Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
Michael Chapman wrote: Sorry, ... but: No. It would be useful if people replied to the points posted, and not to what they wished people (seeming, regarded as opponents;-( had said. Michael What I wrote was: Sorry, no. This thread started with a lot of wrong assumptions on another patent, so it is not a good start to discuss whole the IP system, as such. I didn't write: Sorry, ... but: No. What I wanted to say was that this thread has started in a biased way, and under some wrong assumptions. The discussion has been amplified, for me actually in some impressing way...(The initial impression which was given was that the patent system is kind of stupid, can't work etc. Just re-read...) I am certainly not the only one who is/was pointing this out: This thread was about an invalid patent; we're happy that it was rejected, and we can now all move along. (Marc Lavallée) I was actually answering to this: It would have been interesting to discuss some of the points that this thread has raised. That seems to be a lost hope. So, what actually IS this thread about? Is it another patent, or the copyright and patent system? Either we didn't stick to the thread topic at all (first posting), or we actually have discussed some of the points you wanted to have discussed. Where is the lost hope, then?! I don't want to seem pedantic :-D , but we see a different thread topic, how it seems. Just to clarify why I wrote Sorry, no, which refered exactly to the two cited phrases above. I admit that this was not an ideal way of answering, because this was a little bit unclear. (My English is obviously not native.) It would be useful if people replied to the points posted, and not to what they wished people (seeming, regarded as opponents;-( had said. I actually thought I did... :-[ :-) That seems to be a lost hope. But if we would have some clear thread topic (which already has OT included), maybe there would have been far less room for any misunderstandings? Best, Stefan Schreiber ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
Scientific information ought to be public domain. Anything else is a cheat of the intention of sciece. Only to the very limited extent that it costs money to distribute things should there be any charge. The AES ought to be ashamed of trying to line the organizations pockets by selling old reprints and reports. I wasn't going to come back into this but, Robert, I do think you are being a little hard on the AES here - as a member, it's only about 107 euros (price of a dozen bottles of reasonably good wine or one hundred Mars bars) for a year's access and the number of items you can download is unlimited. Don't forget, it's not just the distribution costs you have to factor in but the cost of maintaining the archive and, more particularly, of producing it in the first place. It's not just a case of pushing the save as as .pdf button as we would do these days, because the vast majority of the archive had to be scanned in from paper sources, many of which would have to be unbound then rebound (all the early journals and most of the early conference/convention proceedings, for instance). I think the AES should be commended for doing it, not condemned. Anyone with a university login can search and download all IEEE papers freely via the IEEEXplore facility, even an unpaid external visiting research fellow such as myself. It would be nice if the AES provided a similar resource. Richard - the cost to the University is an order of magnitude greater for IEEEXplore access than it is for them to subscribe to the AES equivalent. This is, of course, partly because the IEEE library is very, very much larger. IEEEXplore is not cost-free except in as far as Universities decide to make it so to users. It _is_ a fantastic resource, as is the AES library. We've been trying here to persuade the Uni here to subscribe to the AES library for years, but with no luck yet - there are just so many other demands on the limited funds the library has available. Dave -- These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer /*/ /* Dave Malham http://music.york.ac.uk/staff/research/dave-malham/ */ /* Music Research Centre */ /* Department of Musichttp://music.york.ac.uk/; */ /* The University of York Phone 01904 432448*/ /* Heslington Fax 01904 432450*/ /* York YO10 5DD */ /* UK 'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio' */ /*http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/mustech/3d_audio/; */ /*/ ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
On 23/09/2011 09:34, Dave Malham wrote: .. Anyone with a university login can search and download all IEEE papers freely via the IEEEXplore facility, even an unpaid external visiting research fellow such as myself. It would be nice if the AES provided a similar resource. Richard - the cost to the University is an order of magnitude greater for IEEEXplore access than it is for them to subscribe to the AES equivalent. This is, of course, partly because the IEEE library is very, very much larger. IEEEXplore is not cost-free except in as far as Universities decide to make it so to users. It _is_ a fantastic resource, as is the AES library. We've been trying here to persuade the Uni here to subscribe to the AES library for years, but with no luck yet - there are just so many other demands on the limited funds the library has available. Indeed. I still hope to try again with Bath Uni. I would guess it is probably an either/or issue, and as you say even though expensive, the IEEE archive is so much larger (and I assume covers a much wider range of topics) that it is the preferred option. As most of the people writing papers I am likely to be interested in are now presenting to DAFx, the need for me to subscribe to the AES dwindled considerably. People like myself really get more mileage out of core textbook resources unfolding an integrated studyable progression than from a multitude of individual papers. The Zolzer DAFx book is my pride and joy, even though at £75 (!) I suspect I have yet to make sufficient use of it to claim it has repaid itself. It has at most two pages discussing Ambisonics. Which of course is also why I continue to wait for a full comprehensive and authoritative reference book on Ambisonics covering all the post-Gerzon and HOA material which is presently scattered all over the place, partly in the archives of this list, partly in a smattering of papers here and there, and partly still tucked away inside the heads of the most active developers and researchers. The absence of such a text (what - forty years on?) makes me wonder whether much of the subject is in fact sufficiently controversial or debatable for any one individual to be not prepared to go quite that public. Richard Dobson ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
Well, what a whole load of freely given information my original posting provoked! :-[ Dave PS. A final (please) thought Money is a sign of poverty (in case I get accused of IP theft, this is a Culture quote from Iain M. Banks) -- These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer /*/ /* Dave Malham http://music.york.ac.uk/staff/research/dave-malham/ */ /* Music Research Centre */ /* Department of Musichttp://music.york.ac.uk/; */ /* The University of York Phone 01904 432448*/ /* Heslington Fax 01904 432450*/ /* York YO10 5DD */ /* UK 'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio' */ /*http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/mustech/3d_audio/; */ /*/ ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
