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Comment by dendory | Hacker News Reader

Every day we see bat-shit-crazy lawsuits over patents and trademarks that have a huge impact on society, for no good reason but corporate greed. If the company follows through it means any computer system that lists possible time zones would be at risk since the original data came from a source that this company bought. Not surprised one bit by this.

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In the end, this is Astrolabe, Inc.

http://alabe.com/photogal.html

I don't think they are going to take the computerized world into the timezone dark ages. I suspect this will all be resolved reasonably, especially if companies who ship this data get involved (e.g. every *nix vendor, Oracle (Java), etc).

Well, as a company making its living from peddling Astrology, taking the world into the dark ages would arguably be in their self interest...

Actually I wouldn't be so sure. Very often it's the legal people who push for that stuff and the founders are told to not worry, everything will be fine, until they are left with a PR disaster.

It seems likely that the interest of an Astrology company in historical timezone data is in being able to determine the precise position of the stars and planets in the sky at the moment of someone's birth (which obviously involves knowing what local timezone was in effect at that place and time).

I am sure they see great value in being the only Astrologers who can do this, which means that they need to suppress access to this data.

Unlikely that this would be possible as the data can no doubt be compiled from other sources. Besides they're still selling the atlas. Seems more likely that some lawyer has noticed the reference and convinced them to take it up.

The lawyer who filed the documents is a small-town lawyer from East Sandwich, MA who deals in "Civil Litigation, Real Estate, Family & Matrimonial Law, Zoning, Contract, Disputes, Estate Planning, Wills, Health Care, Proxies, Powers Of Attorney". So it doesn't seem likely this was dreamed up by the lawyer as some grand IP case. Time will tell when more happens in the court case.

I am sure they see great value in being the only Astrologers who can do this, which means that they need to suppress access to this data.

It's amazing to think that people might actually care about this kind of "accuracy" in Astrology, but unfortunately, you might just be right. Geez, maybe in a year or so, they're calling the other astrologers phonies because they can't possibly have the right data.

I wish more people knew this. I learned this first hand. You must watch what your lawyers are doing. Its in their interest to drum up billable hours pursuing stuff like this. It may not be at all in your business's interest to let it happen.

Publicly held corporations are greedy by definition. The objective of such a corporation is simply to make as much money for its owners as possible.

Our laws create an environment where intellectual property abuse has proven to be a profitable venture.

The solution is not to redefine corporations as non-greedy entities.

Not necessarily. Generally, the purpose of a corporation is, in fact, to maximize shareholder wealth, but all a corporation is supposed to do is to represent the interests of the shareholders, which do not have to be financially motivated.

In theory, corporations are not solely profit-seeking. In practice, they tend to be.

I'm not sure if this is an Australia-only thing - and I was under the impression that if was far from being so - but here the responsibility to shareholders of a corporation is solely fiscal.

The reasoning behind this is that shareholder needs tend to differ. If shareholders wish to engage in philanthropy, the corporation is not the ideal (shared) vessel for doing so. Instead, individual investors may receive their asset's rent and choose to distribute their earnings as they please; management is employed to run the Corp and not make decisions for the shareholders' philanthropic activities.

Not true. Corporations are supposed to bring long term value to share holders. In many cases we see lawyers go for a quick buck at the cost of a tarnished image, which is very debatable whether that's good long term.

Exactly. Case in point: Google. Imagine if they started pulling stunts like this - the goodwill they depend on would evaporate overnight, the whole "I don't mind Google owning all my data because they aren't evil" balance would become paranoia about everything they touch, and they would lose billions. I believe that Microsoft's myopic focus on short-term profit at the expense of doing the right thing is one of the major causes of it's recent decline towards obscurity.

In today's world of abundant choice, companies have to provide good products AND provide them ethically.

Back on topic, look at what Astrolabe have done - taken something they probably couldn't make much money from anyway, and got the unix-derived world very pissed off with them. Their employees will feel down and it'll be harder to hire, and they'll have to endure snide remarks for years. I know I'd be selling their shares today, if I had any - I don't like investing in jerks.

Instead, they could have come out and said "We're pleased to donate our IP towards this amazingly useful service", and got a pat on the back from the world. And I'm guessing most of their shareholders would have been happy their investment was making the world a better place.

Very well said. And it is important that we help making this a PR disaster for the company, even if we have to be cautious - being it a quite obscure entity, even bad publicity could be useful to them...

> The solution is not to redefine corporations as non-greedy entities.

Wouldn't it be easier to take measures to make undesirable behavior unprofitable than to throw away capitalism?

So true. It just freaks me out how many people don't get this.

