license from the affirmer granting the public an unconditional, irrevocable, non exclusive, royalty free license to use the work for any purpose."
Technically, even if what you were saying were true, it would be civil and not criminal. IP is part of civil law, not criminal law.
http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/18usc2319.htm
I don't believe there's anything like this for patent or trademark infringement, though.
I'd rather attack the root cause with a constitutional amendment that states "All legislators must live full-time in their home districts", and have them conduct official government business through email and videoconference. That makes lobbying impractical: a company that wanted to lobby Congress would need to station lobbyists in all 435 congressional districts, and the lobbyists would have no more pull than an ordinary citizen that the representative happened to be friends with. The reason big companies have the sort of clout that they do in American politics is that there are economies of scale to political power, and once you have scale, you can buy more of it.
With that said, he'll never go for this and neither would the legislature, so... not getting my hopes up.