Talking about the rise of patent licensing firms:
“These technology licensing firms provide a mechanism by which owners of patents that never would have been able enforce their property right can now enforce it,” says patent attorney Kaufman. But this benefit doesn’t come without a cost. “This is like personal injury coming to patents,” says Singer. “One way or the other we all end up paying for it.”
Don’t know how I missed this before — Open Source Adobe. Adobe is opening up some of their libraries under an MIT license. First up are Adam & Eve — libraries for modeling the human interface and behavior in a software. Cool.
And I mean he really gets it! I started stopping by his blog periodically when I heard him talk to a live audience on a podcast about a month ago. He was talking about owning the Mavericks, www.hd.net, intellectual property rights, copyright etc… Recently he suggested that the FCC call Big Media’s bluff and kill the broadcast flag. As it stands there are only 125 days until this extremely offensive DRM technology goes into effect. In case you’re unaware, the broadcast flag — which can prevent time-shifting of shows among other things — is being foisted upon us by the likes of CBS and MPAA. They blackmailed the FCC into adopting it, refusing to fully support Digital Television (including HD) until it was adopted. A good read on an important subject!
Hat tip to Matt
Update: On Feb 22nd the D.C. circuit court of appeals said that the FCC overstepped it’s authority:
“You crossed the line,” Judge Harry Edwards told a lawyer for the Federal Communications Commission during arguments before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Unfortunately even with such a chastisement, the FCC may still win the case. The court also raised the question of whether the plaintiffs had standing — that is whether they would suffer more harm than the general public. If the Justices do find a lack of standing the entire case could be thrown out, and the FCC would be allowed to continue with the broadcast flag requirement. The only recourse at that point would be an appeal to the Supreme Court or getting legislation enacted that would nullify the broadcast flag. Even a victory agaist the FCC would likely require and act of Congress to clear up the FCC’s actual authority, as the FCC would most likely appeal to congress to grant them the authority to enact and enforce the broadcast flag. Unfortunately the Circuit Court of Appeals often takes months in cases such as this to render their decision. We have just three before the flag goes up.
A year ago I took a picture in a blizzard of Mystic’s wonderful tugboat. A number of people have asked if they could use it for Christmas Cards, holiday postcards or advertising. The image is licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike license. If you are unfamiliar with the CC licenses, this particular license means that for personal uses you are free to use it and modify it as long as you give me proper credit as the photographer.
Having said that, I would like to ask for one copy of whatever you produce. This is not required, but I would like to see how it is being used. Also I would not refuse any donations to fund my next lens purchase.
If you would like to use the image (or any of my other CC licensed images) for commercial purposes please contact me.
I have uploaded the full resolution jpg and tiff versions to the server. Please leave a comment with your email or email me if you want the tif format and I will send you the location. (I would publish it, but I am worried about the bandwidth a bit…this is an 18+ MB files after all, besides after doing 1.8 GB in traffic last month for this site alone….)
From the files of the EFF:
A hilarious lampooning of both President Bush and Senator Kerry.
It made it to the EFF because a music publisher claimed to have the rights to the song “This Land Is Your Land” and tried to block JibJab Studios from publishing the animation which features the song in a way that is clearly covered by “fair use”. Unfortunately for Ludlow the EFF and others proved that Arlo Guthrie’s first published the music in 1945 (when copyrights were a more reasonable 28 years) and never applied to renew the copyright. Ludlow renewed the copyright in 1984, 11 years after it had already entered the public domain.
Wonderful ironies, just days after SCO sends off it’s letters warning doom and gloom for the US economy if Open Source is not outlawed, the USPTO announces that it is considering switching a substantial part of its infrastructure to Linux and Java solutions from IBM when the current contract expires this year.
“U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officials are looking toward Linux and Java technologies as they begin planning for a comprehensive new information technology and telecommunications services contract.”
Of course as I said this follows right on the heels of SCO sending letters to all members of Congress and various other government VIP’s demonizing OSS as the downfall of the US economy, way of life, and an undefendable security risk. Heck OSS even poisoned the apple pies…
SCO’s folks seem to read news backwards and upside down
“‘With dozens of countries considering regulating the use of open-source, SCO believes it’s ‘only a matter of time before others in our country would put legislation on the table around open-source software,’ said Stowell.”
When I first read it I thought, well yes, that’s pretty much true, except I don’t think it needs to be legislated, it will happen on it’s own. Then I remembered who was speaking. Stowell actually believes that there will be legislation against using OSS. All the legislation I know of is towards giving OSS a minimum of an equal opportunity to be considered in government systems. I am not aware of a single case where there is legislation against using OSS.
The good news is the more mainstream press is getting it — in describing Linux Computerworld had this to say:
“The most powerful software company in the world would love to kill it off. The most ridiculous software company in the world can’t stop suing over it.”
