Python Is Really Middleware

[Alex Martelli]

"Chris Barker" <chrishbarker at home.net> wrote in message
news:3B6B00D0.DDC21E2 at home.net...
    ...
> Personally, I think that copyright law has shifted too far in the
> direction of protecting publishers and authors, and away from the public
> good original intent. It is, of course, a debatable point whether the
> law has shifter too far in that direction, but it has certainly shifted
> than way.

Undisputably.  And the latest Economist issue has an article that
analyzes the similar shift in *patent* law and practice (much more
recent: just 20 years ago, 'business practices' were not subject to
patents) from a point of view of whether it actually serves
somebody's interests (besides intellectual property lawyers',
of course:-) -- their (very tentative) conclusion is that it varies
by technological field (a disaster in electronics, computers, and
telecom, where all that current practice is doing is forcing each
company to 'milk' research they'd be doing anyway as a source
of a patent portfolio used mostly to stop other patent holders
from attacking -- it may eventually serve to erect huge barriers
to entry, to the advantage of extant oligopolists and a big loss
to the public, but this hasn't eventuated yet; not so bad in
fields such as pharmaceutics).

On the same subject -- I read about a young Australian lawyer
who, to make a point, requested and obtained a patent on a
"revolving motion device" -- i.e., the wheel.  Discussions of
patents should not assume an idealized Patent Office able to
tell the wheat from the chaff: in actual reality, you CAN patent
the wheel (and it's equivalents in other fields -- consider
Amazon's patent on "one-click purchasing" on the web), so
that reality has to be taken into account.


> By the way, FSF literature and the GPL are littered with words like
> "moral" and "ethical". I try to stay away from these issues, there are
> plenty pf practical consideration without having to try to argue
> morality with people.

Absolutely.  However, I do see BIG ethical questions with a law
that allows somebody, anybody, to *patent* genes I may have
in my body -- I don't really care about the economic implications
of that, there HAS to be somewhere one draws a line.


Alex