Re: Ordering Books from Amazon

[Shimpei Yamashita <shimpei@example.com>]

On Sat, Oct 14, 2000 at 03:11:34PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> There is a counterargument, which I am currently researching[1], that
> patents could be the foundation of a social policy to encourage and
> enforce creation of reusable software components.  I believe this is
> theoretically tenable, although I haven't finished the model yet.
> 
> However, it depends on an assumption that the cost of implementing a
> patent is zero.  This is not true in the current system; patents are
> the opposite of good documentation: they are intentionally obfuscated,
> partly to make it hard to use them to actually construct working
> models, and partly to support broad claims that the patent holder
> himself doesn't understand ("I know when someone is using my idea when
> I see it, and I see you!  Pay up!")  So even if software patents could
> be socially valuable, we'd need substantial reform of the kinds
> already demanded.  The simple solution is just to stop.

The good news is that business model and software patents are rather more
difficult to get in Japan right now compared to the US. The bad news is that
the brainless copycats [1] in the Japanese government realized that the
Americans are getting all the patents, and are trying to adjust the
patent-granting scheme in Japan to be as permissive as the American version.
Sadly, when this topic is mentioned in the Japanese mainstream press, the
writers always talk about how the Reagan-era policy change brought
"unprecedented prosperity" in the US, and how "we need to catch up before
we get left behind in the information superhighway," yada yada yada [2];
nowhere are the patents' ill effects on the industry and consumers mentioned.
It would be nice if the writers could present both sides of the view.

It's a bit disturbing that this issue isn't being discussed in the Japanese
Linux community at all, AFAICT. I've thought about tipping off Richard
Stallman on this issue, and asking him to evangelize on this issue in Japan as
well, but that will probably just have a reactionary effect--I haven't met a
single Japanese Linux hacker so far who didn't think RMS was anything more
than a political nutcase [3].

Oh, and this seems to be a good chance to mention the following article,
which is the most cynically satisfying thing to end up in my inbox this past
year. Disclaimer: I haven't invested in this scheme, or even know whether
such a scheme is actually in motion; as a finance person, I just find it
extremely amusing.

http://www.aful.org/pipermail/patents/2000-January/000286.html

Shimpei.

[1] The Japanese government is rarely known for doing anything that isn't
tried by the Americans or the Europeans first. 

[2] Earlier this year, there was an epidemic of articles about how Japan
needs more lawyers with the same line of argument: the US has lots of
lawyers, and look where they are now. The only good news is that the readers
of these articles tend to have short memeory....

[3] Well, he *is* a nutcase, but at least some English-speaking hackers are
willing to read what he wrote before throwing it away.

-- 
Shimpei Yamashita                               http://www.shimpei.org/