What happens now if you you publish an encryption product based on that algorithm:

• If the product supports network encryption, BigCorps 1, 2 and 3 sue you because they have patents on "network encryption"

• if the product supports file system encryption, BigCorp 4, BigCorp 5, Big Corp 6 or Big Corp 7 sue you depending on how you implemented it

• if the product just encrypts files, Big Corp 7 and Big Corp 8 will sue you (and Big Corp 9 if it's a symmetric key algorithm --so not modular exponentiation-- and you add support for using the encryption in zip files).

Now, those are results from just a quick google search, and obviously not all of those patents will be infringed by every implementation. However, how many small software have the resources to figure out which patents exist, whether or not they infringe on those patents (nobody likes being served with an injunction that prevents them from selling the software they designed and wrote all by themselves) and how to rewrite their software so that they won't on any currently filed patent, or patent that may be filed up to a year from now (grace period).

Indeed, good luck. I'll take my chances that someone else will reverse engineer what I did and try to duplicate my work, rather than that I have to watch out that nothing I did may have been patented within the last 17 years by at least one company.

What the GP meant is not that the distinction should be "is the abstract process carried out using electrons or chemical reactions". What he (presumably) meant, was "does the novelty lie in the abstract process, or does it lie in the physical process". Figuring out an energy-efficient way to split water into oxygen and hydrogen obviously can be represented via abstract formulas, the but the novelty does not lie in the maths but in the physical insight.

Conversely, an algorithm that performs a quicker FFT is an innovation in mathematics rather than in physics, even if when calculating that formula using a CPU uses less electricity. I.e., the fact that any kind of mathematics can be calculated using physical means (including our brains), should not suddenly render it patentable. The innovation is not a new understanding about how electrons work. And no, generally implementing that same innovation in hardware would/should/is not be patentable either (the innovation is not in how to build hardware). That why they came up with the integrated circuit layout design protection (although it's not very popular due to it being way narrower than a patent, and of course it's always more fun/interesting to have broad exclusion rights instead of narrow ones).

In general, this kind of philosophical discussion does not lead anywhere though. The easiest way to demonstrate why software patents don't work is to simply look at the negative effects of how they work in practice.

"Style of gameplay" is not a copyrightable entity, at least not in the sense that I understand that term (which may differ from your definition). The graphics of a game are copyrightable, the music is copyrightable, and the story can be copyrightable if it is sufficiently creative (only "creative works" are copyrightable, but there is no objective lower boundary for what constitutes a creative work because that simply cannot be objectively defined). Style of gameplay or rules for games are however not copyrightable. And that's a good thing overall.

I don't understand how your post is an answer to what I wrote. Whether Facebook is built on PHP or ASP.NET doesn't really matter in this context. The APIs this article is talking about are the APIs used by Facebook games such as Farmville that enable them to integrate with Facebook profiles, friends and whatnot. Or the APIs that people can (could) use to create mashups based on Google maps.

That's also why I mentioned that these open APIs (open in the sense that third parties can use them) are not guaranteed to stay available, and hence do nothing to address one of the main drivers behind open source development (fighting vendor lock-in and planned obsolecense).

It's a bit silly to answer the above to an article that ends with

And of course, the main issue the fact that these open api's are very much "here today, gone tomorrow", which is also one of the driving force behind open source development (to reduce a third party's ability to take away features or to make it impossible to keep using some program on newer systems by refusing to update it in case of incompatibilities).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-rxe9Ayb8c

Afaik, these so-called terminator genes were never used in commercially available seeds.

Indeed, lawyers are way more effective as terminators. And many GM seed producers do require you to buy new seeds every year and forbid you to keep part of the harvested seeds to plant them again the next year.

The same can be said about pickpocketing, burglary and almost any other kind of crime. As long as technical measures can help with partially or temporarily alleviating the problems without causing disproportional side effects or requiring disproportionately large investments (i.e., not TSA nonsense vs terrorism, but more like door locks vs breaking and entering), I don't see what the problem is with developing and deploying them.

Small correction: I thought "venal" was derived from "venom" (as in venomous or poisoned), but apparently it's related to bribery. I don't think ESR is bribed, so I should have replaced that word from his original text with another one.

It's bad bunch of drivel, alright. It's a terrible flamebait — awful from start to finish, idiotic to the core, superficially pandering to the populist notion that pretty much everything a government does by definition must be evil.

Buit I can't help noticing that a lot of people critical about ESR's latest outings are the same people who've been cheerfully referring to other texts by him over the past decade — Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Magic Cauldron, you name it — and I have to wonder.

Don't these people ever learn? Anything? Do they even listen to themselves?

It's bizarre and entertaining to hear people who yesterday who were all about allegedly benign and intelligent analysis on open source economics by ESR are suddenly discovering that in practice, what they get is stupid and vicious comments that has been captured by a venal and shortsighted view about society.

Yeah, no shit? How....how do they avoid noticing that in reality nothing is black and white, and that in fact almost everyone and every organisation/institution says and does both intelligent and stupid things? And that in case of large organisations, it may even depend on whose actually in charge about something, or the topic it is about?

(before replying, please read the parent's citation)