Regarding: software is math. That's not really up for dispute.
Except that you can make artwork with Photoshop but you can't with pages of algorithms that make up the software (unless you're good at origami I suppose) so they aren't quite the same. As soon as you combine the math with technology that can add so much value to it then that value distinguishes it from it on its own. You can carve out a disc and use it for a table but stick 4 of them on a box and you have a vehicle, which has an entirely different value. You can't assign the disc a value on its own and ignore the context it's used in. An aeroplane wing sitting on the ground is valueless but on the side of a plane, it isn't, yet the object hasn't changed.
A rounded rectangle on its own is valueless but when you construct a mobile device in that shape because you have put it in context of a usage scenario and you change the way we use computers then the value changes. That shouldn't prevent people using the shape but the patent has merit in that context:
I am not so sure that Apple has redefined anything. I have done 1 to 1 comparisons on a number of occasions and it has always resulted in no clear winner.
The further we get away from the old T-9 keyboards, the easier it is to forget the shift. Pretty much all phones are now fullscreen, fully multi-touch with centralised app distribution. Tablets and palmtops were operated with styluses and didn't have rich operating systems. I class that as a redefinition of mobile computing - where we use computers the way we should have always used computers, with our fingers.
Give a Windows CE palmtop to a 3 year old and then an iPhone and you can see the difference. The only common outcome is they'll both end up covered in saliva and snot.
I would argue and also tend to agree with Steve Wozniak that Apple is not innovating now in the way that it did in the past and has become merely a consumer device manufacturer. It has less and less focus on creative use, openness and many other aspects that actually made it great in the first place.
That sort of thing happened when Wozniak was long gone from the company. At the beginning it was all proprietary because there weren't enough sales to make a standard. They moved to unix software and USB/VGA/DVI instead of serial/ADB etc. Since iOS, they have locked down a few things again but that's more to do with the security. When you have 400 million units out in the world and they all run Flash, you're putting the security of 400 million people in Adobe's lap who might one day decide not to have your best interests at heart. It comes across as oppressive control until there's a problem and then people huddle under the blanket.
It reminds me of the speech in a Few Good Men:
"We live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You, Lieutenant Whineberg? You want me on that wall! You need me on that wall! I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it!"
Of course nobody wants the Code Red but there is always a compromise - Android is locked down too. You can't do certain things without rooting your device and loading a custom ROM and while you can get binaries outside Google Play, you are strongly encouraged not to. The whole OS is open source but as I said, Google gets their revenue elsewhere and they have used patents to create a monopoly. The difference is not so much in the ethics as it is in the business model.
The iPad 4 may be a good example. Just putting in a faster processor is no big deal, and definitely not innovative in any meaningful sense. In fact I would suggest that the "innovations" since the original iPhone are largely fine tuning, but not real innovation
Apple (or at least the company they bought) designed their own processor for the iPad 4. To say it's 'just faster' again highlights how people ascribe different levels of importance to things based on what matters to them. If that processor goes on to replace Intel's processor and outperform the competition then it might be treated as innovative because people feel the change. Not everything that is innovative will have an immediate impact.
We also shouldn't expect innovation at all times when we don't hold anyone else to that standard. When was the last time any tech company other than Apple did something significantly innovative? Google, Microsoft and all the mobile phone manufacturers have spent the last 5 years catching up to Apple. As you can see from the tablet market, they are still trying. At this point Apple wouldn't warrant criticism even if they stood perfectly still.
I personally actually have to work quite hard for the dollars (actually Euros :-)) I spend on toys so I generally look fairly carefully for the "value for money" in purchasing. with a fixed disposable income there is a limit to how much "premium price" I am willing to pay for anything.
And would you feel the same if someone said that about the product of your work? If you held the quality of your work to a standard and found that in order to meet that standard, you couldn't compete on price with someone in China working for 5c an hour will you lower your price out of kindness even though you keep getting called on for work because your quality is higher?
Products like the Nexus and Kindle are used to suggest Apple could be cheaper but they are making zero profit on them. Google and Amazon treat them as conduits for content they do make a profit on. It's just a different model. Value is also subjective. To many, Justin Bieber's music has value.
I very much appreciate your good arguments and the discussion !!
I appreciate your input here too. It's always good to hear points of view expressed in a rational and concise way where agreement is not an ultimate requirement.
Regarding: software is math. That's not really up for dispute.
Except that you can make artwork with Photoshop but you can't with pages of algorithms that make up the software (unless you're good at origami I suppose) so they aren't quite the same. As soon as you combine the math with technology that can add so much value to it then that value distinguishes it from it on its own. You can carve out a disc and use it for a table but stick 4 of them on a box and you have a vehicle, which has an entirely different value. You can't assign the disc a value on its own and ignore the context it's used in. An aeroplane wing sitting on the ground is valueless but on the side of a plane, it isn't, yet the object hasn't changed.
A rounded rectangle on its own is valueless but when you construct a mobile device in that shape because you have put it in context of a usage scenario and you change the way we use computers then the value changes. That shouldn't prevent people using the shape but the patent has merit in that context:
I am not so sure that Apple has redefined anything. I have done 1 to 1 comparisons on a number of occasions and it has always resulted in no clear winner.
The further we get away from the old T-9 keyboards, the easier it is to forget the shift. Pretty much all phones are now fullscreen, fully multi-touch with centralised app distribution. Tablets and palmtops were operated with styluses and didn't have rich operating systems. I class that as a redefinition of mobile computing - where we use computers the way we should have always used computers, with our fingers.
Give a Windows CE palmtop to a 3 year old and then an iPhone and you can see the difference. The only common outcome is they'll both end up covered in saliva and snot.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
I would argue and also tend to agree with Steve Wozniak that Apple is not innovating now in the way that it did in the past and has become merely a consumer device manufacturer. It has less and less focus on creative use, openness and many other aspects that actually made it great in the first place.
That sort of thing happened when Wozniak was long gone from the company. At the beginning it was all proprietary because there weren't enough sales to make a standard. They moved to unix software and USB/VGA/DVI instead of serial/ADB etc. Since iOS, they have locked down a few things again but that's more to do with the security. When you have 400 million units out in the world and they all run Flash, you're putting the security of 400 million people in Adobe's lap who might one day decide not to have your best interests at heart. It comes across as oppressive control until there's a problem and then people huddle under the blanket.
It reminds me of the speech in a Few Good Men:
"We live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You, Lieutenant Whineberg? You want me on that wall! You need me on that wall! I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it!"
Of course nobody wants the Code Red but there is always a compromise - Android is locked down too. You can't do certain things without rooting your device and loading a custom ROM and while you can get binaries outside Google Play, you are strongly encouraged not to. The whole OS is open source but as I said, Google gets their revenue elsewhere and they have used patents to create a monopoly. The difference is not so much in the ethics as it is in the business model.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
The iPad 4 may be a good example. Just putting in a faster processor is no big deal, and definitely not innovative in any meaningful sense. In fact I would suggest that the "innovations" since the original iPhone are largely fine tuning, but not real innovation
Apple (or at least the company they bought) designed their own processor for the iPad 4. To say it's 'just faster' again highlights how people ascribe different levels of importance to things based on what matters to them. If that processor goes on to replace Intel's processor and outperform the competition then it might be treated as innovative because people feel the change. Not everything that is innovative will have an immediate impact.
We also shouldn't expect innovation at all times when we don't hold anyone else to that standard. When was the last time any tech company other than Apple did something significantly innovative? Google, Microsoft and all the mobile phone manufacturers have spent the last 5 years catching up to Apple. As you can see from the tablet market, they are still trying. At this point Apple wouldn't warrant criticism even if they stood perfectly still.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
I personally actually have to work quite hard for the dollars (actually Euros :-)) I spend on toys so I generally look fairly carefully for the "value for money" in purchasing. with a fixed disposable income there is a limit to how much "premium price" I am willing to pay for anything.
And would you feel the same if someone said that about the product of your work? If you held the quality of your work to a standard and found that in order to meet that standard, you couldn't compete on price with someone in China working for 5c an hour will you lower your price out of kindness even though you keep getting called on for work because your quality is higher?
Products like the Nexus and Kindle are used to suggest Apple could be cheaper but they are making zero profit on them. Google and Amazon treat them as conduits for content they do make a profit on. It's just a different model. Value is also subjective. To many, Justin Bieber's music has value.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
I very much appreciate your good arguments and the discussion !!
I appreciate your input here too. It's always good to hear points of view expressed in a rational and concise way where agreement is not an ultimate requirement.
Yes. Once again I have to say you have some good points, but to many of them there is an alternative perspective. The idea of the software itself being a saleable product is not the only possible business model. As I mentioned somewhere earlier I come from a scientific background and the ENTIRE internet was actually "invented" by publicly funded programming and distributed free of charge. Similarly, the vast majority of scientific software was originally distributed on the universities network (in the pre-software patent days) for free among colleagues. Most of the unix developments were also created and distributed "free".
Then we have the whole open source development and the FOSS and Linux community which is also largely sponsored by private companies who provide programmers time and resources, together with privateers who do it for love of the challenge or whatever. So to take the view that software must be patentable is something that will kill small developers and even the commercially sponsored FOSS programmers and put ALL software firmly in the hands of the big players ... including Microsoft and Apple ... and many others. It is just not possible to program in a world where algorithms are patented ... particularly since the actual claims are more or less impossible to understand (which is NOT a coincidence. the patent lawyers know what they are doing and why.)
I think you may be overestimating one side of the topic, and underestimating the other.
Getting back to Woz. Actually I was an early adopter of the Apple II, which opened creative possibilities in scientific laboratory automation that was simply not affordable from the Big Iron manufacturers .. IBM, DEC, WANG and numerous others who have long since vanished. With its expandability and flexibility it was a real breakthrough. We even built wire-wrapped adaptors, 16-Bit AD Converters and the like from discrete components to do things that were never and will never be a part of the standard "sealed box" commodity products that Apple (and others) are putting on the market today. And believe it or not, MANY of the real breakthroughs in science come from scientists (Tim Berners-Lee) is a well known example, who do not shirk at the challenge of actually building technology that they need/want for their real scientific interests. This is now an area that is in grave danger from the side-effects of software patents.
In the modern times, this may cost the US dearly. FRAND for example is an insurmountable barrier to garage-inventors and programmers. If you don't sell the product, you have no revenue for even cheap license fees for technology. So you are blocked out of the market entirely. The USPTO is, in my view, criminally negligent in scrutinizing patent applications. The high percentage of patents that are declared invalid (if a defendent is willing or able to fight it out at all in the courts) is telling. In the EU it is orders of magnitude less of a problem because the patent office is much more diligent and tends not to issue junk or obvious patents.
