Skip to main content

Home/ Future of the Web/ Group items tagged single

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

EU digital single market: Death by compromise - POLITICO (*) - 0 views

  •  
    By Ryan Heath and Zoya Sheftalovich 6/5/15, 5:30 AM CET Updated 6/5/15, 12:07 PM CET The long-awaited, much-ballyhooed Digital Single Market strategy is set to be published at noon Wednesday by the European Commission. Reaction will be quick, loud and vociferous, but look for clues to the answer to one key question: Will this document really change anything? [*The structure of Media supply/demand keeps on being vertical: Users will only access what Big Companies offer. There must be a way -via watermarking, perhaps- to allow people to consume whatever they want, and fairly monetize it later... If not, the contents will be keep restricted to editors will: that is censorship and restrictions in te age of abundance and freedom] "A user's guide to the Commission's latest brainstorm. By Ryan Heath and Zoya Sheftalovich 6/5/15, 5:30 AM CET Updated 6/5/15, 12:07 PM CET"
  •  
    By Ryan Heath and Zoya Sheftalovich 6/5/15, 5:30 AM CET Updated 6/5/15, 12:07 PM CET The long-awaited, much-ballyhooed Digital Single Market strategy is set to be published at noon Wednesday by the European Commission. Reaction will be quick, loud and vociferous, but look for clues to the answer to one key question: Will this document really change anything? [*The structure of Media supply/demand keeps on being vertical: Users will only access what Big Companies offer. There must be a way -via watermarking, perhaps- to allow people to consume whatever they want, and fairly monetize it later... If not, the contents will be keep restricted to editors will: that is censorship and restrictions in te age of abundance and freedom] "A user's guide to the Commission's latest brainstorm. By Ryan Heath and Zoya Sheftalovich 6/5/15, 5:30 AM CET Updated 6/5/15, 12:07 PM CET"
Gary Edwards

Flex/Flash: About Singleton, Threads and Flex | Blogging about Software Development - 0 views

  • Flex applications are, like Flash applications, compiled into an SWF file. Once a user visits the webpage containing your Flex application, the SWF file is downloaded to and run from the client computer. Instead of a seperate session each user receives their own copy of your Flex application. The client computer runs the Flash VM, which in turn fires up the local copy of your Flex application. Furthermore, Flex uses the Actionscript scripting language. The current version is Actionscript 3. Actionscript 3 is single-threaded. By now you probably already see where this is going. The single-threaded nature of Flex applications means synchronization is not required.
  •  
    Flex applications are, like Flash applications, compiled into an SWF file. Once a user visits the webpage containing your Flex application, the SWF file is downloaded to and run from the client computer. Instead of a seperate session each user receives their own copy of your Flex application. The client computer runs the Flash VM, which in turn fires up the local copy of your Flex application. Furthermore, Flex uses the Actionscript scripting language. The current version is Actionscript 3. Actionscript 3 is single-threaded. By now you probably already see where this is going. The single-threaded nature of Flex applications means synchronization is not required.
  •  
    Live Roulette from Australia, Fun and Free! Now you can play Real "www.funlivecasino.com.au" Live Roulette for Fun in Australia on a brand new website, FunLiveCasino.com.au. Using the latest internet streaming technologies, Fun Live Casino lets you join a real game happening on a real table in a real casino, all broadcast Live! You can see other real players in the casino betting on the same results you do giving you ultimate trust in the results as they are not generated 'just for you', like other casino gaming products such as 'live studios' or computer generated games. Its amazing to think next time your really in the casino that you might be on camera, and people online might be watching! The future is scary! Imagine that one day soon this will be the only way people would gamble online because the internet is full of scams, you have to be super careful, and why would you play Online Roulette any other way except from a Real Casino you can visit, see, hear and trust! Amazingly this site is completely Free and has no registration process, no spam, no clicks and no fuss. Just Instant Fun "www.funlivecasino.com.au" Free Live Roulette! Give it a try, its worth checking out! "www.funlivecasino.com.au" Australia's Online Fun Live Casino! Backlink created from http://fiverr.com/radjaseotea/making-best-156654-backlink-high-pr
Gary Edwards

