- From: Anthony Taylor <tonyt@ptialaska.net>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 11:06:00 -0800
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
Sirs, I read the reasonable and non-discriminatory FAQ with some consternation and growing dread. What you are proposing is the razing of the web community to erect a supermall. What you propose, if I may mix my metaphors, is the auctoning of the commons to a group of self-interested superpowers who already own all other forms of mass-communication. First, consider the term "non-discriminatory." In a world where a patent is granted for "one-click" shopping, or for playing with a cat with a laser-pointer, how on earth can any patents be "non-discriminatory?" How can a proposed standard of any sort be burdened with ownership? This entire policy discriminates against the poor. It discriminates against the powerless. The cost of software has increased by several *thousand* percent, relative to the cost of the computer hardware on which it runs. The only alternative for many (especially with recent assaults by corporations to destroy first-sale doctrine) is to use Free and Open-Source software. Currently, these Free/Open projects are successful only because of the open nature of the web. Once that open gate is slammed in our face, how can we hope to participate in innovation? How can we hope to continue helping the poor access information currently reserved for those who can afford expensive, recurring, non-transerable software licensing fees? The very nature of the Internet has been open, unencumbered communication and cooperation. From the very start, the Internet required *true* good-faith participation. The World Wide Web was a natural extension of what came before-- an *open* project with protocols and methods based on ideas and documents available to all. These open ideas led to something unprecedented: a global communications medium available to all, unencumbered by restrictions based on the needs of powerful corporations. Consider this: recent licenses of Microsoft Front Page have restricted its use such that it may not be used to create sites critical of Microsoft. What you are proposing is to allow similar licenses to creep into the very fabric of the Web, which, until now, has remained Free! You are selling the freedoms of every person on earth to corporations who have only one consideration: maximize profit. In the past, public works have been corporatized to allow someone who can afford to exploit the value of those works. With the Internet, and the Web, *we can all* exploit their value. It does not take expensive manufacturing facilities; nor does it require expensive and delicate research labs. It *does* require the unencumbered, unrestricted use of *all* our intelligence. It *does* require the free flow of ideas. Please, Sirs, do not allow this to happen. Do not prostitute the ideas of Freedom inherent in the current World Wide Web to the desires of lecherous corporations. If you do, you will see the web erode until nothing important exists; we will have news sites that are nothing but mirrors of the pap presented on TV and current mass-produced newspapers. If you *do* relax your current high standards, please at least do the world's population one curtousy: change your name from the W3C to the WCC: the World-Wide Corporation Consortium. It will at least be intellectually honest. Sincerely, Anthony Taylor
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 15:06:05 UTC