rand fees

• From: jack burke <johnjburke@earthlink.net>
• Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 09:22:00 -0800
• To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
• Message-Id: <4.3.1.2.20011115092001.00b0d380@pop3.norton.antivirus>

would you tell me what this is about, it would appear to be not a good thing.

jjb


According to a story from The Register, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) 
is trying to pass a policy that will enable reasonable and 
nondiscriminatory (RAND) fees for Web-standard products. It is up for 
public debate until October 11, 2001. At least that's what the W3C is 
telling us.
If the RAND policy gets passed, and it probably will, we will be charged 
royalty fees on everything on the Web, including .gif files we use on our 
sites -- per file. Though it seems like an impossible thing to enforce, in 
time it will become the standard. It will start at the corporate level, 
with companies that fail to comply being blacklisted or worse. Then it will 
filter down to the consumer level.

Received on Thursday, 15 November 2001 12:19:41 UTC