Developer: Dump JavaScript for faster Web loading | CIO - 0 views

  • Accomplishing the goal of a high-speed, responsive Web experience without loading JavaScript "could probably be done by linking anchor elements to JSON/XML (or a new definition) API endpoints [and] having the browser internally load the data into a new data structure," the proposal states.
  • The browser "then replaces DOM elements with whatever data that was loaded as needed.
  • The initial data and standard error responses could be in header fixtures, which could be replaced later if so desired. "The HTML body thus becomes a templating language with all the content residing in the fixtures that can be dynamically reloaded without JavaScript."
  •  
    "A W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) mailing list post entitled "HTML6 proposal for single-page Web apps without JavaScript" details the proposal, dated March 20. "The overall purpose [of the plan] is to reduce response times when loading Web pages," said Web developer Bobby Mozumder, editor in chief of FutureClaw magazine, in an email. "This is the difference between a 300ms page load vs 10ms. The faster you are, the better people are going to feel about using your Website." The proposal cites a standard design pattern emerging via front-end JavaScript frameworks where content is loaded dynamically via JSON APIs. "This is the single-page app Web design pattern," said Mozumder. "Everyone's into it because the responsiveness is so much better than loading a full page -- 10-50ms with a clean API load vs. 300-1500ms for a full HTML page load. Since this is so common now, can we implement this directly in the browsers via HTML so users can dynamically run single-page apps without JavaScript?" Accomplishing the goal of a high-speed, responsive Web experience without loading JavaScript "could probably be done by linking anchor elements to JSON/XML (or a new definition) API endpoints [and] having the browser internally load the data into a new data structure," the proposal states. The browser "then replaces DOM elements with whatever data that was loaded as needed." The initial data and standard error responses could be in header fixtures, which could be replaced later if so desired. "The HTML body thus becomes a templating language with all the content residing in the fixtures that can be dynamically reloaded without JavaScript." JavaScript frameworks and JavaScript are leveraged for loading now, but there are issues with these, Mozumder explained. "Should we force millions of Web developers to learn JavaScript, a framework, and an associated templating language if they want a speedy, responsive Web site out-of-the-box? This is a huge barrier for beginners, and right n
Paul Merrell

Tech firms and privacy groups press for curbs on NSA surveillance powers - The Washingt... - 0 views

