DISQUS

Framing the issue as "Microsoft-vs-IBM" is simplistic and misguided. The real issue here is standards - what they are meant to achieve, how they are made and how useful they are. What you're saying is "it's a political match and Microsoft won this round." But that's completely missing the point: in a healthy standards process politics shouldn't be part of the game at all. The only thing that should matter is the technical merits of the standard, not which political or business interests stand behind it.

What has people up in arms is not that "Microsoft's standard was approved"; it's that a file specification that is very technically deficient - it is huge, contains previously rejected specifications, and has literally thousands of known problems found by standards bodies around the world - was approved with a "fast track" process that should be reserved for mature specifications with no known problems. The standards process is not, and shouldn't be, a "popularity contest" of which interest gets the most votes; it's a long technical process where engineers work for years to come up with the best way to do or represent something. The minute it turns into a popularity contest where the winner gets to rubber-stamp its own possibly-flawed specification as a standard, the process has already been subverted and lost its meaning. It doesn't matter which specific interest won.

This lack of focus on the real problem is most apparent in this quote: "... trying to blame the messenger (standards bodies), in addition to the message (the standard)...". According to this view ISO is saying: "why blame us when it's the standard that is bad? We don't make up the standard, we just approve what we are given." Which is, of course, completely false. Comparing messenger/message and standards body/standard is utterly misunderstanding the role of standards bodies and the standards process. Standards bodies are responsible for creating the standard. They will usually use an existing specification as a starting point, but it's their task and responsibility to create a high-quality and technically superior standard. The minute they turn into a "messenger", simply "passing along" specifications submitted to them and declaring them as standards, they have lost the sole reason for their existence. If ISO is just the messenger, what meaning does an ISO standard have? What is the benefit of operating such a body at all?

It's easy to paint a pictures of two competing companies where Microsoft wants to get OOXML approved as a standard and the other side wants to have it banned from existence. But that is simply not the case. What the "other side" actually wants is that OOXML goes through the same rigorous and, yes, potentially long process of discussion and refinement that any specification needs to go through before it's good enough to be declared a standard. Declaring OOXML a standard now is sure to benefit Microsoft financially but it doesn't suddenly make OOXML any better. It's still the same deeply-flawed specification, and now Microsoft has even less incentive to fix it. So while we certainly didn't get a better file format, the value of an "ISO standard" was greatly reduced. This is the real issue at hand. Not how Microsoft out-maneuvered IBM in a political game, but how it managed to subvert the ISO process and protocols to turn it into a mere "messenger".

"such violations are issues of contract, not copyright, law".

Of course copyright law shouldn't deal with the details of such contracts, but it can't be taken out of the equation because it is the only incentive the user of a program has to accept any contract at all.

The details of copyright law matter when it comes to the question of whether the user actually has to accept the contract. If the use falls under an exception like fair use or the first sale doctrine, the use is non-infringing anyway so the details of the contract don't matter. A use that doesn't fall under any exception must obey the contract because otherwise it would be infringing.

The EFF page you point to doesn't claim that breaching a EULA is not a copyright issue, but just that EULAs must not trump the first sale doctrine, to which I wholeheartedly agree. If selling a work is not an infringing use, you don't need any license and are not bound by any contract.

As for pointing the guilt, Chen is distributing software that helps users of the original product breach its license and clearly has no non-infringing uses. This is considered infringement under a reasonable copyright law - I don't know the Chinese law but I think it is under U.S. law.

In any case, let's look at the big picture: don't you think in this case copyright law is giving the publisher a clear incentive to create software that is sponsored by advertising? And that this software might not be created if not for copyright law, that prevents users from turning off these advertisements? We don't have to agree that copyright is needed at all, but if it is, this seems like a clear case of the problem it is trying to solve.

Hi Tim,


I posted a comment on Techdirt that would be just as relevant here:



http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20071130/01...>

In essence, I think it's not only copyright infringement but the epitome of copyright infringement.

