Douglas Gresham 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (57)

• On the post: Copyright And Its Harm On Culture

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 14 Nov, 2008 @ 02:57am

  Re:

  Just wanted to quickly address a couple of points:

  I don't think he was referring to Doctorow. It seemed to me he was referring to many people here who use such arguments to justify piracy (or whatever you want to call it). I think you are in too much of a hurry to accuse him of setting up a strawman. But I guess that's the price one pays for not agreeing with Mike Masnick.

  The argument was that mass sharing of works is not beneficial because it's piracy and that the so-called "tired arguments" were a reason it should be ignored. It turned the discussion from "you're endorsing the cultural and creative benefits of sharing" to "you're endorsing nasty evil piracy" in order to try and shore up the case being made. That, my friend, is a straw man.

  So are you saying the old way flouted basic truths? Because the old way did work fine for a long time.

  You mean when we didn't have the Internet allowing for instantaneous, free, worldwide distribution of information? The 'old way' is dependent on the distribution channels being scarce, not the content.

• On the post: Chinese Killer Blames Video Game Addiction

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 12 Nov, 2008 @ 04:33pm

  Re: Video game addiction and crime

  And you should be held accountable for your abuses of the legal process, contemptible behaviour in a court of law, bullying, attempted censorship, and the rest . . . oh wait, you were already :)

• On the post: Blogger Who Uploaded GNR Album Pleads Guilty, Accepts Deal

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 11 Nov, 2008 @ 03:39am

  Re:

  I don't believe Mike said it was GNR's fault that the infringement took place; I think you'll find the argument more along the lines of "why are the FBI involved in what should be a civil matter", and that GNR should recognise that leaks of this nature can benefit them, instead of beating down on someone who appears to be a fan rather than a "terrorist" or whatever other ridiculousness is being peddled today (and also that appearing anti-fan isn't good for business - see eg Metallica).
  
  Use of straw men makes it difficult to have a discussion on this kind of topic, let's keep to what's actually been said.

• On the post: BBC's Magic TV Detector Vans Kept Secret

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 01 Nov, 2008 @ 04:12am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: TV detector vans don't exist

  They don't need proof-positive that you have a TV on, they just need a reason to come in and check, however flimsy that may be. Then, of course, they run into situations like a ton of people living in a managed building (such as mine) where everyone has to have their own TV licence - which they respond to simply by continually sending out notices to any rooms without a licence.
  
  The detector vans are a formality, nothing more. I suspect the beeb don't want us to think that way because they couldn't handle it if significant numbers of people stopped paying they wouldn't copy, which could well be what would happen if the detector vans were showed to be flawed.

• On the post: What A Concept: Sharing New Inventions With The World Is Good For The Inventor

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 30 Oct, 2008 @ 03:58pm

  Lonnie:

  Boldrin and Levine's book has issues. I keep saying I am going to finish it and document the issues, but other personal matters have gotten in the way. Until I can be more comprehensive, I do not consider Boldrin and Levine's work objective or definitive. They also make numerous assumptions, and they deliberately skew their interpretations of studies in their favor. So, you are talking about the world colored by your point of view.

  The key difference is they present actual evidence (that even if they omit details we can research ourselves) and put their slant on it, but because you're relating abstract versions of 'real' examples we're not getting the full picture. You couldn't possibly cover the whole case in the limited space, and you'll cover the points you feel important (it's called confirmation bias). It's understandable, but it makes it difficult to carry the argument further, which is why I asked for something more substantial.

  I think it was me that pointed to Boldrin and Levine as a starting point for someone who said evidence just flat-out didn't exist. I didn't mean it to be "this is the only evidence, and it's totally bulletproof". I did also mention that there are weaknesses in the data they choose to use in that it shows only shows correlation, and only between variables that aren't ideal for assessing levels of innovation. I'll make a point of using a better starter in future :)

• On the post: What A Concept: Sharing New Inventions With The World Is Good For The Inventor

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 30 Oct, 2008 @ 01:34am

  Lonnie: You obviously missed the sarcasm in my first sentence. Of course pricing is a valid competitive model.