On 22/09/2011 00:52, Fons Adriaensen wrote: .. The only point I wanted to make is that the very concept of 'property', of 'owning' things makes sense only if it is recognised by others - it is a social agreement and not a law of nature. Well, lets look at that a bit more closely. Many people likely own things (or information) that nobody else knows about (secrets, in other words, or just extremely personal and private stuff). This does not make the ownership any the less. It does not fully fit reality to regard everything in the world as somehow managed or recognised by society. That arises much later in the evolution of a group. It is of course how many (who identify their individual self with that society) want to see it. The fact that society generally ~wants~ to know as much as possible about everything and everyone is evident, but not always acknowledged. It is simplest by far to declare that an individual had no a priori right of secrecy, ownership or privacy to begin with. Many a dictatorship has been built on that very principle. The problem is that what starts out as a seemingly objective sociological analysis, which it is assumed nobody would think to question, all too easily gets transformed into a moral imperative. This is any assertion of the basic form I want it therefore it is right, or, equally, I don't want it therefore it is wrong. The fundamental aspect of it is that it is ~personal~, even if, for example, God is substituted for I. At best, it is an ongoing public negotiation between personal privacy and public interest, moderated by a (nominally) independent and disinterested legislature. At worst, all it takes is a little reinterpretation. Darwin's famous survival of the fittest got changed very rapidly from the proper scientific meaning of best adapted to their environment to the strongest, and this instantly justified scientifically all manner of individual, group, and national aggression. Misuse (or, charitably, misunderstanding) of that phrase still pervades thinking today, and so it continues to be extremely dangerous. It led, among other things, to the journalistic hacking of mobile phones, an extreme example where the supposed supremacy of information outweighed all other imperatives. Information wants to be free (who said it first is irrelevant; who uses it as a rallying cry is very relevant) is of course much less extreme, but it is a moral imperative nevertheless - a justification for a desire. Many an oppression has been founded on the verbal rhetoric of an aphorism, as of course Orwell famously demonstrated, including the inspired ... but some are more equal than others. There are many variations of this basic pattern of moral imperative, of which perhaps the most pervasive these days is I want it, therefore it is my right. An increasingly common one is I deserve it therefore it is right. Both are expressions of a peculiarly 20th-Century post-war and growing narcissism**. It seems to be a fundamental aspect of an individual in a society (perhaps even a definition) that we are ashamed of our desires despite the necessity of expressing them (or the near impossibility of not expressing them), and will go to any lengths to represent them in some more acceptable form. Modern western culture is absolutely saturated in such moral imperatives, wherever possible taking the form of something quasi-scientific, ~non~-personal, so that they become immune to any sort of challenge, or, best of all, become effectively invisible, hidden so to speak in plain sight. It is not always a conspiracy, as much of the time it is done unconsciously, instinctually (so in that sense property is indeed a law of nature), but it is the mother of all memes. Without it most public media, particualrly the tabloids, would have absolutely nothing to print, and the speeches of politicians would become numbingly dull. The price, as usual, is eternal vigilance. Perhaps this is the time to resume normal service? Richard Dobson ** see for example The Narcissism Epidemic, http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1416575995 ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
RD's analysis was very interesting. But about Informantion wants to be free: People certainly deserve protection for the value of their intellectual work. But greed transforms this plausible principle often enough into abuse. Let me give an example: Scientific research papers and textbooks. Publishers in the past had to charge money for journals, just to pay for the cost of distriubtion and physical production of the journal in the first place. Same with books. Now along come changes. First of all,technology made the things cheaper to produce, for example because authors supply not typed material that needs type setting but computer ready copy where the type-setting is just a matter of pushing a button. Second, the distribution becomes free. Moreover, older papers and books are free to the publisher-the publisher already owns them. So what ought to happen? Books ought to get cheaper, the authors ought to get more of what they do cost(the authors are now doing some of the work that formerly was done by the publisher), and old papers ought to be free entirely on line. Did this happen? Well, somewhat. Some older parts of mathematical journals are free on line now. But not all. The AES is charging for old papers on line and so is Springer for example for mathematical journal articles, even old ones. And books are not cheaper at all. Textbooks for example are a deliberate money scam, with texts on ancient unchanging subjects like calculus going through frequent multiple editions with only meaningless changes to make sure that used copies cannot be used by students. This is a deliberate attempt to work the students over and extract money for nothing. (The changes are trivial but are such that students can no longer use an old eidtion, e.g., changes in the numbering and details of homework exercises). Publishers in short are being greedy, as are textbook authors. In a big way. Well, it is the publishers' last hurrah. Soon they will cease to exist and they deserve to. In a way, that is too bad. I like books. But many publishers are running a scam on the public. They deserve the fate that will soon be upon them. I was looking the other day for a cheap old calculus book to use as a text. The subject of couse and also how it is taught have not changed in the last fifty years or so so I figured I could find an old cheap textbook still in print but reissued cheap in paperback that I could use instead of asking the already financially stressed students(suffering from the collapse of public funding for public education in the USA) to spend nearly $200 on a new and unnecessarily expensive textbook. This search has failed , so far. Such is the greed of people that even books by authors long dead are still being offered, forty years later, at full price. The authors are no longer even around but their grandchildren (or whoever constitutes their estate) are still trying to make money out of books written in the 1960s. Fie upon them. The authors of calculus books were in those days, befor the thing became an industry, were not even making a living out of writing the books. They were taking time from being university professors, already (at that time) well paid and trying to make more money. This is all quite contrary to the proper academic spirit. Information really ought to be free, in many cases. The opposite approach serves only to entrench the culture that says that only the rich have access to much of anything. Robert ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