  • The nation’s top technology firms and a coalition of privacy groups are urging Congress to place curbs on government surveillance in the face of a fast-approaching deadline for legislative action. A set of key Patriot Act surveillance authorities expire June 1, but the effective date is May 21 — the last day before Congress breaks for a Memorial Day recess. In a letter to be sent Wednesday to the Obama administration and senior lawmakers, the coalition vowed to oppose any legislation that, among other things, does not ban the “bulk collection” of Americans’ phone records and other data.
  • We know that there are some in Congress who think that they can get away with reauthorizing the expiring provisions of the Patriot Act without any reforms at all,” said Kevin Bankston, policy director of New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, a privacy group that organized the effort. “This letter draws a line in the sand that makes clear that the privacy community and the Internet industry do not intend to let that happen without a fight.” At issue is the bulk collection of Americans’ data by intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency. The NSA’s daily gathering of millions of records logging phone call times, lengths and other “metadata” stirred controversy when it was revealed in June 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The records are placed in a database that can, with a judge’s permission, be searched for links to foreign terrorists.They do not include the content of conversations.
  • That program, placed under federal surveillance court oversight in 2006, was authorized by the court in secret under Section 215 of the Patriot Act — one of the expiring provisions. The public outcry that ensued after the program was disclosed forced President Obama in January 2014 to call for an end to the NSA’s storage of the data. He also appealed to Congress to find a way to preserve the agency’s access to the data for counterterrorism information.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Despite growing opposition in some quarters to ending the NSA’s program, a “clean” authorization — one that would enable its continuation without any changes — is unlikely, lawmakers from both parties say. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a leading opponent of the NSA’s program in its current format, said he would be “surprised if there are 60 votes” in the Senate for that. In the House, where there is bipartisan support for reining in surveillance, it’s a longer shot still. “It’s a toxic vote back in your district to reauthorize the Patriot Act, if you don’t get some reforms” with it, said Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). The House last fall passed the USA Freedom Act, which would have ended the NSA program, but the Senate failed to advance its own version.The House and Senate judiciary committees are working to come up with new bipartisan legislation to be introduced soon.
  • The tech firms and privacy groups’ demands are a baseline, they say. Besides ending bulk collection, they want companies to have the right to be more transparent in reporting on national security requests and greater declassification of opinions by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
  • Some legal experts have pointed to a little-noticed clause in the Patriot Act that would appear to allow bulk collection to continue even if the authority is not renewed. Administration officials have conceded privately that a legal case probably could be made for that, but politically it would be a tough sell. On Tuesday, a White House spokesman indicated the administration would not seek to exploit that clause. “If Section 215 sunsets, we will not continue the bulk telephony metadata program,” National Security Council spokesman Edward Price said in a statement first reported by Reuters. Price added that allowing Section 215 to expire would result in the loss of a “critical national security tool” used in investigations that do not involve the bulk collection of data. “That is why we have underscored the imperative of Congressional action in the coming weeks, and we welcome the opportunity to work with lawmakers on such legislation,” he said.
  •  
    I omitted some stuff about opposition to sunsetting the provisions. They  seem to forget, as does Obama, that the proponents of the FISA Court's expansive reading of section 215 have not yet come up with a single instance where 215-derived data caught a single terrorist or prevented a single act of terrorism. Which means that if that data is of some use, it ain't in fighting terrorism, the purpose of the section.  Patriot Act § 215 is codified as 50 USCS § 1861, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1861 That section authorizes the FBI to obtain an iorder from the FISA Court "requiring the production of *any tangible things* (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items)."  Specific examples (a non-exclusive list) include: the production of library circulation records, library patron lists, book sales records, book customer lists, firearms sales records, tax return records, educational records, or medical records containing information that would identify a person." The Court can order that the recipient of the order tell no one of its receipt of the order or its response to it.   In other words, this is about way more than your telephone metadata. Do you trust the NSA with your medical records? 
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Connected Continent: a single telecom market for growth & jobs - Digital Agenda for Eur... - 0 views

  •  
    "In the face of the deep crisis affecting its economy and society, Europe needs to tap into new sources of growth in areas that will reinforce its competitiveness, drive innovation and create new job opportunities. " [Key information: Communication Regulation Recommendation Impact assessment Press release - Watch the press conference Memo Speech: We must act now - time for a Connected Continent Press conference opening remarks by Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the EC in charge of Digital Agenda Statement by Ryan Heath, Spokesperson for Digital Agenda on the Telecom Package Tags: Telecoms telecoms single market growth and jobs]
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

What's in the new Digital Single Market Strategy from the EU for open source? | Opensou... - 0 views

  •  
    "After months of preparation, the European Commission (EC) released its broad 5-year roadmap in early May for information and communications technology (ICT) policy, the Digital Single Market Strategy, or DSM."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

How To Join Several Partition Together To Form a Single Larger One On a Linux Using mhddfs - 0 views

  •  
    "I've three old hard drives: sized 60, 60 and 120 GB. And 200 GB of video files, which I need to store on these drives. How would I store all my files on three hard drive without split a file into pieces or creating RAID array? How can I combines a several mount points (partitions) into the single one on a Linux operating systems?"
Paul Merrell

Internet users raise funds to buy lawmakers' browsing histories in protest | TheHill - 0 views

