UN proposal against aharonarchy

[Roland Orre <orre@nada.kth.se>]

It's sad, or maybe not a coincidence, that one of the few persons on
this list who is pro sw patents is also pro anarchy. The conclusion
that Greg Aharonian is pro anarchy is the only conclusion I can draw
from such of his statements which I have recited in the end of this
mail.

I don't want to live in an anarchy, as I guess most people prefer
not to do. In an anarchy law and order do not have much significance
and actions which are beneficial for all people are less likely to
happen. People in an anarchy put too much effort into protecting
themselves against others and mainly do things which are beneficial
to themselves only. I want to live in a world where I know that what
I create is my creation. A creation which I can share with others in
the way I prefer. It is insane that someone suddenly should be able to
say, "No, I thought of this before you, so it's my idea." This is what
two kids could possibly say to each other in kindergarten, if raised by
bad parents, but nobody would take such a statement seriously.

No, the world which the (mostly) US influenced lobbyists are trying
to impose on us is an unfree world, where you are not free to think
and create. Where you don't know how to do right. Because almost
whatever you do, you do wrong. It's a lottery if someone will sue
you or not. This is the world Aharonian and others want us to live in.

As Russell McOrmond pointed out, patenting software is like
patenting ideas, and ideas are and should be free. Of course we
also want some protections for our creations, art, music, writing,
programming etc, for this purpose copyrights serve a good purpose.
GPL, one of the most powerful legal constructs ever made, from
my point of view, is a good example of a very useful copyright,
despite Greg's futile claims that copyrights would not be useful
on programs. Patents can on the other hand only be harmful, as
Stallman points out. 

An artist can not patent his/her way of painting, writing,
thinking etc. Ideas which springs off from a mind, can not be
owned, when communicated an idea belongs to us all.

The absurd idea itself, to be able to purchase monopoly on an idea,
is, apart from being insane and against the human rights we have
defined, yet another factor which makes companies organize into larger
aggregates, (rich richer) a la Adam Smith's old predictions, making
it hard for small companies to compete.

What is going to happen is probably that patents as such will
become global as e.g. discussed in this article from Technology
Review http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/schwartz0503.asp

To make something like that happen there is needed a global
harmonization on patent/copyright rules. US have software
patents due to an old mistake, but instead of revising the
patent system and disallow software patents for all, some
of their interests (mainly controlled by capitalists and
lawyers) have lobbyists, represented by e.g Greg Aharonian,
trying to affect the rest of the world to be similar to
the American system where you are in lack of legal rights
in the normal meaning of the world. If I do something
wrong I should know that I do something wrong. With software
patents, you can't know this. (e.g. in my master thesis work
1980 I had used two, at that time, patented constructs) 

It is scary when reading for instance this article:
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/shulman0300.asp
a natural idea for an e-business: an "experts online" web site.
Would anyone seriously believe that someone would be able to
patent such an obvious idea, no, as little as the stupid
Amazone one-click patent? I and a friend of mine who is
physician had ideas about developing an on-line expert system
for patient self diagnosis 1996, but I didn't have time to deal
with that at that occasion so we put that aside. To patent it?
No, such an insane idea would never have occured for us,
because it's absolutely obvious. There is already a lot of
expert systems online by the way, so better not speak about it...
My company, which deals with warehousing and remote data
analysis will of course also include expert systems on
the web, this we already have in the coming three years
plan, but thank's to the stupid fact that the so called
"Intellectual property firm, Walker Digital" has patented
this obvious idea we will now enter the anarchy because
now we can't mention that this what we are doing is in
fact an expert system. And Greg, don't come here and
say something stupid like: you could have documented this
then and invalidate the patent! You document complicated
ideas, but not obvious ideas! From that perspective I
already wrote in a student paper 1986 about how the
"Terrrestrial Operative System (a mix of global operative
system, expert system and advanced human/computer interface
being in contact with the database "world knowledge") allowed
anyone to be assisted immedeately through the global wireless
(10 Mbit at that time) (with high speed back bone grid) network.
This paper, if a student paper is "valid" :) would
invalidate that (and many other) patents, anyway, so I'm clean.


So, what I suggest is that we appeal to United Nations, referring
to Article 19:
      "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression;
       this right includes freedom to hold opinions without
       interference and to seek, receive and impart information and
       ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

A request that:

* Protocols or patterns can not be patented.
* Software, algorithms and ideas can not be patented.

Before this can be added to international law, there should also
be possible to create a virtual society, a "Free Society" where
we as individuals can join, and we should then be immune to patents
on software, protocols and patterns. I don't know much about
legal possibilites for a "free society" network, but this must
be possible to implement some way.

As an individual you would have to choose, which law to obey,
the "Free Society" or the (anarchistic) society where sw patents
may still exist for a while. The same choice would be for a
company. Please, come with suggestions how to attack this
problem on the international level! There must be some form
of legal law segregation possible to implement.

    Best regards
    Roland Orre

A selection of some of Aharonian's anarchistic statements:

Gregory Aharonian <srctran@world.std.com> Thu, 10 Apr 2003 writes:
> Besides, you only get sued with a software patent if you have
> substantial enough profits for a patent holder to want to grab some.
> Until you are making some money, you can mostly ignore the harassment
> letters you get about someone's software patents.

Gregory Aharonian <srctran@world.std.com> Thu, 10 Apr 2003:
> For those few software patents that would survive such an attack, you
> only have to worry if you have any money someone else could try to get
> by suiing you.  And sad to say, there are few open source companies
> showing any decent profit levels to be worth it for anyone to sue
> them.

Gregory Aharonian <srctran@world.std.com> Sat, 3 May 2003
> In Europe, unless you are making a lots of and lots of profits with
> your software, and unless the patent is good, no one is going come
> after you with their software patent.  Loser-pays is a very good
> deterrent to people asserting stupid software patents.

And, as we all now, this is not only valid for companies, it's also
for individuals, as when Fraunhofer asked Tord Jansson to remove the
binaries to his bladeenc from his home page. The bladeenc is GPL
but due to Fraunhofers (in Europe illegal patent) binaries of
these programs can not be provided. Another stupid thing with this
is that MP3 is an ISO standard... to patent a standard? Insane!