Potential Bad News
Fri, 2004-12-17 01:16
CNet has the following article running about a guy suing to get copyright protections lifted from Software by arguing that patent law is sufficient to protect software...
http://news.com.com/Lawsuit+Software+should+not+be+copyrighted/2100-7350_3-5490228.html
Is this good or bad for FOSS?
My thought:
Bad because the GPL and ALL software licenses depend on copyright law to have any power at all.
Good because if software can not be copyrighted then code can be used without any kind of licensing requirements from anywhere as long as you obey any relevant patents. The downside to this would be a rush to patent ANYTHING and EVERYTHING, which is pretty well where we are today in America anyways.
What do y'all think?
Patents instead of copyrights? :-o :quoi: :-o :quoi:
That's the wrong way around!
Inventors applying for a patent have to prove that their idea is new and original, a process that typically takes years and costs thousands of dollars.
The average open source developer does not have thousands of dollars. Without copyright, anyone can do with his work whatever they want.
My general opinion is that copyright is a good idea, and patents are a bad idea.
See also: Advocacy & Activism forum
http://www.libervis.com/modules/newbb/viewforum.php?forum=7
Patents do have value for physical inventions although I don't know if the incentive they once held is really as good today as it once was. Especially since only a large corporation with deep pockets could hope to protect itself against patent infringement of any kind.
I cannot even doubt that switching copyright with patents is very bad for free as in freedom software. Copyright system is basically the only one of the "IP" laws that enable free software to function within. Patents on the other hand can only lead to many freedoms being restricted. Patents enable monopolies over what is being patented, and patenting software is not only worse than patenting physical products, but completely and utterly wrong. It's actually what we should consider one of the extreme opposites from FOSS, very far from anyhow adopting it.
Thank you
Daniel
Quote from the article:
Computer software should not be protected by copyright laws designed for music, literature and other creative works. ...
Well, this is just so obviusly wrong, the same statement but with "patent" instead of "copyright" makes much more sense:
Computer software should not be protected by patent laws designed for mechanical inventions.
Mechanical here means "everything but symbolic", where software, music, literature and many other creative works are symbolic by nature and therefore copyright is simply more natural choice than patent.
Another quote from the article:
...software makers can protect their products adequately through patents...
I completely agree on this one, but only if software_makers = huge_monopolistic_companies.
I have nothing against a world where there are many software licenses based on copyright law (both free and non-free) but where are NO software patents. I believe that free software development models and its licences would (if not being restricted by patents) prove to be better and ultimately dominate over non-free ones.
The problem I see with this argument made by the article is that one single program can infringe many software patents. Just creating a single webpage in the Internet with patented features, however free they may be, can have more than 15 different features patented. These different patents can belong to many people and many companies. So, if the program doesn't have at least a copyright, it would be difficult for one company to negotiate cross-licensing with another company. At least that is if you want to have a proprietary program.
In the case of software patents, copyright makes more sense than patents, and in that I agree with most of you here.
the biggest problem is we are trying to define a new technology (software) in terms of laws (copyright and patent) that weren't designed for software. Neither patents nor copyrights provide the proper balance of legitimate protection for original and creative work and legitimate rights that users should have.
1) There has never been patent or copyright protection for mathematical equations or formula. a lot of code writing is just the development and implementation of mathematics.
2) A lot of code writing is involves taking an existing process and defining it as code. If for example, I take a library book cataloquing system and computerize it, I haven't done anything that qualifies as original or innovative. Is there any process in Microsoft Office that doesn't have a real world equivalent? Even an OS is just a system for handling communication between hardware systems and applications. The entire system may represent a great deal of work and effort, but each of the subsytems can be broken down into very basic and well understood ideas.
Any protection for software should be for a limited (2-3 yr) time period
protection should be for code copy only, not for methods and concepts.
no protection for code that derives directly from advances in hardware. One of the requirements for patents is that the idea is non-obvious. Changes in hardware capabilities change what is possible to do with software.
No protection for any software that is proposed and adopted as an internet standard.
food for thought