  • House passes bill undoing Obama internet privacy rule House passes bill undoing Obama internet privacy rule TheHill.com Mesmerizing Slow-Motion Lightning Celebrate #NationalPuppyDay with some adorable puppies on Instagram 5 plants to add to your garden this Spring House passes bill undoing Obama internet privacy rule Inform News. Coming Up... Ed Sheeran responds to his 'baby lookalike' margin: 0px; padding: 0px; borde
  • Great news! The House just voted to pass SJR34. We will finally be able to buy the browser history of all the Congresspeople who voted to sell our data and privacy without our consent!” he wrote on the fundraising page.Another activist from Tennessee has raised more than $152,000 from more than 9,800 people.A bill on its way to President Trump’s desk would allow internet service providers (ISPs) to sell users’ data and Web browsing history. It has not taken effect, which means there is no growing history data yet to purchase.A Washington Post reporter also wrote it would be possible to buy the data “in theory, but probably not in reality.”A former enforcement bureau chief at the Federal Communications Commission told the newspaper that most internet service providers would cover up this information, under their privacy policies. If they did sell any individual's personal data in violation of those policies, a state attorney general could take the ISPs to court.
Gary Edwards

» 21 Facts About NSA Snooping That Every American Should Know Alex Jones' Inf... - 0 views

  •  
    NSA-PRISM-Echelon in a nutshell.  The list below is a short sample.  Each fact is documented, and well worth the time reading. "The following are 21 facts about NSA snooping that every American should know…" #1 According to CNET, the NSA told Congress during a recent classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls… #2 According to U.S. Representative Loretta Sanchez, members of Congress learned "significantly more than what is out in the media today" about NSA snooping during that classified briefing. #3 The content of all of our phone calls is being recorded and stored.  The following is a from a transcript of an exchange between Erin Burnett of CNN and former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente which took place just last month… #4 The chief technology officer at the CIA, Gus Hunt, made the following statement back in March… "We fundamentally try to collect everything and hang onto it forever." #5 During a Senate Judiciary Oversight Committee hearing in March 2011, FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted that the intelligence community has the ability to access emails "as they come in"… #6 Back in 2007, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell told Congress that the president has the "constitutional authority" to authorize domestic spying without warrants no matter when the law says. #7 The Director Of National Intelligence James Clapper recently told Congress that the NSA was not collecting any information about American citizens.  When the media confronted him about his lie, he explained that he "responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner". #8 The Washington Post is reporting that the NSA has four primary data collection systems… MAINWAY, MARINA, METADATA, PRISM #9 The NSA knows pretty much everything that you are doing on the Internet.  The following is a short excerpt from a recent Yahoo article… #10 The NSA is suppose
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Can a digital single market give Europe the lead? [# Via...] - 0 views

  •  
    "The objective of the European digital single market looks hard to achieve. A focus on digital platforms could provide a way"
Gary Edwards

The Future of the Web | Freebase and the Parralax Browser - 0 views

  •  
    Excellent review of the Freebase project that includes a video of the Parralax Browser in action. Incredible stuff! Great video Google is essentially a media company - as Tom Foremski succinctly points out here - logging your actions for Ad Word generation like a supermarket rewards card program while leveraging brute force search of the indexed web as you search for your keywords and phrases. Wikipedia is essentially a single destination site, which means lots of laborious single issue searching. The semantic web is a vision of information that is understandable by computers, so that they can perform more of the tedious work involved in finding, sharing and combining information on the web.
Gary Edwards

MHTML / MIME HTML - Another Good Microsoft Creation - 0 views

  •  
    MHTML (MIME HTML) which allows all of webpages referenced resources to be downloaded and saved in a single file. This way you can avoid having the manageability problem of many loose files which many browsers produce when you save a web page. This is very useful for archiving webpages to file servers and local disk as well as emailing webpages to people....... An alternative to MHTML would be ZIP containers similar to ODF, OOXML, and XPS. Moving to standardized, containerized files will provide the same benefit of MIME HTML, allowing entire webpages and associated resources to be treated as a single file for better usability.
Gary Edwards