  I speak whereof I find. Your scenarios may well be real-world, but if you abstract them I have to deal with them in the abstract, don't I? Boldrin and Levine use them as devices for explaining their data-backed conclusions (I briefly mentioned the issues with that data before). If you give the actual examples, so we can use the specifics of each case for a discussion (as we've done in the case of Johnny Chung Lee), then you can claim we're talking about the real world; otherwise we're talking about the world carefully filtered through your point of view.

  Further, even if they're entirely accurate what's to suggest your scenarios are not the exception but the rule? I've already said some will benefit from abolishing patents and some won't; what's key is a net benefit. To that end, I'd be interested to know what your scenario 3 actually was.

  You missed out what I consider to be one of the key points in your response - that A can use the time that B is using to copy them to innovate further and stay ahead of the curve. That's where the incentive for innovation comes from.

  Finally, I maintain that A only supplying P may well be great for P, but not for A (again, if I knew the situation maybe I could address it). If we assume A can supply many producers and that there's a cost to the supplier of switching producer then being first absolutely carries an advantage, and that was a key difference between your patents/no patents example that renders any comparison between the two rather moot.

• On the post: What A Concept: Sharing New Inventions With The World Is Good For The Inventor

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 29 Oct, 2008 @ 05:13pm

  Re: Re:

  Are you suggesting that every country with any manufacturing capacity has and always had patent law, and that said patent is uniformly strong and well-enforced throughout the world? Dear me. As a starter for ten, check out http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm and in particular chapter 8.
  
  There are issues with it such as us not having a good and consistent way to measure innovation (it staggers me that there are serious papers out there that use number of patents granted as such a measure), the evidence being correlation which doesn't necessarily imply causation, and you have outside influences to consider - so often what you get upon the introduction of a patenting system is a sharp increase in investment from foreign countries that have strong IP laws (although that's a poor measure too; I'd like to see return on investment and increase in GDP, but I digress), then a tailing off over time and as patent law is strengthened.
  
  Finally, I'm arguing the base condition - patents are an artificial construct that restrict ideas that would otherwise naturally be shared, which logically should put the burden of proof on those arguing for patents (although I understand that given we're proposing changing accepted wisdom - however mistaken this wisdom is - means we have to back up our arguments too).

• On the post: What A Concept: Sharing New Inventions With The World Is Good For The Inventor

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 29 Oct, 2008 @ 04:20pm

  Sorry, but the market doesn't reward plain old copies. It rewards you when you do something better than your competitor.

  Now, that is not completely true, is it? Once a product has hit commodity status, purchasing is all about price, as numerous studies and economists have proven. Thus, there is a tendency among commodity goods to be nearly the same as their competitors, and about the only thing left is the name and price. We have seen this happen in electronics especially, where plain old copies of televisions, VHS players and DVD players have taken over the majority of the market. Even computers have succumbed to this tendency. There are very few suppliers of video cards, and most of the big players use the same ones.

  Because better pricing isn't real competition. Obviously. Your electronics example is amusing; if it were the case people would only buy the cheapest, whereas we see that people pay extra for extra features. Mentioning video cards just shows an ignorance of the colossal barrier to entry there is in chip fabrication.

  That's why it's called competition. IP is a limitation on what your competitor can do, so it's a limit on the ways in which they can attempt to do something better than you, so it's a limit on how they can compete, so it's a limit on competition.

  Oh my. So you can't just copy what the other guy did? So they have to come up with something unlimited by the other guy's IP, to enable new options with better features, thus unburdening themselves with old technology, thus expanding competition. Why do you think we had projection tv's, LCD tv's, plasma tv's and LED tv's? Inventive companies looking for another way around the other guys patents. I love the competition because it gave me more choices. God forbid that I would have been stuck with projection tv's forever.

