Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Thomas Beckett <thomas AT tbeckett.com>]

        As a sometime intellectual property attorney, I have to agree that the
patent system in seriously broken.  Between patents for business
practices and patents for gene sequences found in nature, the whole
thing has moved far afield from the core criteria of originality and
non-obviousness.  It's caused an irrational rush of land-grabbing in
technology development and other fields.  Ugh!

TaB

Steven Champeon wrote:
> 
> So, amazon.com has been awarded a patent on affiliate programs.
> 
>  <http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US06029141__>
> 
> Tim O'Reilly has shown some guts in responding to the patent by
> asking Amazon to refuse to use it as a club against competitors:
> 
>  <http://www.oreilly.com/ask_tim/>
> 
> He's also provided a petition you can sign in order to show your
> support of the request and your disgust with the patent and with
> Amazon's behavior.
> 
>  <http://www.oreilly.com/ask_tim/amazon_patent.comments.html>
> 
> I've signed it, and added language to my site (<http://dhtml-guis.com>)
> to the effect that a purchase from amazon is expressing support for
> antisocial behavior that is ultimately destructive to all. I've also
> changed the default clickthrough bookseller on my site to fatbrain.com.
> 
> In essence, they've introduced what will become a major backlash
> against the very network effects that spawned their success, and
> which they are trying to "protect".
> 
> Opinions?
> 
> Steve
> 
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