Huddle: Consumer cloud services causing 'security time-bomb' for enterprises | ZDNet - 0 views

  •  
    "AN FRANCISCO -- As more employees continue to access consumer cloud accounts at work (regardless of IT rules), the enterprise world is about to reach a breaking point, based on a new report. Quite simply, U.K. cloud collaboration company Huddle described the trend as a "security time-bomb." At least 38 percent of U.S. office workers are said to have admitted to storing work documents on personal cloud tools and services, while a whopping 91 percent of workers added they use personal devices (i.e. USB drives) to store and share sensitive company documents. Huddle argued that this means enterprise and government organizations are at severe risk of losing both data intellectual property forever as this fragmentation continues. The London-headquartered company published its first State of the Enterprise assessment report amid the official opening of its San Francisco offices on Thursday morning as Huddle branches out to attract a U.S. customer base. "Legacy technologies create barriers to how we want to work," said Mitchell. Huddle produces a team-based collaboration platform designed for large teams within enterprises storing content securely and individually. The idea behind Huddle is to replace personal USB drives and "dumb file storage" platforms with open-security models and folder-based content. As the cloud-based storage and collaboration market grows, it looks like Huddle will be aiming to take on the likes of Box, Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive, and Dropbox, among others. Huddle is framing itself as different in that it constructs a single network for working and collaborating beyond a firewall, removing VPN complexities with single, company-wide login. Huddle CEO Alastair Mitchell described during an inaugural media presentation that its customers are replacing legacy technologies, calling out SharePoint and Outlook in particular as users move content collaboration out of email. "Legacy technologies create barriers to how we want to work," sai
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Letter to the Council of the European Union: "Don't Turn Your Backs on Net Neutrality!"... - 0 views

  •  
    "Paris, November 26, 2014 - Tomorrow on Thursday November 27th, the "Transport, Telecommunications and Energy" (TTE) Council will meet in Brussels to discuss the general approach on Telecom Single Market the Italian Presidency sent to the delegations of the Member States on November 14th. This text, which aims at protecting Net Neutrality and therefore the freedom of our communications, unfortunatel" [# ! No #NetNeutrality # ! … No #HumanRights. # ! Is this what #Europe wants to be said about @ur #Union…? # ! want to guess that not…]
  •  
    "Paris, November 26, 2014 - Tomorrow on Thursday November 27th, the "Transport, Telecommunications and Energy" (TTE) Council will meet in Brussels to discuss the general approach on Telecom Single Market the Italian Presidency sent to the delegations of the Member States on November 14th. This text, which aims at protecting Net Neutrality and therefore the freedom of our communications, unfortunatel"
  •  
    "Paris, November 26, 2014 - Tomorrow on Thursday November 27th, the "Transport, Telecommunications and Energy" (TTE) Council will meet in Brussels to discuss the general approach on Telecom Single Market the Italian Presidency sent to the delegations of the Member States on November 14th. This text, which aims at protecting Net Neutrality and therefore the freedom of our communications, unfortunatel" [# ! No #NetNeutrality # ! … No #HumanRights. # ! Is this what #Europe wants to be said about @ur #Union…? # ! want to guess that not…]
Alexandra IcecreamApps

Websites for Singles on Valentine's Day - Icecream Tech Digest - 0 views

  •  
    Oh, what a great holiday! Couples, couples everywhere. Everything is pink and red; every little thing is screaming love and everyone around seems oh so happy and head over heels. Except for you. The only valentine you are sending is, … Continue reading →
  •  
    Oh, what a great holiday! Couples, couples everywhere. Everything is pink and red; every little thing is screaming love and everyone around seems oh so happy and head over heels. Except for you. The only valentine you are sending is, … Continue reading →
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Russian Copyright Law Allows Entire News Site To Be Shut Down Over A Single Copied Arti... - 0 views