  This is just plain wrong. First off, the other guy's IP precludes incremental improvement of your TV which is valuable too - imagine if someone invented a colour TV and was prevented from selling it because it used the same CRT technology as the incumbent black-and-white one? Secondly, if LCD/plasma/LED TVs are better, then they'll succeed in the market without patents, and so there's plenty incentive to create them and supersede the incumbent tech (unless you can show solid evidence to the contrary). Thirdly, those doing the "copying" aren't necessarily the same people as those creating the new technologies, and you've still not shown any evidence (where evidence != thought experiment or rhetoric) that demonstrates this "copying" limits said innovation in any way.

  I won't quote all of your scenarios for fear of over-inflating this post, nor am I particularly interested in the made-up numbers. Further, your thought experiments are not a substitute for evidence - you can keep coming up with examples, but until you show data to back them up people will - quite rightly - call bullshit on you. That said, rebuttals:
  Scenario 1: Company A goes to Supplier P, says they have a prototype and asks to discuss it under NDA. Company A launches the product onto the market. Company B sees it, goes to P to ask for it, but they can't reveal it. They reverse engineer it and bring a prototype to P, at which point it'd be reasonable for P to manufacture it. Meanwhile, A's product has been out and selling, giving them brand recognition and time to innovate further in order to compete; B launches the copy, take a hit on their reputation for being uninnovative and are still behind on the innovation stakes. Suddenly it makes a lot of sense for B to not only incorporate the new feature but do something different as well.
  Scenario 2: other than your numbers being conflated to the point of being flat-out bad business sense, you write off the long term benefits of A being first to market. I don't go out to buy a vacuum cleaner, I want a Hoover. I don't want a cola, I want a Coke. You don't factor in the reputation that Company A has gained by giving the market what it wants. You seem to assume that once all of them have an equal product, they'll get equal market share, which is just wrong. You don't factor in the 2 years that Company A now has to innovate and keep its technological advantage (which sounds like encouraging innovation, no?). You assume that in the 2 years, the customers won't switch to A, and that they can't be customers of A and the others simultaneously. A only supplying P is a monumentally stupid business decision. Most absurdly, you claim that profits trending towards marginal costs is the sign that competition won't happen, when it's the definition of what happens in a competitive market.
  Scenario 3: scientific method 101 states if you're going to test something, you change that variable and ONLY that variable, so it's unfair to say A is now willing to serve other customers than P. You assume that B, C and D wouldn't have done the cost-cutting without patents, which is unsubstantiated. You assume A only saw the threat to its business in this scenario, which is an unfair comparison. You state that A will only start to innovate again once B, C and D start to compete, which in a patent-free scenario A would have had to be doing from day 1 in order to preserve its advantage (in fact, what's likely to happen in this scenario is litigation because of ambiguity in the patent, but we'll let that slide). You also treat "burst" innovation and incremental innovation as if they exist independently, when if "burst" innovation exists at all it certainly exists alongside incremental innovation, and precluding the incremental innovation limits competition just the same (also I note you didn't give a scenario involving patents and incremental innovation . . . I wonder why). You also assume that all companies will be able to have these "burst" inventions, whereas I find you get some basic revolutionary principle that allows for the new product, and then you get a cycle of iterative refinement of and building upon that idea (and the one with the idea has the advantages discussed in scenario 1).

  2) that there is a wording of patent law that would allow for the prevention of copying without promoting this kind of busywork while maintaining someone else's ability to do something new with your idea, then you might have an argument.

  I think I lost something in the translation here. What is the question?

  I want you to show that there is any wording of monopolistic patent law that both stops people from copying your invention (where copying includes making changes that are sufficient to prevent infringement but insufficient to actually improve the functionality, for instance changing a 4-pronged kitchen fork into a 3-pronged one) and allows incremental invention (that is to an invention based on the fork but different in function, such as a spork). Evidence that copying is actually detrimental is much more important to the argument, though.

