Intellectual property and business competition reforms in the 21st century
A Presentation of jrm&aFLUX
(latest major update of this section on or about 12-12-2001)
by J.R. Mooneyham
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The world was actually in dire need of some major reforms in intellectual property practices long before now-- such as in the late 20th century and before. But rather than improvements, things were only made steadily worse by legislators, executives, and courts, as a frightening convergence of government and big business succeeded in warping the original intent of intellectual property laws, leading to less opportunity for everyone but a few powerful corporations, and less real innovation, over succeeding decades. Such legislated increases in the power of monopolies produced many excesses, and did enormous harm to the world economy and living standards. It took years for the global economy to finally screech to a complete halt from its effects, thereby forcing reforms to finally begin being put into place. Of course, the huge corporations and many corrupt or plain misguided politicians and portions of the electorate did everything they could to stall or reverse reforms, which meant still more years of stagnation and worse. But finally, eventually, it was obvious to all that things could not continue on as they were. Obvious that humanity was headed into a new dark age from which it might never emerge again, if big changes weren't made.
And humanity was freed at last.
People often tell me (J.R.) that the technological progress I describe in my timeline is much too slow. I say to them, look around. As of the beginning of the 21st century big government and big business are converging in ways that should frighten anyone familiar with history, or George Orwell's 1984, and other apocryphal works. If this convergence continues, we'll be lucky if technology continues to advance at all, after another decade or two. For innovation is born of competition, and democracy is dependent upon free speech. If all meaningful business competition is squelched, and wholesale surveillance and severe curbs on civil liberties (including free speech) realized, from where will competition and democracy flow then? The simple answer is, they won't. And we'll all be trapped, until and unless we can suitably separate the interests of government and business for good.
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Lawrence Lessig believed as of 2001 corporations were increasingly usurping the government's proper role in regulating the internet. The result appears to be a transformation of the internet from a public resource to a massive new market manipulation tool. The sort of tool that geopolitical governments seeking to control or limit the freedom of their citizens will be happy to use for their own ends, as well.
Lessig recommends a mild form of government supervision over internet affairs, in order to provide some modicum of consumer protection from otherwise unfettered industry excesses. Lessig believes things like the patenting of internet business methods reduce the pace of innovation, and the potential practice of ISPs limiting the access of internet users to the ISPs' own preferred sites should be outlawed. Lessig says that so far governments like those in the USA appear to be doing the bidding of big business in things like preventing some technologies (like DVDs) from being accessible at all in open source operating systems like Linux. The US Congress also continues to extend copyrights to absurd lengths, again, to appease big business interests. "...We're in the worst possible time to have to rely on our government to do the right thing. Government has been captured..." -- Lawrence Lessig -- The Accidental Activist by Brendan I. Koerner; March 20, 2001; http://www.business2.com/content/magazine/indepth/2001/03/12/28050 |
During this period some important geopoliticals join the virtual states in several measures limiting the present and future power and influence of mega-corporations in order to gain various economic and technological benefits for civilization as a whole.
These measures include (but are not necessarily restricted to):
#1: Amending geopolitical national constitutions to include a suitable firewall between business and state interests so that money and profit are NOT the over-riding, top priorities of government officials. Some essential aspects of the new firewall measures might include:
(A) Real and effective campaign finance provisions which would prevent the people's elected representatives from being made beholden to deep pocketed donors during the election process. The election process would also benefit from reasonable efforts by officials and governments to insure that each and every vote counts in every jurisdiction of the land, and that everyone who is qualified and wishes to vote is allowed to do so. The voting process must also be designed to be as easy, simple, and straightforward as possible, with no political advocates or persuasive actions of any kind permitted on the grounds of voting places themselves.
(B) A 'none of the above' option in all significant elections, forcing new candidates (or referendum choices) to be determined for follow up votes, if the 'none of the above' choice wins the election.
(C) An ironclad requirement that at least three lengthy debate sessions take place between the top two or more contending camps for a given middle to high level political office, with the last being perhaps three weeks before the election itself. Only one of these debates would be between the individual candidates themselves. The other two would be between their appointed advisors-- people named by the candidates during the campaign to be officially placed in their positions after election (these people would also have to acknowledge their willingnes to be officially appointed, in order to participate in the debates). One of the advisor debates would be live, while the other would not, but rather consist of a lengthy exchange complete with research citations which would then be made public for the media and voters to examine.
The careful, sometimes highly detailed and multi-part questions posed for candidates and their staffs during the debates would come equally from several different sources:
(i) Mainstream media outlets
(ii) Respected alternative, independent media outlets
(iii) From the opposing campaigns themselves
(iv) Composite questions put together by computer from thousands of queries posted online by the electorate. Large groups of questions would be summed up as to theme and then presented as single, possibly detailed questions.
(v) A non-partisan commission responsible for creating 'tough but realistic problem scenarios' for the politicians and their staffs. These questions might be posed to both the lead politician in a live debate for his own, unaided response, and separately to his full staff of advisors in the more in depth and thoroughly researched debate exchanges. The commission would be free to impose certain rules and assumptions on any potential scenario solution, such as saying a military response to a certain problem could not be used for various reasons, or that a certain number of civilians must be put at lethal risk in the solution, but the candidate can decide who and where.
The above specifications detail a minimum debate schedule and requirements; candidates and campaigns could participate in a greater number and wider variety of debate sessions than this, if they desired to do so.
(D) The recommendations of a commission of the top ranked expert economists, consumer advocates, educators, and scientists in the entire world (not just the geopolitical state in question, unless all the top globally ranked experts happen to live there) should be included in the design of the firewall legislation meant to safely separate business and government interests.
(E) Elected officials should be required to live at minimum no better and no worse than the statistics say the average citizen in their state lives. This means, among other things, that the officials themselves must obey the same exact laws and regulations imposed on the average citizens of their state. They must also endure the same levels of surveillance and restrictions of civil liberties (if not more; there's a case to be made for government officials and business executives to be subject to even more stringent surveillance than the average citizen or employee; this is discussed elsewhere in the timeline). Possible exceptions to these requirements for average living standards might include:
(ii) Practical every day matters like transportation, office housing, equipment, and supplies, advisors, and office workers which are essential to allowing them to do their job.
#2: Strengthening free speech protections in an era of otherwise overpowering corporate control of the mass media
Alternative news and information sources must be allowed and encouraged to flourish. Some things which might accomplish this goal include:
(A) Tax deductible financing for dedicated alternative, non-profit news and educational outlets. These organizations must not be directly or indirectly involved in any other sort of organized religious, media, governmental lobbying, or business activity.
(B) Rules requiring major internet search engines to always include all the publically available content of alternative news and education web sites in their databases.
(C) The recommendations of a commission of the top ranked expert journalists, scientists, educators, and lawyers specializing in free speech and consumer advocate issues in the entire world (not just the geopolitical state in question, unless all the top globally ranked experts happen to live there) should be included in the design of the new free speech legislation meant to provide a wide array of alternative news and information sources to the public.
(D) Major corporate news and information media outlets would be required to regularly inform the public as to the existence and contact information of specific alternative news sources in the form of prominent public service announcements presented in TV and radio commercials and their media web sites. Government web sites and other news and information sources would also be required to do the same, in regards to informing the public as to the existence and location of these alternative news and information sources.
(E) Whistleblowers throughout society, government, and industry given much broader and deeper protections than ever before, to sound the alert on corruption, waste, fraud, and criminal conspiracy, wherever they find it. Where the efforts of such people turn out to be on the mark and succeed at uncovering important matters for society, they are publically awarded medals (if desired; anonymity is also an option). They are also given monetary rewards of various sorts, depending partly on personal preference and partly on other issues. Some example rewards might be zero federal income, social security, and medicare taxes for one year. Especially important cases might give a whistleblower permanent freedom from such taxes (a lifetime where the government pays their taxes for them, up to a certain annual limit). Other alternatives for rewards might be come from other sources, and take different forms. Note that in some cases it might be necessary for whistleblowers to receive new identities and protection similar to that organized crime informants have received in the past. Of course, where the whistleblower's alert concerned government and/or political mis-deeds, various safeguards might be required to make sure the whistleblower isn't endangered by their own supposed protectors.
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Many of the world's most important medical journals were battling against what they called pharmaceutical companies' "excessive control" over research in 2001, leading to manipulation of study results where undesirable findings were left out of reports. In some cases companies are suing research bodies when they publish unfavorable results from their testing. The problem appears to be a big one, affecting a wide swath of the research community (and so also the safety, quality, and cost of drugs for consumers).
-- Medical journals tackle "excessive control" of drug companies by Emma Young; 10 September 01; New Scientist |
To minimize possibly embaressing or unnecessarily harmful mistakes on the whistleblowers' part, a nationwide toll free phone support service (with accompanying web site) is set up. The service will help a potential whistleblower determine if something illegal is actually taking place, and what, if anything, they can do about it. If action looks advisable, the whistleblower receives guidance on what sort of evidence they need to collect, and what authorities to take such evidence to. This support service can thus help prevent frivolous or errant cases from arising, while increasing the chances of success for those cases with merit. The support service itself will only assist and guide potential whistleblowers; it will be illegal for them to take such cases public themselves, or directly profit from providing the assistance of their office in any way but simply earning their normal pay for duties performed. AUTHOR'S CAVEAT. This last point of not directly taking on such cases themselves, I'm unsure about. But it 'feels' like the right thing to do, for various complex legal, political, and economic reasons. For one thing, it might help reduce the office's use as a weapon by political or business interests against innocent competitors? END CAVEAT.
The nationwide service is overseen by a commission consisting of well respected figures in business and government ethics, law, and economics; the service itself is a non-profit organization capable of accepting tax deductible donations from contributors, and largely manned by volunteers and students under the direction of various specialists in the fields of ethics, law, business, and government, largely serving at the discretion of the commission members themselves. Commission members might be nominated by various prestigious universities well known for their expertise and contributions in these subject areas, and voted on by a well credentialed body of scholars in the fields familiar with their work.
#3: Encouraging and rewarding individuals and organizations which give away their new technological innovations (make the designs public domain or open source, and free to anyone to use). This would be to encourage actions similar to some of the most notable in the past, like when CERN gave away its world wide web technology to the world in 1993. Some specific methods which might help accomplish this could include:
(A) Awarding tax deductions for such actions to the entities involved which last twice as long as a patent would. The value of the tax deductions could be calculated from the market value of competing or previous technologies replaced by the new innovation in the marketplace. I.e., if the design was for a new hard drive head for which a previous patented design cost 20 cents each in patent licensing for manufacturers to include in a drive, then for each new 'free' concept head which replaced the patent design in marketed drives, an additional 20 cents in tax deduction would be available for the creative entity to enjoy-- or 'sell' to other companies, in a way similar to the budding industrial market in environmental pollution excesses and deficits.
(B) Creating an array of prestigious new annual awards for the best new innovations contributed to society in this manner. For example, one award might be for the most popular concept in unit number utilized by industry; another might be for the most financially valuable innovation of the year. Another might be an award given randomly to one of the individuals responsible for giving away a new and potentially useful idea that year. Etc., etc.
(C) Allowing such giveaways to be a factor in the awarding of government contracts. That is, an entity bidding on a government contract scores a few points in some fashion in the considerations due simply to the fact that they gave away a new and potentially useful technological innovation to society within the past year. This act would not give them preferential treatment in the bidding; it would just help them where the contest between them and another party was very, very close.
(D) The recommendations of a commission of the top ranked expert managers of corporate and government R&D efforts, scientists, engineers, economists specializing in technological innovation and productivity, and lawyers specializing in patent and intellectual property issues in the entire world (not just the geopolitical state in question, unless all the top globally ranked experts happen to live there) should be included in the design of the new legislation meant to encourage and reward the giveaway of potentially useful technological innovations to society.
#4: Insuring that due diligence is performed in processing each and every patent application, to insure the validity of every patent granted.
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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, either by accident or design, became chronically underfunded and understaffed by the late 20th century. This circumstance allowed business interests to push through many questionable patents, thereby creating a potential litigious nightmare and massive drag on technological innovation for years or decades to come.
Even if the funding and staffing problems were solved, the PTO might require a revamp or expansion to properly deal with the relatively new issue of software patents, or other major new technology paradigms that may erupt onto the scene in the future. -- Would You Buy a Patent License From This Man? By Ian Mount; April 2001; eCompany Now "The PTO is not designed to catch all bad patents -- it just doesn't have the time or the resources to do so"-- Mark Lemley, University of California at Berkeley, 2001. -- Analysis: High-tech patent reform pending By Aaron Pressman; April 4, 2001; Cable News Network/IDG |
#5: Forcing corporations which reach a certain size to either split into smaller organizations or reshape their internal structures like so:
Adopt a 'separation of powers' within the company somewhat similar to that of the original USAmerica's political system, as well as take up separate Bills of Rights for customers and for employees, designed to help minimize many present and future excesses of such organizations. For instance, the employee Bill of Rights might prevent an employee from being punished for blowing the whistle on internal company waste, fraud, corruption, and abuse, and even substantially reward them for the act (with a sum equivalent to a certain percentage of the financial wealth directly involved in the incidents or put at risk by same).
#6: Eliminating patents altogether, and/or shortening the effective lifespans of patents and other intellectual property protections-- at least in certain fields.
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Shouldn't one of society's general guiding principles be that technology be used for the common good, rather than merely for profit or power?
It appears that excesses in intellectual property protections should, like many other things in life, be avoided. Minimal to moderate protections should exist to encourage the creators to produce and help sustain them. But excessive protections unnecessarily stunt innovation. One example is the telephone monopoly AT&T enjoyed through much of the 20th century. The idea of helping create what would essentially have been the internet was proposed to AT&T then (sometime after 1956), and the Pentagon even offered to pay all the costs. AT&T refused, partly because they could see the network might become a competitor to their own system. Similar excesses look to be taking place in USAmerica today, as the government strengthens intellectual property protections to excessive levels, and business exploits these protections to reduce competition in their respective fields. This is slowing innovation and raising costs for consumers. Some specific examples include: The FCC is allowing big radio companies to control access to radio spectrum, which is preventing much potential innovation in increasing radio efficiency and allowing advances in wireless devices. Cable businesses, which currently comprise the mainstream of broadband links for consumers, are being allowed to experiment with ways to control their users' access to web content, and exclude competing services from their networks. End examples. It appears the recent increases in copyright protections should be rolled back again, and programmers allowed to work once more on getting around programming code which prevents the fair use of products. Only patents which prioritize innovation over profit should be granted. Copyrights for artists and authors should only last for five years, but be renewable; thus the content would fall into the public domain once the owners no longer cared enough to retain them. "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today." -- Bill Gates, Microsoft, 1991 -- Profit© vs. innovation© By Douglas McGray; The Christian Science Monitor; November 01, 2001; http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1101/p19s1-bogn.html; and other sources Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, stung by media criticisms of a particular patent taken out by the company, suggested that perhaps software and business patents should be made legally much weaker than other types of patents, extending for only 3-5 years, and enduring a stint of public discussion prior to going into effect. -- What Happened to the Fuss over Patents? By Tom Perrotta; Internet World News; the date stamp appears to be April 9, 2001 Do patents really promote innovation? Increasing numbers of economists believe they do not. At least not in the manner the USA is currently granting them. Indeed, it appears USA style patents may at best accomplish nothing at all, in at least certain types of industries. And at worst, they may actually reduce or interfere with real innovation. Evidence seems to be mounting that patent laws should be weakened rather than strengthened. The more complex the technology involved in a given patent, the more likely any company wishing to apply that patent to a product or service will need the cooperation of other, different patent holders to realize their goal. If patent laws are too strong, they may cause less cooperation between different patent owners, thereby slowing the pace of innovation overall. Different technologies are affected by patent laws in different ways. Where patents are built up for bargaining chips in complex fields like information technologies, they are obtained for more straightforward ROI (Return on Investment) reasons in simpler fields like chemicals and pharmaceuticals. It appears that the stronger patent laws are made, the better off an industry is to avoid activity related to them-- which leads directly to anti-competitive behavior. Being the first to market, and leveraging secrecy rather than patents looks to slow the spread of information in general throughout an industry. Cross licensing looks to actually increase research and development. There's no simple solution to the current intellectual property dilemma. But it appears that whatever the ultimate solution may be, it will involve a wider array of IP protection tools and more complex gauges of their effectiveness than we possess today. -- Patently absurd? The Economist; July 6th 2001 and Jun 21st 2001 are both dates associated with this piece. |
#7: Putting a cap on how many different types of products or services a single company can produce (this cap helps rein in conglomerates which find sneaky ways to get around the total company size limit).
#8: Outright banning some corporations from the right to own patents and the like for extended periods of time as punishment for certain types of misdeeds or acts of omission on the part of the organization or employees therein. In such cases companies could be forced to sell their inventory of intellectual property to the highest bidder(s), then lease them back to continue in business. Where competitors buy the I.P. and refuse to lease it back, the corporation under punishment could well face dissolution. Take-overs of remaining assets by employees, unions, other businesses, or even government agencies could also occur under such circumstances.
#9: Requiring public disclosure by corporations of any and all individuals, employees or not, directly responsible for the research and development leading to a corporate patent or other intellectual property claim, along with any and all relevant documentation and media created by all those people in the creation process. This public disclosure of documentation can sometimes aid the patent application processing due to the acknowledgement of possible prior art or references to same. Severe legal punishments are put into place for any company or individual found to intentionally withhold such relevant documentation from the patent office.
This required disclosure of all related documentation greatly aids the patent office's refusal of many patents, as well as helps discourage parties from making too many applications or be too extravagant and broad in their claims.
#10: Forcing companies which chronically and intentionally commit atrocious or outrageous acts largely due to decisions based only upon quarterly results or even shorter term priorities to have their planning and budgeting operations taken over by a cooperative consisting of 40% relevant government representatives, 30% by rotating volunteer retired executives from the same industry (but having no financial interests in the company or its direct competitors), and 30% by rotating college students on leave from school and majoring in relevant subject areas, for periods of time to be determined by the appropriate regulating agency. All interaction between these various parties is fully documented as well in order to minimize undesirable types of interaction between the groups. The periods of usurped control might be as short as six months or as long as several years.
#11: Though there are many related details not listed here, basically under the new reforms the larger a company is in relative terms to its competitors, the more tightly regulated that company's advertising and marketing efforts. In extreme cases they are completely banned from any direct marketing efforts similar to that which was typical in the late 20th/early 21st centuries. In other cases they must provide more robust proof of accuracy in claims than smaller players.
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It appears that government regulatory changes impose substantially more financial costs on both small businesses and minority religions than they do big business or majority religions.
This means that entreprenuers and small business startups are penalized and discouraged, compared to established and/or larger businesses. The smallest businesses appear to pay almost 60% more per worker to comply with new regulations than the largest businesses do. Paperwork related to taxes and environmental regulations appear to be where most of the discrepancy exists. Economies of scale account for much of the bigger burden on smaller businesses as opposed to larger ones. In the case of religion, it means the establishment of new religions or existence of minority religions is discouraged to the benefit of larger, already existing religions. -- The Great Red-Tape Robbery By Robin J. Phillips; NOVEMBER 7, 2001; The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc., and Government regulations can prove discriminatory to minority religions; 7-Nov-2001; Contact: Paul Blaum; pab15@psu.edu; 814-865-9481; Penn State |
#12: Companies above a certain size must usually provide more and better customer guarantees of quality and satisfaction than substantially smaller competitors, by rule of law. As the warrantees expressed by smaller competitors provide the standard by which such measurements are made, some monolithic companies today find themselves hard-pressed to out-compete smaller players-- with the result being that immense corporations now often abandon mature markets to a boisterous band of upstarts. This legal pressure thus often pushes huge companies to forge ahead into new and unexplored territory product and service-wise, rather than milking an existing mature market for all it's worth. Their enormous resources cushion the risks and give them an endurance in research and development smaller companies might never match. And so the pace in innovation overall is accelerated via heavy investment from corporate giants as they try to establish all new markets to replace the mature ones made too competitive for them by government regulations and robust market competition.
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It appears that government regulatory changes impose substantially more financial costs on both small businesses and minority religions than they do big business or majority religions.
This means that entreprenuers and small business startups are penalized and discouraged, compared to established and/or larger businesses. The smallest businesses appear to pay almost 60% more per worker to comply with new regulations than the largest businesses do. Paperwork related to taxes and environmental regulations appear to be where most of the discrepancy exists. Economies of scale account for much of the bigger burden on smaller businesses as opposed to larger ones. In the case of religion, it means the establishment of new religions or existence of minority religions is discouraged to the benefit of larger, already existing religions. -- The Great Red-Tape Robbery By Robin J. Phillips; NOVEMBER 7, 2001; The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc., and Government regulations can prove discriminatory to minority religions; 7-Nov-2001; Contact: Paul Blaum; pab15@psu.edu; 814-865-9481; Penn State |
#13: This may be the most important new rule: Forcing companies to possibly compete with immortal, incremental upgrades of their own past products. That is, whenever a company officially stops selling and/or supporting a given product or computer program, it must hand over the designs, specifications, code, and all documentation related to the past and present building, manufacture, and maintenance of that product or program to the open source knowledge pool, where anyone with the capability may then continue maintaining, manufacturing, updating, and improving that product or computer program into perpetuity-- with the added rule that all subsequent innovations to the product or code will themselves forever remain within the open source pool for access to and by all.
This public availability of past technology and ideas also eventually makes for an excellent and growing database of easily searched prior art, helping force new patent applications to be truly original and innovative, rather than simply attempts to claim ownership of common ideas whose origins have been obscured by bankrupt companies, forgotten individuals, forced obsolescence, brief-lived fads, out-of-date databases, and other flaws of human historical record.
This new rule greatly intensifies market competition, choice, and innovation, while cutting prices for consumers and thus raising living standards for all. It also widens and deepens the choices available for the poor and the young, as it allows for much longer useful lives for both hardware and software of many types. It creates vast new entrepreneurial opportunities in the servicing of such products, as well as allows individual human knowledge and experience to remain viable for much longer than they might otherwise in the marketplace. For example, vacuum tubes. Note that not only did it turn out that vacuum tubes did not become obsolete for all uses in the 1960s, but they even turned out to be important for cutting edge research after 2000.
Open sourcing this knowledge also provides all of human civilization with an extra layer of technological redundancy and security in case of catastrophic technological failures or even major natural disasters. How so? Allowing obsolete tech to continue on in an open knowledge base and in commercial products and services greatly increases the diversity of the world technological base, as well as insuring that at least some portions remain perpetually de-centralized. Thus, it becomes increasingly difficult for any conceivable natural disaster, tech failure, war, sabotage, or terrorist attack to bring about a substantial global failure in the net and other technological devices upon which humanity increasingly depends. I.e., imagine the difficulty involved in creating a single virus which could do significant damage to such a wide gamut of software architectures and applications as implied by an open source knowledge pool. By contrast, in 2000, so much of humanity was limited to a single, closed, proprietary architecture (Microsoft Windows), that successful and costly attacks of many sorts were routine in computing and networking affairs.
Plus, even in worst case scenarios, the world's increased tech diversity due to the open source knowledge pool offers multiple starting points from which to rebuild and regenerate the infrastructure if necessary.
Despite all this some decry this open sourcing rule early on as being a drag on innovation and productivity rather than an accelerant. After all, if the masses aren't forced to adopt new technologies they might never do so, resulting in a stifling of new research and development, and stagnation in the related industries.
But no such decline takes place. Indeed, the pace of innovation quickens, technological flexibility and security increases, productivity rises, and general consumer satisfaction soars. How so? The threshold in product improvement required for customers to replace prior devices is raised considerably compared to the past. Companies are forced to squelch defects and quality problems before release, rather than after. Forced to perform tests in both greater quantity and quality in product development than before. Forced to make their devices at least as easy and convenient to use as present competing products, simply to get anyone at all to consider them. Beyond that, a product must offer some compelling cost, convenience, functionality, or performance advantage over others to be adopted. Widespread consumer review and credibility ratings of both companies and their products and services do much to enforce the new paradigm.
Advances in computer hardware and software have of course made it much easier and faster to do this extra development work upfront too, than was possible in the past.
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"Abandonware" may be a notion whose time is coming. Namely, that software which for any number of reasons is no longer sold or supported by its original maker, is made available for free to everyone on the internet for downloading. Related documentation and the content from old books and magazines pertaining to the programs and their use are also made available, under this concept.
Abandonware can allow old computer hardware to maintain some usefulness far beyond the life of the makers, companies, brand names, and original markets from which it sprang. Among other things, this means it can make for dirt cheap basic computing resources for the poor, and children everywhere. Over time more and more abandonware may even be suitable for use in practically free low end internet clients, thereby doing even more good. Currently 95 year long copyrights remain a legal obstacle to this idea, making it effectively illegal for anyone to distribute or obtain such software, despite the fact the maker itself is no longer selling, distributing, or supporting it. Of course, many current software developers would likely prefer that consumers not have access to abandonware, since that would reduce the need to buy new software and hardware on a regular basis. So industry associations like the Interactive Digital Software Association routinely track down and kill any web sites and organizations found attempting to make Abandonware a real alternative, via the ever expanding copyright laws that Congress has obligingly been enacting for major corporations over the past decade or two (to the point that even the existence of public libraries is now being threatened). Grass roots efforts are now underway to persuade the original creators of much old software to officially put them into the public domain, thereby breaking the copyright stranglehold on such items. Unfortunately, it can be nearly impossible to find the original developers in many cases, as the works are so old. Plus, the vagaries of the software business mean that many programs were bought or taken over by one or a succession of other companies, before or after the software itself stopped being sold and supported. Tracking down ownership in such cases is no sure thing. Especially since the owners themselves in many cases have discarded any relevant records they may once have had of such ownership and transactions. Perhaps the most practical thing to do would be for Congress to enact a law allowing the free distribution of software which appears to have been abandoned by its maker for at least two years, with the provision that if a rightful owner does appear and protest the distribution, it'll be stopped. A few software publishers seem to have seen the potential benefit to society of making such old programs available for free to everyone. They include the makers of Mac OS 6.0.3 through 7.5.3, ThinkTank, More, and Acta outliners, Turbo C and Turbo Pascal, VisiCalc, Nisus Writer 4.1.6, Allaire Forums, and various games by Scott Adams. -- Can "Abandonware" Revive Forgotten Programs? By Kevin Savetz; September 17, 2001; BYTE Magazine; Features; 2001; September
The mounting case for obsolete technologies being released into a free/public domain/open source project classification all their ownAt several points in my timeline I write about a vast amount of so-called "obsolete technology" becoming categorized as something akin to a universal store of materials, devices, and software accessible for virtually free to all human beings everywhere by a certain point in future history. A vast, royalty-free library/catalog from which anyone may draw via a nanotech replicator to reproduce various goodies for need or want. Such largess becomes a form of official Do-It-Yourself 'welfare' and 'social security' for citizens of the far future, helping provide a sort of 'ultimate safety net' for everyone. Though (as of 2001) it will be centuries before the most idealistic form of this system may be available to us, already some present-day observers are wondering aloud if we shouldn't create some sort of legitimatized system for making 'obsolete' technologies available to those who want or need them. Simsom L. Garfinkel of the Boston Globe gives the example of the advanced Improv spreadsheet created by Lotus Development on Next computers (and then MS Windows 3.1 PCs) many years ago, and then abandoned to the dustbin of history, for apparently no good reason. He goes on to describe the many practical and legal obstacles to obtaining the technology for himself and others at the time of his writing, and how the inaccessibility of such technology seems morally wrong and logically a drag and drain on the potential of the global economy itself. Garfinkel argues that when a copyright owner of something like Improv fails to continue support and/or improvement of that product, or even stops distribution altogether, the copyright should go into the public domain so that the product may still serve those who find it useful, and perhaps even regain ongoing support and improvement from other parties. After all, Garfinkel points out, copyright laws only exist in the first place to encourage authors to produce new and improved works; if they don't do that, then aren't the authors reneging on their part of the social contract? Garfinkel does seem to make an excellent case-- and brought up a new point I hadn't previously considered myself about the issue: namely, that such 'obsolete' products going into a public domain/open source code mode might furiously increase competition in the commercial sectors as well, leading to higher quality and lower prices across the board, plus prodding commercial ventures to take feature sets to whole new and higher levels than they might otherwise do, thereby greatly reducing the types of product stagnation we seem to have suffered in computer operating systems and applications the past ten years or so. Note too that this release of obsolete tech into the public domain might help control the future growth of monster corporations as well (mega corporations beyond the power of world governments to control or regulate could pose a serious threat to human rights and progress in coming centuries). -- Copyrights and wrongs By Simsom L. Garfinkel; 02/18/99, Boston Globe, page C04 An open source library of hardware designs could reduce waste in the product development cycle, accelerate innovation, and increase competition. -- Free hardware design library proposed By John G. Spooner, ZDNN March 27, 2001; http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn Some scientists are banding together to boycott scientific journals which do not