  •  
    "from the funny-how-that-works dept We've noted for a long time now that copyright laws are regularly used as a tool for censorship. In Russia, abusing copyright law for censorship and to harass political opponents has become standard. Remember how the Russian government teamed up with Microsoft to use questionable copyright claims to intimidate government critics? And then how the MPAA gleefully got into bed with Russia's media censor to celebrate copyright? Of course, Russia also expanded its ability to use copyright to censor the internet, following pressure from short-sighted US diplomats, demanding that Russia better "respect" copyright laws. "
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

The "Internet Governance" Farce and its "Multi-stakeholder" Illusion | La Quadrature du... - 0 views

  •  
    by Jérémie Zimmermann For almost 15 years, "Internet Governance" meetings1 have been drawing attention and driving our imaginaries towards believing that consensual rules for the Internet could emerge from global "multi-stakeholder" discussions. A few days ahead of the "NETmundial" Forum in Sao Paulo it has become obvious that "Internet Governance" is a farcical way of keeping us busy and hiding a sad reality: Nothing concrete in these 15 years, not a single action, ever emerged from "multi-stakeholder" meetings, while at the same time, technology as a whole has been turned against its users, as a tool for surveillance, control and oppression.
  •  
    by Jérémie Zimmermann For almost 15 years, "Internet Governance" meetings1 have been drawing attention and driving our imaginaries towards believing that consensual rules for the Internet could emerge from global "multi-stakeholder" discussions. A few days ahead of the "NETmundial" Forum in Sao Paulo it has become obvious that "Internet Governance" is a farcical way of keeping us busy and hiding a sad reality: Nothing concrete in these 15 years, not a single action, ever emerged from "multi-stakeholder" meetings, while at the same time, technology as a whole has been turned against its users, as a tool for surveillance, control and oppression.
Gary Edwards

The True Story of How the Patent Bar Captured a Court and Shrank the Intellectual Commo... - 1 views

