Patents and the environment

From what I have read of the patent policy discussion, the transformation of
the internet by capitalism into a pay-for resource is tantmount to the slow
evolution of the free environment into a cross-cut slope. An example of this
in action is the matter of water. In many 3rd world countries, bottled water
is a necessity of life. Even in european countries this is the case. While
water may be a naturally clean resource, pollution of the industry in using
this free-resource to the point of corrupting it has produced the problems
we have now. Water costs money to treat, it costs to purify and package, and
out it comes at $1.50 or 12 oz. of guaranteed clean water. The cost of large
companies which use these once free resources is passed on to the general
consumer who may not even be related to the industry which abuses their
privileges with water. In the end, what should be a free resources now costs
money to undo the corruption that has been released by the abuse of such a
free resource by companies who are willing to exploit what is cheap in order
to make a faster buck.

Although the internet is a man-made product, the culture that has formed
within it is arguably organic - it is an organism, NOT an organization.

If you wish to control the cost of the organism, do so within your own scope
and bounds... lookat AOL, which for many years restricted the use of FTP
programs and other proxy-based programs... I left AOL quickly after finding
out that I had to use their FTP and their news readers to view newsgroups.
That kind of control is not worth the cost, no matter how "enhanced" the
service may be. For a company to corrupt their own resources is fine -
people pay for this... but to remove the free aspects of this will fragment
the internet into pieces...

Anyone who believes otherwise hasn't been following the most recent XML
propaganda, in which Microsoft all-but-states that they have basically
transformed the internet with XML.

I have relied on the W3C for an honest approach to web authoring ever since
I began in 1993. They have provided the simplest tools for free - the most
basic standards for free - they have gone to bat against browser wars which
fell prey to the the capitalist sandbox foible (i.e. to play in the sandbox,
you have to follow the rules of who owns the sandbox)... Is IE a better
browser? In their own eyes, will the answer ever be no? Is Mozzila the best
browser? Maybe not, but they appeal to standards that are set by a larger
community. They admit that the best judge of standards are those that exist
within a conciliar context that is free to take into account all of the
interested parties because it cannot stake any particular claim in any one
of those technologies...

I have always feared the day when the W3C patented their standards - and
thus force Microsoft or any other arge comany to suddenly bow in obedience.

The web will simply go further underground, where everything is free - we
have already seen this with the music industry... mp3 top porn and warez in
search engines... when records cost a lot to make, the price of albums was
justified... but cds are made for less than a dollar, and cost more in many
cases... it is no wonder that P2P solutions have made free music possible...
warez and porn are the same industry... will web design go underground to
remain free? Undoubtedly... MS will shun WindowsME... in fact, they will
pull support once they have a large enough backing from the 80% estimates
who havent registered Windows yet use it daily... Look at the MS list of
dead programs on ther website.... it's amazing ow many dead apps there
are... prfectly good programs that cease support in order to encourage the
purchase of new versions and new OS...

What more needs to be send... I don't wnt to have to hack and pirate to make
web pages, but I know a lot of very bright people who will do so... and the
companies will never sleep at night because the hackers will continue until
justice prevails...

Just say no to RAND.

Thanks,
Jacob Gorny
www.gornystudios.com

Received on Thursday, 3 January 2002 03:01:06 UTC