when i was a child my grandaunt told me the story of a demon who lived in old banyan tree. he would swoop down on unwary travellers, but the travellers always ran away. one day, one traveller could not run, and the demon stopped him. he said, sit down under the tree, and learn everything i know. that is the only way i can stop being a demon. i was turned into a demon for refusing to teach what i knew. i want to be freed of that curse. umashankar i have published my poems. read (or buy) at http://stores.lulu.com/umashankar Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:06:38 -0700 From: gre...@math.ucla.edu To: richarddob...@blueyonder.co.uk; sursound@music.vt.edu Subject: Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent RD's analysis was very interesting. But about Informantion wants to be free: People certainly deserve protection for the value of their intellectual work. But greed transforms this plausible principle often enough into abuse. Let me give an example: Scientific research papers and textbooks. Publishers in the past had to charge money for journals, just to pay for the cost of distriubtion and physical production of the journal in the first place. Same with books. Now along come changes. First of all,technology made the things cheaper to produce, for example because authors supply not typed material that needs type setting but computer ready copy where the type-setting is just a matter of pushing a button. Second, the distribution becomes free. Moreover, older papers and books are free to the publisher-the publisher already owns them. So what ought to happen? Books ought to get cheaper, the authors ought to get more of what they do cost(the authors are now doing some of the work that formerly was done by the publisher), and old papers ought to be free entirely on line. Did this happen? Well, somewhat. Some older parts of mathematical journals are free on line now. But not all. The AES is charging for old papers on line and so is Springer for example for mathematical journal articles, even old ones. And books are not cheaper at all. Textbooks for example are a deliberate money scam, with texts on ancient unchanging subjects like calculus going through frequent multiple editions with only meaningless changes to make sure that used copies cannot be used by students. This is a deliberate attempt to work the students over and extract money for nothing. (The changes are trivial but are such that students can no longer use an old eidtion, e.g., changes in the numbering and details of homework exercises). Publishers in short are being greedy, as are textbook authors. In a big way. Well, it is the publishers' last hurrah. Soon they will cease to exist and they deserve to. In a way, that is too bad. I like books. But many publishers are running a scam on the public. They deserve the fate that will soon be upon them. I was looking the other day for a cheap old calculus book to use as a text. The subject of couse and also how it is taught have not changed in the last fifty years or so so I figured I could find an old cheap textbook still in print but reissued cheap in paperback that I could use instead of asking the already financially stressed students(suffering from the collapse of public funding for public education in the USA) to spend nearly $200 on a new and unnecessarily expensive textbook. This search has failed , so far. Such is the greed of people that even books by authors long dead are still being offered, forty years later, at full price. The authors are no longer even around but their grandchildren (or whoever constitutes their estate) are still trying to make money out of books written in the 1960s. Fie upon them. The authors of calculus books were in those days, befor the thing became an industry, were not even making a living out of writing the books. They were taking time from being university professors, already (at that time) well paid and trying to make more money. This is all quite contrary to the proper academic spirit. Information really ought to be free, in many cases. The opposite approach serves only to entrench the culture that says that only the rich have access to much of anything. Robert ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/private/sursound/attachments/20110922/cbfa61a1/attachment.html ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 12:31:40PM +0100, Richard Dobson wrote: On 22/09/2011 00:52, Fons Adriaensen wrote: .. The only point I wanted to make is that the very concept of 'property', of 'owning' things makes sense only if it is recognised by others - it is a social agreement and not a law of nature. Well, lets look at that a bit more closely. ... Again, I never wrote any of 'Information wants to be free', 'I want it herefore it is right', etc, I did not interpret Darwin, and I'm not stating any moral imperatives. So please stop blaming me for what may be some people's ideas or errors but certainly not mine. Ciao, -- FA ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
Sorry, ... but: No. It would be useful if people replied to the points posted, and not to what they wished people (seeming, regarded as opponents;-( had said. Michael On 22/09/2011 15:32, Fons Adriaensen wrote: On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 12:31:40PM +0100, Richard Dobson wrote: On 22/09/2011 00:52, Fons Adriaensen wrote: .. The only point I wanted to make is that the very concept of 'property', of 'owning' things makes sense only if it is recognised by others - it is a social agreement and not a law of nature. Well, lets look at that a bit more closely. ... Again, I never wrote any of 'Information wants to be free', 'I want it herefore it is right', etc, I did not interpret Darwin, and I'm not stating any moral imperatives. So please stop blaming me for what may be some people's ideas or errors but certainly not mine. Ciao, It's a discussion. Relevant since there is an interest in the principles and problems of intellectual property (or whatever else we call it) on this list - to say nothing of the broader issues around free v commercial, the GPL, etc. Ultimately, ~all~ arguments not purely about hard facts hinge on the conflict between moral imperatives, and draw on rhetorical techniques to present them. I am not accusing or blaming anyone here. This is a very general issue. But the words social agreement inherently imply an imperative of some kind - the idea that ownership is relative or sanctioned, rather that absolute (if only in the sense that breaking the agreement might be judged under another imperative, or justified by it). I give simple examples to illustrate and clarify. These things are present in the words, whether we like it or not, intentional or not, and we ~all~ call upon them frequently, one way or another, perhaps the the more so the more political we are. Topics just on this list have included copyright, DRM and watermarking, as well as patents, and I have surely perpetrated quite a few moral imperatives myself, in unguarded moments! Richard Dobson ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
