
White House Petition to End Software Patents Is a Hit - bane
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27194/
======
bane
Interesting to note that this is currently #1 with >100 points, while my link
to the _actual_ petition was flagged and is now marked dead.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3032320>

According to the guidlines

"Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they
found on another site, submit the latter."

bizarre.

~~~
jxcole
There is absolutely no justification for flagging this. I am disheartened that
hacker news has become a place where people flag stuff they dislike rather
than posting a rebuttal. I feel this is a systemic error, it is currently too
easy for a few people to kill articles they don't like.

~~~
jxcole
To the responses: the whole point of hacker news is to have a culture where
upvoting is the only form of vote. If you want something to sink to the bottom
the only thing you are supposed to do is not vote for it. Flagging is reserved
for spam or other stuff that violates HN policies.

~~~
mquander
If that were true, then flagging would not sink things to the bottom. I click
the buttons that do what I want, not ones that are supposed to do what I want.

~~~
marshray
This is why we can't have nice things.

~~~
waqf
No, the refusal to make the effort to design well _allowing for this_ is why
we don't have nice things.

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hugh3
The only thing less useful than an internet petition is... actually I can't
finish that sentence because I can't think of anything less useful than an
internet petition.

But I'm sure the White House had a fun time harvesting all those email
addresses to spam throughout the coming fourteen months of election season!

~~~
ugh
Why do you think that is going to happen? Their privacy policy doesn't seem to
allow email addresses to be used for that purpose. I do not think the Obama
campaign could take this lightly, and not only because of the privacy policy.
Use of government resources for an election campaing is another issue, one
more than just privacy activists care about.

~~~
hugh3
_Why do you think that is going to happen?_

Because harvesting email addresses is pretty much the ultimate purpose of
_all_ online petitions.

 _Their privacy policy doesn't seem to allow email addresses to be used for
that purpose_

Which part excludes it?

 _Use of government resources for an election campaing is another issue, one
more than just privacy activists care about._

In a world where the President can take Air Force One to go to a campaign
fundraiser, I don't think that this is taken all that seriously any more.
There are certain rules regarding what's "politics" and what's "government",
but if the White House has your email address you're certainly gonna be
getting a lot of emails going "Gosh, what a good job I'm doing as President.
What a pity those darn Republicans are to blame for everything that's going
wrong" et cetera.

~~~
icebraining
_> Because harvesting email addresses is pretty much the ultimate purpose of
all online petitions._

Says who? I've been registered on more than one petition websites for years
using an email just for them ([name-of-site]@mydomain.com) and I haven't ever
got a spam email.

 _In a world where the President can take Air Force One to go to a campaign
fundraiser, I don't think that this is taken all that seriously any more.
There are certain rules regarding what's "politics" and what's "government",
but if the White House has your email address you're certainly gonna be
getting a lot of emails going "Gosh, what a good job I'm doing as President.
What a pity those darn Republicans are to blame for everything that's going
wrong" et cetera._

Do you have an evidence of this ever happening, or are you just defaming?

------
vadiml
I wonder i somebody took a time to _really_ read what the petition says. The
title is anti-sofware patents but the body is more complicated: "The patent
office's original interpretation of software as language and therefor
_patentable_ is much closer to reality and more productive for innovation than
it's current practice of issuing software patents with no understanding of the
patents being issued".

I think it should read: "The patent office's original interpretation of
software as language and therefor _not patentable_ is much closer to reality
and more productive for innovation than it's current practice of issuing
software patents with no understanding of the patents being issued."

Or am I missing something?

~~~
nextparadigms
I wonder if the creator of the petition even noticed the mistake, or he can't
edit it anymore. Would that be a real problem giving the title and some of the
body are clearly anti-software patents?

~~~
Lost_BiomedE
Yes, the creator posted in another thread that that they wont let him edit it.
He also said it was accidentally sent prematurely before a good proof-read,
due to the system not being intuitive to him at the moment.

