yawho?
Yahoo Crosses The Line
201–210 of 236 posts
Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line
#202Earlier 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. 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.
In a copyright-free world, that merchandise could be made by anyone; there's no guarantee that any merchandising money will make it back to the movie's creators. Crowdfunding can be a viable option, but paying large sums of money before any work is done makes it tempting to abscond with most of the money and produce either an inferior or nonexistent product. How would you prevent this from happening on a regular basi…
> In a copyright-free world, that merchandise could be made by anyone
Not if you keep trademarks and have trademarks on the relevant characters, objects, etc.
Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
This comment is nonsense and is guilt by association. Fred has been on the record numerous times advising startups not to bother with patents.
[citation needed]
The burden of proof is on the accuser. In this case, that would be you. I enjoy HN for the evidence-based approach that most posters take.
Claiming someone is guilty by association or virtue of their profession is bad form.
Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a copyright-free world, that merchandise could be made by anyone; there's no guarantee that any merchandising money will make it back to the movie's creators. Crowdfunding can be a viable option, but paying large sums of money before any work is done makes it tempting to abscond with most of the money and produce either an inferior or nonexistent product. How would you prevent this from happening on a regular basi…
> In a copyright-free world, that merchandise could be made by anyone Not if you keep trademarks and have trademarks on the relevant characters, objects, etc.
If you allow trademarks on the characters and such, you end up in a worse position than when you started: Nobody can reproduce the original work or create any kind of derivative work without permission. This lasts in perpetuity as long as it is defended, and permission will likely never be given out of a belief that the trademark needs to be protected.
In other words, you're free to do anything you want with the Harry Potter movies, so long as you remove all instances of the name "Harry Potter" and all likenesses of Daniel Radcliffe wearing a robe?
Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line
#205Earlier 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...
At least in my opinion, the ultimate goal of Free Software is to kill copyright. In a perfect world, everything would be public domain and at the utmost, we'd have a right to attribution (ie, you may demand to be named as the creator of something you made). Copyleft is, right now, just a "necessary evil" to bring us closer to that goal. In a sense, it's a form of using the enemies' weapons against them - but what we actually want is mutual decommissioning.
Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line
#206I 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.
>Don't hate the player, hate the game.
In case you missed it, it's the players who make the game and keep it running - a self-sustaining spiral of endless bullshit.
Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line
#207The OP wouldn't seem quite so hypocritical if VCs didn't put immense pressure on startups to generate patents. Don't tell me those patents are supposed to be purely defensive, either. They were supposed to stake out a bit of technical turf, just like Yahoo's doing. I'm not saying it's right, but I don't think much of demanding patent generation on one hand and then complaining about their use on the other. If you wan…
Any chance you could post (or privately send to me) information about the process by which you contractually set up patents so they can only be used defensively? I'm very much interested in doing the same. BTW, you're taking a lot of heat in this thread that you don't deserve. I work at a VC funded startup (with USV as an investor no less) and I basically agree with you.
Don't worry about the heat. Karma here has no value, or perhaps even negative value, to me. What I'm saying about VCs, startups, and patents is real and important, even if some self-interested HN'ers don't want it heard or even if Fred was the wrong frame on which to hang that picture. I'll burn some karma to get the word out about the real source of the problem and the real solution.
To answer your question, of course IANAL but the way to do this is to assign the patents to an external entity such as http://www.patentcommons.org/ or http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/, where that entity has a charter allowing only defensive use - and preferably with other entities involved to enforce that charter. A public statement like http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html doesn't hurt either, though it's not legally binding. Now, PC or OIN might not be the exact right vehicle for you, for other reasons, but that's the basic approach.
Disclaimer: I work for Red Hat, which is a strong proponent of this approach and supporter of these organizations. Until software patents go away - and Red Hat is supporting that effort too - this is the only way to play the game that is both safe and (IMO) moral.
Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line
#208Thomas 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 foreseeab…
>they have a fiduciary duty of care to the corporation
I absolutely agree. if you're the CEO of a publicly traded company, it is your fiduciary duty to extract value from the company's assets.
Exhibit #1: Sun Microsystems
if Sun had the cojones to sue Google (re: Java/Android) they'd still be in business today.
Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line
#209Thomas 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 foreseeab…
"So the author's reliance on this de facto "rule not to litigate" is flawed." And also historically ignorant. Yahoo did the same thing to Google when they went public in 2004. Somehow the world didn't end.
No, they didn't. Your memory of history is incorrect.
Overture, a completely different company, sued Google in 2002, two years before their IPO.
Yahoo purchased Overture in 2003. After this, Google settled.
Google's IPO wasn't until 2004.
Re: Yahoo Crosses The Line
#210Thomas 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 foreseeab…
In this case, it's unnecessary to make a leap from government gaining control to corporations gaining control, since patents are created and enforced by governments, not corporations. On top of that, a corporation is by definition an entity created by a government.