Wonderful! The whole point of science is to give the information to other people. Otherwise, science is no different from what Peter Hoeg says about it in Smilas Sense of Snow, that it is inevitably about money. Scientific information ought to be public domain. Anything else is a cheat of the intention of sciece. Only to the very limited extent that it costs money to distribute things should there be any charge. The AES ought to be ashamed of trying to line the organizations pockets by selling old reprints and reports. Robert On Thu, 22 Sep 2011, umashankar mantravadi wrote: when i was a child my grandaunt told me the story of a demon who lived in old banyan tree. he would swoop down on unwary travellers, but the travellers always ran away. one day, one traveller could not run, and the demon stopped him. he said, sit down under the tree, and learn everything i know. that is the only way i can stop being a demon. i was turned into a demon for refusing to teach what i knew. i want to be freed of that curse. umashankar i have published my poems. read (or buy) at http://stores.lulu.com/umashankar Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:06:38 -0700 From: gre...@math.ucla.edu To: richarddob...@blueyonder.co.uk; sursound@music.vt.edu Subject: Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent RD's analysis was very interesting. But about Informantion wants to be free: People certainly deserve protection for the value of their intellectual work. But greed transforms this plausible principle often enough into abuse. Let me give an example: Scientific research papers and textbooks. Publishers in the past had to charge money for journals, just to pay for the cost of distriubtion and physical production of the journal in the first place. Same with books. Now along come changes. First of all,technology made the things cheaper to produce, for example because authors supply not typed material that needs type setting but computer ready copy where the type-setting is just a matter of pushing a button. Second, the distribution becomes free. Moreover, older papers and books are free to the publisher-the publisher already owns them. So what ought to happen? Books ought to get cheaper, the authors ought to get more of what they do cost(the authors are now doing some of the work that formerly was done by the publisher), and old papers ought to be free entirely on line. Did this happen? Well, somewhat. Some older parts of mathematical journals are free on line now. But not all. The AES is charging for old papers on line and so is Springer for example for mathematical journal articles, even old ones. And books are not cheaper at all. Textbooks for example are a deliberate money scam, with texts on ancient unchanging subjects like calculus going through frequent multiple editions with only meaningless changes to make sure that used copies cannot be used by students. This is a deliberate attempt to work the students over and extract money for nothing. (The changes are trivial but are such that students can no longer use an old eidtion, e.g., changes in the numbering and details of homework exercises). Publishers in short are being greedy, as are textbook authors. In a big way. Well, it is the publishers' last hurrah. Soon they will cease to exist and they deserve to. In a way, that is too bad. I like books. But many publishers are running a scam on the public. They deserve the fate that will soon be upon them. I was looking the other day for a cheap old calculus book to use as a text. The subject of couse and also how it is taught have not changed in the last fifty years or so so I figured I could find an old cheap textbook still in print but reissued cheap in paperback that I could use instead of asking the already financially stressed students(suffering from the collapse of public funding for public education in the USA) to spend nearly $200 on a new and unnecessarily expensive textbook. This search has failed , so far. Such is the greed of people that even books by authors long dead are still being offered, forty years later, at full price. The authors are no longer even around but their grandchildren (or whoever constitutes their estate) are still trying to make money out of books written in the 1960s. Fie upon them. The authors of calculus books were in those days, befor the thing became an industry, were not even making a living out of writing the books. They were taking time from being university professors, already (at that time) well paid and trying to make more money. This is all quite contrary to the proper academic spirit. Information really ought to be free, in many cases. The opposite approach serves only to entrench the culture that says that only the rich have access to much of anything. Robert ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
On 22/09/2011 18:38, Robert Greene wrote: Wonderful! The whole point of science is to give the information to other people. Scientists have done and do just this, all the time - primarily to fellow scientists. On top of their myriad internal channels they have arXiv (open access), CiteSeer, Nature (which for 51 print issues a year is really very cheap) and any number of other readily accessible outlets, so I think they are probably doing as well as they can, especially given that most of the time they are prevailed upon by their Universities to raise their publication rate simply for profile and fund-raising purposes, all of which rather cuts into precious research time. Scientific information ought to be public domain. Anything else is a cheat of the intention of sciece. Only to the very limited extent that it costs money to distribute things should there be any charge. The AES ought to be ashamed of trying to line the organizations pockets by selling old reprints and reports. The AES (along with the IEEE, about which similar complaints are voiced) stands somewhat apart, as it is not strictly speaking a scientific organisation but (as the name indicates) an engineering (industrial RD) one - we might almost call the JAES a trade journal. You have to qualify to be a full voting member of the AES. So they are unashamedly commercial/industrial in orientation, not least because the majority of its members are too. It is not a prime outlet for science research in the way Nature is, it is more of a club for working engineers. Companies employing them typically subscribe to the large AES CD and DVD and online libraries, so that having to download and pay for an individual paper hardly figures at all. Anyone with a university login can search and download all IEEE papers freely via the IEEEXplore facility, even an unpaid external visiting research fellow such as myself. It would be nice if the AES provided a similar resource. To the independent developer and researcher of course, where every dollar matters, yes it is all rather expensive, especially when you can't check a whole paper beforehand to make sure it is actually useful. On the other hand, anyone can ask to join an AES working group - no payment involved. I am a member of the AES31-related group (file format, project interchange), on which I had precisely no impact (they went ahead and ratified the horrible RF64 file format anyway), and I find that as such I can still access standards documents, such as on the newly announced AES50 HRMAI (High resolution multi-channel audio interconnection), which may be of interest to this list (a dizzying 24 channels each way at 24/96 over Cat-5 cable), so the picture is not all bad. Richard Dobson ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