  • The change in the law wrought by the Federal Circuit can also be viewed substantively through the controversy over software patents. Throughout the 1960s, the USPTO refused to award patents for software innovations. However, several of the USPTO’s decisions were overruled by the patent-friendly U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, which ordered that software patents be granted. In Gottschalk v. Benson (1972) and Parker v. Flook (1978), the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, holding that mathematical algorithms (and therefore software) were not patentable subject matter. In 1981, in Diamond v. Diehr, the Supreme Court upheld a software patent on the grounds that the patent in question involved a physical process—the patent was issued for software used in the molding of rubber. While affirming their prior ruling that mathematical formulas are not patentable in the abstract, the Court held that an otherwise patentable invention did not become unpatentable simply because it utilized a computer.
  • In the hands of the newly established Federal Circuit, however, this small scope for software patents in precedent was sufficient to open the floodgates. In a series of decisions culminating in State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group (1998), the Federal Circuit broadened the criteria for patentability of software and business methods substantially, allowing protection as long as the innovation “produces a useful, concrete and tangible result.” That broadened criteria led to an explosion of low-quality software patents, from Amazon’s 1-Click checkout system to Twitter’s pull-to-refresh feature on smartphones. The GAO estimates that more than half of all patents granted in recent years are software-related. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court continues to hold, as in Parker v. Flook, that computer software algorithms are not patentable, and has begun to push back against the Federal Circuit. In Bilski v. Kappos (2010), the Supreme Court once again held that abstract ideas are not patentable, and in Alice v. CLS (2014), it ruled that simply applying an abstract idea on a computer does not suffice to make the idea patent-eligible. It still is not clear what portion of existing software patents Alice invalidates, but it could be a significant one.
  • Supreme Court justices also recognize the Federal Circuit’s insubordination. In oral arguments in Carlsbad Technology v. HIF Bio (2009), Chief Justice John Roberts joked openly about it:
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • The Opportunity of the Commons
  • As a result of the Federal Circuit’s pro-patent jurisprudence, our economy has been flooded with patents that would otherwise not have been granted. If more patents meant more innovation, then we would now be witnessing a spectacular economic boom. Instead, we have been living through what Tyler Cowen has called a Great Stagnation. The fact that patents have increased while growth has not is known in the literature as the “patent puzzle.” As Michele Boldrin and David Levine put it, “there is no empirical evidence that [patents] serve to increase innovation and productivity, unless productivity is identified with the number of patents awarded—which, as evidence shows, has no correlation with measured productivity.”
  • While more patents have not resulted in faster economic growth, they have resulted in more patent lawsuits.
  • Software patents have characteristics that make them particularly susceptible to litigation. Unlike, say, chemical patents, software patents are plagued by a problem of description. How does one describe a software innovation in such a way that anyone searching for it will easily find it? As Christina Mulligan and Tim Lee demonstrate, chemical formulas are indexable, meaning that as the number of chemical patents grow, it will still be easy to determine if a molecule has been patented. Since software innovations are not indexable, they estimate that “patent clearance by all firms would require many times more hours of legal research than all patent lawyers in the United States can bill in a year. The result has been an explosion of patent litigation.” Software and business method patents, estimate James Bessen and Michael Meurer, are 2 and 7 times more likely to be litigated than other patents, respectively (4 and 13 times more likely than chemical patents).
  • Software patents make excellent material for predatory litigation brought by what are often called “patent trolls.”
  • Trolls use asymmetries in the rules of litigation to legally extort millions of dollars from innocent parties. For example, one patent troll, Innovatio IP Ventures, LLP, acquired patents that implicated Wi-Fi. In 2011, it started sending demand letters to coffee shops and hotels that offered wireless Internet access, offering to settle for $2,500 per location. This amount was far in excess of the 9.56 cents per device that Innovatio was entitled to under the “Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory” licensing promises attached to their portfolio, but it was also much less than the cost of trial, and therefore it was rational for firms to pay. Cisco stepped in and spent $13 million in legal fees on the case, and settled on behalf of their customers for 3.2 cents per device. Other manufacturers had already licensed Innovatio’s portfolio, but that didn’t stop their customers from being targeted by demand letters.
  • Litigation cost asymmetries are magnified by the fact that most patent trolls are nonpracticing entities. This means that when patent infringement trials get to the discovery phase, they will cost the troll very little—a firm that does not operate a business has very few records to produce.
  • But discovery can cost a medium or large company millions of dollars. Using an event study methodology, James Bessen and coauthors find that infringement lawsuits by nonpracticing entities cost publicly traded companies $83 billion per year in stock market capitalization, while plaintiffs gain less than 10 percent of that amount.
  • Software patents also reduce innovation in virtue of their cumulative nature and the fact that many of them are frequently inputs into a single product. Law professor Michael Heller coined the phrase “tragedy of the anticommons” to refer to a situation that mirrors the well-understood “tragedy of the commons.” Whereas in a commons, multiple parties have the right to use a resource but not to exclude others, in an anticommons, multiple parties have the right to exclude others, and no one is therefore able to make effective use of the resource. The tragedy of the commons results in overuse of the resource; the tragedy of the anticommons results in underuse.