  I'm not going to spend any more time going over any further ridiculously flawed thought experiments because I get the impression you're attempting (badly) to ad-hoc argue your position rather than using them as a device to understand where I'm coming from. If you want to engage me further, bring some data to the party.

• On the post: What A Concept: Sharing New Inventions With The World Is Good For The Inventor

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 29 Oct, 2008 @ 12:25pm

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Business model?

  Lack of IP provides incentive to copy, which specifically limits choice, thus reducing competition.

  So, Mike is arguing against competition. He is arguing FOR uniformity and identical products.

  Sorry, but the market doesn't reward plain old copies. It rewards you when you do something better than your competitor. That's why it's called competition. IP is a limitation on what your competitor can do, so it's a limit on the ways in which they can attempt to do something better than you, so it's a limit on how they can compete, so it's a limit on competition. Maybe there will be duplicate products on the market, but that's an incentive to make yours stand out, right? The fashion industry is a great example of this.

  You also completely ignore the fact that patents don't just stop you producing an identical copy, they stop you using what is covered by the patent in any context without permission. Say you invented a kitchen fork and got a patent on "a multiple-pronged instrument for manipulating malleable objects by means of skewering or scooping" (yeah crappy description, I'm tired) - you wouldn't be stopping me just from producing an identical kitchen fork, but also garden forks, sporks, various types of skewers, multi-headed screwdrivers, tridents (!) . . .

  Alternatively, we could say the patent should be limited to something more concrete like "a four-pronged 6-inch metal implement used for the transfer of food from plate to mouth by way of skewering or scooping", which means you only stop me directly copying you - except then I could just make a fork with 3 prongs, or one made of plastic, or one that was 5 inches long, or whatever. In other words, instead of directly copying, people copy making just enough changes not to infringe, which both fails to address the fundamentals of your argument and decreases the value of the patent to the inventor.

  If you can show me 1) that copying actually decreases innovation, and 2) that there is a wording of patent law that would allow for the prevention of copying without promoting this kind of busywork while maintaining someone else's ability to do something new with your idea, then you might have an argument.

• On the post: What A Concept: Sharing New Inventions With The World Is Good For The Inventor

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 29 Oct, 2008 @ 08:31am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Aspirations are way too low

  Success of the patent system: I agree regarding your comment on the number of patents. I also agree regarding the economics. I am unsure of why people claim "it won't work in real life for real inventors." That makes no sense. People have invented. People have gotten patents. People have licensed their patents for money. That is proof that patents can have economic value.

  My meaning was that evidence that patents create a net economic detriment (overall, not just for an individual patent holder) is met with the objection that abolishing patents wouldn't work in real-world cases, and vice-versa. I haven't ever intentionally claimed that a patent has no economic value, nor that in most cases a patent has negative economic value for the patent holder.

  Your other question is better. Does the money spent on patents generate a net economic gain? Businesses must think so, otherwise, knowing they must account for their actions to their shareholders, why would they spend money on something that makes no economic sense?

  Wrong question. Obtaining patents certainly can make sense in a world where everyone else has them and leverages them against you (see previous TD articles on the matter). The right question is what would happen if *all* patents vanished, not what would happen if yours did and everyone else kept theirs. When we talk about the varying economic benefit, we mean for society as a whole, not just for an individual patent holder. That inventors can succeed without patents *while* others have them to use against said inventors is, in fact, a more compelling case than them just succeeding in a patent vacuum.

  I think that's the key point you missed in what I was arguing. Removing or weakening patents would make some better off and some worse off, and I'm sure nobody on either side denies this. If the net effect across all cases is beneficial, we should do it; if not, we shouldn't.

  On the litigation front, I never denied there were other reasons for patent litigation. I'd add a third to your list - patent trolls (emotive term, I know, but it conveys a specific meaning too). Not perfect, indeed.