Richard Dobson wrote: On 20/09/2011 22:24, Fons Adriaensen wrote: Interesting choice of words. You say agree, I would say recognise. Do they put it to a vote? My thoughts (which you appear to equate with things) are my own, and if I choose to share them with anyone else that is my choice, and their privilege. The alternative is living isolated, or having to physically protect and defend your 'property' all the time, which sort of defeats the purpose. What purpose is that? Who decides what the purpose is? Unless one rejects inheritance taxes, wealth taxes, etc., etc. one is left with the fact that one has accepted a situation where one has 'a balance'. Perhaps the worst imaginable situation ... except all the others ... but there it is. Akin to all property belongs to the monarch and one holds it under licence, but nowadays society not the monarch. Those taxes pay for the police who I hope -if vainly- may catch your burglars and return your property. I nearly said, also, unless one believes patents should be eternal. But that would be false. A patent is a trade off. You can keep your invention secret (and unprotected) or publish/patent it and receive limited protection. (As for anthrax, IIRC at the time the hype was that 'Cipro' was the only licensed product. And that fitted with Sampo's experiences. Bacterial resistance is a totally different argument: Anyway I read an article recently that it is politically incorrect to go into the alleged causus belli for an ilegal war of aggression, when it was in fact a 'home goal'. My argument was about licensing not weaponising.) This may all be OT, but if: -ambisonics had developed twenty years later -if there had been no patents on it would the World have been different? Michael ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
On 21/09/2011 09:38, Michael Chapman wrote: .. What purpose is that? Who decides what the purpose is? Unless one rejects inheritance taxes, wealth taxes, etc., etc. one is left with the fact that one has accepted a situation where one has 'a balance'. Perhaps the worst imaginable situation ... except all the others ... but there it is. Akin to all property belongs to the monarch and one holds it under licence, but nowadays society not the monarch. Those taxes pay for the police who I hope -if vainly- may catch your burglars and return your property. Last time I checked, taxes have to be paid with hard cash; and the principle has been long established at least in liberal democracies of no taxation without representation. If I could pay my tax by handing even 10% of my intellectual property (including knowing how to teach people to play the flute, which I also consider part of my personal IP) to the state, that would be great. Of course, that skill (however uniquely and inventively expressed) is not patentable anyway. Remember, the original proposition was Intellectual property... does not exist naturally - it is something granted by society to individuals, which I regard as mere sophistry, at best - a typical example of what I could call GPL fundamentalism, in which information wants to be free remains the most daft pseudo-anthropomorphic statement ever said by anyone. information is an abstract mathematical or philosophical concept, possibly a thing, but definitely not a sentient life-form who wants anything. This may all be OT, but if: -ambisonics had developed twenty years later -if there had been no patents on it would the World have been different? Probably not. The issue with Ambisonics has never been the technology, nor even with the patents; it has been with imagination (how to present it) and ambition. The latter is now expressed, as I have argued hopelessly here before) in the deprecation of good old first-order (even over four speakers!) in favour of HOA which remains utterly beyond the scope of a mass or otherwise popular market. The core patents in audio have all been for lossy compression tools, which have enabled a huge range of affordable toys for people, demonstrating the power of something that is palpably flawed, but nevertheless for most users good enough. That is where the big money and distribution will always be. It could have been a vehicle for new potentially with-height content (where even POA is manifestly better than what we now have in 5.1, which nevertheless also qualifies as good enough), whereas discussion at least on this list has become concerned almost entirely with adding a bit of extra ambience or realism to stereo, something of importance to perhaps the 0.0001% of the population who pay 4-figure sums for their amps and 5-figure sums for their speakers (and probably 3-figure sums for their cables). So it is irrelevant whether there are any patents on it or not, as it has very little the behemoth that is the audio/music industry will be interested in enough to change direction, now. Had it been used for the original soundtrack for Star Wars or Close Encounters, it would have had a chance. It wasn't, dedicated tools for composers (FOSS or otherwise) scarcely exist, and the rest is history. Fons has referred to things, including IP; but Ambisonics is not a thing, it is an idea, and an increasingly polymorphic one at that, which may or may not be a Good Thing. Richard Dobson ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
On 21/09/2011 17:11, Marc Lavallée wrote: .. Information wants to be free is a 40 years old aphorism, not a scientific statement, and it does not come from the free software movement. Its author said later: Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive.. More like 27 years. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free So, two anthropomorphic statements, which form an opposition or an extended oxymoron. Perhaps a bit like money wants to be free. According to that page, Stallman reformulated it to use the phrase generally useful information together with the inevitable should - without indicating who or what decides what qualifies as generally useful. Presumably the same disinterested people (anyone other than the author, in fact) who decide whether to 'agree' I own something, or not, as the case may be. Richard Dobson ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