------
extension
Look what else is a hit:

[https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/formally-
ac...](https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/formally-acknowledge-
extraterrestrial-presence-engaging-human-race-disclosure/wfYDlmlG)

------
guelo
It's a shame that the petition that gained traction was so poorly written to
the point of not being understandable.

~~~
anigbrowl
Yep. That pretty much assures it's a dead letter.

------
Francon
If there arent any software patents would we see new competetion to the big
giants of industry. A competetor to Google for example? (no, bing doesnt
count) Seems to me that the entire reason that the internet has been so
successful and innovative is that there (was) little litigious battles and it
was just smart people solving problems. I'd be in favor of eliminating the
anti-competetive behavior of patents.

------
jaywhy
This is a liitle offtopic, but I have a simply question, one that I've had for
awhile but cannot find the answer to, can anyone give an example of a
legitimate software patent -- a patent that beyond its superficial veneer
doesn't seem utterly absurd.

~~~
hugh3
A sophisticated algorithm for drug design.

A sophisticated algorithm for simulating turbulent flow near jet engines.

A sophisticated algorithm for optimizing [some complicated industrial
process].

If you want a specific example, this is just what I got from a google patent
search for "rational drug design", but:
[http://www.google.com/patents?id=3b8kAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&...](http://www.google.com/patents?id=3b8kAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&dq=rational%20drug%20design&pg=PA2#v=onepage&q&f=false)

~~~
l_dopa
I was under the impression that algorithms are specifically not patentable

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patentable_subject_matter#The_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patentable_subject_matter#The_algorithm_exception_and_the_patent-
eligibility_trilogy)

~~~
iano
Applications of algorithms are patentable, not the algorithms themselves. (un-
cited e.g. using machine learning for handwriting recognition)

~~~
BrandonM
_> e.g. using machine learning for handwriting recognition_

This is one of the problems with software patents. Using machine learning for
handwriting recognition is a pretty obvious "innovation" to anyone with a
little background in AI who has thought about the problem at all. If we allow
people to patent "using machine learning for X" for all activities X, that
blocks a lot of innovation. The field is moving so fast right now that people
are thinking of new ideas all the time; we don't need patents to encourage
that.

There are some non-obvious algorithms that are worthy of patenting (that is,
if algorithms were actually patentable). One that comes to mind is the fast
inverse square root algorithm
([https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fast_inverse_...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root)).
In our field, trade secret (e.g. compiled source code) is usually sufficient
to provide protection against a competitor stealing a novel algorithm,
rendering patents largely unnecessary.

------
raldi
The headline "White House Petition to End Software Patents Is a Hit" is
slightly misleading. It makes it sound like the petition came from the White
House.

~~~
Jach
I thought that too at first. A better title would be "Petition for the White
House to end ...".

I haven't even heard of this petition site before, it's interesting that it
hasn't been overrun by 4chan scripts inflating whatever. "We petition you to
make 4chan the official capital of the internet."

------
ninjaa
Here's my petition to pass the StartupVisa

[https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/allow-
forei...](https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/allow-foreign-born-
startup-founders-start-their-businesses-united-states-
httpstartupvisacom/TCSQ4XG6)

Please sign it if you are so inclined

------
delinka
If by "hit" you mean "we still need many signatures," then OK. Just that it's
the most popular petition amongst a few hundred people who have signed
petitions at all does not smack of "hit material" to me.

~~~
AshleysBrain
Well, it's soared past the 5000 requirement to 6500+ at time of writing now!

~~~
delinka
You are correct. I did not clearly state that my complaint is specifically
about the article as written rather than the petition itself.

------
ajju
The link from Technology review to the application is broken. If they fix it,
the number will probably go up!

------
missy
I wondered if, there were no software patents would the community be better
off ? Does anyone know off a statistic were there are cases where it shows
that companies that sued others and won, ended up paying more in the end for
breaching someone elses patent.

Google bought Motorola recently and some say just to have security that
android is used on the phones. They then used ,and still are, the patents as
an leverage against rivals competitors.

I think as indiviudal company you can gain, but with these wars the eco system
is weakend and in turn everyone is worse off.