I also suggest it is worth remembering that technological development in the components industry is not exclusively for the smartphone market. Companies like Samsung and others who are innovating, for example, in screen technologies have much wider application areas in their cross-hairs, many of which are highly profitable on a per-unit basis. Aerospace, Industrial automation, scientific instrumentation, are all examples where faster processors, higher component density and other aspects are driving the development. My point is that these things are R&D projects IN THEIR OWN RIGHT, so the mere fact that a smartphone manufacturer discovers the technology and finds application areas, is NOT in my mind "redefining the market". ANY application areas where memory, cpu speeds, graphics displays and networking technology are equally "re-defining" the market when you look at it that way. Apply this idea to the iPad 4 and you will understand what I mean. Actually the AI review of the iPad 4 picked up this point. It is NOT a major innovation in its own right. Faster rendering is certainly cool, but the benefit is only relevant when the whole technological chain, including bandwidth and throughput is also at a higher level. Being able to render the output from a slow internet server faster, is not in itself going to give you a better experience until the data actually arrives to be rendered.
So these general considerations form largely the basis for my skepticism about Apples "thermonuclear war". In my view it is mutually assured destruction and it WILL hit Apple sooner or later if import bans become a permanent feature of the us market. Bet on it.
But my personal agenda has also a more socially oriented component. WE, the end users, are the ones paying the F*ing lawsuits. It is really horrid that more resources are going into litigation than into R&D. Everyone suffers, everything is MUCH more expensive, effectively blocking the financially underprivileged from the digital world. I think that is BAD for society in general. In the US it is getting out of control. I would like to see the poor kids in 3-rd world countries get access to the knowledge and learning resources of the internet. In my mind that is IMPORTANT. More important than setting up the market so that the wealthy few can enjoy their Cartier Watches, Armani Suits, Llamborginis, Diamond tiaras and whatever.
So if Apple wants to stay a niche Player, and if their customers are happy to pay far too much for what they actually get, its fine by me. (incidentally I actually have a fairly high income personally by US standards, so to some extent I can also enjoy expensive toys where I choose to do so,) But I think the right to clean water, electricity and communications, basic health services, access to education and many other things, are fundamental human rights, which are actually being attacked by Apple, Microsoft and some other players using aggressive "IP Litigation".
Anyway you look at it, Apple is getting thrashed by Android in the world market, precisely because they have decided to be a "premium price commodity manufacturer". As the world's "richest" company, they could make other choices. They don't. They chose to be greed-motivated. 75% of the world smartphone market is Android based. That is the reality. Steve Jobs was talking crap when he claimed it is "stolen from apple". He knew it, and their "stealing" of the motorola FRAND patents on communication technology is adequate proof as I have mentioned before. To claim there is some justification in demanding discriminatory licence fees for trivial technology for "Android" products, and simultaneously refusing to pay for the FRAND Technology that makes the iPhone possible AT ALL, is hubris. I don't say that BECAUSE apple does it. The criticism is equally valid for all players who try that crap.
The Apple-Motorola FRAND litigation got tossed in 2 US courts already. It will be interesting to see what happens with the M$ Motorola litigation. My guess is that Motorola will get less than the 2.5% per device license that they claimed as a starting point for the FRAND license negotiations that both Apple and M$ refused to follow in good faith. But they will get MUCH more than the fractions of a cent that these two litigants are aiming for.
Now there is a good argument that FRAND patents should be cheap(er). But it is not OK to do this AFTER the fact. If the patent holders think that they will not get the ROI on their FRAND patents that make it worthwhile, then they will be more than reluctant to contribute to FRAND. That is happening already. I doubt that it is in the interests of the economy or society as a whole. Its also worth remembering that ALL parties are entirely self-serving in their litigation arguments. Apple and Microsoft are no exceptions. But that is the whole point of FRAND. It is SUPPOSED to produce negotiated agreements based on a whole list of factors, including the "importance" of individual claims in the basket of Patents concerned. This is not a simple matter, and probably not one that the courts are well placed to resolve. In the end it is likely that its will turn out to be a no-win battle and Apple will also lose something valuable to them ... their profit margin. But the customers will pay. Count on that !
Just taking my industry (generic pharmaceuticals) as an example. My company is VERY quality oriented in the EU where I have first-hand direct experience. But the margins are low in the generics business (generic pharmaceuticals are off-patent products). Yet the R&D costs to bring a new pharmaceutical product to market lie at aroud $1 Billion per new chemical entity. (in laymans terms, new drugs). And the time-to-market often means that even patented products (and believe me, big pharma is good at patenting) may often not have much patent lifetime left by the time they actually come to the pharmacies. So from the 17 year patent lifetime, often only 2-5 years are left to recover the Billion in R&D. There is simply no comparison to a "rubber-band" or "rounded corners" patent. I hope we can all agree that the patients have a RIGHT to high quality pharma with proven effectivity and safety on the one hand, and manufacturing quality on the other. (BTW I don't want to get into a discussion of Pharma in general here in AI. It's just an argument to underline that software patents are not really comparable in any meaningful sense to utility or chemical patents. There are orders-of-maginitude differences in the real costs, but also in the stakes. Staying alive is something most of us place high value on.) Yes, you can also die if your smartphone fails, but that is an exceptional situation.
So from my perspective we have both technical and social aspects to consider before we can really take firm positions. I don't fundamentally deny or question the right to "for profit" motivations, and I don't think that any company is "ethical" in the sense that I use the word. But the misuse of the patent system, as is currently the case in the US, and which is exemplified by the Jobsian "thermonuclear war" is something that is against the interests of society, the customers and higher values in terms of human development. Profit is OK, often it is honest, but profit at any cost, or externalization of the costs (somebody else pays) is not defensible. We do not live in a black-and-white world. Nor do we live in a perfect world, but I feel we have a duty and obligation to society in general and the coming generations in particular to ensure that the world they live in is not worse than it could be if we make the right choices now. You may use the words "idealistic". Maybe it is. But a world without ideals and respect for fundamental human rights is not a world that I would be prepared to defend.
As an aside: in my area of current professional expertise (Privacy Law), there are also clear cultural divergences between the US and the EU. These take many forms, but the bottom line is that we do have incompatible expectations. (Incidentally in the EU and particularly in Germany, the right to privacy and to informational self determination are constitutional rights. In the US this is unfortunately not the case. So Americans often don't understand why we tend to get hysterical when the US infringes basic human and constitutional privacy rights (of EU Citizens), and Europeans don't understand why the Americans get hysterical when they perceive that Big Government is limiting the right to "make money". It bears reflecting on this. While we think we share certain basic views and beliefs. This is increasingly not the case. The sad thing is that the EU is becoming less relevant to the world than it used to be ... with the Chinese becoming the dominant power in all areas, and we share even fewer basic views on freedom and other basic human rights with them. Did you know that there are more chinese with IQ over 150 than there are inhabitants in the Americas, and that there are more chinese with an IQ over 180 than the US population, or that they are turning out around 10 times the number of technology graduates in China than in the US. ?
The idea of the software itself being a saleable product is not the only possible business model. the ENTIRE internet was actually "invented" by publicly funded programming and distributed free of charge.
Sponsored by private companies who provide programmers time and resources, together with privateers who do it for love of the challenge or whatever.
There was a direct economic benefit for investors in the internet though. Look at examples that don't have a direct return like Wikipedia where they have to regularly put up banners begging people for money. You can't pay a mortgage and support a family with the hope that someone will offer you free money for an altruistic endeavour. I don't prefer the for-profit business model by any means, I just recognise that it's more often than not the successful model.
So to take the view that software must be patentable is something that will kill small developers and even the commercially sponsored FOSS programmers and put ALL software firmly in the hands of the big players ... including Microsoft and Apple ... and many others. It is just not possible to program in a world where algorithms are patented ... particularly since the actual claims are more or less impossible to understand (which is NOT a coincidence. the patent lawyers know what they are doing and why.)
I think that some form of protection is a must. I agree that too broad a protection harms progress. The main reason given on the following site for why patents are favoured is because copyright just isn't working well enough:
This goes beyond software - the legal system just hasn't kept up at all with the digital movement and the global economy and tech companies are using whatever means they can to protect themselves.
We even built wire-wrapped adaptors, 16-Bit AD Converters and the like from discrete components to do things that were never and will never be a part of the standard "sealed box" commodity products that Apple (and others) are putting on the market today.
You can say that about cars too though switching over to electronic engine management systems from mechanical/electrical. Computers are much more advanced than they used to be - transistor count is in the billions instead of thousands. Even so, there's nothing stopping you making a USB or PCI device.
the mere fact that a smartphone manufacturer discovers the technology and finds application areas, is NOT in my mind "redefining the market". ANY application areas where memory, cpu speeds, graphics displays and networking technology are equally "re-defining" the market when you look at it that way.
That would suggest that laptops have been significantly redefined over the years but nobody would say that. The clamshell design hasn't changed much in 30 years:
By contrast, the way we use mobile devices has changed entirely. Could a doctor effectively carry a clamshell laptop to a patient's bedside? Not really but now they can take an iPad or similar and access an entire world of information conveniently. You could say it's only because of advances in the components but it's not just that. The Apple Newton had a lot of the same core capability in 1993.
WE, the end users, are the ones paying the F*ing lawsuits. It is really horrid that more resources are going into litigation than into R&D.
Perhaps but say Apple spent $1b between 2001 and 2007 developing the iPhone and then Samsung picks one up in a store for $500, picks it apart (there are court documents showing they did this) and doesn't have to make any of the hard decisions (a lot of the costs are in making the mistakes). They then implement it freely and make $6b with a fraction of the R&D:
to what we have now, again without making the hard decisions over how to solve the problems. Is that fair? Would everyone feel the same way if it was Apple sitting doing nothing and waiting for other companies to make the mistakes, find a solution that works and then do it the same way?
Apple made a profit because the competition couldn't catch up fast enough (it took Google 2 years to get the software keyboard in Android) but if everybody had undercut them in price quickly by compromising on quality, the imitators profit more than the innovator. Of course in the short term, the customers applaud but what happens when the innovators stop putting in the effort?
We don't have to wonder, we all saw the rut the mobile phone industry got into. Apple changed it and everybody smacks their forehead saying 'well, obvious really' and proceed to deny them the credit for it. But further, say their terms aren't acceptable and support imitators with a different business model.
Everyone suffers, everything is MUCH more expensive, effectively blocking the financially underprivileged from the digital world.
Apple making high quality products doesn't prevent the underprivileged accessing the internet. If that was all that was available it would but that isn't the case.
