Why just Acacia? Fight for total Patent Reform!
 

Another Acacia thread? Not necessarily. Something I've not seen brought up as yet:

Why fight a bunch of battles instead of winning the war?

Acacia mini battles, Acacia big battles, then let's say for the helluvit they are defeated. Ok, who's next? The patent for the affiliate program? The patent for making thumbs? For exit consoles? Maybe the patent for the hyperlink itself!

My point is we're thinking too damned small here. Oh hell yes, Acacia is the current evil villian -- by far! No doubt about it, but what about the next one? And the next and the next?

And if you think it's going to be one-at-a-time in a row, don't fool yourselves either. We can ALL easily find ourselves in the near future fending off the "Axis Powers of Patents" with multiple enemies at the same time. Each of them asking for 2-5% of the gross! Do your own math, how many 5% of grosses does it take before there's no value in anyone being in business? Not many.

What is the answer? Pushing for Patent Reform and doing what every other industry does (and many smaller than ours do), which is have professional lobbyists working in D.C., contribute to candidates and PACs that are supportive of our interests, and grassroots lobbying by writing to your Congressmen. (That one is FREE folks!)

The U.S. Patent Office has pretty much spent the last 10-15 years fucking up the works. None of this would be here if the pencil-pushers had even remotely technical knowledge; instead they rubber stamped every stupid thing that crossed their wake. Their ignorance and incompetance has opened a legal and economic Pandora's Box of nightmares upon the Internet, with about twenty years worth and tens of thousands of future lawsuits, with trillions of dollars that will be wasted in legal battles, billions in illigitimate patent fees paid, incaclcuable future loss of jobs and companies being put out of business (adult and mainstream) and much more.

What we need is Patent Reform Act, one that is retroactive and with little or no grandfather clauses. Something that will have an oversight committee re-review and have the authority to overturn all technological patents issued since 1990 that do not have true merit. (Dont laugh, under the circumstances this would be cheaper than the lawsuts and economic setbacks. Also, what the government can giveth, the government can taketh away! That is a fact!!) And for those patents deemed to stand that have merit, a system of responsible fees, not this 5% gross, whatever they want to make up bullshit.

This is the and the most effective way to stop all of this bullshit, by putting the patent whores out of business for good. (This is the '00s equivalent of the '80s junk bond scheme, and its effect on not US commerce but global commerce can be devastating.) A law needs to be passed to correct the wrongs of the moronic bureaucrats, before people are put out of business or give in to legal extortion or spend money on court case after court case.

Trust me, there will be strong backup for such a law by the judiciary; the last thing they want is more burdensome frivilous law suits. Pro e-ecommerce senators and representives will also support such an initiative. And there are more Washington power brokers who would also have an interest in this. Not to mention the general business sector. Remember these things are not just adult, they are now and or they will be mainstream as well. Even Acacia is already going after colleges and college students now.

This is where we should be fighting ... fight the WAR, not merely the current battles. Just as the IMPA defendents can end the Acacia thing by a win, creating precdent, so can retroactive Patent Reform Act take out the "Acacias", this real Acacia, and the next "Acacia", and the hundreds of other "Acacias" all quietly getting into line -- for their cut of your money!!

You wouldn't say that if you owned patents.

:Graucho :)

worried about getting a letter from Gore claiming that you are using his internet?

Corvett, no. Are you worried about who owns the patent on the affiliate program, on third-party processing, or the join form? You will be. I'm sure of it. :)

KRL, many patents are valid claims for work. But I doubt I need to expound upon the obvious abuse factor and the flood gates that have opened from rubber stamping so many frivilous patent claims as legitimate, thus vaidating a legal means for what is essentially mass extortion.

Actually there is another post here saying essentially the same thing, posted by me earlier today. I agree 100% that nobody in this industry is thinking far enough to the future. There are hundreds of patents that affect all of us and will sooner or later be used against us. It does not matter if these new "acacias" win or lose their fights, the end result is the same, hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent on horseshit patent claims by this industry.

Drav,

I went through a 2 year patent process and believe me you will need to get rid of the entire staff at the USPTO to change things. These folks are bobo's to the max. They don't understand technology and its not just one or two, its the whole office.

Its next to impossible to fire civil servants. After dealing with these people, I don't even think you can train them effectively. They just don't have the mental capacity to understand all the technology terms used in these patent applications.

I don't know what the solution is. But they definitely need to hire some computer savvy people pronto over there.

Nuc, KRL ... amen to what you both said!

Well the fact is, and you can easily tell this by all the intelligent posts about this issue here, that nobody in this industry can see far enough ahead or they just hope it wont come to pass, that this is a fact of life and if we do not fight the actual PROBLEM itself instead of taking each new thing on as it hits, it is never going to go away.

Let's see, larry has a patent on age verification, acacia and a number of others have patents on video and media, someone has one on hyperlinks, someone else has one on a popular image format, there are a few in the adult industry itself with patents that they are just waiting to spring on their own industry, etc. etc.

How many %'s do you want to give away before this industry kills itself?

If you do not fight the actual problem itself, this will come to pass.

Cant you only hold patents for So many Years anyway before it becomes Fair game ?

This is the sick part, they hire patent examiners direct from colleges and universities and recruit undergrads with BA's in engineering and computer science and then mold them into hopelessly incompetent fuckwits.

The IMPA is all about reform and we are actively developing an agenda and submitting papers to initiatives that are already underway in support of patent reform.

