

Yahoo proves that Silicon Valley is no different to Hollywood - jasonadriaan
http://jasonadriaan.com/post/19284168790/yahoo-proves-that-silicon-valley-is-no-different-to

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icebraining
Software patents are an "elephant in the room"? Are you serious? The "tech
community" is constantly criticizing, forming campaigns[1] and creating
petitions[2] against them! _Constantly_.

You are essentially making the erroneous generalization of equating a few big
companies and patent trolls with the whole tech community.

Hollywood, on the other hand, is pretty much dominated by the MPAA members,
who bought most of the small studios of the area. There's a reason why the
Sundance, ACE or South By Southwest aren't in Hollywood.

 _So let’s stop writing posts about how Hollywood and the Music industry is
outdated, archaic and evil._

No, let's not.

[1]: [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fighting-software-
patents.htm...](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fighting-software-
patents.html), <http://en.swpat.org/>, <http://www.ffii.org/>

[2]: [https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/petition-the-white-
house...](https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/petition-the-white-house-to-end-
software-patents)

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tmh88j
I agree that the tech community is painfully aware of the patent trolls, but
for the casual user it may not be as obvious (albeit this blog is aimed at the
tech community).

Just look at the coverage that SOPA and PIPA received. I spent about an hour
convincing my mom that the poor record companies aren't losing money because
of people "stealing" their music, but rather they're not willing to adapt the
changing environment.

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razzaj
Silicon Valley and Hollywood are not equal... dying businesses are.

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jasonadriaan
well put :) too bad yahoo is going to drag us all down with them though.

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realschool
How is anyone surprised that an old company that has run out of steam is
trying alternative revenue models that are designed for the benefit of old out
of steam companies?

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notyourwork
This article makes no mention of how Yahoo proved anything. The article claims
they (yahoo) have patents as do Amazon and Microsoft among many others,
and....?

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obtu
Keep up!

[http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/03/opinion-baio-yahoo-
pa...](http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/03/opinion-baio-yahoo-patent-lie/)

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zeruch
Yahoo proves that desperation breeds rather desperate moves. And make no
mistake, I think Yahoo has been remarkably resilient in that any number of the
gaffes and missteps they have committed could have done them in any number of
times (or at least set the machine in motion full speed) yet have still
remained at least tenuously in "the game". But this is bad. Very very bad.

Now as to how this makes SV like HWood, I don't see it at all. I worked with a
stack of the studios in a past tech life (one I have no love for mind you) and
the gap in terms of approach, the manner and the outlook between
MPAA/RIAA/Studio management and the lion's share of tech firms is so wide as
to be past the horizon line. They are simply totally different in many
fundamental ways.

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pdwetz
"Patent law like Copyright law has become completely impractical in its
current form"

While I agree patents for software are impractical (to put it lightly), I
don't follow what that has to do with copyright. They're two very different
things and I haven't seen many issues with copyright for code (now, copyright
extensions by lawmakers/treaties to avoid works hitting the public domain...
that's another story).

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chj
Actually worse. Because software patent is pure shit.

