Hacker News Reader

Comment by daniel-cussen | Hacker News Reader

I can't believe how fast the problem with patents is becoming a mainstream issue. Npr, some other well-known medium (forgot which), and now this.

View on HN

There is a certain demographic that reads The Economist and it is not the mainstream. It is closer to the mainstream than Hacker News, but it still isn't quite there yet.

It is nice to see this issue filtering its way through popular media, but the problem is that some of the nuances seem to be getting lost along the way.

Maybe it's just me, but I would have liked to see a bit more background on this issue than what was presented in this article. Even just a little discussion regarding the problems specfic to software patents. (I.e. the question of whether software is even patentable.)

I guess the problem with that is the more details get included, the further from the mainstream you get.

Really, I think that it would take something really shocking to get the real mainstream into this. Something like an injunction against some popular piece of hardware (or software). Then you wouldn't need to include all of the details. You could just rely on people having knee-jerk reactions against patents in general.

I would say this is going to boil down to "Patent trolls make the world terrible." At which point something might be done about the patent trolls, but not about the patents themselves. Which, granted, the world would be a much better place without the trolls. But i would still rather see Software patents abolished.

The system is the way it is because somebody benefits. In this case it's the big software companies, who will end up cross-licensing patents the way the chip makers did in the '90s and create a legal cartel. They'll be able to crush newcomers with patent litigation. And the great thing about suing a small company is you don't even have to win - you just have to make defending against your lawsuit very expensive.

Pretty sure the Economist has already run something along the lines of "For %%%%'s sake, let's decriminalize marijuana already." Don't count on government doing the sensible thing after the Economist runs an article on it.

The Economist has been in favor of full legalization of all drugs for decades now. Fun fact: Milton Friedman was also strongly in favor of legalization, and he even convinced his friend and Reagan's Secretary of State George P. Shultz.

Even more fun fact: the National Review has also been pro-legalization for ages, as was William F. Buckley Jr.

This is part one. It gets itself into the public consciousness. This by itself will do nothing to help fix it. Lots of stuff in politics is broken and everyone knows it.

The fix comes when a cool new technology gets invented in America, produced in China and then sold everywhere on earth but the USA while garnering huge media attention. Something almost iPhone big that Americans just can't get.

I was hoping Spotify would be a good trial run. I'm hoping they just pack up and head to greener pastures.

Well it is a mainstream issue, given the prolificacy of the PTO it would appear any entity with a website is probably infringing on multiple extant patents. Probably what you are remarking is how quickly it is being recognized as a mainstream issue. What would be more remarkable though is how quickly the problem is actually fixed, if ever.

Get one of those patents, start suing politicians. Refuse to license the technology, insist that the website be taken down.

How would one prevent the politicians from simply carving out a special exemption for themselves (as they seem to have done with the TSA) instead of fixing the problem?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com