Hi, sorry I'm late to the discussion, and Ben, I'm deeply sorry I couldn't make it to your speech despite being in Sydney (I had another engagement). If they post the video, please let us know.
>From what I know about this Ric Richardson, he sounds like a huge patent troll. I may have my facts wrong, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the understanding that he came up with a DRM system for detecting when software moves from one machine to another to prevent it from being copied. He used it to protect his own software, then when Microsoft used similar technology, he sued them, won, and was lauded by the media as an "Aussie battler" who "beat up big bad Microsoft." I'm usually the last person to defend Microsoft, but honestly, I don't know what's worse for freedom of expression: a DRM scheme that makes your software break if you modify your own computer, or suing a company for building similar technology to you. But the DRM aside, this is the perfect example of why the patent system is completely broken. This guy obviously used the technology to protect his own software. If it wasn't useful to him, he wouldn't have invented it. The fact is that patents are usually by-products of software engineering -- usually a tiny piece of a larger whole that was developed along the way (such as a DRM technology). You are compensated for inventing the technology by being able to use it in your own product -- you don't *need*to take further royalties unless you're greedy. If some guy from Australia hadn't invented a way of determining when a machine is significantly changed, chances are pretty bloody high that someone at Microsoft would have. Therefore, the patent system served no "benefit" to society (if inventing a DRM system can be called a benefit), because society would have of course invented the same technology with or without Richardson. Does Richardson therefore deserve a small cut of every sale of Windows XP? He bloody well does not! I can never quite justify why I think software deserves a special exemption from the patent system. I think what it comes down to is that *so very very little* of what we invent is actually non-obvious. I don't wish to deride software engineers in any way -- we do a lot of good work. But the fact is that nearly all solutions are obviously derivable from the problem definition. Ask any software engineer how to stop someone from installing a copy of a program on multiple computers and they will probably invent something that infringes on Richardson's patent. Unfortunately, lawyers, judges and juries don't appreciate the obviousness of most of these inventions. (I use the word obvious not in the sense of "trivial", or to imply that someone would immediately think of the solution. But in the sense that if you sat down for awhile to work it out, you could come up with something close enough to infringe upon the patent.) As for the article ... well a lot of this is complete trolling. "And if you were to pick a person at random on the streets, the chance that they would have an opinion about whether or not genes should be patentable would be very much greater than the possibility that they are even aware there is a debate around software patents." This is the first time I've seen an argument that "the average person doesn't know it's a problem, so therefore it's not a problem." Is this guy really a lawyer? "Your honour, although witnesses have testified to my client's guilt in great detail, if you were to pick a person at random on the streets, the chances are that they wouldn't know my client is guilty. Therefore, is it really such a great crime?" Progressive and conservative governments both back something so therefore it must be good? The patent system was supposed to provide a net benefit to society, and maybe it doesn't always work, but it's the best thing we have? Start-ups and open source software still exists, so what are you complaining about? These aren't even arguments!! _______________________________________________ Free-software-melb mailing list [email protected] http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb
