Computer Ethics, Summer 2022

Online, Tuesdays and Thursdays 6:00-7:30ish

Class 11 Readings


Read the parts of Chapter 4 on Patents.

Read Chapter 5 on Crime.




Bungie Sues Destiny YouTuber

There is a price for illegitimate DMCA takedowns!

https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/23/23180178/bungie-destiny-lawsuit-youtube-fake-dmca-copyright-notice

How Bungie tracked this down: torrentfreak.com/digital-trails-how-bungie-identified-a-mass-sender-of-fake-dmca-notices-220624.

There's a penalty for filing false DMCA takedown notices, but Bungie appears to be focusing on other charges as well.



Debates

Antitrust: Facebook

Patents

What's wrong with software patents

www.techdirt.com/2022/06/24/ridiculous-govt-contractor-copies-open-source-3d-printing-concept-and-patents-it.

Microsoft tried to patent the BlueJ Java IDE's "object workbench", too, although they backed down.

1. Contesting patents in court is very expensive ($2 million?)

2. Even contesting these patents via a so-called IPR (a special hearing procedure within the PTO) costs an average of $300-500,000.

3. There is no free mechanism for saying "this patent is fraudulent"

4. Supposedly there is a penalty for willfully failing to list all known prior art, but the PTO almost never applies this.