Apple could be more competitive on price in a number of areas but so could Sony, Volkswagen, BMW, Prada, Calvin Klein... If the customers won't stop buying from them, why would they? Apple can't keep up with the demand as it is. Perhaps that is what motivates people to encourage others not to buy from Apple but it should be done in equal measure for products lke the Galaxy S3, which are similarly 'overpriced'.
I think the right to clean water, electricity and communications, basic health services, access to education and many other things, are fundamental human rights, which are actually being attacked by Apple, Microsoft and some other players using aggressive "IP Litigation".
I don't see how you link those together. Wouldn't patents on drugs affect people in poverty more than anything Apple does?
"The Gates Foundation has spent $6 billion on vaccine-related projects. That’s a lot of money, until you realize that the top-selling vaccine, Pfizer’s Prevnar 13, will soon generate that much revenue in a year. All told, the Gates Foundation has given away $25 billion so far. That is less than the National Institutes of Health uses in a year. Gates’ entire net worth is only twice the annual budget of the NIH. It might seem that America’s richest man can move any mountain, but he has to pick his battles. That’s why he put so much effort into figuring out how to get drug giants like GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Pfizer and Novartis to try to find ways to get their vaccines to the developing world. It would be great if wealth could just flow easily into making the health care systems of poor countries more robust."
75% of the world smartphone market is Android based. That is the reality.
That is the current quarterly sales ratio. Overall, Apple has sold 400 million iOS devices vs 500 million Android (these figures will vary by a few tens of millions since they were published).
Steve Jobs was talking crap when he claimed it is "stolen from apple". He knew it
Why did Google offer to license their technology? It wasn't just stolen from Apple, Oracle sued Google and Microsoft now gets paid by manufacturers shipping Android devices.
software patents are not really comparable in any meaningful sense to utility or chemical patents. There are orders-of-maginitude differences in the real costs, but also in the stakes.
What about viagra or restless leg lotion vs software that controls a pacemaker? What's more important? In terms of real costs, you can't say that software costs are always far less and therefore less worthy of protection, especially since if medical developents are mostly government funded, the inventors aren't at risk of losing their income. A single video game can take $20-100m to develop.
the misuse of the patent system, as is currently the case in the US, and which is exemplified by the Jobsian "thermonuclear war" is something that is against the interests of society, the customers and higher values in terms of human development.
I don't support their war against Android entirely but the legal system has obviously given them insufficient protection over their efforts.
a world without ideals and respect for fundamental human rights is not a world that I would be prepared to defend.
This is a common projection made from all sides. People claim that Google's and Facebook's models of offering services at low cost while compromising personal information to favour businesses is not something we should advocate. Likewise the motivation for ever-cheaper products leading to 'slave labour' in the 3rd world.
On the one hand, you'd say expensive products the poor can't afford harms them, others would say low profit products they have to build forces them to work for low wages.
On the one hand, you'd say Apple has a locked down for-profit business model that harms access to resources, others would say advertising supported services compromise individual privacy.
We should all aim to get as close to the scenario where we have affordable products, fair competition, fair labour, individual privacy and a thousand other good things but they have inherent conflicts that ensure we can only ever reach a compromise between them all. I will gladly fight for the most important ones and I don't place financial prosperity in that category but I feel creatives and inventors should be incentivised and protected, otherwise we are doing them a disservice.
The idea of the software itself being a saleable product is not the only possible business model. the ENTIRE internet was actually "invented" by publicly funded programming and distributed free of charge.
Sponsored by private companies who provide programmers time and resources, together with privateers who do it for love of the challenge or whatever.
There was a direct economic benefit for investors in the internet though. Look at examples that don't have a direct return like Wikipedia where they have to regularly put up banners begging people for money. You can't pay a mortgage and support a family with the hope that someone will offer you free money for an altruistic endeavour. I don't prefer the for-profit business model by any means, I just recognise that it's more often than not the successful model.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
So to take the view that software must be patentable is something that will kill small developers and even the commercially sponsored FOSS programmers and put ALL software firmly in the hands of the big players ... including Microsoft and Apple ... and many others. It is just not possible to program in a world where algorithms are patented ... particularly since the actual claims are more or less impossible to understand (which is NOT a coincidence. the patent lawyers know what they are doing and why.)
I think that some form of protection is a must. I agree that too broad a protection harms progress. The main reason given on the following site for why patents are favoured is because copyright just isn't working well enough:
This goes beyond software - the legal system just hasn't kept up at all with the digital movement and the global economy and tech companies are using whatever means they can to protect themselves.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
We even built wire-wrapped adaptors, 16-Bit AD Converters and the like from discrete components to do things that were never and will never be a part of the standard "sealed box" commodity products that Apple (and others) are putting on the market today.
You can say that about cars too though switching over to electronic engine management systems from mechanical/electrical. Computers are much more advanced than they used to be - transistor count is in the billions instead of thousands. Even so, there's nothing stopping you making a USB or PCI device.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
the mere fact that a smartphone manufacturer discovers the technology and finds application areas, is NOT in my mind "redefining the market". ANY application areas where memory, cpu speeds, graphics displays and networking technology are equally "re-defining" the market when you look at it that way.
That would suggest that laptops have been significantly redefined over the years but nobody would say that. The clamshell design hasn't changed much in 30 years:
By contrast, the way we use mobile devices has changed entirely. Could a doctor effectively carry a clamshell laptop to a patient's bedside? Not really but now they can take an iPad or similar and access an entire world of information conveniently. You could say it's only because of advances in the components but it's not just that. The Apple Newton had a lot of the same core capability in 1993.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
WE, the end users, are the ones paying the F*ing lawsuits. It is really horrid that more resources are going into litigation than into R&D.
Perhaps but say Apple spent $1b between 2001 and 2007 developing the iPhone and then Samsung picks one up in a store for $500, picks it apart (there are court documents showing they did this) and doesn't have to make any of the hard decisions (a lot of the costs are in making the mistakes). They then implement it freely and make $6b with a fraction of the R&D:
to what we have now, again without making the hard decisions over how to solve the problems. Is that fair? Would everyone feel the same way if it was Apple sitting doing nothing and waiting for other companies to make the mistakes, find a solution that works and then do it the same way?
Apple made a profit because the competition couldn't catch up fast enough (it took Google 2 years to get the software keyboard in Android) but if everybody had undercut them in price quickly by compromising on quality, the imitators profit more than the innovator. Of course in the short term, the customers applaud but what happens when the innovators stop putting in the effort?
We don't have to wonder, we all saw the rut the mobile phone industry got into. Apple changed it and everybody smacks their forehead saying 'well, obvious really' and proceed to deny them the credit for it. But further, say their terms aren't acceptable and support imitators with a different business model.
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Originally Posted by Taniwha
Everyone suffers, everything is MUCH more expensive, effectively blocking the financially underprivileged from the digital world.
Apple making high quality products doesn't prevent the underprivileged accessing the internet. If that was all that was available it would but that isn't the case.
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Originally Posted by Taniwha
if their customers are happy to pay far too much for what they actually get, its fine by me.
Apple could be more competitive on price in a number of areas but so could Sony, Volkswagen, BMW, Prada, Calvin Klein... If the customers won't stop buying from them, why would they? Apple can't keep up with the demand as it is. Perhaps that is what motivates people to encourage others not to buy from Apple but it should be done in equal measure for products lke the Galaxy S3, which are similarly 'overpriced'.
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Originally Posted by Taniwha
I think the right to clean water, electricity and communications, basic health services, access to education and many other things, are fundamental human rights, which are actually being attacked by Apple, Microsoft and some other players using aggressive "IP Litigation".
I don't see how you link those together. Wouldn't patents on drugs affect people in poverty more than anything Apple does?
"The Gates Foundation has spent $6 billion on vaccine-related projects. That’s a lot of money, until you realize that the top-selling vaccine, Pfizer’s Prevnar 13, will soon generate that much revenue in a year. All told, the Gates Foundation has given away $25 billion so far. That is less than the National Institutes of Health uses in a year. Gates’ entire net worth is only twice the annual budget of the NIH. It might seem that America’s richest man can move any mountain, but he has to pick his battles. That’s why he put so much effort into figuring out how to get drug giants like GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Pfizer and Novartis to try to find ways to get their vaccines to the developing world. It would be great if wealth could just flow easily into making the health care systems of poor countries more robust."
Should we end the patents on drugs to prevent commercial abuse?
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Originally Posted by Taniwha
75% of the world smartphone market is Android based. That is the reality.
That is the current quarterly sales ratio. Overall, Apple has sold 400 million iOS devices vs 500 million Android (these figures will vary by a few tens of millions since they were published).
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Originally Posted by Taniwha
Steve Jobs was talking crap when he claimed it is "stolen from apple". He knew it
Why did Google offer to license their technology? It wasn't just stolen from Apple, Oracle sued Google and Microsoft now gets paid by manufacturers shipping Android devices.
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Originally Posted by Taniwha
software patents are not really comparable in any meaningful sense to utility or chemical patents. There are orders-of-maginitude differences in the real costs, but also in the stakes.
What about viagra or restless leg lotion vs software that controls a pacemaker? What's more important? In terms of real costs, you can't say that software costs are always far less and therefore less worthy of protection, especially since if medical developents are mostly government funded, the inventors aren't at risk of losing their income. A single video game can take $20-100m to develop.
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Originally Posted by Taniwha
the misuse of the patent system, as is currently the case in the US, and which is exemplified by the Jobsian "thermonuclear war" is something that is against the interests of society, the customers and higher values in terms of human development.
I don't support their war against Android entirely but the legal system has obviously given them insufficient protection over their efforts.
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Originally Posted by Taniwha
a world without ideals and respect for fundamental human rights is not a world that I would be prepared to defend.
This is a common projection made from all sides. People claim that Google's and Facebook's models of offering services at low cost while compromising personal information to favour businesses is not something we should advocate. Likewise the motivation for ever-cheaper products leading to 'slave labour' in the 3rd world.
On the one hand, you'd say expensive products the poor can't afford harms them, others would say low profit products they have to build forces them to work for low wages.
On the one hand, you'd say Apple has a locked down for-profit business model that harms access to resources, others would say advertising supported services compromise individual privacy.
We should all aim to get as close to the scenario where we have affordable products, fair competition, fair labour, individual privacy and a thousand other good things but they have inherent conflicts that ensure we can only ever reach a compromise between them all. I will gladly fight for the most important ones and I don't place financial prosperity in that category but I feel creatives and inventors should be incentivised and protected, otherwise we are doing them a disservice.
Hi Marvin,
In the interests of not getting MUCH too long (and I don't even know if anyone else is interested in this particular thread) I'm going to be somewhat selective.
You make a lot of good arguments some of them even convincing. ;-) When I look at what we customarily describe these days as the "digital world" I tend to agree that this has come to be SO important for society in general that it invokes the need to look again at our priorities. In fact I think we largely agree on many points, albeit often from different vantage points.
