Paper 3: Patents/Crime
Due: April 30, 2009
Comp 317/417,
Dordal
Choose one of the following two topics:
1. Do Software Patents Help Or Harm Progress?
Are software
patents, on the whole, good for society? Do they foster innovation? Do
they encourage invention and investment in invention, leading to more
software ideas for everyone?
Or do they retard invention? Do they simply tie up ideas for the duration of the patent?Discuss both sides, and come to some sort of a conclusion (not necessarily either/or).
You don't necessarily have to agree that non-software
patents are beneficial for society, but if you're arguing against
patents generally, please make that clear. In such a case, you should
also be sure you understand your argument's implications for, say, the
pharmaceuticals industry.
Keep in mind the following points:
- Incentives to innovation and development
- Litigation costs as a negative social side-effect
- Inventor's rights
- Public's rights to shared ideas
- Conflicts between patented software and open source
Note
that the argument here is framed above as fundamentally
utilitarian. However, if you want to take a deontological approach (eg
that inventors have a natural right to their inventions), feel free to
do so.
You can either ignore the Bilski decision,
or stick to software patents that create some sort of "virtual object"
(a file format, or a webpage control, for example) that might still be
valid post-Bilski.
2. Rules for Software
When you use a software package (free or
payware), it seems reasonable to suppose that you are entitled to
something that isn't "malware" or "spyware".
What,
exactly, does this mean? Are there specific rights that you, as a user,
have? Are there specific obligations the vendor has? Are their rights
or obligations that it should not be possible to waive or alter through
a "clickwrap" agreement?
Negative features might include
- license termination
- automatic file deletion
- backdoor access to your machine
- bandwidth-consuming advertising
- sending of personal information to other parties without your knowledge
- inclusion of personal information in files created with the software
- support for browser cookies
- installation of unfriendly drivers
Some other examples can be found at stopbadware.org. You might feel that different standards apply to free versus nonfree software; if so, spell them out clearly.
This
is a good example of an issue that is relatively undecided legally, and yet
there are very specific legal and societal expectations in place when you buy food, or
toasters, or automobiles; in these cases the manufacturer is most
definitely not permitted to
claim caveat emptor (buyer beware). Feel free to draw analogies, if
you feel they help (but note that there are essentially no free
physically-manufactured products).
Richard Stallman has written an article, Can you trust your computer.
One tricky issue is that of consent:
should you be allowed to consent to, say, the sharing of personal
information at the end of a long click-wrap agreement? If not, then how
would you use free tax-preparation software (which obviously ends by
sharing your information with the IRS)? If so, then what if you fail to
notice the fine print? Car manufacturers, by comparison, can not require you to waive basic safety features in the fine print.