Re: Tim Berners-Lee Approves Patent Policy

tom poe wrote:
> 
> Hi:  patent-free patent-free?  Yahoo!


Not actually.  Tim and the W3C are not really addressing Internet standards
in information freedom terms.  As I understand it, they have retained the
field of use language, which means that supposedly free software that uses
Internet standards cannot really be free.

You have to credit their reworking of the policy, which is tremendously
improved over the direction in which they were originally going; and having
a standards body that is capable of articulating a policy of this sort, and
in practical terms, is tremendously constructive all by itself.

But they have not actually declared that their protocols will be freely
usable, which really is the key.

Seth Johnson


-- 

DRM is Theft!  We are the Stakeholders!

New Yorkers for Fair Use
http://www.nyfairuse.org

[CC] Counter-copyright: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cc/cc.html

I reserve no rights restricting copying, modification or distribution of
this incidentally recorded communication.  Original authorship should be
attributed reasonably, but only so far as such an expectation might hold for
usual practice in ordinary social discourse to which one holds no claim of
exclusive rights.

Received on Sunday, 25 May 2003 21:30:29 UTC