The sticking point seems not to be the basic agreement that it is a good thing for bright ideas to be recognized and receive some kind of protection. What is killing innovation in the us seems to be the low quality of patents on the one side, and the artificial need to acquire defensive patent portfolios in order to survive in business AT ALL in the high-tech market. In my view this is a very bad derailment of the fundamental idea of patents, namely to promote innovation for the good of society. Now its never going to be feasible to predict in advance what is going to turn out to be a milestone invention (leaving the software patent argument for the moment). Currently, with the ability of the patent holder to block development by restrictive licensing, the balance is skewed and the interests of society at large are not being protected at all.
BTW, Don't try to make Bill Gates look like Robin Hood. He wasn't and he isn't. He got to be obscenely rich by creating and abusing a monopoly power at the expense of society in general. Philanthropic activities, in the absence of a prison sentence, do not compensate society for that. No more than it would be acceptable to society to put the boss of the columbian cocaine mafia on the same pedestal simply because he distributes a small fraction of his ill-gotten wealth to a select part of society on terms that he determines.
An aside: even big pharma gives away some of its patented drugs. My company for example distributes an antimalaria drug free to the tune of $1.7 Billion to third world countries. It's just a drop in the ocean and probably more a matter of image than ethical concerns.
But as long as the patent system is capable of being abused and used to block both access to the digital world, and as an anticompetitive tool, then something is fundamentally wrong. As I mentioned a couple of times, this is a BAD coming mainly from the US and its legal system. Your mention of the software controlling a pacemaker is amusing. As I understand the law, it would be theoretically possible to a patent-holder to get an injunction or demand money from an end-user as well. Some Trolls are already trying that (fortunately with limited success.)
Nevertheless, with forum shopping, biased judges, manipulated juries, suppression of material evidence, I don't see much reason to believe that society is well served by the US legal system. On the other hand, I tend towards the view that participation in the digital society is so important in the meantime that one can probably regard it also as a fundamental human right. A growing number of people seem to be taking that position, and that does, in my view, require adequate protection which may, in particular circumstances, trump the right to make a buck. In some ways the idea of classification of patents, in rudimentary form in FRAND, may be a direction we need to consider. If ANY patent is essential or necessary for the common good, then it may be the case that the patent-holders rights to exploit may need to be restricted.
Leaving the smartphone arena for a moment: In the biomedical field this can get to be a life-critical issue. Can a patent-holder receive the right to withhold life-saving diagnostic or treatment based on a business method patent ? Or a software patent ??. Is it ethically justifiable that natural gene sequences should be patentable ? The patent law would seem to say no to patenting nature, but the courts have punched a hole in that wall. Both of these would seem to me to be cases where unpatentability should in fact be agreed or at the very least be massively limited. I would even go so far as to say that a society does in fact have the right to assign certain kinds of patents to society. (Life-saving vaccines spring to mind) and if necessary to do this without, or with minimal compensation in emergency situations. (India and Brasil are already doing this). I agree that it needs to be controlled carefully, but it is a good example of where fundamental human rights are going to trump the profit motive. I think this is GOOD. But these may be situations where compensation may be more appropriate from the taxpayers, or in a package deal with some other benefits for the lost IP (limited tax-breaks or whatever.) I agree that the good for society may make it necessary to change the business model in Pharma. But really, there's no reason why drugs should only be developed by private enterprise. There is a good argument that this may be an area where the taxpayer needs to get involved. In the US that won't fly but in the civilized world (HeHe) it does have a chance.
I was personally well informed of the "behind-the-scenes" discussions during the "Influenza Pandemic" debate. Roche made a killing on Tamiflu (which cost the taxpayer x100 Million in Germany for stockpiling). As it turned out, that was in retrospect not a good idea, but if the pandemic had really gotten to be as bad as it could have, then the subsequent discussion on the costs of stockpiling drugs and vaccines would have been rather different. But even that "learning" experience has had a positive effect, in that the R&D efforts for a broad-band anti-influenza vaccine received a BIG boost in the industry, and I would guess that we will see that on the market "any day now" (based on insider information and some knowledge of the state of science in the field).
Returning to the SW patents: considering the difficulty of ranking sw patents in any kind of rational form, and considering the astronimical number of patents involved in a smartphone, its a no-brainer to see that if every single patent was to receive the "compensation" that Apple is demanding for some of its patents, then there would be NO SMARTPHONES. There would probably not even be dumbphones because the network and telekommunications patents would block those as well, IF EVERY PATENT received the same level of compensation. It doesn't make sense to me to allow blocking injunctions on trivial patents that play a minor role in a complex technological package. So far however we don't seem to have a better solution. But even the present solution is not viable if each of the 250,000 patents was to cost a dollar per device. Sure, Bill Gates could talk to Larry Ellison. So what. So we need a different approach. And in my view, a stronger recognition of the interests of society need to play a much more central role than they do at this point in time.
You are spot on regarding copyright as a failed mechanism for protecting "inventors" rights. But maybe that may also hold a possible solution. Looking at the absurdity of the Oracle-Google argument, it may make sense to restrict software patents to a particular source code implementation, rather than allowing overly broad patents on the underlying algorithms. But then you would need to limit the patent life-span to a short (5 Years ??) period, or change the copyright laws to do it in that context.
Getting to Facebook-Google. You seem to forget that in the EU, Facebook and Google don't "Own" the data they are selling. The data subjects "own" the data. So selling it without authorization is "theft" :-). As I mentioned, in the German Jurisdiction we have the concept of informational self-determination, which is a contstitutional right and cannot be signed away.
I have recently (today) read that the UK border authorities are wanting to use a SAS profiling package to determine "risky travellers". You will one day come to understand how dangerous this thinking is going to become. On the other hand, Google has, in my view, become a quasi-monopoly BECAUSE of the value people place on their search capabilities. So here we have an interesting balance to find. How to keep the good and keep out the bad. Facebook in my mind is irrelevant. Its a fad and doesn't contribute to society at all. You could shut it down today and nobody would be worse off except the shareholders. How sad.
But the problem with Google is much more complex and important. The difference between it being a really good service to society, and a really dangerous antidemocratic weapon of oppression is basically simply a matter of two things. Who asks the questions and what are the questions they ask. If the Nazis had had google technology AND the database, there would be no jews. Period. Think about it.
In the interests of not getting MUCH too long (and I don't even know if anyone else is interested in this particular thread) I'm going to be somewhat selective.
What is killing innovation in the us seems to be the low quality of patents on the one side, and the artificial need to acquire defensive patent portfolios in order to survive in business AT ALL in the high-tech market. as long as the patent system is capable of being abused and used to block both access to the digital world, and as an anticompetitive tool, then something is fundamentally wrong.
In some ways the idea of classification of patents, in rudimentary form in FRAND, may be a direction we need to consider. If ANY patent is essential or necessary for the common good, then it may be the case that the patent-holders rights to exploit may need to be restricted.
The patent law would seem to say no to patenting nature, but the courts have punched a hole in that wall. Both of these would seem to me to be cases where unpatentability should in fact be agreed or at the very least be massively limited. I would even go so far as to say that a society does in fact have the right to assign certain kinds of patents to society. These may be situations where compensation may be more appropriate from the taxpayers, or in a package deal with some other benefits for the lost IP (limited tax-breaks or whatever.)
We do the latter already to an extent with public money in that we choose which services are essential and therefore publicly funded such as emergency services, healthcare, judicial systems, some transport services and so on. But then things like housing and food aren't for the most part.
There is a danger in creating an anti-competitive situation when trying to prevent one. If everyone decided to stand behind national healthcare for example, it makes it difficult for private companies to compete with that, even if they offer a better service. As a consumer, you then have little option of saying you are unhappy with the service and will take your business to the next competitor. But in this case, public funding has to be the better option solely on the basis that a business would make more profit by denying treatment in many situations.
If the profit motive of an essential service is contrary to the provision of the service, it is better to be publicly funded. The profit motive in the food and housing markets are not contrary to the provision of food and housing so that works in the private sector.
The provision of software is directly linked to profit so again there's no inherent need for public funding. Given that we have survived for millenia without this technology, it also can't really be viewed as a fundamental human right in its entirety. When it is viewed as a means to access the best forms of education, there is some basis for it being linked with human rights but it doesn't go anywhere near covering Apple's latest smartphone IP. At best, it would be accessing some sort of terminal hooked to the internet.
We also have to consider who we are talking about when using phrases like 'as a society' in the context of making decisions. It's not feasible to pass every patent round and let us all decide on what's essential enough that we should force the owner to hand it over. These decisions have to be made by a small number of officials who are able to abuse their positions.
considering the difficulty of ranking sw patents in any kind of rational form, and considering the astronimical number of patents involved in a smartphone, its a no-brainer to see that if every single patent was to receive the "compensation" that Apple is demanding for some of its patents, then there would be NO SMARTPHONES. It doesn't make sense to me to allow blocking injunctions on trivial patents that play a minor role in a complex technological package.
There are cases for injunctions like with Psystar - the company that tried to sell Mac clones:
They used a small piece of software to compete with Apple and there was never an outcome of reaching a licensing agreement.
Should Samsung be allowed to keep selling products that have taken ideas from Apple that Apple doesn't want them to keep using? The issue isn't money - they both have plenty. It's about protecting their brand. The following setup isn't acceptable:
If we assume injunctions shoudn't be possible for trivial things, what if a company uses a whole bunch of trivial things (like Samsung) or a trivial thing that enables an entire class of non-trivial things (like Psystar)?
In general, I'd agree that infringement of trivial elements shouldn't have serious consequences by definition but it's what qualifies for that label that's questionable - an icon layout, an icon design, a UI behaviour, a shape, a colour? The Apple logo is just a shape but it's unique. The iPad is just a rounded rectangle but it's also unique. If they'd shaped it like an apple there wouldn't be a problem but no, they had to pick a rectangle.
it may make sense to restrict software patents to a particular source code implementation, rather than allowing overly broad patents on the underlying algorithms. But then you would need to limit the patent life-span to a short (5 Years ??) period, or change the copyright laws to do it in that context.
It's not quite enough though because software keeps changing and you can't copyright future modifications to copyrighted code so all someone has to do is change enough to avoid the copyright. This is a lot easier to do in software than in a book for example because software can be rewritten by a machine and still work but a book can't be rewritten by a machine and still make sense.
If the Nazis had had google technology AND the database, there would be no jews.
Any searches for Matzah Ball recipes sure would land them in the scheiss. It gets really bad with mobile software because the app stores all have the IDs and profiles of everyone using the store and the contacts on phones can be accessed with apps. They also know buying history and interests.