The problem is with the broken legal system that needs to get fixed. No I am not happy about Astrolabe doing this stupid stuff, but they are quite clearly the symptom, not the root cause. We need to fix the system instead of crying foul everytime someone uses the broken system to do something that is against societies best interest.

The same is true of the financial system. Everyday I talk to people who complain about the greedy and 'stupid' bankers. Well, they behaved 100% rationally. If you work in a system where you can play 'heads I win, tails you loose' you almost have to do it (otherwise you will be outearned and get fired). The problem is the system that allows this kind of game. That is what needs to get fixed.

> Publicly held corporations are greedy by definition. The objective of such a corporation is simply to make as much money for its owners as possible.

This isn't always true.

The objective of a corporation is defined by the objective of its owners (if the owners are any good). This objective might not necessarily be "to make as much money as possible."

Different corporations have different cultures, and these cultures can define different priorities for the companies.

Look, these intellectual property companies are job creators. I'm sick of all you hippies who want free access to a timezone database. As long as they keep up the lobbying and donations, they're doing a lot more for the world than silly concepts I've never heard of like "unix" and "java".

Yeah, they teach us in business school that "time = money".

Only a pinko commie would think that privately-owned intellectual property like this should be free.

Mafia and drug cartels create jobs as well. That doesn't mean they are good for the society, and that the people employed by them could not produce more value doing something else.

Guess I needed the snark tag. Thought the unix and java line would be a dead giveaway.

I missed it too and so I downvoted your post.

HN being a site full of entrepeneurs I often see concepts about society and rights where I feel sick in my stomach, so your post did not seem very unusual to me.

Yes, I'm sorry I downvoted you too before I realized you were making a joke (no way to undo it, though I upvoted this post to make up for it). I guess it wasn't over-the-top enough, there are people that would mean that seriously, and defend copyright and patent trolls.

You can't be serious.

I wasn't :)

I'm sick of all you hippies who want free access to a timezone database

Seriously. Who came up with the moronic idea that people somehow "deserve" to know what time it is?

Right on! It is about time that computer users buck up and take some personal responsibility. It's not like you can just look up at the sky and figure out what time it is! The hard work of innovators who figure out complex issues like the time need to be compensated!

It'd be funnier if it weren't so, so true.

Indeed. It's not like knowing what time it is, is not valuable. Just think of all the interviews you could make on-time!

Of course, if you want to show up on time, on the correct day, you'll also need to license out access to our date server, in addition to the time server.

We can totally crowdsource time. If everyone inputs what time they think it is by looking at the sky, we could just take the average of all those inputs and know the absolute time [wisdom of the crowd]

+1 for absolute relative social local time!

Statistically, it will always be just about lunch time, so I think we can just dispense with clocks.

I'd much rather each community select a few people who they think are the best at knowing what time it is and then take an average of them.

Kindly lay off sarcasm. I understand the temptation, but succumbing to it will cause HN to become a place for wenting anger. I mean just look at the thread of comments below yours. Is that what you want HN to be?

Let's make it a place for civilized discourse instead... shall we?

I don't mind the occassional visit to sarcasm and humor on HN, especially when it is relatively high-brow, poignant, and relevant.

Not that I would claim I always manage to instill poigniancy into my jibes.

Is satire, which often makes very heavy use of sarcasm, to be considered uncivilized?

In this case it just wasn't funny.

(Yes, I know, subjective, blah blah blah. I don't care.)

Unless it's exceptionally good then we're better off without it.

The problem with sarcasm is that it insulates you from having to make an argument yourself. All you have to do is mimic your opponent and make them sound ridiculous. It's almost inherently a straw man fallacy unless it is exceptionally careful.

If you can't use sarcasm you're forced to state what you believe in positive terms, which makes for much more fruitful discussion. It's like the "passive voice" of argumentation. There are some cases where you just have to, but your writing gets better if you categorically avoid it.

there is no room for satire on HN.

Hacker News is a bit like KAOS. Unless you're at the North Pole, there is no joking here.

Kindly lay off scolding. I understand the temptation, but succumbing to it will cause HN to become a place for silly meta discussions. I mean just look at how much longer you made this thread.

PS there was an actual point there. You can disagree if you want I guess, but meta discussions are always stupid - post the disagreement instead.

You hid your actual point in sarcasm so well, I have no idea whether your point was merely "rah rah American democracy is shit" or something more insightful.

What was it?

That we as techies have a fundamentally different view of this than legislators, and legislators typically are going to listen to whoever pays to play. Honestly listen, as in they know what they don't know and are trying to learn. But they only hear part of the story.

Sarcasm and satire only work when you aren't saying something you might actually believe.

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