• On the post: What A Concept: Sharing New Inventions With The World Is Good For The Inventor

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 29 Oct, 2008 @ 07:01am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Aspirations are way too low

  Inventions do not equal patents, but patents equal inventions. You can have an invention without a patent, but you cannot have a patent without an invention.

  As far as "patents encourage patents," that is not a tautology, but it is true. Indeed, regular posters on this web site have stated that because company A patents, company B feels they must also patent.

  RJR's argument is a tautology in the sense that the desired outcome is more inventions (well, more innovation, but let's say the two are correlated). His argument is "if there are more patents, there must be more inventions" - which if patents are equated to inventions becomes "if there are more patents, there must be more patents". That is a tautology.

  To address your point, I'd argue that a patent on something doesn't imply an invention (see: method patents), or necessarily even an innovation (although that may be a function of the patent system's pragmatic brokenness rather than any inherent issues), but you're right that not all inventions have or even can get patents. The point I was making is that you can't measure the success of the patent system by counting the number of patents - you have to look at the economics. Of course, when people do that, you just say it won't work in real life for real inventors. Round and round we go.

  The market may be responding to the marketing technique (which can be novel and inventive) rather than the device itself. Non-innovative devices have responded to clever marketing in the past (remember Tom Sawyer and the white washed fence? Creative marketing at work!).

  And this is a problem because . . . ? Marketing doesn't just mean advertising, it means finding out what people need, making your product fill that need and convincing people that it fills the need. If you don't do that, people don't buy your invention and the world isn't made any better - and under the current system, when you fail you then take your patent and litigate against the person who has managed to do it properly. Call me crazy, but I'm not one for rewarding failure and punishing success.

• On the post: What A Concept: Sharing New Inventions With The World Is Good For The Inventor

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 29 Oct, 2008 @ 12:49am

  Re: Re: Re: Aspirations are way too low

  Au contraire, Lonnie. Given that it's in the context of an argument of whether patents encourage invention, defining "inventions" as "patents" means RJR's argument becomes "patents encourage patents". That's a tautology, and using it to support his case is begging the question. Further, by defining "invention" only as "that which can get a patent", you write off a ton of stuff that the patent system hobbles which is socially and economically useful, like simultaneous invention

  Who is in a position to objectively judge whether his device is novel, and have they made a determination that his device is indeed inventive?

  How about the market? Just a thought.

• On the post: What A Concept: Sharing New Inventions With The World Is Good For The Inventor

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 28 Oct, 2008 @ 10:05am

  Re: Aspirations are way too low

  Let's play logical fallacy bingo, with your host, Ronald J Riley!

  1) We do not know if Johnny Chung Lee invented anything because he has not had his work reviewed and validated with a patent examination.

  Honestly - patents cause more inventions, where an invention is only valid if it has a patent? This is a logical fallacy called "begging the question".

  2) If Johnny Chung Lee actually has produced significant inventions his aspirations are way too low. Working for a big company is rarely in the interest of a real inventor.

  You don't get to decide what a 'real' inventor is. One who invents is an inventor, it has nothing to do with their aspirations. We call this fallacy "no true Scotsman".

  3) Patents are still mandatory if the inventor expects to receive fair value. Getting a job is not fair value.

  Assertions made without backing them up with evidence. We call this fallacy an "ad-hoc argument", or possibly an "argument from ignorance" (I don't understand it, therefore it's not true).

  4) While getting a patent is likely to lead to a fight with a patent pirating transnational the good news is that today there are plenty of patent enforcement companies and contingency litigators ready and willing to extract fair value out of the thieves. A fringe benefit is seeing them whine about so called trolls followed by seeing those companies handed their heads at trial.

  The use of the words 'pirating' and 'thieves' is an example of a fallacy of "emotional appeal" - trying to elicit an emotional response rather than dealing in facts (and yes, I know the other side uses the word 'troll'; neither use is a valid argument without evidence). It's also a "non sequitur" fallacy, in that levels of litigation and RJR's personal satisfaction at seeing the 'pirates' beaten in court does not imply anything about whether patents are necessary to stimulate innovation, which is the actual point of the argument.