That has some relevance in these legal disputes because these disputes will ultimately determine the success or failure of big companies. In the case of Microsoft, their ability to rip off the Mac OS allowed them to create a dominating presence in desktop computing, which severely hampered the adoption of web standards and open media formats. But if Apple had been able to protect the Mac OS with software patents, they couldn't have. But then Apple would be the only hardware manufacturer.
I don't believe Google will create the same scenario as Microsoft and that's why I'd rather they be Apple's main competition than anyone else but it does create a situation where Google is a controlling element in the lives of hundreds of millions of people. If they aren't to be trusted, allowing them the means to reach that status can't be in our best interests.
- software patents could have stopped Microsoft
- software patents can stop Google who already used software patents to create a monopoly
What would perhaps work better in all fields is to scrap patents (the ownership of concepts) as you've alluded to and instead only allow copyright of implementations but within a degree of well-defined variance. The copyright can last indefinitely though just as it does with a brand and the main issue would be over the variation allowed.
So people would be able to build capacitive tablets without licensing but they couldn't build them to the same Apple likeness that Samsung has. If a court finds that it doesn't infringe the variance in the copyright, that's the end of it but it has to account for the entire thing. The tablet hardware might pass but not when you account for the packaging, cabling, store presentation, OS modifications and so on that show an intent to mimic the original.
Comments
Except that you can make artwork with Photoshop but you can't with pages of algorithms that make up the software (unless you're good at origami I suppose) so they aren't quite the same. As soon as you combine the math with technology that can add so much value to it then that value distinguishes it from it on its own. You can carve out a disc and use it for a table but stick 4 of them on a box and you have a vehicle, which has an entirely different value. You can't assign the disc a value on its own and ignore the context it's used in. An aeroplane wing sitting on the ground is valueless but on the side of a plane, it isn't, yet the object hasn't changed.
A rounded rectangle on its own is valueless but when you construct a mobile device in that shape because you have put it in context of a usage scenario and you change the way we use computers then the value changes. That shouldn't prevent people using the shape but the patent has merit in that context:
http://www.google.com/patents/US4614320
The further we get away from the old T-9 keyboards, the easier it is to forget the shift. Pretty much all phones are now fullscreen, fully multi-touch with centralised app distribution. Tablets and palmtops were operated with styluses and didn't have rich operating systems. I class that as a redefinition of mobile computing - where we use computers the way we should have always used computers, with our fingers.
Give a Windows CE palmtop to a 3 year old and then an iPhone and you can see the difference. The only common outcome is they'll both end up covered in saliva and snot.
That sort of thing happened when Wozniak was long gone from the company. At the beginning it was all proprietary because there weren't enough sales to make a standard. They moved to unix software and USB/VGA/DVI instead of serial/ADB etc. Since iOS, they have locked down a few things again but that's more to do with the security. When you have 400 million units out in the world and they all run Flash, you're putting the security of 400 million people in Adobe's lap who might one day decide not to have your best interests at heart. It comes across as oppressive control until there's a problem and then people huddle under the blanket.
It reminds me of the speech in a Few Good Men:
"We live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You, Lieutenant Whineberg? You want me on that wall! You need me on that wall! I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it!"
Of course nobody wants the Code Red but there is always a compromise - Android is locked down too. You can't do certain things without rooting your device and loading a custom ROM and while you can get binaries outside Google Play, you are strongly encouraged not to. The whole OS is open source but as I said, Google gets their revenue elsewhere and they have used patents to create a monopoly. The difference is not so much in the ethics as it is in the business model.
Apple (or at least the company they bought) designed their own processor for the iPad 4. To say it's 'just faster' again highlights how people ascribe different levels of importance to things based on what matters to them. If that processor goes on to replace Intel's processor and outperform the competition then it might be treated as innovative because people feel the change. Not everything that is innovative will have an immediate impact.
We also shouldn't expect innovation at all times when we don't hold anyone else to that standard. When was the last time any tech company other than Apple did something significantly innovative? Google, Microsoft and all the mobile phone manufacturers have spent the last 5 years catching up to Apple. As you can see from the tablet market, they are still trying. At this point Apple wouldn't warrant criticism even if they stood perfectly still.
And would you feel the same if someone said that about the product of your work? If you held the quality of your work to a standard and found that in order to meet that standard, you couldn't compete on price with someone in China working for 5c an hour will you lower your price out of kindness even though you keep getting called on for work because your quality is higher?
Products like the Nexus and Kindle are used to suggest Apple could be cheaper but they are making zero profit on them. Google and Amazon treat them as conduits for content they do make a profit on. It's just a different model. Value is also subjective. To many, Justin Bieber's music has value.
I appreciate your input here too. It's always good to hear points of view expressed in a rational and concise way where agreement is not an ultimate requirement.
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Originally Posted by Marvin
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Originally Posted by Taniwha
Regarding: software is math. That's not really up for dispute.
Except that you can make artwork with Photoshop but you can't with pages of algorithms that make up the software (unless you're good at origami I suppose) so they aren't quite the same. As soon as you combine the math with technology that can add so much value to it then that value distinguishes it from it on its own. You can carve out a disc and use it for a table but stick 4 of them on a box and you have a vehicle, which has an entirely different value. You can't assign the disc a value on its own and ignore the context it's used in. An aeroplane wing sitting on the ground is valueless but on the side of a plane, it isn't, yet the object hasn't changed.
A rounded rectangle on its own is valueless but when you construct a mobile device in that shape because you have put it in context of a usage scenario and you change the way we use computers then the value changes. That shouldn't prevent people using the shape but the patent has merit in that context:
http://www.google.com/patents/US4614320
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Originally Posted by Taniwha
I am not so sure that Apple has redefined anything. I have done 1 to 1 comparisons on a number of occasions and it has always resulted in no clear winner.
The further we get away from the old T-9 keyboards, the easier it is to forget the shift. Pretty much all phones are now fullscreen, fully multi-touch with centralised app distribution. Tablets and palmtops were operated with styluses and didn't have rich operating systems. I class that as a redefinition of mobile computing - where we use computers the way we should have always used computers, with our fingers.
Give a Windows CE palmtop to a 3 year old and then an iPhone and you can see the difference. The only common outcome is they'll both end up covered in saliva and snot.
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Originally Posted by Taniwha
I would argue and also tend to agree with Steve Wozniak that Apple is not innovating now in the way that it did in the past and has become merely a consumer device manufacturer. It has less and less focus on creative use, openness and many other aspects that actually made it great in the first place.
That sort of thing happened when Wozniak was long gone from the company. At the beginning it was all proprietary because there weren't enough sales to make a standard. They moved to unix software and USB/VGA/DVI instead of serial/ADB etc. Since iOS, they have locked down a few things again but that's more to do with the security. When you have 400 million units out in the world and they all run Flash, you're putting the security of 400 million people in Adobe's lap who might one day decide not to have your best interests at heart. It comes across as oppressive control until there's a problem and then people huddle under the blanket.
It reminds me of the speech in a Few Good Men:
"We live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You, Lieutenant Whineberg? You want me on that wall! You need me on that wall! I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it!"
Of course nobody wants the Code Red but there is always a compromise - Android is locked down too. You can't do certain things without rooting your device and loading a custom ROM and while you can get binaries outside Google Play, you are strongly encouraged not to. The whole OS is open source but as I said, Google gets their revenue elsewhere and they have used patents to create a monopoly. The difference is not so much in the ethics as it is in the business model.
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Originally Posted by Taniwha
The iPad 4 may be a good example. Just putting in a faster processor is no big deal, and definitely not innovative in any meaningful sense. In fact I would suggest that the "innovations" since the original iPhone are largely fine tuning, but not real innovation
Apple (or at least the company they bought) designed their own processor for the iPad 4. To say it's 'just faster' again highlights how people ascribe different levels of importance to things based on what matters to them. If that processor goes on to replace Intel's processor and outperform the competition then it might be treated as innovative because people feel the change. Not everything that is innovative will have an immediate impact.
We also shouldn't expect innovation at all times when we don't hold anyone else to that standard. When was the last time any tech company other than Apple did something significantly innovative? Google, Microsoft and all the mobile phone manufacturers have spent the last 5 years catching up to Apple. As you can see from the tablet market, they are still trying. At this point Apple wouldn't warrant criticism even if they stood perfectly still.
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Originally Posted by Taniwha
I personally actually have to work quite hard for the dollars (actually Euros :-)) I spend on toys so I generally look fairly carefully for the "value for money" in purchasing. with a fixed disposable income there is a limit to how much "premium price" I am willing to pay for anything.
And would you feel the same if someone said that about the product of your work? If you held the quality of your work to a standard and found that in order to meet that standard, you couldn't compete on price with someone in China working for 5c an hour will you lower your price out of kindness even though you keep getting called on for work because your quality is higher?
Products like the Nexus and Kindle are used to suggest Apple could be cheaper but they are making zero profit on them. Google and Amazon treat them as conduits for content they do make a profit on. It's just a different model. Value is also subjective. To many, Justin Bieber's music has value.
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Originally Posted by Taniwha
I very much appreciate your good arguments and the discussion !!
I appreciate your input here too. It's always good to hear points of view expressed in a rational and concise way where agreement is not an ultimate requirement.
Yes. Once again I have to say you have some good points, but to many of them there is an alternative perspective. The idea of the software itself being a saleable product is not the only possible business model. As I mentioned somewhere earlier I come from a scientific background and the ENTIRE internet was actually "invented" by publicly funded programming and distributed free of charge. Similarly, the vast majority of scientific software was originally distributed on the universities network (in the pre-software patent days) for free among colleagues. Most of the unix developments were also created and distributed "free".
Then we have the whole open source development and the FOSS and Linux community which is also largely sponsored by private companies who provide programmers time and resources, together with privateers who do it for love of the challenge or whatever. So to take the view that software must be patentable is something that will kill small developers and even the commercially sponsored FOSS programmers and put ALL software firmly in the hands of the big players ... including Microsoft and Apple ... and many others. It is just not possible to program in a world where algorithms are patented ... particularly since the actual claims are more or less impossible to understand (which is NOT a coincidence. the patent lawyers know what they are doing and why.)
I think you may be overestimating one side of the topic, and underestimating the other.
Getting back to Woz. Actually I was an early adopter of the Apple II, which opened creative possibilities in scientific laboratory automation that was simply not affordable from the Big Iron manufacturers .. IBM, DEC, WANG and numerous others who have long since vanished. With its expandability and flexibility it was a real breakthrough. We even built wire-wrapped adaptors, 16-Bit AD Converters and the like from discrete components to do things that were never and will never be a part of the standard "sealed box" commodity products that Apple (and others) are putting on the market today. And believe it or not, MANY of the real breakthroughs in science come from scientists (Tim Berners-Lee) is a well known example, who do not shirk at the challenge of actually building technology that they need/want for their real scientific interests. This is now an area that is in grave danger from the side-effects of software patents.
