Subject: RE: [hackers-il] Philosophy: Fair IP laws

From: "Ofir Carny" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 13:34:41 +0200

Sure (and easy):

Trademark - You only get protection for something which is not generic (e.g. sufficient to create unique identification) and when the offender is obviously capitalizing on your success.

Copyright - Much shorter term (I'd say 20 years for original author and 10 for corporations etc.), explicit fair use protection, allowance for deriviative work (when not inclusive of the original), commentary, etc. 

Better yet - you only get protection on something on which protection can be proven to be beneficail to society, usually only if substancial work was done on it and only if it would not have been made public otherwise (e.g. maps, most books), so music, political and religious texts, etc. would not be protected or protected for the very short term (like 3 years, in which most revenue comes in anyway).

Patent - the original rules were sufficient - only usefull, original, and non-obvious - and I would add beneficial to society - almost no software and absulutly no buissness patents fit there.

-----Original Message-----
From: Alon Altman [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2002 11:57 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: [hackers-il] Philosophy: Fair IP laws

Hi,
  Most of us are against the current status of Copyright and Patent law, and
are outraged from stuff like the DMCA, SSSCA, et al. We know that this
system is wrong, and must be changed.

  However, nullifying all IP laws is IMHO a bit too strong, because there
will be no incentive to create anything for mass market sale except out of
goodwill, or for leveraging other revenue (aka Linux).

  Assuming you could rewrite the entire world IP law, and even create a new
social system, my question is: What laws can be written that will be fair
both to content creators and to users, while cutting the middleman?

For further reference see: http://logosfoundation.org/copyleft/copyrigh.html

  Alon

-- 
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From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 13:59:20 +0300 (EET DST)

On Fri, 10 May 2002, Ofir Carny wrote:

> Patent - the original rules were sufficient - only usefull, original,
> and non-obvious - and I would add beneficial to society - almost no
> software and absulutly no buissness patents fit there.

Patent laws worked reasonably well when artifacts could be created
utilizing only one or two patents.
But when several patents go into a single artifact, there has always been
the need to circumvent the original intent of patents by formation of
patent pools.  This happened in the aviation industry (a single airplane
embodies several patents).

Even this doesn't work for software industry, because contrary to airplane
manufacturers, software can be and is written also by very small
operations, which don't have the resources to search for, and negotiate,
patent licenses.  And it is often difficult to find what patents are used
by a particular software package.

I don't see an obvious solution to the problem of creating goods, which
embody several patents.  This is like having a property (such as
apartment) which is jointly owned by 50 people, each one having his own
agenda, beliefs, desires and opinions about the best way to manage it.
                                             --- Omer
The Deaf in Israel demand 100% captioning of Hebrew language TV and CATV
programs.
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