publish their reports online a short time after hard copy publication, in a freely accessible format. A far larger group of 26,000+ scientists in 170 nations have given their formal support to the establishment of a public online archive to serve as a central storage place for scientific research of all kinds. Such an archive could in theory accelerate scientific advances. One big reason for these two movements is increasing discontent with the delays and unnecessary obstacles to progress the older journal publication process is causing, primarly due to journal publishers placing profit motives over everything else. -- Scientists call for online library by Mark Ward; 1 September, 2001; BBC News Online The attraction of open source software for corporate IT is the potential for lower programming costs, higher quality software, and more rapid debugging than might be possible with proprietary applications. But what is the attraction of IT vendors (like IBM) to open source? Microsoft in 2001 fiercely opposes the adoption of open source software by the industry, partly because Microsoft already enjoys an effective monopoly in the field, and feels threatened by competition which deviates from the standard business model on which Microsoft's monopoly stands. The open source model offers free software which is invulnerable to price wars on the part of Microsoft, and there is no single, centralized entity or source which Microsoft can simply buy out to stop the competition. Thus, Microsoft is lobbying government to hobble open source software via regulation. Other market players (like IBM) have little to lose in betting on open source eventually seizing monopoly status from Microsoft. In that event, Microsoft would lose its power to control who participates and how in the industry-- and no single entity could replace Microsoft in that role. In such an "open monopoly", the barriers to entry would be much lower, and would tend to remain low, encouraging greater competition and making it much tougher for any one company to bar another from entering the market or bringing new innovations to bear there. The lower costs open source can allow in software development and maintenance for everyone means potentially bigger profits, too. Since in open source the users/customers tend to participate in determining what advances and improvements are made to the software, far fewer mistakes or mis-steps can be made by developers in what products are supplied to meet customer demand (compared to the older proprietary model; another competitive advantage open source may enjoy over proprietary models like Microsoft's). Market economies throughout history have tended to encourage monopolies in cases where a suitable industrial infrastructure was still lacking. It may be that the software industry is reaching the end of its infrastructure building stage. -- The coming "open monopoly" in software By Petr Hrebejk and Tim Boudreau; October 24, 2001; CNET Networks, Inc There should be more constraints placed on what contracts may be imposed by business onto customers in items like software licenses, so that 'fair use' of content by end users is not thwarted. More active promotion and support of the public domain concept would likely improve the environment for future advances. -- Internet liberation theology By Marc Rotenberg; Nov. 7, 2001; Salon.com |
While true that in the beginning widespread new and high profit margin product adoption slows somewhat under these rules, it is soon determined that the cause of the slowing is the public's increased satisfaction with present or past technologies and subsequent higher reluctance to support unfinished, incomplete, buggy, more expensive, and/or harder-to-use offerings from commercial concerns. While consumers often had little choice but to do so in the past, when monopolized (or nearly so) industries in products like automobiles and computer operating systems could overnight declare yesterday's product never more to be sold or supported, today they can often keep and maintain yesterday's device near indefinitely if they like-- and many do (at least wherever no safety or security concerns are discovered with the tech-- and even then in many cases an upgrade will be made quickly available to rectify the matter).
However, once business realizes that they may no longer take their customers for granted as in the past, they quickly adapt to the new market rules, soon outputting items good enough to hold their own or even surpass the legacy competition. Given the higher quality and lower prices of the new offerings (relative to the bigger artificial premiums they commanded in the past over older tech), consumer buying behavior soon becomes very comparable to what it was prior to the new laws going into effect-- but with a few notable differences.
One, the widening and deepening pool of Open Source products means that within a generation there's suitable and sustainable levels of technology available at virtually every income level worldwide. Though the poorest children in the darkest corners of Africa and Asia can't imagine the tools and toys kids in the developed states enjoy, they are no longer totally shut off from the technological revolution reshaping the world. Local schools and organizations easily obtain or build older tech devices to empower local youngsters with basic levels of computing and net access, and often much more.
In many cases combining lots of cheap old tech with just one or a few items of expensive newer tech allows entire schools and villages to leapfrog many intermediate and cost-intensive stages of development others were forced to undergo prior to the IP reforms. Over time perhaps a billion lives are saved, and another billion fewer go hungry each night, due directly or indirectly to these reform measures.
Two, the veritable flood (as opposed to 'trickle-down' effect), of useful technologies into the poorest nations unleash more than heightened living standards and improved educational and training resources; they also generate lots of new business startups in these regions of the world, some of which eventually go on to challenge the behemoths of the developed states in certain competitive arenas. (Of course, this outcome is one of the reasons big, established businesses opposed the IP reforms in the first place; they feared the increased competition which could appear on a level playing field).
Three, purveyors of newer technologies are put under tremendous competitive pressures by older tech vendors to reduce bugs, defects, and user risk in their offerings to at least roughly match the quality of older tech even in version 1.0 items. Because otherwise they get crucified in product reviews and comparisons.
Of course, none of the above principles will achieve anything if they are not enforced. True and consistent enforcement requires not just passage of appropriate laws, but the establishment of an organization dedicated to their enforcement, with sufficient independence from contemporary political administrations to maintain and fulfill their duty even when or if considerable political or financial pressures are applied to stop or reduce their efforts. I guess I'm describing something along the lines of the Federal Reserve body here, only modified to serve the interests of balancing the intellectual property rights of owners and consumers in ways most beneficial to society as a whole, over the long term.
Why and how does a shorter patent lifespan accelerate innovation and improve living standards for populations? In these ways:
(Two), shorter patent periods encourage more R&D as companies are unable to rest on their laurels in many markets as long as they did before the reduction. More R&D means more and faster innovation.
(Three), shorter patent periods means increased 'generic' technology-based startups and competition, with possibly many of these new fledgling companies eventually growing sufficiently to start their own fresh R&D efforts-- thereby challenging and competing with the established brands and mega-corporations easier and sooner and more frequently than they could before.