Patent reform and forcasting patent abuse are two of the primary purposes for the IMPA's existence.

at least as far as patent reform on the internet --i think there's a larger class of internet publishers that need to get their asses involved. why the fuck is it we ( the adult side ) are spinning our wheels and expending all our time, money, skull sweat and energy fighting this one in particular? where the fuck are MSN, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, CBS, ABC, NBC ?! and now that it seems they're going after people who just have links to a web site containing audio/video --EVERYBODY is affected. guess what all you "respectable" mainstream folks ?? you think this is just the adult webmasters problem ?? wake up. smell the coffee. break open your wallets and check books. your next ...

roflmao
that's funny

he was very influencial in it's initiation though

really ?! when did Al Gore change his name from Timothy Berners-Lee ?? and from this article: ... The World Wide Web was invented at CERN in 1989.

Far-L the problem with that seems to be that very few if any of the current initiatives want to be anywhere near the flak they will get from being associated with pornslingers. This needs to be done the old fashioned way, behind the scenes, greasing palms, so to speak. It needs to be done in washington where most PACS and "contributions" never come to light. Where nobody has to be worried about the association.

Nice post, but you seem to mistake the WWW with the internet. The internet was created by the US military.

If you would like a true timeline:

http://www.isoc.org/graphics/timeline.gif

[chuckle] actually --i know that timeline. i just love the "Al Gore invented the Internet/Web" ones ... :winkwink:

which to Al's credit --a reporter DID miss-quote him ...

Far-L, I am VERY glad to hear that! I know you guys are still getting organized there, and I am happy to see that Patent Reform is among your initiatives.

Will this include the necessary lobbying, and campaign and PAC contributions to have a vaiable and tangible presense in The Capitol that can make the difference?

... If so, let's get together and talk about this.

You beat me to it Berg. This is one of those things some idiot report made up and it stuck. Gore never said that. And he was one of the very few technology literate people in Congress back at that time and perhaps the most proactive in getting the federal government to start funding computers in schools and various programs for students. Ashame that misquote follows him around as it takes away from his actual contributions.

Nuc, ahh the old pre-commerce internet days of military, scientific and education only.

Who'da thought back then what it's become? :)

Gore didn't claim to have help created the world wide web, he helped to create the internet!

http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_10/wiggins/



Fight the Patent!

I hear ya on the Patent Reform movement, and your thoughts are echoed by organizations who are lobbying Congress (Ralph Nader started an organization that focuses on patents and other tech/consumer issues at http://www.cptech.org/). Over in EU, there is a big battle to keep software patents out.

Those involved in the EU patent issue have suggested that I join in to tell Congress to tell the USPTO to stay out of EU's business.

I had to laugh at their suggeestion for me to shift my focus.. maybe they are not aware of how difficult it is to get Congress motivated to make change.

Free Speech Coalition does alot of lobbying to congress with Bill Lyon's capital hill connections, but on this patent issue, they have been silent. But my point is that there is already an adult organization that lobbys Congress, and it's no easy thing. I am not suggesting that FSC take up the patent issue...just alluding to the fact there is an adult organization that does lobbying.

I believe there is a huge need for Patent Reform, but it does cost money, lots of it, and you need lots of insider connections.

As I have read further down in this thread, yes, there would be a problem with "pornographers pitching congress about patent reform" (trying to go for an alliteration with "p" but ran out of P words)

Capital Hill is buzzing on issues like COPPA, obscenity, Porn on P2P, etc.

What might need to be done is to find one of these patent reform lobbyist groups and support their efforts with an arm's length connection.

You would think that an adult organization like ASACP, who's charter is to help remove CP from the web would be widely receptive by the mainstream, but the truth of the matter is the "adult" stigma is there and does cause doors to be cracked open slightly to see who's there, rather than open to welcome.


Fight the Patent!

Let's deal with one patent problem at a time please...
WG

pornographers pitching politicians about patent pirates ... :winkwink:

You'd rather fight battle after battle, enemy after enemy ad infinitium instead of fighting to knock out ALL present and future threats in a single blow?? ... Oh yeah, that makes sense. .... Maybe here in GFY World.


No, the campaign would represent Internet in general and all ecommerce and try like hell to get mainstream people in there as well. This is not an adult-only issue. Because of technology it is an adult-first issue. But then even Acacia is hitting the colleges and college students now.

I'm simply saying patent reform is a much more complex issue and the Acacia issue is more immediate with a November 30 deadline for most. I think focusing on that should warrant more attention than trying to reform how patent's are issued.

WG

I think I responded overly harshly there, WG.

Of course the big Acacia battle with the big 11 and IMPA is very important and yes so is the November 30 deadline (in Acacia's buck shot, desperation maneuver.) I am not saying they are not important.

I'm only advocating that *in addition* we shouldn't lose sight of the big picture, that we should not ignore the forest because we're looking at the trees.

If we focus all of our attention to each invididual Acacia battle and all even to the collective Acacia battles, while important, we will be blind-sided by the army of "other Acacias" marching this way on the horizon.


And while yes I do strongly think we need a presence in Washington, and that would require money, there is nothing right now to stop everyone here from writing their Congressmen (yes, they have email nowadays) and ask them, do they know what's happening on the Internet in general, with Acacia in particular and what is there stance on Patent Reform, and to tell them that you want it! No donations, just a few minutes of your time!

Go here to write your Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contac...nators_cfm.cfm

Go here and write your Representative: http://clerk.house.gov/members/index.php

Well said.
WG