[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: [Fwd: W3C ridiculous new policy on patents]
I don't know but there are counter-revolutions. It is probably time for some to face up to the reality of what a technical consortium is: you pay fees to be a member and in accordance with the rules of the consortium, attempt to influence the consortia process to the benefit of your business. Did anyone really buy into the Moral Majesty argument? Do you really think that business goals and means change simply because of Berners-Lee's reputation? Here come da judge... Patents and patent pools (see MPEG) are very lucrative. The Internet can route around a dead node but it takes a business decision to revive the node. There are many ways that such a system is vulnerable to the economic environment that builds and replaces nodes. What we have enjoyed for ten years is the investment of the previous years of building and replacing nodes. We have had a free ride on every university that put in an Internet node and allowed all of the Internet traffic to cross it unimpeded by inspection or tariff. It has been an Internet of open borders given the natural wealth of each territory and its ability to sustain the open traffic. But the costs to improve that traffic, to offer more services to the travelers, are mounting and are being met by deficits. That is a recipe for stagnation at best, and collapse at worst. Unless we are willing to nationalize these assets, or regulate them as public utilities, the privatization of the assets continues unhindered. The W3C isn't bad; it is too weak to forestall this rather predictable and necessary seachange. Because it attempts to be a hegemony, and because the realization of its vulnerability comes late to that organization, it is unlikely to withstand these pressures for long if at all and its role has to be examined from the perspective of what it can do successfully. As a technology incubator, it is successful. As an enforcement agency for member behavior, it is devastatingly underpowered. Because the Internet is global, it is difficult to envision a coordinated response not mediated by the power brokers of the global corporations, and they are not likely to view the "information must be free" arguments as a decent business model. Without profits, the web we familiar with is beginning to fracture with the fault lines becoming more evident in the non-interoperability of the systems. This forces us to choose sides in the new round of not browser wars, but network system wars, information wars, if you like as each business pursues a model of profit based on encapsulation or outright ownership of information. So one should begin to inquire about the nature of tariffs. It is possible that the patents are the least restrictive and are more in accord with the rights of persons to the results of their efforts than the middle men system by which one collects fees simply to be a gatekeeper. The second way is how the record business works and it is corrupt beyond your wildest imagination. Choose the goal and direct your own evolution. That is what human free will means. len -----Original Message----- From: Champion, Mike [mailto:Mike.Champion@S...] The Register (an entertaining, but not terribly reliable source) says: "More positively, we understand that the coalition-building process that takes the web standards out of the hands of any one group, particularly one as susceptible to capture as the W3C, has already started." http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/21948.html Anyone know what that refers to, if anything?
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