Noel,

Instead of talking about what people think about software patents, why not just answer Tim's question and give the best reasons you know that software patents are good?

Whether there are people that think software patents are good (or how much programming experience they have) is much less interesting than their arguments for supporting that view. Since Tim just complained that these arguments are seldom heard, you have the perfect excuse to list them.

Carme

"Luckily, the courts were substantially more skeptical toward software patents..."

It should be noted that this is not a software patent. The problem, of course, is trivial patents and not just software patents. Software patents are just inherently prone to being trivial.

Carme

Don Ricardo.
¿La cita no era:
"Llora como mujer lo que no has sabido defender como un hombre", de la señora madre de Boabdil el Zagal?
Le traiciona el subconsciente, oiga.

Estoy de acuerdo con el señor Lucien en que las personas, aunque no coincidamos en ellos, podemos exponer nuestros puntos de vista de manera educada y sin tener que rebajar el debate a copia de palabras malsonantes.
Hay una parte de la ciudadanía de Catalunya que se siente vendida por el acuerdo Mas-Zapatero. Venderse las aspiraciones de una sociedad sí que es inmoral. Vendérselas a cambio de cargos e influencias es inmoral. Decir como está diciendo el señor Mas que congelará el acuerdo con Zapatero si ERC continua en el Govern de la Generalitat, como medida de presión tras las palabras del President Maragall, en las que dejaba claro que el tripartito seguía adelante, es de una falta de moralidad manifiesta.Creo que con su actitud, el señor Mas ha demostrado ser un hábil "negociador" (viene de "negocio")sin escrúpulos de ninguna clase, que se ha aprovechado del trabajo de otros, de la ilusión de muchos, y que se ha limitado a convertirlo en una mercancía que se puede vender a buen precio, al precio de uno o dos ministerios y el retorno a la hegemonía en Catalunya. Espero que los catalanes y catalanas sepamos contestar a toda esta operación como merece ser contestada, que seámos muchas y muchos los que salgamos a la calle el día 18F, y que ERC esté tambien en esa lucha pacífica, me parece perfecto. Ellos son los más vilipendiados, demonizados, insultados, atacados y presionados de todo el espectro político;que quieran involucrarse en la preparación de la manifestación no veo que sea inmoral.

Pues aquí en mi país hay bastante gente indignada por el acuerdo de MAS-DRID, y no precisamente porque sea un avance en nada.
No es de recibo que un señor se pula en cuatro horas lo que otros han estado trabajando durante dos años. La seriedad política no tendría que rendir culto al miedo. El discurso de la España plural donde cabemos todos es poco creíble, siendo muy generoso, viendo de qué manera se ha desarrollado todo el proceso de los acontecimientos. El Estatuto sólo ha servido a CiU como moneda de cambio de intereses partidistas. Ellos se presentan como garantes de la moderación cuando hace unos meses alguien les llamaba Batasuna i Unió porque iban de radicales (ya se ve que de boquilla). Negociar cargos y alianzas mercadeando con los derechos que el Parlament de Catalunya quiere para sus ciudadanos me parece una cosa miserable e indigna, aúnque hablar de dignidad a estas alturas de la película puede suponer un ejercicio de ingenuos.
Lo que preocupa es que la coyuntura política nunca podrá ser tan "favorable" como ahora para haber intentado una cosa diferente a lo que siempre se ha hecho desde el poder del Estado respecto al tema catalán. Nos han demostrado que hay pocas ideas divergentes i que si hubiere alguna, ésta ha sido eliminada por el ruido a los sables y el miedo a la propaganda que difunden las emisoras del clero, las salidas de tono del poder judicial,...
Si era para éso, no hacía falta. Se habla claro y no se pierde el tiempo.

Gracias, señor Eugenio Otero por su aportación.
Con gente como usted podría haber entendimiento porque antepone la razón a las tripas.