- From: Eric Laffoon <sequitur@easystreet.com>
- Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2001 18:33:02 -0700
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
I would like to express a serious concern of historical importance and ethical and moral significance. While I in fact derive income for internet commerce I also enjoy the freedom that the internet provides. I find this change of position on patents extremely distressing. Consider the following. Prior to the internet being made available to the general public in the early 90s most people accessed private networks. Compuserve, AOL and others were the on-line world, but they could not compete with the dearth of content that exploded with the internet. The internet was built around FREE and open technologies. If for instance someone had patented TCP/IP how could this diverse content be available? I submit that there are a lot of technologies far more substantial and crucial than many comparatively trivial patents that have been issued. I have experienced the frustration and anxiety of design issues that have arisen from the GIF patent issues. It seems absurd that there is a legal framework being considered which could be construed to provide a means to lock in a revenue base for which there are no charges being made until the base is locked. It seems unthinkable that the W3C would be behind it. I submit that the internet could not have managed any substantial user base or even come into existence if it had not been free and open. I would also say that in a historical perspective what we do here today is so important that it may be difficult to gauge while looking at a huge pool of resources to siphon off. I believe human civilization was most dramaticallly impacted by the printing press and the exchange of information. However due to the physical cost of materials it favored those who had financial resources. The internet promises to be the greatest impact yet with free information. The prospects to advance the human condition are nearly unfathomable. This brings me to what I believe is the essential immorality of restrictive patents constructed of and carried on the burgeoning free and open internet. The very concept of a patent is that it provides a temporary monopoly to someone who has developed something unique and serviceable. However on the internet this is an absurd notion in almost all cases. 1) In ever case these technologies are subordinate to and dependent on other free and open technologies like TCP/IP, HTTP, XML and others. If it is a matter of taking your bat and ball if others don't like the rules what if the core components were to fall under this situation? What if they started there? Again, it seems absurd that minor and fractional elements could regulate the whole which would likely not even exist if it were so regulated. 2) In most cases the notion that a single entity could in fact service the world population for years to come with patent in hand is also less than rational. In the case of something of the nature of LZW compression and GIFs it is simply a matter of how long it takes the average user to convert over to a new standard. In fact this fractionalizes standards unless there is some more substantial monopolistic leverage to impose them. This may have been more practical in the 1700s but not today. 3) The idea that entities would not develop these technologies without the ability to extract massive royalties as a government endorsed monopoly is also an argument without merit to day. From the perspective of open source developers we see the majority of the internet being served by those whose reward having the software. Alternately corporate motivations are sufficient without the lure of monopoly benefits with patents. I submit they would develop these technologies regardless. I conclude my point on patents by saying that while I do not oppose all patents I believe that the public routes and methods of information exchange ought to remain patent free. I believe there is a substantial lesson in monopoly issues with Microsoft corporation. Once handed the lever to supply the operating system to most all PCs it becomes difficult to envision dislodging them from monopoly status. Any successful temporary monopoly on the internet will almost certain become a permenant one. We must oppose this. I also believe we must insist that any standard which allows for pay services, which almost certainly are inevitable, guarantees certain restrictions. 1) Whatever is to be charged for should be so declared clearly so that companies and consumers can properly evaluate the playing field when deciding what to do. Consumer protection laws often penalize the "bait and switch" technique. We cannot place a temptation like this in the hands of corporate boards with our blessing. 2) Anything being charged for should be done so by virtue of content alone, NOT because of delivery unless the technology delivering is so exceptional or so involved that it is proportionally far more significant than the existing technologies it relies on. It should meet a standards test that it was in fact very clearly non-trivial and does require benefits to recover substantial development efforts. In closing I believe the following. We have a debt to both those who have made the internet possible as well as posterity. That debt is that we keep it free for common content and we do not enhance the digital divide by creating means by which we move beyond the selective and understandable charges for content to where delivery and key technologies proverbially nickel and dime away what is potentially the greatest opportunity to enhance the human condition we have yet known. Forget your board of directors for a moment and consider where you will be in the history books... and whether the less fortunate will even be able to access them. Thank you. -- Eric Laffoon Virtual Artisans Web developer and open source programmer on Quanta Plus for KDE
Received on Saturday, 29 September 2001 21:45:27 UTC