Le Wed, 21 Sep 2011 23:12:47 +0100, Richard Dobson richarddob...@blueyonder.co.uk a écrit : On 21/09/2011 17:11, Marc Lavallée wrote: .. Information wants to be free is a 40 years old aphorism, not a scientific statement, and it does not come from the free software movement. Its author said later: Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive.. More like 27 years. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free You are right. It was in 1984. Here's the authoritative source: http://web.me.com/stewartbrand/SB_homepage/Info_free_story.html This is freely available information, attributed to the author himself. According to that page, Stallman reformulated it to use the phrase generally useful information together with the inevitable should - without indicating who or what decides what qualifies as generally useful. Who? Yourself, if you want. What? Any organization, for example. We're collectively responsible. Presumably the same disinterested people (anyone other than the author, in fact) who decide whether to 'agree' I own something, or not, as the case may be. You can claim that you own something, like the expression of an idea. Then wait for interested people to complain... If you don't want your work (or claimed original expression of an idea) to be owned at all, you can release it into the public domain. Then wait for interested people to complain or create interesting derivative works. -- Marc ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 11:49:37 - (GMT), Michael Chapman wrote: The modern day pharmaceutical industry is perhaps the one exception to the rule that patents are bad to humanity. Why is that? Well, because it's remained the most sacred, shielded, unquestioned, and especially for the longest time. In part because of the huge and quite possibly unfounded shielding it has. Sometimes that actually works. I've been holding my tongue, but seeing as Sampo has added an [OT] tag: Is it not strange that Medicine relies on patent medicines, whilst Surgery relies on published 'open source' procedures . . . ? Yes, curious isn't it? Similarly, often a surgery can be curative. In contrast, most drug treatments are not. They are often intent upon supressing, but not curing, the underlying issue while sustaining the revenue stream derived from perpetual ongoing treatment. Michael -- Michael Graves mgravesatmstvp.com http://www.mgraves.org o713-861-4005 c713-201-1262 sip:mgra...@mstvp.onsip.com skype mjgraves Twitter mjgraves ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
The modern day pharmaceutical industry is perhaps the one exception to the rule that patents are bad to humanity. Why is that? Well, because it's remained the most sacred, shielded, unquestioned, and especially for the longest time. In part because of the huge and quite possibly unfounded shielding it has. Sometimes that actually works. I've been holding my tongue, but seeing as Sampo has added an [OT] tag: Is it not strange that Medicine relies on patent medicines, whilst Surgery relies on published 'open source' procedures . . . ? Michael ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
Sampo Syreeni wrote: On 2011-09-19, Stefan Schreiber wrote: Our economy is really based on IP, in some areas. Think of the pharmaceutical industry in Britain. Personally I'm a political pirate, and an economically minded classical liberal/libertarian minarchist, at the same time. I'd be labelled a federalist in the US circuit, and in the current EU one. If you are a pirate, you just won the local election in Berlin. Even if people who voted for them don't know for what the pirates stand... :-) We all already know that physical ownership is necessary for progress and growth. At the same time we do *not* know that intellectual property is needed for that. Because modern economy is much more based on knowledge? Because the competition is global? Because Hollywood movies didn't even exist? The modern day pharmaceutical industry is perhaps the one exception to the rule that patents are bad to humanity. Why is that? Well, because it's remained the most sacred, shielded, unquestioned, and especially for the longest time. In part because of the huge and quite possibly unfounded shielding it has. Sometimes that actually works. E.g. it seems to work with certain very expensive chemotherapeutic agents, right now. I don't think they would have gone beyond vancomycin in antibiotics, if it wasn't for intellectual property protection. Because that stuff already costs *tons*. But then I actually have a small anecdote to give wrt this, right now, in the opposite direction. Because of my own current condition. I mean, about three months ago I suffered a rather nasty prolapsus disci intervertebralis, which has left me unable to to work or even much move around. One of my bigger discs in my backbone decided to rupture in a nasty way, and suddenly I experience a rather debilitating pain in my right leg. The real story is that my doctor (a female one if you might wonder about that), prescribes me etorixocib. Because it's the newest and neatest COX-2 (cyclooxygenase-2) inhibitor around here. Yes, it does work, to a point, and no, it doesn't mull your stomach up. She also (atypically) knows that paracetamol/acetaminophen works via a different route, and prescribes it together in large amounts with etoricoxib. What she does *not* know is that the oldest, simplest and cheapest NSAID medication works even better. I mean, today, now that I ran out of my prescribed NSAID, I again took a gram's worth of aspirin (acetosalicylic acid). As before, it worked twice as well as the 30x more expensive newer -coxib. I've seen this process many times over already, and since I follow the clinical and pharmacological literatures as well as I can, this is no surprise; really, this just happens even with the best of doctors, when the pharmaceutical industry has even a little bit of influence upon them. Really, I'm quite certain that my doctor is totally okay and thinks she is uninfluenced by anything; yet she prescribes me a *very* expensive and newest COX-2 inhibitor, instead of say the stuff they give my mom now: naproxen plus a proton pump inhibitor. Which is much cheaper, but prolly as- or more effective than what I'm eating now. That's how patents and the like distort real life, in the medical circuit. ... I am obviously sorry for this incident. If you are right, this is a case of wrong treatment or prescription, not really patent-related. Everybody could copy any medicament, as long as the composition is known. Which is then good? This ind of industry simply would brea down without IP, because it is quite easy to copy a chemical composition if you now it. Do remember that the original idea behind patents was that they eventually *should* be copied. The only question is about how soon. If the patent is expired, which is the definitive answer. And that calculation could very well have changed in the mean time, after the first patent paws were passed. I mean, even *you* can't *seriously* think technological progress goes along at the same rate today, as it did then. Can you? The first cars, planes and televisions were developped by several people exactly at the same time, in every case. Sometimes ideas are ready to be realized. And then, the technological progress was very swift. Think also of microelectronics in the 60s/70s, after the tansistor was developped. Who would any development of new drugs (and perform the costly tests) if there would be no ind of protection at all? Maybe nobody. But answer me this: 1) why is this testing so expensive, 2) why is it mandated even against the treatmentees wants, 3) why does the new drug has to be a cure, instead of a marginal improvement upon a previous drug, 4) why precisely is it the drug manufacturer's problem if they offer an imperfect drug to wanting recipients, with full disclosure, and it then backfires, Because patient and normal people have to be protected. and e.g. 5) how is