(Four), the pace of technology innovation and effective commercial exploitation is increasing even as productivity gains are cutting associated costs (thereby increasing potential profits incrementally per unit), and rapidly growing world markets and trade are allowing booming revenues (thereby increasing economies of scale in the applications of patented technologies, increasing profits still more). Thus, today's companies actually are often benefiting far more from each commercially successful patent than a company a decade or two earlier usually could. So a careful reduction in the patent timespan amounts to little more than returning rewards for innovation closer to their historic norms, so far as basic business and economic principles are concerned. The growing economic imbalance in much of the world due to patent lifespans legislated in antiquity remaining the law of the land in the first half of the 21st century is likely one reason why so many economic statistics of the 21st show an ever widening gulf between rich and poor; the rich were enjoying an ever increasing automatic benefit due to the growing historical imbalance between patent lifespan and patent profitability. At least, until the reforms were made.
(Five), it lowers the costs incurred on government at all levels (federal through state through local) in providing social services of various kinds, such as medical insurance for retirees. The estimated cost reductions in military spending alone appear enormous.
Isn't someone hurt by this? Yes. Immense corporations and the very wealthiest individuals are forced back to historical norms in their patent-related profits, and must work harder to maintain or improve their current status in markets. But even these downsides are rendered virtually non-existent in many cases, by advances in computer technologies which make it easier for various businesses to survive and prosper on ever smaller profit margins over time. Much of the previous overhead and operational risks associated with many processes and decisions are fast disappearing from company balance sheets, even as productivity advances are cutting workforce requirements too. END NOTE.
SPECIAL NOTE: The basics of market economics rest upon the laws governing supply and demand. Almost everyone instinctively comes to grasp these basic economic principles in terms of physical, tangible goods during childhood. The more people that want the same thing, the more valuable that thing is-- at least if there is a finite number of such objects. Conversely, the more there is of a particular item, or the fewer people who want it, the less valuable that item is. Thus the interplay of supply and demand. Almost the entire world economy exists solely upon the changes in balance between supply and demand for various physical products and the services which directly or indirectly support/provide them. But what of virtual or imaginary items? Things which can be instantly, easily multiplied to satisfy as many people who might want them, for costs so low as to be essentially free? In this case manufacturing and distribution costs practically don't exist. Especially with the near negligible costs in computing, storage, and bandwidth today. So any involved costs must stem from the initial creation of an item, and/or any tangible assets spent in creating an awareness of and demand for that item. But in a world with instant global communications and ubiquitous AIs constantly searching for items which might benefit their owners in some way, practically the only purpose for marketing or 'spin' would be, basically, to scam people into doing something that wasn't really in their best interests. Ergo, marketing or 'spin' is now becoming little more than a tool for the criminal, corrupt, or malevolent to use upon peers or subordinates in efforts to create modern versions of 20th century cults and/or other unhealthy or ill-advised relationships of various sorts. Is it any wonder then that marketing and advertising as widely practiced in the late 20th/early 21st centuries is outright banned in many places and heavily regulated in others today? So, in effect, the costs of marketing and advertising for a given product or service is today falling to negligible levels too. The savings from this tend to be put towards new product/service research and development and quality control in general. Of course, as quality control done right itself saves huge sums (as proven by the Japanese in late 20th century auto manufacturing), as well as often propels related products/services skywards in comparative reviews and ratings, increasing sales, the increased attention to quality control likely produces net profits for most organizations, rather then costs. The vast improvements in computing and network efficiency and flexibility have served to make R&D efforts much more cost-effective than ever before in history too. So R&D and quality control likely present net costs primarily to those companies which are extraordinarily incompetent at managing same, during this period. Indeed, much R&D today may be carried out entirely by automated simulation software, generating and testing billions of ideas in days or weeks to find the best combination for a given market. Moving the concept from virtual to physical reality is also easier than ever. For one thing, many projects today never require transformation from the virtual to physical worlds at all. Once fully formed in VR, they are done and ready to ship! But moving from the lab to physical factory too is not much more difficult, when companies can simply print 3-D objects and models directly from computer memory to a wide variety of physical production facilities. In general, the more advanced our manufacturing and production processes become, the more like virtual intangibles even physical items can be (in terms of related costs). Likewise the less valuable even intellectual creations become, as the physical means to invent and manufacture become ever more effortless and negligible in cost, and advances in artificial intelligence and other mind amplification (or replacement) make innovation itself an ever more trivial task So it's getting harder and harder today to find a substantial cost source in the creation and production of many products and services. Throw in the fact that quite a bit of intellectual property is created more out of love of the work itself (or other personal benefits derived) rather than for financial compensation, and potential costs drop still further. But never fear: individuals, business, and government have come up with a new way to assess the market value of a particular good, even under conditions like these which tend to push costs towards zero for many items-- and especially purely intellectual goods, such as an old fashioned text novel, with no added VR values and zip in the way of distribution costs. AUTHOR'S NOTE: A summary of this new method and some examples follow below. Today, it's becoming increasingly evident that trading in time is becoming the major market of the world-- maybe the only market, eventually. Everything else about life is becoming amenable or replaceable in some fashion. But time remains an item in short supply. Thus, the probable impact of a given product or service on the time of its customers or consumers, in relation to the benefits it provides, is becoming more and more important. Time sinks are not only worth less than time multipliers, they can actually force the producer of a related product or service to pay someone to use it, rather than the other way around. Where decades before many companies exploited various laws and circumstances to play something akin to a lottery game with their customers-- I.E., a purchase only meant a chance at getting a desired product or service, not a guarantee that you'd get what a business had offered you for your money-- now the tables have turned, so that companies avoid the lottery game if at all possible. For one of the elements of the lottery game was a business shifting time deficit burdens out of their operations onto their customers. Now, that is no longer acceptable, both by market demand and by law. Companies today struggle mightily to avoid costing a customer a time deficit, as that can effectively force them to provide the related product or service at significant