Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 173 posts

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#151

Post by pjc50 »

pritchardgelman wrote: post #86
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m becoming more of the opinion that all intellectual property law is immoral on the grounds that it creates artificial barriers to prosperity for individuals who don’t receive the benefits of the patents. I work hard on personal projects (robots) that I think would be useful to others and I share them all CC0 or BSD licensed. I think it would be useful for economists to consider the way patents exacerbate inequalit…

>intellectual property law is immoral on the grounds that it creates artificial barriers to prosperity for individuals who don’t receive the benefits of the patents It is also a wealth transfer from the poor to the wealthy: the justice system protecting IP capital is financed by taxpayers, the hard majority of which hold no patents.

I do think the time is long overdue for IPR "property tax" as an anti-squatting measure and a defence against increasingly long copyright terms.

Disney making billions off Mickey Mouse? They can pay a tiny fraction of that and they can have their extension.

Novel by obscure dead author? Don't extend the copyright unless the estate wants to pay for it.

Abandoned and nobody to pay the tax? Enters the public domain.

All those defensive spurious patents? They impose a search cost on every single other innovator. There should be a carrying cost for the defensive patent wall.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#152

Post by troymcclure »

ve55 wrote: post #17

Stop finding excuses to stay on Facebook. Be strong and do what is right. You can convince your friends to use other things if they are truly your friends.

Deleted that puppy 5 years ago when the info from Snowden came out. SMS is amazing and anyone with a cell phone can potentially use it, even if they don't know that it still exists.

Group SMS is some next-level shit and my friends still talk to me, I swear. It's cool, I don't have to rub my life in their face with life event posts before I talk to them. When I talk to them, I get to catch up with their life and build a relationship like normal humans used to do.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#153

Post by code_duck »

hellllllllooo wrote: post #4

It's crazy how the large companies file so many patents for any idea their employees can think of. We used to have a lawyer come to our desks once a month and they would try patent any idea you could come up with even off the top of your head. Not sure how small companies can compete when larger companies can buy up all the IP in a space without having to do any work. The smaller companies I've worked for have to be…

I agree, but I so feel like this comment is suggesting that Facebook isn't using most of these. To me, they all seem to be clear areas of interest or even correspond to features and ad placement that I've observed. Guessing whether people are single, for instance - we'd be naive to not know that FB does that.

Also worth noting that even if they don't themselves derive certain conclusions from our data or use that conclusion, it doesn't mean another party does not. For instance, a user's sleep/wake cycle could be determined by others from the data FB collects and shares with them.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#154

Post by dominotw »

bogomipz wrote: post #89
dominotw wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe NY tîmes had articles about Facebook and privacy practices prior to 2017. I cant seem to find any. Do you have examples?

You didn't look very hard then. There are plenty: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/technology/facebook-offer... https://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/facebook-sti... https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25tue2.html

> Where was this level of scrutiny before

Fact that you had to look very hard and go all the way to 2010 to find examples proves my point not yours.

Going back to 2010 doesn't mean plenty.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#155

Post by chrisbennet »

squirrelicus wrote: post #3
math wrote: post #2

It upsets me more to be reminded that governments grant monopolies on not-very-difficult-to-come-up-with ideas such as any of those mentioned in the article.

Yeah software is this funny new world where the cost of manufacture and distribution is orders of magnitude less than the cost of invention. Patents were intended to solve the opposite problem. Software patents are just inexcusable

I'm against software patents but patents were not intended "to solve the opposite problem" (expensive manufacture & distribution and cheap invention).

They were intended to solve the problem of technological progress being hindered by trade secrets that never come into the public domain. If you couldn't protect your recipe for making a life saving drug, no one else could make it even if you decided not to anymore or went out of business.

From the Constitution (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8):

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#157

Post by dannyw »

pjc50 wrote: post #151
pritchardgelman wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>intellectual property law is immoral on the grounds that it creates artificial barriers to prosperity for individuals who don’t receive the benefits of the patents It is also a wealth transfer from the poor to the wealthy: the justice system protecting IP capital is financed by taxpayers, the hard majority of which hold no patents.

I do think the time is long overdue for IPR "property tax" as an anti-squatting measure and a defence against increasingly long copyright terms. Disney making billions off Mickey Mouse? They can pay a tiny fraction of that and they can have their extension. Novel by obscure dead author? Don't extend the copyright unless the estate wants to pay for it. Abandoned and nobody to pay the tax? Enters the public domain. All…

I think that's a great idea. The value of an IP could be self-assessed, with the caveat that any party has an option to purchase the IP for e.g. 125% of the self-assessed value.

The tax on this value could scale from 1% for year 10 onwards, increasing by 0.25% per year. Year 50 of your copyright? Be prepared to pay 11% APR rent on its value.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#158

Post by ska »

Someone wrote: post #29
QML wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we allow for algorithms to be patented though? To reserve something so abstract would be near equal to claiming a mathematical formula for oneself. If IBM had patented the fast Fourier transform, where would signal processing be?

Patents on mp3 and RSA didn’t prevent them from being used everywhere. I guess a patent on FFT (which, by the way, was considered at the time, according to Wikipedia) wouldn’t have stopped its adoption either. Also, IMO, a formula , which tells you what to compute, is essentially different from an algorithm , which tells you how . FFT would be patentable because it is non-obvious, even when given the formula for doin…

You have to be careful to avoid cherry picking results. As a counter-example in the same area, arithmetic coding was arguably shut down as commercial technique by IBM patents.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#159

Post by kodablah »

bogomipz wrote: post #150
kodablah wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Policies of an outlet can be determined by volume and slant, even op-eds. Opinion pieces help drive a narrative that regular stories do as well. It's not like, to view NYT's ads, you knew the article you were visiting. They're next to each other in search engine results. This isn't on a site named nytimesopinion.com. The sheer volume of articles now, regardless of whether you tell people they are in different forms,…

>"Policies of an outlet can be determined by volume and slant, even op-eds" No, op-ed pieces by there very nature are not subject to editorial review. Anyone is free to right one. And it is quite common to have editorials with opposing views published opposite each other in the Ed Op section. Saying that ed-op pieces have a "slant" is absurd. The entire purpose of an editorial is to express the views of an individual…

> No, op-ed pieces by there very nature are not subject to editorial review. Anyone is free to right one. And it is quite common to have editorials with opposing views published opposite each other in the Ed Op section. Saying that ed-op pieces have a "slant" is absurd. The entire purpose of an editorial is to express the views of an individual.

I specifically said "volume and slant" not just "slant". Combined, they have value. I don't know why you chose just one part.

> No the New York Times actually a physical news paper that you can buy at a newsstand. I did so yesterday. It is also a newspaper of record.

That is not as related to their website as you are making it seem. I even cautioned against pretending they're the same and you did it again.

> The Cambridge Analytica scandal came to light because Christopher Wylie blew the whistle and began speaking about it. I would very much consider that a human driving a dialog.

I specifically said "at this point". I don't know why you are talking about when it started.

Post reply on HN