In the modern times, this may cost the US dearly. FRAND for example is an insurmountable barrier to garage-inventors and programmers. If you don't sell the product, you have no revenue for even cheap license fees for technology. So you are blocked out of the market entirely. The USPTO is, in my view, criminally negligent in scrutinizing patent applications. The high percentage of patents that are declared invalid (if a defendent is willing or able to fight it out at all in the courts) is telling. In the EU it is orders of magnitude less of a problem because the patent office is much more diligent and tends not to issue junk or obvious patents.
I also suggest it is worth remembering that technological development in the components industry is not exclusively for the smartphone market. Companies like Samsung and others who are innovating, for example, in screen technologies have much wider application areas in their cross-hairs, many of which are highly profitable on a per-unit basis. Aerospace, Industrial automation, scientific instrumentation, are all examples where faster processors, higher component density and other aspects are driving the development. My point is that these things are R&D projects IN THEIR OWN RIGHT, so the mere fact that a smartphone manufacturer discovers the technology and finds application areas, is NOT in my mind "redefining the market". ANY application areas where memory, cpu speeds, graphics displays and networking technology are equally "re-defining" the market when you look at it that way. Apply this idea to the iPad 4 and you will understand what I mean. Actually the AI review of the iPad 4 picked up this point. It is NOT a major innovation in its own right. Faster rendering is certainly cool, but the benefit is only relevant when the whole technological chain, including bandwidth and throughput is also at a higher level. Being able to render the output from a slow internet server faster, is not in itself going to give you a better experience until the data actually arrives to be rendered.
So these general considerations form largely the basis for my skepticism about Apples "thermonuclear war". In my view it is mutually assured destruction and it WILL hit Apple sooner or later if import bans become a permanent feature of the us market. Bet on it.
But my personal agenda has also a more socially oriented component. WE, the end users, are the ones paying the F*ing lawsuits. It is really horrid that more resources are going into litigation than into R&D. Everyone suffers, everything is MUCH more expensive, effectively blocking the financially underprivileged from the digital world. I think that is BAD for society in general. In the US it is getting out of control. I would like to see the poor kids in 3-rd world countries get access to the knowledge and learning resources of the internet. In my mind that is IMPORTANT. More important than setting up the market so that the wealthy few can enjoy their Cartier Watches, Armani Suits, Llamborginis, Diamond tiaras and whatever.
So if Apple wants to stay a niche Player, and if their customers are happy to pay far too much for what they actually get, its fine by me. (incidentally I actually have a fairly high income personally by US standards, so to some extent I can also enjoy expensive toys where I choose to do so,) But I think the right to clean water, electricity and communications, basic health services, access to education and many other things, are fundamental human rights, which are actually being attacked by Apple, Microsoft and some other players using aggressive "IP Litigation".
Anyway you look at it, Apple is getting thrashed by Android in the world market, precisely because they have decided to be a "premium price commodity manufacturer". As the world's "richest" company, they could make other choices. They don't. They chose to be greed-motivated. 75% of the world smartphone market is Android based. That is the reality. Steve Jobs was talking crap when he claimed it is "stolen from apple". He knew it, and their "stealing" of the motorola FRAND patents on communication technology is adequate proof as I have mentioned before. To claim there is some justification in demanding discriminatory licence fees for trivial technology for "Android" products, and simultaneously refusing to pay for the FRAND Technology that makes the iPhone possible AT ALL, is hubris. I don't say that BECAUSE apple does it. The criticism is equally valid for all players who try that crap.
The Apple-Motorola FRAND litigation got tossed in 2 US courts already. It will be interesting to see what happens with the M$ Motorola litigation. My guess is that Motorola will get less than the 2.5% per device license that they claimed as a starting point for the FRAND license negotiations that both Apple and M$ refused to follow in good faith. But they will get MUCH more than the fractions of a cent that these two litigants are aiming for.
Now there is a good argument that FRAND patents should be cheap(er). But it is not OK to do this AFTER the fact. If the patent holders think that they will not get the ROI on their FRAND patents that make it worthwhile, then they will be more than reluctant to contribute to FRAND. That is happening already. I doubt that it is in the interests of the economy or society as a whole. Its also worth remembering that ALL parties are entirely self-serving in their litigation arguments. Apple and Microsoft are no exceptions. But that is the whole point of FRAND. It is SUPPOSED to produce negotiated agreements based on a whole list of factors, including the "importance" of individual claims in the basket of Patents concerned. This is not a simple matter, and probably not one that the courts are well placed to resolve. In the end it is likely that its will turn out to be a no-win battle and Apple will also lose something valuable to them ... their profit margin. But the customers will pay. Count on that !
Just taking my industry (generic pharmaceuticals) as an example. My company is VERY quality oriented in the EU where I have first-hand direct experience. But the margins are low in the generics business (generic pharmaceuticals are off-patent products). Yet the R&D costs to bring a new pharmaceutical product to market lie at aroud $1 Billion per new chemical entity. (in laymans terms, new drugs). And the time-to-market often means that even patented products (and believe me, big pharma is good at patenting) may often not have much patent lifetime left by the time they actually come to the pharmacies. So from the 17 year patent lifetime, often only 2-5 years are left to recover the Billion in R&D. There is simply no comparison to a "rubber-band" or "rounded corners" patent. I hope we can all agree that the patients have a RIGHT to high quality pharma with proven effectivity and safety on the one hand, and manufacturing quality on the other. (BTW I don't want to get into a discussion of Pharma in general here in AI. It's just an argument to underline that software patents are not really comparable in any meaningful sense to utility or chemical patents. There are orders-of-maginitude differences in the real costs, but also in the stakes. Staying alive is something most of us place high value on.) Yes, you can also die if your smartphone fails, but that is an exceptional situation.
So from my perspective we have both technical and social aspects to consider before we can really take firm positions. I don't fundamentally deny or question the right to "for profit" motivations, and I don't think that any company is "ethical" in the sense that I use the word. But the misuse of the patent system, as is currently the case in the US, and which is exemplified by the Jobsian "thermonuclear war" is something that is against the interests of society, the customers and higher values in terms of human development. Profit is OK, often it is honest, but profit at any cost, or externalization of the costs (somebody else pays) is not defensible. We do not live in a black-and-white world. Nor do we live in a perfect world, but I feel we have a duty and obligation to society in general and the coming generations in particular to ensure that the world they live in is not worse than it could be if we make the right choices now. You may use the words "idealistic". Maybe it is. But a world without ideals and respect for fundamental human rights is not a world that I would be prepared to defend.
As an aside: in my area of current professional expertise (Privacy Law), there are also clear cultural divergences between the US and the EU. These take many forms, but the bottom line is that we do have incompatible expectations. (Incidentally in the EU and particularly in Germany, the right to privacy and to informational self determination are constitutional rights. In the US this is unfortunately not the case. So Americans often don't understand why we tend to get hysterical when the US infringes basic human and constitutional privacy rights (of EU Citizens), and Europeans don't understand why the Americans get hysterical when they perceive that Big Government is limiting the right to "make money". It bears reflecting on this. While we think we share certain basic views and beliefs. This is increasingly not the case. The sad thing is that the EU is becoming less relevant to the world than it used to be ... with the Chinese becoming the dominant power in all areas, and we share even fewer basic views on freedom and other basic human rights with them. Did you know that there are more chinese with IQ over 150 than there are inhabitants in the Americas, and that there are more chinese with an IQ over 180 than the US population, or that they are turning out around 10 times the number of technology graduates in China than in the US. ?
There was a direct economic benefit for investors in the internet though. Look at examples that don't have a direct return like Wikipedia where they have to regularly put up banners begging people for money. You can't pay a mortgage and support a family with the hope that someone will offer you free money for an altruistic endeavour. I don't prefer the for-profit business model by any means, I just recognise that it's more often than not the successful model.
I think that some form of protection is a must. I agree that too broad a protection harms progress. The main reason given on the following site for why patents are favoured is because copyright just isn't working well enough:
http://otd.harvard.edu/inventions/ip/software/compare/
This goes beyond software - the legal system just hasn't kept up at all with the digital movement and the global economy and tech companies are using whatever means they can to protect themselves.
You can say that about cars too though switching over to electronic engine management systems from mechanical/electrical. Computers are much more advanced than they used to be - transistor count is in the billions instead of thousands. Even so, there's nothing stopping you making a USB or PCI device.
That would suggest that laptops have been significantly redefined over the years but nobody would say that. The clamshell design hasn't changed much in 30 years:
http://techland.time.com/2012/07/16/clamshell-the-history-of-the-greatest-computing-form-factor-of-all-time/
By contrast, the way we use mobile devices has changed entirely. Could a doctor effectively carry a clamshell laptop to a patient's bedside? Not really but now they can take an iPad or similar and access an entire world of information conveniently. You could say it's only because of advances in the components but it's not just that. The Apple Newton had a lot of the same core capability in 1993.
Perhaps but say Apple spent $1b between 2001 and 2007 developing the iPhone and then Samsung picks one up in a store for $500, picks it apart (there are court documents showing they did this) and doesn't have to make any of the hard decisions (a lot of the costs are in making the mistakes). They then implement it freely and make $6b with a fraction of the R&D:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20091505
Google analyses the software to go from this:
http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2974676/this-was-the-original-google-phone-presented-in-2006
to what we have now, again without making the hard decisions over how to solve the problems. Is that fair? Would everyone feel the same way if it was Apple sitting doing nothing and waiting for other companies to make the mistakes, find a solution that works and then do it the same way?
Apple made a profit because the competition couldn't catch up fast enough (it took Google 2 years to get the software keyboard in Android) but if everybody had undercut them in price quickly by compromising on quality, the imitators profit more than the innovator. Of course in the short term, the customers applaud but what happens when the innovators stop putting in the effort?
We don't have to wonder, we all saw the rut the mobile phone industry got into. Apple changed it and everybody smacks their forehead saying 'well, obvious really' and proceed to deny them the credit for it. But further, say their terms aren't acceptable and support imitators with a different business model.
Apple making high quality products doesn't prevent the underprivileged accessing the internet. If that was all that was available it would but that isn't the case.