  Get your logical fallacy bingo scorecard at http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Logical_fallacy and play along next time!

• On the post: UK Ruling Says Authorities Can Force You To Hand Over Your Encryption Key

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 17 Oct, 2008 @ 03:31am

  Re:

  Quite.
  
  On topic, the question this raises is interesting. The police have the power to enter your home and search it for evidence if you're suspected of a crime, but they don't have the power to enter your brain and do the same. The question is, which one does your computer fall under? Is your encryption key like your front door key, or does the fact it's the only means of getting access (as opposed to breaking down the door) change that? Tough question; I can see it from both points of view.

• On the post: Details Released On The Radiohead Experiment Results: A Tremendous Success

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 16 Oct, 2008 @ 06:26am

  And of course this isn't counting . . .

  . . . the other benefits like gaining new fans who wouldn't have bought their album and who might now spend money on scarcities like gigs.
  
  It's slightly disappointing that some are hanging on to the average price paid as if it's a meaningful number (I'll take making a dollar a time on a hundred sales over making 10 dollars on one, thank you) , but overall it's great to have these numbers out there.

• On the post: EA Execs Also Worried About Second-Hand Sales… But With A Better Approach

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 10 Oct, 2008 @ 04:14am

  Re: No

  It's the right approach if and only if:
  1) You can still play the game second hand without their extras.
  2) The extras provide real added value that's worth paying for.
  
  Alternatively, I don't have a problem with fully subscription-based games (has to be for MMOs) - as long as it's crystal clear that what you're paying for is a subscription, not the copy of the game. Where I have a problem is the deliberate deceptiveness of the "you're not buying the game, you're buying a license" rubbish.
  
  Who wants to bet whether EA's posturing will follow either of these approaches? I'll give you great odds on them not making a total mess and trying to completely rip off their customers . . .

• On the post: Books Are The Souvenir Edition For Your Idea

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 10 Oct, 2008 @ 12:41am

  Re: Infinite, scare, infinite

  Oh look, it's the "selling t-shirts is the only business model" argument. There are plenty of other scarcities to sell - the actual creation of work on a commissioned basis, the author's time (signings, readings and whatnot), and I'm sure Mike has been over many more. That's what the last sentence of the article is about - new business models showing up.
  There's also the fact that publishing ebooks has typically led to higher sales of the dead tree one (see here for an example), backing up the whole "souvenir" idea.
  But hey, don't let facts get in the way of your argument.

• On the post: Apparently The Financial Crisis Is The Fault Of Flickering Computer Screens

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 07 Oct, 2008 @ 12:51pm

  Re: patent trolls caused it !!!

  Well I don't think anyone will claim they caused it, but given innovation has been one of the US's strongest qualities, anything that hampers it is going to hamper the creation of new wealth and so the recovery from this mess.
  
  On topic: this couldn't be an issue with non-CRT screens - are we supposed to believe that (as well as the other rubbish) people who were dealing with huge amounts of money couldn't afford them? Dear me.

• On the post: Applying A 'Chrome' Strategy To Your Own Business

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 16 Sep, 2008 @ 02:14pm

  Re:

  An area that is more aesthetically pleasing should attract people in and of itself - people that Wal-Mart can sell to. It should mean people will prefer to go there than to other places where there are other stores. It's also a good PR exercise.
  
  Anyone else have some others? I'm sure they're there.

• On the post: UK ISPs Move Down The Slippery Slope Of Becoming Copyright Cops

  

  Douglas Gresham ( profile ), 24 Jul, 2008 @ 12:11pm

  Re:

  Your points about the three strikes are the ones that worry me most. Both politicians and record labels think it's acceptable to do away with due process, and it sickens me. I'm ashamed to be British today.

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