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
Sampo Syreeni wrote: On 2011-09-19, Stefan Schreiber wrote: What she does *not* know is that the oldest, simplest and cheapest NSAID medication works even better. I mean, today, now that I ran out of my prescribed NSAID, I again took a gram's worth of aspirin (acetosalicylic acid). As before, it worked twice as well as the 30x more expensive newer -coxib. That's how patents and the like distort real life, in the medical circuit. ... I am obviously sorry for this incident. If you are right, this is a case of wrong treatment or prescription, not really patent-related. I must disagree. Patents _do_ distort the market. Unpatented medicines have no budget for marketing: for representatives to visit practitioners, for advertising, for stands at conferences, for sponsorship, for (which could bring is back to elegant arguments about ambisonics;-) The best example is perhaps the 'anthrax scare'. 'Everyone knows'(TM) that plain ordinary penicillin is effective at treating anthrax (well that's what the textbooks used to say), but one patented product had a licence: governments spent fortunes stockpiling the latter, whilst the former must cost only a few cents a gram Michael ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
Oops, I try to send the same message in another format... :-[ Michael Chapman wrote: Sampo Syreeni wrote: On 2011-09-19, Stefan Schreiber wrote: What she does *not* know is that the oldest, simplest and cheapest NSAID medication works even better. I mean, today, now that I ran out of my prescribed NSAID, I again took a gram's worth of aspirin (acetosalicylic acid). As before, it worked twice as well as the 30x more expensive newer -coxib. That's how patents and the like distort real life, in the medical circuit. ... I am obviously sorry for this incident. If you are right, this is a case of wrong treatment or prescription, not really patent-related. I must disagree. Patents _do_ distort the market. Unpatented medicines have no budget for marketing: for representatives to visit practitioners, for advertising, for stands at conferences, for sponsorship, for (which could bring is back to elegant arguments about ambisonics;-) The best example is perhaps the 'anthrax scare'. 'Everyone knows'(TM) that plain ordinary penicillin is effective at treating anthrax (well that's what the textbooks used to say), but one patented product had a licence: governments spent fortunes stockpiling the latter, whilst the former must cost only a few cents a gram Michael Sorry, but no. There are forms of anthrax which can't be treated by penicillin. If we talk about biological weapons, unfortunately they would use these forms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks All of the material was derived from the same bacterial strain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strain_%28biology%29 known as the Ames strain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_strain. Prior to the attacks, the Ames strain was believed to be a common strain isolated from a cow in Iowa. After the attacks, the investigation discovered that it was a relatively rare strain isolated from a cow in Texas in 1981 - a critical fact in the investigation.[58] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks#cite_note-57[59] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks#cite_note-58 First researched at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Medical_Research_Institute_of_Infectious_Diseases (USAMRIID), Fort Detrick, Maryland, the Ames strain was then distributed to sixteen bio-research labs within the U.S. and three other locations (Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom).[60] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks#cite_note-usatoday.com-59 DNA sequencing of the anthrax taken from Robert Stevens (the first victim) was conducted at The Institute for Genomic Research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Institute_for_Genomic_Research (TIGR) beginning in December 2001. Sequencing was finished within a month and the analysis was published in the journal Science in early 2002.[61] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks#cite_note-60 Radiocarbon dating http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating conducted by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Livermore_National_Laboratory in June 2002 established that the anthrax was cultured http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbiological_culture no more than two years before the mailings.[62] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks#cite_note-61 In October 2006 it was reported that the water used to process the anthrax spores came from a source in the northeastern United States.[63] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks#cite_note-Criminal_probe-62 On September 11, the president and White House http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House staff began taking a regimen of Cipro http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cipro, a powerful antibiotic. The public interest group Judicial Watch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Watch filed lawsuits in June 2002 against federal agencies to obtain information about how, what and when the White House knew on 9/11 about the danger of anthrax weeks before the first known victim of the anthrax attacks.[41] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks#cite_note-40[42] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks#cite_note-41 The issue, therefore, is on what grounds governmental officials were alerted to prepare for the coming anthrax attacks, which were later traced to a U.S. army medical research institute.[43] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks#cite_note-42 Best, Stefan ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 02:15:19PM -, Michael Chapman wrote: I must disagree. Patents _do_ distort the market. As does any monopoly, even a temporary one. I'd very much want to see some changes to patent law, like for example a patent being cancelled if within a reasonable time there are not at least four or five effectively competing licencees, all of them bound to the same conditions. Intellectual property, just like property of physical goods, does not exist naturally - it is something granted by society to individuals in the hope that society will benefit by doing so. If that doesn't happen there is no reason why it should exist. Ciao, -- FA ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