  • In order to cope with the tragedy of the anticommons, we should carefully investigate the opportunity of  the commons. The late Nobelist Elinor Ostrom made a career of studying how communities manage shared resources without property rights. With appropriate self-governance institutions, Ostrom found again and again that a commons does not inevitably lead to tragedy—indeed, open access to shared resources can provide collective benefits that are not available under other forms of property management.
  • This suggests that—litigation costs aside—patent law could be reducing the stock of ideas rather than expanding it at current margins.
  • Advocates of extensive patent protection frequently treat the commons as a kind of wasteland. But considering the problems in our patent system, it is worth looking again at the role of well-tailored limits to property rights in some contexts. Just as we all benefit from real property rights that no longer extend to the highest heavens, we would also benefit if the scope of patent protection were more narrowly drawn.
  • Reforming the Patent System
  • This analysis raises some obvious possibilities for reforming the patent system. Diane Wood, Chief Judge of the 7th Circuit, has proposed ending the Federal Circuit’s exclusive jurisdiction over patent appeals—instead, the Federal Circuit could share jurisdiction with the other circuit courts. While this is a constructive suggestion, it still leaves the door open to the Federal Circuit playing “a leading role in shaping patent law,” which is the reason for its capture by patent interests. It would be better instead simply to abolish the Federal Circuit and return to the pre-1982 system, in which patents received no special treatment in appeals. This leaves open the possibility of circuit splits, which the creation of the Federal Circuit was designed to mitigate, but there are worse problems than circuit splits, and we now have them.
  • Another helpful reform would be for Congress to limit the scope of patentable subject matter via statute. New Zealand has done just that, declaring that software is “not an invention” to get around WTO obligations to respect intellectual property. Congress should do the same with respect to both software and business methods.
  • Finally, even if the above reforms were adopted, there would still be a need to address the asymmetries in patent litigation that result in predatory “troll” lawsuits. While the holding in Alice v. CLS arguably makes a wide swath of patents invalid, those patents could still be used in troll lawsuits because a ruling of invalidity for each individual patent might not occur until late in a trial. Current legislation in Congress addresses this class of problem by mandating disclosures, shifting fees in the case of spurious lawsuits, and enabling a review of the patent’s validity before a trial commences.
  • What matters for prosperity is not just property rights in the abstract, but good property-defining institutions. Without reform, our patent system will continue to favor special interests and forestall economic growth.
  •  
    "Libertarians intuitively understand the case for patents: just as other property rights internalize the social benefits of improvements to land, automobile maintenance, or business investment, patents incentivize the creation of new inventions, which might otherwise be undersupplied. So far, so good. But it is important to recognize that the laws that govern property, intellectual or otherwise, do not arise out of thin air. Rather, our political institutions, with all their virtues and foibles, determine the contours of property-the exact bundle of rights that property holders possess, their extent, and their limitations. Outlining efficient property laws is not a trivial problem. The optimal contours of property are neither immutable nor knowable a priori. For example, in 1946, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the age-old common law doctrine that extended real property rights to the heavens without limit. The advent of air travel made such extensive property rights no longer practicable-airlines would have had to cobble together a patchwork of easements, acre by acre, for every corridor through which they flew, and they would have opened themselves up to lawsuits every time their planes deviated from the expected path. The Court rightly abridged property rights in light of these empirical realities. In defining the limits of patent rights, our political institutions have gotten an analogous question badly wrong. A single, politically captured circuit court with exclusive jurisdiction over patent appeals has consistently expanded the scope of patentable subject matter. This expansion has resulted in an explosion of both patents and patent litigation, with destructive consequences. "
  •  
    I added a comment to the page's article. Patents are antithetical to the precepts of Libertarianism and do not involve Natural Law rights. But I agree with the author that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit should be abolished. It's a failed experiment.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

TTIP for dummies | EurActiv - 0 views

  •  
    "In the wake of the global economic crisis and the deadlocked Doha round of international trade talks, the EU and the United States started negotiating a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which seeks to go beyond traditional trade deals and create a genuine transatlantic single market. But the road ahead is paved with hurdles."
  •  
    "In the wake of the global economic crisis and the deadlocked Doha round of international trade talks, the EU and the United States started negotiating a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which seeks to go beyond traditional trade deals and create a genuine transatlantic single market. But the road ahead is paved with hurdles."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Learn it Faster: The Complete Linux Kernel in a Single Map - 1 views

  •  
    "Short Bytes: Today, we are sharing an interactive Linux Kernel map that will teach you the basics and understand the various subsystems. Take a look."
1 - 20 of 102 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page