- From: Mark Herman II <turbodog@cajun.net>
- Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2001 13:49:27 -0500
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
Dear W3C Patent Policy Working Group, I am extremely concerned about the proposals regarding RAND licensing terms on W3C standards. The rampant distribution of patents by the US is already making it more difficult than ever to develop software without wondering whose toes are being stepped on and what lawsuits will be filed. A high-profile case in point is Amazon's patent on one-click ecommerce transactions. Another would be the patents issued in 1996 for the windowing method of solving the Y2K problem. Many of the patents out there were given to someone simply because they were the first to file the papers. Many of them weren't necessarily innovative, but were just obvious solutions to problems that hadn't presented themselves before. It's unfortunate that the patents are often issued before someone even has a reasonable start of an implementation. If software patents are allowed to continue at their current pace, one day everybody will be wondering why it costs so much just to look at the Internet. Free software and free standards bring computing and the Internet to people who otherwise couldn't have them. Endorsing and legitimizing patents just helps bring people closer to the day when they may have a free operating system but have to pay $5 to view 1/3rd of the pictures on the Internet or $10 to listen to music from it. $10 may be reasonable to the average middle class American, but it may be what someone in another country using a 6 year old computer that was given to them makes in a week. Even hobbyists and students are often forced to use pirated versions of software not because they seek to become criminals but because the pricing structure of development software, for example, is generally targeted to large corporations and not to the average person. Patents may eventually make it hard or impossible to bring free implementations of common programs to these groups. Patented "standards" are just the sort of thing that companies that seek to dominate the Internet need to, for example, make their bundled products appear free while another truly free implementation can't use it because their product would no longer be free. This is already becoming the case even without the endorsement of the W3C. Why should the W3C endorse such activity? It seems hard to even call something that is financially hindered a standard. If the Internet is to reach its potential of bringing the world together, then the most basic building blocks of it must remain free. What is "reasonable" to a majority may still be totally out of reach for countless others. Adopting the RAND proposals will completely undermine the relevance of the W3C. Sincerely, Mark Herman, II
Received on Tuesday, 9 October 2001 14:47:15 UTC