On 20/09/2011 20:38, Fons Adriaensen wrote: On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 02:15:19PM -, Michael Chapman wrote: .. Intellectual property, just like property of physical goods, does not exist naturally - it is something granted by society to individuals in the hope that society will benefit by doing so. If that doesn't happen there is no reason why it should exist. Wow. How far back in time does this arrangement go? Which came first - the individual, or the society? Richard Dobson ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 09:23:37PM +0100, Richard Dobson wrote: On 20/09/2011 20:38, Fons Adriaensen wrote: On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 02:15:19PM -, Michael Chapman wrote: .. Intellectual property, just like property of physical goods, does not exist naturally - it is something granted by society to individuals in the hope that society will benefit by doing so. If that doesn't happen there is no reason why it should exist. Wow. How far back in time does this arrangement go? Which came first - the individual, or the society? That doesn't really matter. If a number of individuals interact you have a society. Once that happens, things are 'yours' only because the others agree the are. Such agreements arise because they bring mutual benifit. The alternative is living isolated, or having to physically protect and defend your 'property' all the time, which sort of defeats the purpose. Ciao, -- FA ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
Re: [Sursound] [ot] another patent
On 20/09/2011 22:24, Fons Adriaensen wrote: .. Wow. How far back in time does this arrangement go? Which came first - the individual, or the society? That doesn't really matter. If a number of individuals interact you have a society. Once that happens, things are 'yours' only because the others agree the are. Such agreements arise because they bring mutual benifit. Interesting choice of words. You say agree, I would say recognise. Do they put it to a vote? My thoughts (which you appear to equate with things) are my own, and if I choose to share them with anyone else that is my choice, and their privilege. The alternative is living isolated, or having to physically protect and defend your 'property' all the time, which sort of defeats the purpose. What purpose is that? Who decides what the purpose is? Unfortunately, not all societies are so enlightened. The days where one needed no lock on one's front door are long gone; if they ever really existed much anyway. I have been burgled three times, by individuals (aka society according to you) who clearly did not agree that my Tannoy DC200 dual-concentrics, or my gold signet ring with the family seal on it inherited from my father, belonged to me. Am I now supposed to agree that they really owned them all along? Seems to me there are plenty of people around who would treat my thoughts in the same way, if they could. Perhaps a few of them are even on this list. You just can't slap a GPL licence on a person and call it natural. Richard Dobson ___ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
[Sursound] [ot] another patent
On 2011-09-19, Stefan Schreiber wrote: Our economy is really based on IP, in some areas. Think of the pharmaceutical industry in Britain. Personally I'm a political pirate, and an economically minded classical liberal/libertarian minarchist, at the same time. I'd be labelled a federalist in the US circuit, and in the current EU one. Those ideas mesh well, because from the economic viewpoint, physical property and the intellectual kind really don't have too much to do with each other. In fact they fight against each other rather badly: either you can use your physical DVD as you like, as part of your property/ownership, or otherwise somebody else holds some sort of ownership right to it, which precludes you from e.g. copying it willy-nilly. That other right pretty much has to be an immaterial right, by definition. The same holds for patents as well, wrt simultaneous invention (which has always been rife, even with Edison, Bell, and fer gossake even Tesla, who's the poster child for independent electric invetion, amongst the counter-theoretical folks at least... We all already know that physical ownership is necessary for progress and growth. At the same time we do *not* know that intellectual property is needed for that. I mean, come on, it originally started as the King's or the Guilds' privilege, so as to suppress printing/duplication of subversive materials. The generally, historically, first statute to recognize copyright was the Statute of Anne, which basically just codified medieval guild rights into the rights of the stationery companies of her time. Thankfully it brought that stuff under public scrutiny and control for the first time. But it's not as though we should make that first effort into anything more than it was; the first effort towards something better. ... The modern day pharmaceutical industry is perhaps the one exception to the rule that patents are bad to humanity. Why is that? Well, because it's remained the most sacred, shielded, unquestioned, and especially for the longest time. In part because of the huge and quite possibly unfounded shielding it has. Sometimes that actually works. E.g. it seems to work with certain very expensive chemotherapeutic agents, right now. I don't think they would have gone beyond vancomycin in antibiotics, if it wasn't for intellectual property protection. Because that stuff already costs *tons*. But then I actually have a small anecdote to give wrt this, right now, in the opposite direction. Because of my own current condition. I mean, about three months ago I suffered a rather nasty prolapsus disci intervertebralis, which has left me unable to to work or even much move around. One of my bigger discs in my backbone decided to rupture in a nasty way, and suddenly I experience a rather debilitating pain in my right leg. The real story is that my doctor (a female one if you might wonder about that), prescribes me etorixocib. Because it's the newest and neatest COX-2 (cyclooxygenase-2) inhibitor around here. Yes, it does work, to a point, and no, it doesn't mull your stomach up. She also (atypically) knows that paracetamol/acetaminophen works via a different route, and prescribes it together in large amounts with etoricoxib. What she does *not* know is that the oldest, simplest and cheapest NSAID medication works even better. I mean, today, now that I ran out of my prescribed NSAID, I again took a gram's worth of aspirin (acetosalicylic acid). As before, it worked twice as well as the 30x more expensive newer -coxib. I've seen this process many times over already, and since I follow the clinical and pharmacological literatures as well as I can, this is no surprise; really, this just happens even with the best of doctors, when the pharmaceutical industry has even a little bit of influence upon them. Really, I'm quite certain that my doctor is totally okay and thinks she is uninfluenced by anything; yet she prescribes me a *very* expensive and newest COX-2 inhibitor, instead of say the stuff they give my mom now: naproxen plus a proton pump inhibitor. Which is much cheaper, but prolly as- or more effective than what I'm eating now. That's how patents and the like distort real life, in the medical circuit. Even for us in the Western countries. Everybody could copy any medicament, as long as the composition is known. Which is then good? This ind of industry simply would brea down without IP, because it is quite easy to copy a chemical composition if you now it. Do remember that the original idea behind patents was that they eventually *should* be copied. The only question is about how soon. And that calculation could very well have changed in the mean time, after the first patent paws were passed. I mean, even *you* can't *seriously* think technological progress goes along at the same rate today, as it did then. Can you? Who would any development of new drugs (and