Off-contract iPhone 5 = £529
http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iphone5
Off-contract Galaxy S3 = £449 (launched at £499)
http://shop.o2.co.uk/mobile_phone/pay_monthly/init/Samsung/Galaxy_S_III_Marble_White
Apple could be more competitive on price in a number of areas but so could Sony, Volkswagen, BMW, Prada, Calvin Klein... If the customers won't stop buying from them, why would they? Apple can't keep up with the demand as it is. Perhaps that is what motivates people to encourage others not to buy from Apple but it should be done in equal measure for products lke the Galaxy S3, which are similarly 'overpriced'.
I don't see how you link those together. Wouldn't patents on drugs affect people in poverty more than anything Apple does?
"The Gates Foundation has spent $6 billion on vaccine-related projects. That’s a lot of money, until you realize that the top-selling vaccine, Pfizer’s Prevnar 13, will soon generate that much revenue in a year. All told, the Gates Foundation has given away $25 billion so far. That is less than the National Institutes of Health uses in a year. Gates’ entire net worth is only twice the annual budget of the NIH. It might seem that America’s richest man can move any mountain, but he has to pick his battles. That’s why he put so much effort into figuring out how to get drug giants like GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Pfizer and Novartis to try to find ways to get their vaccines to the developing world. It would be great if wealth could just flow easily into making the health care systems of poor countries more robust."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/01/12/bill-gates-and-polio-victory-not-conspiracy/3/
Should we end the patents on drugs to prevent commercial abuse?
That is the current quarterly sales ratio. Overall, Apple has sold 400 million iOS devices vs 500 million Android (these figures will vary by a few tens of millions since they were published).
Why did Google offer to license their technology? It wasn't just stolen from Apple, Oracle sued Google and Microsoft now gets paid by manufacturers shipping Android devices.
What about viagra or restless leg lotion vs software that controls a pacemaker? What's more important? In terms of real costs, you can't say that software costs are always far less and therefore less worthy of protection, especially since if medical developents are mostly government funded, the inventors aren't at risk of losing their income. A single video game can take $20-100m to develop.
I don't support their war against Android entirely but the legal system has obviously given them insufficient protection over their efforts.
This is a common projection made from all sides. People claim that Google's and Facebook's models of offering services at low cost while compromising personal information to favour businesses is not something we should advocate. Likewise the motivation for ever-cheaper products leading to 'slave labour' in the 3rd world.
On the one hand, you'd say expensive products the poor can't afford harms them, others would say low profit products they have to build forces them to work for low wages.
On the one hand, you'd say Apple has a locked down for-profit business model that harms access to resources, others would say advertising supported services compromise individual privacy.
We should all aim to get as close to the scenario where we have affordable products, fair competition, fair labour, individual privacy and a thousand other good things but they have inherent conflicts that ensure we can only ever reach a compromise between them all. I will gladly fight for the most important ones and I don't place financial prosperity in that category but I feel creatives and inventors should be incentivised and protected, otherwise we are doing them a disservice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
The idea of the software itself being a saleable product is not the only possible business model. the ENTIRE internet was actually "invented" by publicly funded programming and distributed free of charge.
Sponsored by private companies who provide programmers time and resources, together with privateers who do it for love of the challenge or whatever.
There was a direct economic benefit for investors in the internet though. Look at examples that don't have a direct return like Wikipedia where they have to regularly put up banners begging people for money. You can't pay a mortgage and support a family with the hope that someone will offer you free money for an altruistic endeavour. I don't prefer the for-profit business model by any means, I just recognise that it's more often than not the successful model.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
So to take the view that software must be patentable is something that will kill small developers and even the commercially sponsored FOSS programmers and put ALL software firmly in the hands of the big players ... including Microsoft and Apple ... and many others. It is just not possible to program in a world where algorithms are patented ... particularly since the actual claims are more or less impossible to understand (which is NOT a coincidence. the patent lawyers know what they are doing and why.)
I think that some form of protection is a must. I agree that too broad a protection harms progress. The main reason given on the following site for why patents are favoured is because copyright just isn't working well enough:
http://otd.harvard.edu/inventions/ip/software/compare/
This goes beyond software - the legal system just hasn't kept up at all with the digital movement and the global economy and tech companies are using whatever means they can to protect themselves.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
We even built wire-wrapped adaptors, 16-Bit AD Converters and the like from discrete components to do things that were never and will never be a part of the standard "sealed box" commodity products that Apple (and others) are putting on the market today.
You can say that about cars too though switching over to electronic engine management systems from mechanical/electrical. Computers are much more advanced than they used to be - transistor count is in the billions instead of thousands. Even so, there's nothing stopping you making a USB or PCI device.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
the mere fact that a smartphone manufacturer discovers the technology and finds application areas, is NOT in my mind "redefining the market". ANY application areas where memory, cpu speeds, graphics displays and networking technology are equally "re-defining" the market when you look at it that way.
That would suggest that laptops have been significantly redefined over the years but nobody would say that. The clamshell design hasn't changed much in 30 years:
http://techland.time.com/2012/07/16/clamshell-the-history-of-the-greatest-computing-form-factor-of-all-time/
By contrast, the way we use mobile devices has changed entirely. Could a doctor effectively carry a clamshell laptop to a patient's bedside? Not really but now they can take an iPad or similar and access an entire world of information conveniently. You could say it's only because of advances in the components but it's not just that. The Apple Newton had a lot of the same core capability in 1993.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
WE, the end users, are the ones paying the F*ing lawsuits. It is really horrid that more resources are going into litigation than into R&D.
Perhaps but say Apple spent $1b between 2001 and 2007 developing the iPhone and then Samsung picks one up in a store for $500, picks it apart (there are court documents showing they did this) and doesn't have to make any of the hard decisions (a lot of the costs are in making the mistakes). They then implement it freely and make $6b with a fraction of the R&D:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20091505
Google analyses the software to go from this:
http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2974676/this-was-the-original-google-phone-presented-in-2006
to what we have now, again without making the hard decisions over how to solve the problems. Is that fair? Would everyone feel the same way if it was Apple sitting doing nothing and waiting for other companies to make the mistakes, find a solution that works and then do it the same way?
Apple made a profit because the competition couldn't catch up fast enough (it took Google 2 years to get the software keyboard in Android) but if everybody had undercut them in price quickly by compromising on quality, the imitators profit more than the innovator. Of course in the short term, the customers applaud but what happens when the innovators stop putting in the effort?
We don't have to wonder, we all saw the rut the mobile phone industry got into. Apple changed it and everybody smacks their forehead saying 'well, obvious really' and proceed to deny them the credit for it. But further, say their terms aren't acceptable and support imitators with a different business model.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
Everyone suffers, everything is MUCH more expensive, effectively blocking the financially underprivileged from the digital world.
Apple making high quality products doesn't prevent the underprivileged accessing the internet. If that was all that was available it would but that isn't the case.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
if their customers are happy to pay far too much for what they actually get, its fine by me.
Off-contract iPhone 5 = £529
http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iphone5
Off-contract Galaxy S3 = £449 (launched at £499)
http://shop.o2.co.uk/mobile_phone/pay_monthly/init/Samsung/Galaxy_S_III_Marble_White
Apple could be more competitive on price in a number of areas but so could Sony, Volkswagen, BMW, Prada, Calvin Klein... If the customers won't stop buying from them, why would they? Apple can't keep up with the demand as it is. Perhaps that is what motivates people to encourage others not to buy from Apple but it should be done in equal measure for products lke the Galaxy S3, which are similarly 'overpriced'.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
I think the right to clean water, electricity and communications, basic health services, access to education and many other things, are fundamental human rights, which are actually being attacked by Apple, Microsoft and some other players using aggressive "IP Litigation".
I don't see how you link those together. Wouldn't patents on drugs affect people in poverty more than anything Apple does?
"The Gates Foundation has spent $6 billion on vaccine-related projects. That’s a lot of money, until you realize that the top-selling vaccine, Pfizer’s Prevnar 13, will soon generate that much revenue in a year. All told, the Gates Foundation has given away $25 billion so far. That is less than the National Institutes of Health uses in a year. Gates’ entire net worth is only twice the annual budget of the NIH. It might seem that America’s richest man can move any mountain, but he has to pick his battles. That’s why he put so much effort into figuring out how to get drug giants like GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Pfizer and Novartis to try to find ways to get their vaccines to the developing world. It would be great if wealth could just flow easily into making the health care systems of poor countries more robust."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/01/12/bill-gates-and-polio-victory-not-conspiracy/3/
Should we end the patents on drugs to prevent commercial abuse?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
75% of the world smartphone market is Android based. That is the reality.
That is the current quarterly sales ratio. Overall, Apple has sold 400 million iOS devices vs 500 million Android (these figures will vary by a few tens of millions since they were published).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
Steve Jobs was talking crap when he claimed it is "stolen from apple". He knew it
Why did Google offer to license their technology? It wasn't just stolen from Apple, Oracle sued Google and Microsoft now gets paid by manufacturers shipping Android devices.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
software patents are not really comparable in any meaningful sense to utility or chemical patents. There are orders-of-maginitude differences in the real costs, but also in the stakes.
What about viagra or restless leg lotion vs software that controls a pacemaker? What's more important? In terms of real costs, you can't say that software costs are always far less and therefore less worthy of protection, especially since if medical developents are mostly government funded, the inventors aren't at risk of losing their income. A single video game can take $20-100m to develop.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
the misuse of the patent system, as is currently the case in the US, and which is exemplified by the Jobsian "thermonuclear war" is something that is against the interests of society, the customers and higher values in terms of human development.
I don't support their war against Android entirely but the legal system has obviously given them insufficient protection over their efforts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
a world without ideals and respect for fundamental human rights is not a world that I would be prepared to defend.
This is a common projection made from all sides. People claim that Google's and Facebook's models of offering services at low cost while compromising personal information to favour businesses is not something we should advocate. Likewise the motivation for ever-cheaper products leading to 'slave labour' in the 3rd world.
On the one hand, you'd say expensive products the poor can't afford harms them, others would say low profit products they have to build forces them to work for low wages.
On the one hand, you'd say Apple has a locked down for-profit business model that harms access to resources, others would say advertising supported services compromise individual privacy.
We should all aim to get as close to the scenario where we have affordable products, fair competition, fair labour, individual privacy and a thousand other good things but they have inherent conflicts that ensure we can only ever reach a compromise between them all. I will gladly fight for the most important ones and I don't place financial prosperity in that category but I feel creatives and inventors should be incentivised and protected, otherwise we are doing them a disservice.
Hi Marvin,
In the interests of not getting MUCH too long (and I don't even know if anyone else is interested in this particular thread) I'm going to be somewhat selective.
You make a lot of good arguments some of them even convincing. ;-) When I look at what we customarily describe these days as the "digital world" I tend to agree that this has come to be SO important for society in general that it invokes the need to look again at our priorities. In fact I think we largely agree on many points, albeit often from different vantage points.
