- From: Tony Sellers <tony_sellers@yahoo.com>
- Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 23:04:10 -0700 (PDT)
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
Wrestling again with a swirl of ideas, I find myself again ill equipped to express the fullness of my objection to to the proposed "RAND" licensing proposal for WC3 promulgated but privately patented standards (hereafter RAND). The alternate futures at stake in rand range too greatly to be analyzed in the limited amount of time provided by the committee both before and after the extension of the public comments period. Understand: I appreciate the extension given by the W3C; it is nonetheless true that the power of this brief proposal is greater than can be considered by any average individual in the space of a few short days, weeks, or months. I suspect years of individual pondering would leave the matter incompletely explored. Luckily, the previous work of the W3C and others has provided a mechanism by which we lesser participants may know the minds of others if they should wish to reveal themselves. From each greater or lesser thinker who freely offers his work, we may learn and select the best ideas. In the end we are all richer for having this exchange--the readers for having learned and the authors for being recognized and understood. Throughout the process we are all free to continue if we wish to pursue compensation in the measure we desire. We are not obliged to leave our families or ourselves hungry, poorly sheltered, or even wanting for vast riches if we choose to participate in this exchange. Consider the extent of patents. In the United States, home to the companies who sponsor RAND by employee proxy, patents last seventeen years. Seventeen years ago the internet was a nascent technology comprising the brilliant works of people like Crocker, Cerf, and Postel (to name ony a very few) which is still recognizable today. By opening their work they did not deprive themselves or their companies of legitimate revenue, but built a system in which they prospered, or at least had an equal opportunity to prosper. Their works were extended by other researchers who devised standards like RARP, TFTP booting, POP, and TACACS, which remain to this day. Some implementations remain essentially as standardized. Others evolved. Others died. This was eleven years before 'HTML' appeared in an IETF RFC. This was ten years before the W3C was founded. This was 1984. This was the year that a pioneer personal computer company reintroduced itself to the world in an ad more famous for its cinematic acumen than for its commercial effect. Apple's vigorous young avatar sought to smash te hegemony of the IBM/Microsoft business environment. She failed, but not so miserably as to bankrupt herself. Apple remains, and curiously supports the bland new hegemony of RAND. The real threat to computing freedom apparently was not 1984, but 2001. What dark monolith do we ponder today, and how can we be sure of its intentions for us? Who will smash it if need be? Seventeen years is too long to enshrine a standard when only months ago the world embraced 'internet time' as the new standard for development cycles. Ironically, 'internet time', as a popular buzzword, passed in its approximate definition--six months. Andy Oram covered this ground far better than I can in his piece "The Ghosts of Internet Time" ( http://www.webreview.com/pi/2000/12_22_00.shtml ) Still I feel the need to compare the common protocol standards of yesterday and today to the closed patent traditions of today and standards of tomorrow and to question the proposed change in standards making. The old standards didn't go out of their way initially to embrace non-English or disabled audiences, but they didn't intentionally exclude those potential users either. Today, web sites make broad use of Macromedia's Flash. This frequently disenfranchises several groups from the discussion. Non-speakers of the dominant language of the site must muddle through translations or settle for what gist they can glean. The blind are often totally excluded. Others, like myself do not view Flash-intensive sites (like http://wwww.miami-airport.com ) because either there is no Flash plug-in for their browser on their platform of choice or because they choose (if they can afford otherwise) to adhere to the thin client ideal of the web. I concede that Flash neither sufficient nor necessary to cause this exclusion and I apologize for singling out this actually interesting technology. Its current use is however emblematic of one future we face under RAND, a web where only the most common browser with certain patented plug-ins (how many?), available only for the most popular architecture, and tolerable only at a costly performance point can view a vast amount of content on the web. Others, unable to view this content may form discrete sub-communities on a web of babel. Market forces will moderate this tendency, as they do today, but some organizations or their web designers will prefer artistic self-indulgence over communication in service to their customers and peers. W3C endorsement not of RAND but of only those simpler protocols necessary to online communication and commerce, and insistence on accomodating the use of the minimum necessary protocols could form a levee against technology for its own sake. Alternatively, lower-common-denominator standards can enable the extension of web benefits to consumers and individuals of lesser physical and monetary ability without seriously crimping the ability of content providers to deliver the most polished product they can concieve to more advantaged users. I offer an example, a sight impaired user. Specifically, the key technology is text (ASCII or Unicode). Text-based web tools can take web content and render it into speech via adaptation to speech synthesis products. Control can be achieved through rudimentary speech recognition systems or by using the speech synthesis system to provide feedback to the browser user regarding cursor position. Strip away the speech products and text or low resolution graphics browsers can provide poorer users the same content with trivial costs because of minimal hardware requirements. Site developers can maintain showier content in parallel if they want. Try a text browser on several sites. You'll be surprised at the result both positively and negatively. The positive option is a choice worth preserving. As Jon Snayder recently wrote, "If member companies are concerned with recouping their '`significant research efforts,'' let them compete in the marketplace rather than trying to use the W3C as a tax collector." ( http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comment/2001Oct/1498.html ) The possibly fictional Alex Simons poses an interesting question: "Why create new [intellectual property] when you have to risk it as part of the W3C procedures?" ( http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comment/2001Oct/0017.html ) The true meaning here is 'no one will do so'. The W3C concedes that this has not been the case in the past, and I regretfully remind Alex that the last time I looked closely at one of his company's operating systems, a grep of Microsoft's own TCP/IP stack DLL did show a copyright of the Regents of the University of California, who chose to license that technology royalty free. UC WROTE the BSD license. If profit is always more important than providing something useful to the community which built your industry, why have all major web browser vendors given their product away at one time or another? True artists create because the urge lives within them. Some can pay their bills with their labors. A few become wealthy. Some die in poverty unless they make their living otherwise (e.g., James Joyce). To endorse RAND at the expense of users for the enrichment of developers who have the choice of exploiting their own work without the artificial demand of its inclusion in a standard would be an abrogation of the W3Cs self-image. The W3C proclaims its origins thus: "The World Wide Web Consortium was created in October 1994 to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability." ( http://www.w3.org/Consortium/ ) I submit that no patent encumbered standard can ever be developed as a "common protocol" and that to attempt the promulgation of such would hinder the evolution and interoperability of devices, and more importantly of people on the World Wide Web. The risks of RAND are too great to justify breaking from the status quo. Please reject RAND. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals. http://personals.yahoo.com
Received on Friday, 12 October 2001 02:04:11 UTC