Unglue.it Best So Far

Posted on 2016-01-10 by arjaybe
Unglue.it Logo

Unglue.it Best So Far

Since I published Green Comet, I’ve been involved with a few websites whose aim is to help people distribute their creative work. I got involved with them during their alpha and beta phases, and helped them work out the kinks in their processes. All of them espoused an open philosophy and I was glad to be involved. I still am.

The first was BitTorrent Bundle, which I signed up for in the middle of 2013. You can see Green Comet here and Parasite Puppeteers here. I was selected for alpha testing and published in December 2013, along with lots of other people’s books, videos and audios. Their idea is to provide a platform for hosting torrents of these works, and I got up to around 3,000 downloads. I can’t be sure because they had a glitch and the count had to start over. Of course I wasn’t keeping close track.-) Activity there has virtually stalled, and the addition of Parasite Puppeteers last year hasn’t done much.

The second was Unglue.it, which I joined in December 2013. You’ll find Green Comet here and Parasite Puppeteers here. The aim of this site is to free books. They allow the author to set an amount at which they will loosen their copyright on a book, and it is freed if donations reach the target. Alternatively, if the book is already free, as my books are with their Creative Commons licenses, then people are allowed to reward the author to thank them. Green Comet has just reached 1,000 downloads on Unglue.it. (Actually 999 as of this minute, but who’s counting?) Not as much as BitTorrent Bundle, but still chugging along. The fact that it still feels alive is why I say it’s the best so far.

The third site is OpenBooks, which contacted me in the middle of 2014. I told them I would go ahead and they said we’d be going live three months later. There were some delays — birthing pains, to be expected — and we finally got going in December 2014. Green Comet is here, Parasite Puppeteers here. I had high hopes for OpenBooks. Their plan is to get the books onto torrent sites and let exposure do its magic. I had visions of pirates uploading my book all over the Internet, but I can’t find it on many torrent sites. Unfortunately, Green Comet has yet to reach 500 downloads, and it feels moribund.

The experiment isn’t over. There are still more options to try, one of which I’ve just begun. But those are for another day and another report. For now I’ll just conclude, by my highly subjective criteria, Unglue.it is the best so far.

rjb

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Patent suits still battered tech companies in 2015

Posted on 2016-01-06 by arjaybe

Further to my last post about the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Stupid Patent of the Month, here’s an analysis of the ongoing pain being caused by so-called patent trolls, more politely called non-practicing entities (NPEs.) That’s a term to describe entities that hold patents but don’t use them for anything, except sometimes to sue people who are producing things.

Not all NPEs are patent trolls, though. That would be too simple. Some of them are universities that do research but don’t directly try to employ their discoveries. So, they hold patents but don’t use them, the very definition of NPE. All this makes it difficult to fashion solutions to the patent troll problem. Nearly everyone agrees that the trolls are a problem. Other than from the trolls and their lawyers, you don’t see much justification for their parasitical behavior. But lawmakers have to be careful that they don’t damage innocent bystanders along with the trolls.

From the Christian Science Monitor article:

Tech companies faced a growing wave of patent suits in 2015 from so-called non-practicing entities, which hold patents but do not create products based on them.

Universities … (say) … the proposals go too far by potentially categorizing them as patent trolls.

… contrary to the perception of NPEs as mostly patent trolls, some inventors have also repeatedly filed claims, particularly for software and hardware.

Once again we have to find that fine line between rewarding innovation and creativity, and letting it turn into a farce that punishes those who do and rewards those who sue.

Source: Despite crackdown from courts, patent suits still battered tech companies in 2015 – CSMonitor.com

rjb

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Electronic Frontier Foundation Stupid Patent of the Month: Microsoft’s Design Patent on a Slider

Posted on 2015-12-30 by arjaybe

Patents are good. They encourage innovation. Software patents are bad. They encourage trolling. The Electronic Frontier Foundation keeps an eye on these things. They monitor the complex and usually boring details of our electronic existence, and try to warn us when it threatens to go awry. An example of their awareness-raising is their Stupid Patent of the Month award, which goes to Microsoft for December 2015. Microsoft filed a design patent for a slider, as in the picture above, and now they’re suing Corel for patent infringement.

stupid-patent-square-2

For the first time ever, this month’s Stupid Patent of the Month is being awarded to a design patent. Microsoft recently sued Corel for, among other things, infringing its patent on a slider …

Microsoft’s patent claims against Corel are unsurprising in light of how much money is potentially at stake. If Corel is found to infringe even one of Microsoft’s design patents through even the smallest part of Corel Home Office, current Federal Circuit law entitles Microsoft to all of Corel’s profits for the entire product. Not the profits that can be attributed to the design. Not the value that the design adds to a product. All of the profit from Corel Home Office.

All of their profits for their Corel Home Office product would be forfeit for the use of one stupid, obvious design feature. The current patent system is, rather than encouraging innovation, rewarding parasitical laziness. That is the opposite of what the system was created for. To me, this shows that the public institutions in charge of the system are just as bankrupt as the system itself.

In addition to the article on the EFF site, here is some good coverage at Ars Technica.

Source: Stupid Patent of the Month: Microsoft’s Design Patent on a Slider | Electronic Frontier Foundation

rjb

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment