CPTR 486 Senior Seminar/Team 2 Intellectual Property

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A report on Intellectual Property for CPTR 427 Network Security

We need to talk about Jefferson's thoughts here:

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." -- Thomas Jefferson

1 Link Dump
2 Brian
3 Russell
4 Shawn
5 Andrew & Ben

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Link Dump

Are baseball stats IP, or just facts?
Baseball Warns Against "Information Piracy" At World Series
Slashdot story on some Yahoo story on some warez group that got busted
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warez
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_In_Motion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTP%2C_Inc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll
http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/01/technology/rim/index.htm?cnn=yes
Pirates: It Takes One to Know One Survey shows that most people belive the reason less music is being purchased is because todays music is of lesser quality.

"This site will not accessable from the outside. The reason: The big bloated companies (RIAA, MPAA) have enough money to take your rights away and most people happilly let them do it. DON'T BUY MUSIC, download it for free! Then maybe someday when these companies have no customers they will see the light." ~Quote from Nilosplace http://mp3s.nilosplace.net/message_view_thread.php?id=4023

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Brian

During the Asian bird-flu crisis of October last year, the government of Taiwan decided to produce at least a million doses of Tamiflu, in violation of a patent held by Roche, a Swiss pharmaceutical company. They said they could do this for a about 6 million dollars (US) as a opposed the 31 million it would cost to get the drug from Roche. They in order to protect their people, they must produce the drug more quickly than Roche can get it to them.

Do you think the actions of the Taiwanese government are justifiable? If not, is there anything that Roche can do about it?

Consider this statement on open-source software from microsoft.com:

Intellectual Property Protections: The Free Software community views software as "speech" instead of property. It seeks to curtail or eliminate certain types of intellectual property laws and protections. For example, Free Software advocates oppose software patents and are actively seeking to eliminate the ability of innovators to patent and protect new software advances. Commercial Software companies rely on a broad range of intellectual property laws, including trade secret, trademark, copyright and patent protection. The Commercial Software industry has long believed that these forms of intellectual property not only provide the environment needed to create sustainable businesses but that they also provide appropriate incentives to encourage firms to invest substantial resources to create innovative products.

Is software more like speech, or more like property? Are software patents really helping to create innovations in software?

In 2001 Steve Ballmer said that "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches...Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody...� But "open source is not available to commercial companies," and should therefore be regarded as a violation of the public trust. The Registrar

Should the US government fund GPLed software at universities?

What about the department of homeland securities recent funding of OSS security?

NET is reporting that the US Department of Homeland Security is extending its support to open source software. The DHS will be giving Stanford University, Coverity, and Symantec a $1.24 million grant to improve the security of open source software. From the article: 'The Homeland Security Department grant will be paid over a three-year period, with $841,276 going to Stanford, $297,000 to Coverity and $100,000 to Symantec, according to San Francisco-based technology provider Coverity, which plans to announce the award publicly on Wednesday.' It's nice that our tax dollars are being used for the right stuff.

Should the DMCA be repealed? This the law that states any attempt to circumvent DRM is illegal?

What about the INDUCE act? Should it be passed?

The law is not clear about what constitutes inducement. Critics fear the CD-burners, MP3 players, and jump drives may be targetted with this legislation, not to mention P2P networks which may have legitimate uses, such as bittorrent.

In Islam, copyrighting of ideas and the concept of intellectual property is Haram or forbidden, since: "Knowledge is the ownership of whoever possesses it and not the ownership of the one who taught it only. Thus, as long as a person has the knowledge, it is his/her property, but once it is revealed to others, by any means, it becomes allowed for everyone to use it with or without the permission of the original owner.

Therefore, no one has the right to copyright because whatever is written in that book, for example, is knowledge. As long as that person possesses that knowledge, it is his/hers, but once he/she gives it to people verbally, in writing, or in any means, it becomes allowed for all people. Teaching that knowledge, by these people, to anybody is also allowed. Then, making copyrights on any kind of knowledge is a prohibition to what is already allowed by Allah. Making copyrights is making teaching knowledge, acquiring knowledge haram. Therefore, it is not allowed for anyone to have copyrights. This, however, should not give the impression that one can buy a book or a computer program, for example, and claim that he/she is the author of that material. Claiming such thing is considered a lie in Islam (not stealing) and it is haram."

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Russell

Current copyright law, short presentation

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Shawn

So, if I put up questions here, they're you're property Brian? http://sauwiki.com/wiki/index.php/SAUwiki:Copyrights

Yup. --Axiom 05:44, 3 February 2006 (PST)

-- 1. What's wrong with grabbing Quake 4 off the network? I'm a poor college student. I don't have the money to spend $60 on a game I'm only going to play for a few days. It's not like I would buy it if I couldn't get it off the network. I'm not costing the developer any money.

2. I worked in a factory last summer. The layout of that factory, where each machine was set on the floor, how many people worked at each station, was the result of a significant amount of research that the factory did in order to optimize their production. Should the factory floor layout be public knowledge? Should the competitors know how we do things? If everyone should have access to that information, why would any company try to find a better way to do things? They can't do it better than their competition, because their competition could just copy it.

[possible discussion point] Is a piece of music or a movie really an idea, or is it a product? Is there a difference between not allowing people to speak out against their government and not letting people download Microsoft Word for free?

[possible discussion point] In 2003-2004, I spent over 200 hours working on a peice of software. I posted a compiled copy of it on a web site, and had several people send me feedback, bugs, suggestions, etc. Later, thanks to Google, I found copies of my program on two other people's web sites. One person gave me credit for it. The other web site was run by one of the people who send me a bug report, and he took credit for the program on his web site. Without copyright law, there is no way to keep people from taking credit for other people's work.

Ah but even with copyright law, there is no way to stop people form using your program. Especially since you put it on the internet. Though you might be able to get attribution if you only distributed a binary, and put your name in the about dialog. --Axiom 05:48, 3 February 2006 (PST)

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