I almost snarfed coffee when I read this bit in an article relating to Microsoft’s objection to a pillow and quilt manufacturer in Australia registering the Trademark “Microsoft” in their particular goods class. (emphasis mine)
“I don’t think anyone is going to shove a pillow into a computer…
“In his ruling on August 11, 1997, Ian Forno, the hearing officer, observed, in part: “The opponent (Microsoft) does not appear from the evidence to have had any reputation for padding, stuffing and filling materials, as at the date of the present mark’s application. There has been no evidence put forward by the opponent to show any instances of deception caused by the use of applicant’s mark.”
Yeah, thats why 600 MB of email took up 2.25 GB when it was stored in Outlook.
Purax Feather Holdings — the pillow and quilt company — bills Microsoft in this way: Our exclusive new non allergenic and thoroughly hygienic Polyester Fibre “Microsoft” ensures a luxurious nights sleep,
No way is there going to be any confusion there—Microsoft software has caused too many nights of missed sleep for me in the past years of supporting it professionally.
Otherwise, essentially an unremarkable news story about the trademark process working exactly as it is supposed to. Or maybe that is somewhat remarkable after all?
It looks as if Microsoft has filed for patents in Europe and New Zealand on the XML format they use for Office documents. Ironic that part of the whole original vision of XML was inter-operability and communication. XML was hailed as a lingua franca that could be used as the glue between dissimilar systems. Microsoft’s move to patent an XML format, or it’s use by other applications is, to me, really obnoxious. I would say that the patenting of an open specification adoption and specific usage would be clearly rejected by the patent offices, but, well…
Microsoft knows Linux is a threat, mostly on the server and in larger institutions. Arve Bersvendsen recently pointed out that for the average home & SOHO user, Linux on the desktop is not a yet a threat to Microsoft. While he uses a broad definition of Linux, not distinguishing the OS from the complete installed system, it is a definition most non-Linux advocate’s identify with, and he is right—the Linux core OS is ready and can be transparent to the user, but the “Linux Desktop” experience is far from that point. My sister–in-law, Mom & Dad, Grandfather, a few business clients and everyone else I act as ‘private tech support’ for—except my wife who has in-house tech support to tailor her system to her needs—would not make the switch to Linux on the desktop, and to tell the truth, I would not push them towards that either, at least for right now.
Windows works for them and even though it may annoy the more advanced of them, it is generally simple, comfortable and usually transparent to them. They, like most users, are task driven, not technology or philosophy driven in their computer use. All of them, however, would be willing to switch to OpenOffice—especially when it is system or Office Suite License upgrade / renewal time. OpenOffice is a genuine threat to Microsoft’s Office Suite across almost every user category. OpenOffice works, and requires very little adjustment to switch from MS Office. It gets the tasks done efficiently in a way that is familiar enough to users to be comfortable—it doesn’t let it’s technology or philosophy get in the way of efficient task accomplishment. It’s now on three more computers that shipped with MS Word or Microsoft’s stripped down Works package. All three users were going to buy MS Office for these systems, but all now report they are happy they didn’t.
In related news, Bruce Perens was recently interviewed by the BBC on the subject of Patents, SCO and Linux. When asked about challenges to Linux and Open Source Software in the next 18 months, Bruce expressed that he doesn’t see the SCO issue doing any long term damage The good news is that SCO has pretty much exhausted any chance of being successful in court.
He goes on to explain that the real challenge is in the wide-spread, over broad patenting of software.
“You have to consider engineers today spend their entire careers combining other people’s intellectual property. And every small and medium sized enterprise is at risk regarding software patenting…
“We’re looking at a future where only the very largest companies will be able to implement software, and it will technically be illegal for other people to do so. That’s a very, very bad situation developing. We must do something so that there is reason for people to innovate, there is reason for people to invent, but that companies can execute without this constant fear that we will be sued into the ground regarding software patenting.”
Bruce thinks that this year will be a strong year for Linux on the desktop, with large deployments in companies such as IBM and large institution and government agencies. I hope he is correct, and judging from some recent news from IBM, the Austin TX. city government, Massachusetts, government agencies in Germany, the United Kingdom, and Israel—among others—I think he is. Hopefully this will increase the development of a novice / average computer user friendly Linux Desktop implementation that, like OpenOffice, doesn’t let it’s technical or philosophical standards get in the way of ease of use and just getting the task done simply and efficiently. We’re most of the way there, but the last miles of an uphill finish are often the hardest—the goal is close enough to taste but too far away to provide any relief.
Edit 08/24/2006: Just discovered that the link is 404′ing. Unfortunately the owner of the song used in the animation is shutting everyone down who hosts the video, so I’m afraid the Dancing Sumo Hippo is no more (at least in the well lit main streets of the web…there are dark alleys where it can still be found though. Once released online nothing can be totally pulled back in!)
