Recently in Intellectual Property Category
Cat and I have an ongoing discussion on whether corporate vs. governmental regulation is more dangerous. She leans towards the corporate being the lesser evil, where I believe corporate regulation (that is, companies deciding policy, disregarding lobbying) is the greater evil.
Visa just announced their intention to block payments to the Russian music download site AllofMP3. AllofMP3 insists upon its legality in terms of Russian copyright law—but has promised a change in its business model, hoping for more international acceptance (of course, this will come at a price, as the downloaders are quite happy with the current system).
But is Visa's extreme measure to block payments to AllofMP3 acceptable? As a digg poster commented, Since when has it been Visa's obligation to judge business morality? While I believe that businesses should have models of moral obligation, decisions such as these should be questioned by general consumers and more closely examined by relevant subscribers. Business policies, and corporate morality policies should be easily available, and digestible to consumers, subscribers, anyone who wants them, really—public accessibility is key. Archives of past business and policy movements should be equally accessible.
Link (Must login to NYTimes.com)
In a landmark move, IBM, one of the largest patent holders has decided to publish patent filings on the web for peer review. This is a huge step in the right direction, I think, in the effort against egregious patenting. The government patent regulations are slow to evolve, and hopefully this will both speed up that process, and lead to other corporations following IBM's example.
To extend the previous post on AT&T's new policy on data ownership... I feel as though events and conventions such as these are increasingly archaic - rooted in the paper-based paradigm of yesterday. This [policies such as these] are what should be instantly noticed as 'not good at all' and rejected by an increasingly informed and empowered public. Parallels can be drawn in the [quickly changing] media publishing world—as giants controlling artists—content creators—output. Strict seperation is necessary between the pipelines and what flows through them. Obviously, the pipeline daemons [read: carriers] are a: scared of being sued, b: want more control and power [as gained from a certain ammount of ownership in what goes on in 'their system']. If anything, government access should not be something the carriers and gatekeepers should be able to give—but something inherent, transparent, and dumb.
AT&T's new privacy policy is pretty frightening, stating that AT&T owns their customers' data. This change is, of course directly influenced by the recent events involving the Government. I really hope customers read this issuance carefully and make an informed decision on whether to remain a customer. I know that there's no way in Hell I'll be switching over to AT&T.
Patents. Promoting innovation. Protecting intellectual property. No bright lines.
Tipped off to an interesting development re: patent research. The office is now promoting a system of peer review for new patents. This is pretty great, as there seem an aweful lot of ridiculous patents being registered as of late. Hopefully this will cut down on the garbage, pan-all, blanket patents mucking up the creative world.
During the weekend I got through most of Lawrence Lessig's Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. The text is out-dated, naive, a fossil—but still somehow stimulating/thought-provoking. The subject of encription and trusted systems is pretty interesting. I still need to develop a more informed opinion on the risks and benefits of publishing intellectual property in digital form. Lessig brings up his token idea of the commons—Creative Commons. Still, I'm just not convinced by the arguments of a simple code-based architecture structuring the passage through the net. Many project ideas are coming out of reading the book, though, so look forward to more on this.
UPDATE: Link - maybe the book isn't so obsolete.