The sticking point seems not to be the basic agreement that it is a good thing for bright ideas to be recognized and receive some kind of protection. What is killing innovation in the us seems to be the low quality of patents on the one side, and the artificial need to acquire defensive patent portfolios in order to survive in business AT ALL in the high-tech market. In my view this is a very bad derailment of the fundamental idea of patents, namely to promote innovation for the good of society. Now its never going to be feasible to predict in advance what is going to turn out to be a milestone invention (leaving the software patent argument for the moment). Currently, with the ability of the patent holder to block development by restrictive licensing, the balance is skewed and the interests of society at large are not being protected at all.
BTW, Don't try to make Bill Gates look like Robin Hood. He wasn't and he isn't. He got to be obscenely rich by creating and abusing a monopoly power at the expense of society in general. Philanthropic activities, in the absence of a prison sentence, do not compensate society for that. No more than it would be acceptable to society to put the boss of the columbian cocaine mafia on the same pedestal simply because he distributes a small fraction of his ill-gotten wealth to a select part of society on terms that he determines.
An aside: even big pharma gives away some of its patented drugs. My company for example distributes an antimalaria drug free to the tune of $1.7 Billion to third world countries. It's just a drop in the ocean and probably more a matter of image than ethical concerns.
But as long as the patent system is capable of being abused and used to block both access to the digital world, and as an anticompetitive tool, then something is fundamentally wrong. As I mentioned a couple of times, this is a BAD coming mainly from the US and its legal system. Your mention of the software controlling a pacemaker is amusing. As I understand the law, it would be theoretically possible to a patent-holder to get an injunction or demand money from an end-user as well. Some Trolls are already trying that (fortunately with limited success.)
Nevertheless, with forum shopping, biased judges, manipulated juries, suppression of material evidence, I don't see much reason to believe that society is well served by the US legal system. On the other hand, I tend towards the view that participation in the digital society is so important in the meantime that one can probably regard it also as a fundamental human right. A growing number of people seem to be taking that position, and that does, in my view, require adequate protection which may, in particular circumstances, trump the right to make a buck. In some ways the idea of classification of patents, in rudimentary form in FRAND, may be a direction we need to consider. If ANY patent is essential or necessary for the common good, then it may be the case that the patent-holders rights to exploit may need to be restricted.
Leaving the smartphone arena for a moment: In the biomedical field this can get to be a life-critical issue. Can a patent-holder receive the right to withhold life-saving diagnostic or treatment based on a business method patent ? Or a software patent ??. Is it ethically justifiable that natural gene sequences should be patentable ? The patent law would seem to say no to patenting nature, but the courts have punched a hole in that wall. Both of these would seem to me to be cases where unpatentability should in fact be agreed or at the very least be massively limited. I would even go so far as to say that a society does in fact have the right to assign certain kinds of patents to society. (Life-saving vaccines spring to mind) and if necessary to do this without, or with minimal compensation in emergency situations. (India and Brasil are already doing this). I agree that it needs to be controlled carefully, but it is a good example of where fundamental human rights are going to trump the profit motive. I think this is GOOD. But these may be situations where compensation may be more appropriate from the taxpayers, or in a package deal with some other benefits for the lost IP (limited tax-breaks or whatever.) I agree that the good for society may make it necessary to change the business model in Pharma. But really, there's no reason why drugs should only be developed by private enterprise. There is a good argument that this may be an area where the taxpayer needs to get involved. In the US that won't fly but in the civilized world (HeHe) it does have a chance.
I was personally well informed of the "behind-the-scenes" discussions during the "Influenza Pandemic" debate. Roche made a killing on Tamiflu (which cost the taxpayer x100 Million in Germany for stockpiling). As it turned out, that was in retrospect not a good idea, but if the pandemic had really gotten to be as bad as it could have, then the subsequent discussion on the costs of stockpiling drugs and vaccines would have been rather different. But even that "learning" experience has had a positive effect, in that the R&D efforts for a broad-band anti-influenza vaccine received a BIG boost in the industry, and I would guess that we will see that on the market "any day now" (based on insider information and some knowledge of the state of science in the field).
Returning to the SW patents: considering the difficulty of ranking sw patents in any kind of rational form, and considering the astronimical number of patents involved in a smartphone, its a no-brainer to see that if every single patent was to receive the "compensation" that Apple is demanding for some of its patents, then there would be NO SMARTPHONES. There would probably not even be dumbphones because the network and telekommunications patents would block those as well, IF EVERY PATENT received the same level of compensation. It doesn't make sense to me to allow blocking injunctions on trivial patents that play a minor role in a complex technological package. So far however we don't seem to have a better solution. But even the present solution is not viable if each of the 250,000 patents was to cost a dollar per device. Sure, Bill Gates could talk to Larry Ellison. So what. So we need a different approach. And in my view, a stronger recognition of the interests of society need to play a much more central role than they do at this point in time.
You are spot on regarding copyright as a failed mechanism for protecting "inventors" rights. But maybe that may also hold a possible solution. Looking at the absurdity of the Oracle-Google argument, it may make sense to restrict software patents to a particular source code implementation, rather than allowing overly broad patents on the underlying algorithms. But then you would need to limit the patent life-span to a short (5 Years ??) period, or change the copyright laws to do it in that context.
Getting to Facebook-Google. You seem to forget that in the EU, Facebook and Google don't "Own" the data they are selling. The data subjects "own" the data. So selling it without authorization is "theft" :-). As I mentioned, in the German Jurisdiction we have the concept of informational self-determination, which is a contstitutional right and cannot be signed away.
I have recently (today) read that the UK border authorities are wanting to use a SAS profiling package to determine "risky travellers". You will one day come to understand how dangerous this thinking is going to become. On the other hand, Google has, in my view, become a quasi-monopoly BECAUSE of the value people place on their search capabilities. So here we have an interesting balance to find. How to keep the good and keep out the bad. Facebook in my mind is irrelevant. Its a fad and doesn't contribute to society at all. You could shut it down today and nobody would be worse off except the shareholders. How sad.
But the problem with Google is much more complex and important. The difference between it being a really good service to society, and a really dangerous antidemocratic weapon of oppression is basically simply a matter of two things. Who asks the questions and what are the questions they ask. If the Nazis had had google technology AND the database, there would be no jews. Period. Think about it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taniwha
Hi Marvin,
In the interests of not getting MUCH too long (and I don't even know if anyone else is interested in this particular thread) I'm going to be somewhat selective.
FWIW, I'm still following along with interest.
We do the latter already to an extent with public money in that we choose which services are essential and therefore publicly funded such as emergency services, healthcare, judicial systems, some transport services and so on. But then things like housing and food aren't for the most part.
There is a danger in creating an anti-competitive situation when trying to prevent one. If everyone decided to stand behind national healthcare for example, it makes it difficult for private companies to compete with that, even if they offer a better service. As a consumer, you then have little option of saying you are unhappy with the service and will take your business to the next competitor. But in this case, public funding has to be the better option solely on the basis that a business would make more profit by denying treatment in many situations.
If the profit motive of an essential service is contrary to the provision of the service, it is better to be publicly funded. The profit motive in the food and housing markets are not contrary to the provision of food and housing so that works in the private sector.
The provision of software is directly linked to profit so again there's no inherent need for public funding. Given that we have survived for millenia without this technology, it also can't really be viewed as a fundamental human right in its entirety. When it is viewed as a means to access the best forms of education, there is some basis for it being linked with human rights but it doesn't go anywhere near covering Apple's latest smartphone IP. At best, it would be accessing some sort of terminal hooked to the internet.
We also have to consider who we are talking about when using phrases like 'as a society' in the context of making decisions. It's not feasible to pass every patent round and let us all decide on what's essential enough that we should force the owner to hand it over. These decisions have to be made by a small number of officials who are able to abuse their positions.
There are cases for injunctions like with Psystar - the company that tried to sell Mac clones:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/09/12/15/apple_wins_permanent_injunction_against_clone_mac_maker_psystar.html
They used a small piece of software to compete with Apple and there was never an outcome of reaching a licensing agreement.
Should Samsung be allowed to keep selling products that have taken ideas from Apple that Apple doesn't want them to keep using? The issue isn't money - they both have plenty. It's about protecting their brand. The following setup isn't acceptable:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2011/jul/21/fake-apple-store
But if the logo and products are replaced with Samsung's then it's ok?:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/samsungs-retail-store-inspired-by-apple-store/
If we assume injunctions shoudn't be possible for trivial things, what if a company uses a whole bunch of trivial things (like Samsung) or a trivial thing that enables an entire class of non-trivial things (like Psystar)?
In general, I'd agree that infringement of trivial elements shouldn't have serious consequences by definition but it's what qualifies for that label that's questionable - an icon layout, an icon design, a UI behaviour, a shape, a colour? The Apple logo is just a shape but it's unique. The iPad is just a rounded rectangle but it's also unique. If they'd shaped it like an apple there wouldn't be a problem but no, they had to pick a rectangle.
It's not quite enough though because software keeps changing and you can't copyright future modifications to copyrighted code so all someone has to do is change enough to avoid the copyright. This is a lot easier to do in software than in a book for example because software can be rewritten by a machine and still work but a book can't be rewritten by a machine and still make sense.
Any searches for Matzah Ball recipes sure would land them in the scheiss. It gets really bad with mobile software because the app stores all have the IDs and profiles of everyone using the store and the contacts on phones can be accessed with apps. They also know buying history and interests.
That has some relevance in these legal disputes because these disputes will ultimately determine the success or failure of big companies. In the case of Microsoft, their ability to rip off the Mac OS allowed them to create a dominating presence in desktop computing, which severely hampered the adoption of web standards and open media formats. But if Apple had been able to protect the Mac OS with software patents, they couldn't have. But then Apple would be the only hardware manufacturer.
I don't believe Google will create the same scenario as Microsoft and that's why I'd rather they be Apple's main competition than anyone else but it does create a situation where Google is a controlling element in the lives of hundreds of millions of people. If they aren't to be trusted, allowing them the means to reach that status can't be in our best interests.
- software patents could have stopped Microsoft
- software patents can stop Google who already used software patents to create a monopoly
What would perhaps work better in all fields is to scrap patents (the ownership of concepts) as you've alluded to and instead only allow copyright of implementations but within a degree of well-defined variance. The copyright can last indefinitely though just as it does with a brand and the main issue would be over the variation allowed.
So people would be able to build capacitive tablets without licensing but they couldn't build them to the same Apple likeness that Samsung has. If a court finds that it doesn't infringe the variance in the copyright, that's the end of it but it has to account for the entire thing. The tablet hardware might pass but not when you account for the packaging, cabling, store presentation, OS modifications and so on that show an intent to mimic the original.