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Yahoo Crosses The Line

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Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line

#181

Post by monochromatic »

moldbug wrote: post #175
monochromatic wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An analogy is not a comparison An analogy absolutely draws a comparison. I don't even know what you're getting at here, other than trying unsuccessfully to nitpick. > But I believe it's intellectually permissible for others to condemn Hitler in a sentence - without my extensive training in Hitler Studies. So you think it's permissible to condemn a human being while knowing essentially nothing about him, just going…

> An analogy absolutely draws a comparison. An analogy illustrates common logical features of two commensurate problems. Man:woman, bull:cow. If I state this analogy to my wife, am I "comparing" her to a cow? > So you think it's permissible to condemn a human being while knowing essentially nothing about him, just going by what the groupthink tells you. If the groupthink is right, yes. Groupthink isn't always right.…

> Man:woman, bull:cow. If I state this analogy to my wife, am I "comparing" her to a cow?

Some women might actually take offense at that, but I'd say no. But throwing Hitler into the analogy really does change its flavor, doesn't it? We're not talking about bulls and cows here. The analogy

your position:my position::Satan:Jesus

is a little bit more in line with the inflammatory one you actually used above. And in a case like that, I think reading an analogy as a comparison is both inevitable and exactly what you intended.

> It's not wrong about Hitler. It's not wrong about patents, either.

That's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. But it has nothing to do with whether people should follow groupthink without the capacity to determine whether it's right or wrong.

> I'm quite confident that you have never, ever once told any of your "inventors" the following: yes, I can get this patent issued. But I don't feel it's genuinely novel or non-obvious, so you'll have to find another advocate.

I've told inventors that I thought a particular application would be a challenge to get allowed. I've told inventors that in light of the prior art, they won't get a patent that's broad enough to be worth anything. And yes, on more than one occasion, I've told an inventor that I didn't believe he could get a patent on his idea. (Just a nitpick here, but I've never told an inventor I could get something patented. Nothing is assured, and sometimes you get an examiner that simply will not allow a case.)

> And if they did - you wouldn't want to know, would you? Since you're a patent lawyer, you probably know the term mens rea.

I certainly wouldn't stick my head in the sand to avoid knowing how they use their patents. And there's no issue with mens rea here, since patent trolls aren't doing anything illegal.

> You also know perfectly well that the controlling legal authorities do not have the power to identify and bar "software patents," "business method patents," etc. Legally there are no software patents in Europe, for instance, but the patent bar is not to be stopped. Same with the Supremes in Parker v. Flook.

Indeed, this would have to come from Congress. But it could certainly happen.

> Therefore, the only practical reform of this system is to destroy it entirely.

Aaaand here's where you go off the deep end. Is there a single industrialized country that has no patent system whatsoever? That's a serious question... I don't know of one.

Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line

#182

Post by vibrunazo »

kd5bjo wrote: post #173
angersock wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I replied to a couple points in your thread. Long story short, kill patents, kill copyright, keep trademark.

Without copyright, for example, movies would have to recoup (most of) their production costs before ever showing the film to the public. Once they do, there is huge incentive for theaters to obtain third-party copies and show them without any remuneration to the moviemakers. There are similar arguments for books, music, and video games. How do you propose that this would work in practice?

What about crowd-funding?

Kickstarter already funded over $1m entertainment projects. So did the Louis CK experiment. These are far and far away from the mainstream popularity that buying movie tickets have. Don't you think that it's reasonable that web organized crowd-funding could finance even big blockbuster movies as these websites get more popular?

Imagine if popular celebrity directors with huge cult-followers like Tarantino would post a project on Kickstarter, then properly advertise it. I'd imagine a huge movie could be funded that way.

Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line

#183

Post by duck »

larrys wrote: post #178

The title of this changed from: "They are dead to me. Dead and gone. I hate them now" to: "Yahoo Crosses The Line" Curious about the reason this was done.

Yeah, I just noticed that as well. Once something goes live you have the right to change it, but I would leave an update on why.

Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line

#184

Post by law »

Thomas Jefferson's 1788 quote, in a way, portends this: "the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." The dictionary definition of government ("authoritative direction or control") ostensibly extends this to encompass corporations. Patents are merely one of many tactics for corporations gain control; it's nothing new, and it ought to be expected.

Notwithstanding the foreseeability of patent warfare, I remain despondent toward "unwritten rules" in American law. Yes, they exist; it's no surprise that defendants in criminal cases who assert their 6th Amendment rights to a speedy trial that they subsequently lose will suffer a heightened penalty. The seminal case on this subject, Bordenkircher v. Hayes, specifically endorses threats of stiffer sentences to entice criminal defendants to waive their right to trial and plead guilty to a lesser offense. One can model this as a game of imperfect information, with society reaping the rewards.

So the author's reliance on this de facto "rule not to litigate" is flawed. The real problem arises when companies exclude others from practicing a technology in which that company's property interest is a mere subterfuge. Rarely do companies practice the technologies for which they've secured patent protection, and that brings me to my last Thomas Jefferson quote:

  A man has a right to use a saw, an axe, 
  a plane, separately; may he not combine 
  their uses on the same piece of wood? 
  He has a right to use his knife to cut 
  his meat, a fork to hold it; may a 
  patentee take from him the right to 
  combine their use on the same subject? 
  Such a law, instead of enlarging our 
  conveniences, as was intended, would 
  most fearfully abridge them, and crowd 
  us by monopolies out of the use of the 
  things we have.
However, we should be careful not to criticize the managers of these companies too much: they have a fiduciary duty of care to the corporation. Is there another "unwritten rule" that shareholders of a (struggling) corporation won't launch a derivative suit against the board of directors for failure to assert the corporation's patent rights against an infringing third party?

So in my view, the solution isn't at the corporate level; it's at the national level. As such, patent reform should be a national issue addressed by politicians. Patent term length [c|sh]ould be proportional to the research expenses actually incurred. Alternatively, we might want want a "patent abandonment doctrine" that moves to public domain those patents whose rights haven't been enforced (almost like in trademark law). Even still, we might want to wholly abandon the right to transfer or sell patents (and for that matter, all intellectual property) entirely. I haven't researched the ramifications of these potential solutions, so they're offered merely as points for discussion.

Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line

#185

Post by monochromatic »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #147
monochromatic wrote: post #122

This guy doesn't even mention the claims of the patents in suit, so why should I trust his opinion about their merits? If you don't know how to read a patent, you're absolutely not qualified to make pronouncements like this: > None of them represent unique and new ideas at the time of the filing. I supect they all can be thrown out over prior art if Facebook takes the time and effort to do that. Also, even the articl…

The guy is a VC with over a decade of experience investing in technology companies and selling a portfolio company to Yahoo for billions of dollars. He may know a thing or two about software patents.

This blog posting certainly makes me believe he does not.

Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line

#186

Post by monochromatic »

moldbug wrote: post #177
Tossrock wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously comparing patents to genocide? Is that really what's happening here? One, get some class. Two, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwins_law

Honey, before you were born I had some great flamewars with Mike Godwin on rec.arts.sf-lovers. HN is really turning into Reddit, isn't it?

> If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)

Taken from http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line

#187

Post by kd5bjo »

vibrunazo wrote: post #182
kd5bjo wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without copyright, for example, movies would have to recoup (most of) their production costs before ever showing the film to the public. Once they do, there is huge incentive for theaters to obtain third-party copies and show them without any remuneration to the moviemakers. There are similar arguments for books, music, and video games. How do you propose that this would work in practice?

What about crowd-funding? Kickstarter already funded over $1m entertainment projects. So did the Louis CK experiment. These are far and far away from the mainstream popularity that buying movie tickets have. Don't you think that it's reasonable that web organized crowd-funding could finance even big blockbuster movies as these websites get more popular? Imagine if popular celebrity directors with huge cult-followers…

It's possible, but there's still a lot of details that need to be worked out. For example, how do you deal with projects that don't spend all of the money that was collected? If you've raised $100M to make a movie, it must be tempting to only spend $10M, and pocket the rest.

Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line

#188

Post by cabalamat »

kd5bjo wrote: post #173
angersock wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I replied to a couple points in your thread. Long story short, kill patents, kill copyright, keep trademark.

Without copyright, for example, movies would have to recoup (most of) their production costs before ever showing the film to the public. Once they do, there is huge incentive for theaters to obtain third-party copies and show them without any remuneration to the moviemakers. There are similar arguments for books, music, and video games. How do you propose that this would work in practice?

> Without copyright, for example, movies would have to recoup (most of) their production costs before ever showing the film to the public.

Kinda true, although lots of films make more money through merchandising than the box office.

But even in that situation, why can't movies be funded by crowdsourcing? I'm sure there's lots of fans of LoTR who'd be happy to crwodfund The Hobbit, for example.

Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line

#189

Post by nilsbunger »

viggity wrote: post #6

I really don't like saying this, but here it goes: Don't hate the player, hate the game. We need real, substantive patent reform in this country.

For reform, the trick is to find a solution that works at two ends of the spectrum:

1) A pharma company spends $1B on R&D to develop a drug and get FDA approval. If someone could knock off the resulting compound at 10 cents per pill, we wouldn't have the drug.

2) Software companies, where there are hundreds of potential patents to file or infringe on, and there is tons of iterative evolution.

Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line

#190

Post by cabalamat »

PassTheAmmo wrote: post #172
angersock wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I replied to a couple points in your thread. Long story short, kill patents, kill copyright, keep trademark.

There would be huge problems with killing copyright IMHO. Most open source licenses are based on it for example. http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/pirate-party...

True, but open source would continue fine without copyright -- it's just mean that everything was MIT-licensed.
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