discount, entirely free, or along with a financial compensatory reward to the customer in question. The time constraints reach all through the supply chain in the business world now. On the other hand, if a business successfully manages to instill an element of time multiplier into their product or service, they may sometimes reap substantial profits, tax breaks, and other benefits. The smallest whole unit of a time multiplier factor is 100%; that is, the product or service costs the customer no time at all after the initial transaction, in terms of its proper use. One example of such an item might be a peripheral ordered for your computer. It's delivered to your home sans any packaging, since it's of a single piece and sturdy: like the Batmobile of Batman films in the late 20th century, the peripheral possesses built-in extendable protective shielding for transport, which retracts automatically when the owner instructs it so. It also self-installs wirelessly and instantly onto your computer once it's in close proximity, and just plain works on demand. Thus, no appreciable time sink factor; indeed, a time multiplier factor of 100%, as the customer enjoys a discrete expansion of his or her computing capabilities now, with no significant price in time invested to make it happen, beyond that spent during the transaction. A piece of furniture you must put together yourself rates as a time sink. Thus, unless it offers some very unique and useful features compared to others of its general ilk, it's unlikely the manufacturer will be able to charge very much for it in the marketplace. Because it'll rate as something like a 300% to 800% time sink factor. A big negative. By contrast, a piece of furniture which is delivered to your home without any extra work on your part, unpackages and assembles itself when prompted, provides contextual help information regarding special features automatically via a built-in voice system, and moves itself into the position you dictate in your home, would probably rate a 100% time multiplier factor. Pretty decent positive. Of course, the expected functionality, uniqueness, or certain other qualities of a given product or service also figure into the equation. For instance, a piece of shape-shifting furniture capable of becoming literally any sort of furnishing you might require in a home could be a top-of-the-line product/service of this period. Thus, if it also rated a time sink factor of 300% to 800% because you had to spend some time in your kitchen performing the final chemical activation of the item, it could still command a premium price-- because its other features outweighed its negative factors for most potential consumers during this period in history. All this has led to packaging and specifications touting the proven time multiplier factor of given products/services, as one of their competitive features. Of course, although time is obviously becoming the most important commodity over decades, during this period there still exists a few other elements to consider in determining the market price of a particular product or service. Elements like a product or service's impact on the environment, the mental and physical health of the user or others, the likely result on the user's future employability, etc., etc., etc. These items help determine whether an item is taxed, subsidized, or otherwise impacted by various government policies and other factors. In an environment like this, lethal 20th century-style cigarrettes would have a lot against them. Heavy taxes to make up for the health and employability damage to the user and others, and the agricultural resources used to grow the tobacco, which could have been used for something more productive. One of the byproducts of all this (and other trends of the time) is a change in the medium of exchange too. Hard cash had mostly become electronic cash long ago, in the developed nations. Anonymity of electronic cash transactions eventually became available too, for the price of a percentage premium on the cost of the items involved, and a contractual bond with a sort of insurance bureau which represented you in all your online transactions. If your transactions ever resulted in substantial legal or military action against the bureau, they were obligated to keep you informed of the mounting pressures in regards to your identity, and continue protecting your anonymity up through a certain period of time, based on the size of the premiums you were paying on purchases and any monthly fee (if any). This timespan was meant to allow you time to (a) turn yourself over to authorities to get a more lenient sentence if convicted, (b), possibly do your own investigation and prepare a legal defense, (c) to move away, or (d), do whatever else you'd wish to with the time provided. After this time ran out, the bureau would hand over everything they knew about you to the authorities-- which was usually quite a bit. Getting an anonymous e-cash bond or license requires passing an investigative examination of a fairly detailed application, which the customer completes upfront. After all, the bureau exists only to protect average citizens wishing for privacy in relatively insignificant matters; it does not exist to protect terrorists or criminals. One exception to the bureau protection limitations is free speech. In most cases if the authorities cannot provide significant evidence that their target is not wanted on pure censorship of reasonable free speech grounds, then the bureau is obligated to stand its ground against almost anything, including a full-scale military assault. Some bureaus possess their own armed forces, and operate out of their own sovereign territories to increase their independence and reliability. END NOTE. AUTHOR'S NOTE: The concept of 'economies of scale' applies primarily during periods of intermediate technology and raw resource development. The more advanced technology becomes, the more flexible and less costly it is in resource usage and end use customization, as well as scalability in production-- either up or down. END NOTE. Assuming the problem of bloated corporations and their depressing effect on innovation (as well as upwards pressure on costs) are solved-- and simplifying the issue to one of individual to individual transactions of value-for-value, how might the creation of desirable intellectual property be encouraged and rewarded, while keeping the costs to consumers relatively low as well? Note that individual human beings and their families could never be as wasteful or resource-intensive as the big corporations of their time. Thus, their overhead would be much lower, and much less in the way of financial returns would be necessary to insure their prosperity, compared to what a large corporation might require. People also live much shorter lives than corporations, which works out to much shorter periods for which a given product or service might be desired to support its makers (note that the shorter lifespan and smaller size of makers might serve itself to increase the pace of innovation-- for longer-lived and powerful large corporations have many reasons to prolong the useful lifespan of a product or service in the market, and much resources with which to enforce the event (such as monopolies, market collusion, and others). With the presence of mega-corporations minimized in the markets, small players like individuals and small businesses could flourish more easily around the world, leading to a wider, fairer distribution of wealth, even as competition and innovation increased. Small to moderate-scale marketing efforts would have much better chances of success than before, thereby leading to much lower marketing costs than would exist under the big player scenario. Advances in technology by this time also have allowed reductions in administrative and government costs, while at the same time improving related services-- thereby allowing government (or dedicated small business concerns) to take over some of the duties once left to mega-corporations to perform in-house. So, in this scenario we have a more level playing field, consisting possibly of hundreds of millions of small businesses and self-employed individuals (if not more), occupying nearly every major market sector, rather than just a handful of mega-corporations commanding same. END SPECIAL NOTE. |