August 2006

ATI: Open Source Not Welcome

by on August 24, 2006 · 14 comments

I missed this blog post a couple of weeks ago:

Intel released open-source drivers for its graphics cards on Wednesday, a bid to win Linux allies and give the operating better support, but graphics rival ATI Technologies has indicated it won’t follow suit when it comes to the software that lets operating systems communicate with its workstation and PC graphics cards.

“Proprietary, patented optimizations are part of the value we provide to our customers and we have no plans to release these drivers to open source,” the company said in a statement. “In addition, multimedia elements such as content protection must not, by their very nature, be allowed to go open source.”

It’s possible that position could change if Advanced Micro Devices’ acquisition of ATI goes through, but so far AMD hasn’t committed one way or the other.

This sums up in one succinct sound byte why fans of open source software hate software patents and digital rights management technology. Note that this has nothing to do with being stingy or anti-capitalist. Many open source hackers make a good living and would gladly pay extra for the right to use an open source ATI driver. What they’re focused on is the freedom to tinker, and the positive externalities generated when other programmers are given the freedom to tinker.

Unfortunately, as the ATI guy says, software patents and DRM are fundamentally hostile to the freedom to tinker. By nature, open source software projects lack the infrastructure required to collect patent royalties or to restrict modifications on DRM to prevent circumvention. As a result, the antagonism of open source programmers to software patents and DRM isn’t going to go away.

Hat tip: EFF

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Privacy Debacle Top Ten

by on August 23, 2006 · 2 comments

Wired News reporter Annalee Newitz has compiled a “top ten” list of privacy debacles.

It’s easy to quibble with the results, but I was delighted to see “The Creation of the Social Security Number” at #1. Our national identifier has used its government backing to push aside all others and enable government and corporate surveillance on a scale that never would have occured under natural conditions.

In Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood, I discuss how the uniform identification system we’ve built around the Social Security Number is insecure for individuals, making information about them too readily available to governments, corporations, and crooks.

The fix is nothing so ham-handed as banning uses of Social Security Numbers. Rather, it will be necessary to remake our identification systems so that they are diverse, competitive, and thus solicitous of individuals’ interests.

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Never Mind

by on August 23, 2006

The patent battle between Apple and Creative that I blogged about back in June has been settled. Apple agreed to pay Creative protection money to make them go away.

The dispute was doubtless good for the patent bar, but it’s hard to see how anyone else benefitted.

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Railroad Patents

by on August 22, 2006

I’ve been reading some of the literature on software patents. Here is a fascinating paper by Berkeley’s Robert Merges drawing an analogy among patenting in the railroad, software, and financial services industries. Here’s his description of the early railroad industry:

To begin, there was a great deal of similarity in the way innovation progressed in nineteenth century railroading and late twentieth century Wall Street. Innovation in both industries was “an inside job”: it was dominated by large, vertically integrated firms (Usselman, 2002). Nineteenth century railroads not only laid track and scheduled shipments. They also performed service on and made routine improvements to locomotives, switching technology, rails, and all other aspects of railroad technology. Moreover, innovations diffused rapidly to rivals, and this was an accepted part of the business. Far from preventing this flow of information, the chief technology players at the major railroads saw themselves as part of a larger, cross-firm enterprise. They shared a common culture that included an implicit norm regarding new techniques: I share with you, you share with me (Usselman, 2002: 65). There was pride in an innovation that others could use, perhaps even some increment to firm or individual reputation.

This sounds strikingly like the software industry of today. So does this:

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Watching the “Lack of Competition” Meme

by on August 22, 2006 · 36 comments

Ars Technica – a wonderful publication with brief, informative, and interesting pieces – is showing a little sloppliness in covering the broadband competition issue. The question of broadband competition underlies the drive for net neutrality law, or public utility regulation of broadband.

Discussing FTC Chair Deborah Majoras’ speech at the PFF Aspen Summit, an Ars reporter casually observes, “[M]arket forces really do not exist when it comes to broadband.” That’s at least overstatement. A little more caution would be good given the centrality of the issue.

To show the existence of a duopoly (which is not inherently a competition-free situation), the report links to an earlier Ars piece interpreting a study as showing “not much” competition. But that conclusion goes only to price competition. And it’s a little overstated, too.

The actual study from Kagan research seems to show that DSL is the low-cost option (and getting lower), while cable is the high-bandwidth option (getting higher in bandwidth while dropping in cost more slowly). That diminishes head-to-head price(-only) competition because each is focused on a different niche. But they’re still in competition.

The Kagan Research analyst concludes “Eventually, cable will probably have make [sic] some reductions to cater to the lower end of the consumer market simply to get more customers.” So the study author believes more direct price competition is coming.

That’s some distance from “market forces really do not exist when it comes to broadband.” There is some price and quality competition among the major broadband platforms. Substitutes (such as getting broadband at work and getting information and entertainment offline) play a role in the competition question. And several competitors wait in the wings, to become viable through improvements in technology, new investment, or bad behavior by the current platforms.

I hasten to add that I am not satisfied with the current level of competition. I would like it to be more intense along all fronts and in all regions.

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Heart of Darkness

by on August 22, 2006

Physicists are reporting that they’ve found direct evidence of the existence of “dark matter,” the missing mass whose existence was merely inferred based on the observed characteristics of the universe. In the image there, you can see two galaxy clusters. Overlaid on the image are two colored blobs: the blue blob shows the center of mass of the clusters as inferred from gravitational lensing effects. The red blob shows the location of the bulk of ordinary matter, which is in the form of hot gasses. Scientists hypothesize that the clusters passed through each other, and the hot gasses in each cluster collided. As a result, most of the ordinary matter was dragged behind the dark matter in those clusters, giving us the opportunity to observe them separately. You can see an MPEG animation of how scientists hypothesize the collision went.

I don’t know enough about astronomy to venture an opinion about whether this analysis is right, but it’s pretty cool if it is.

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Binary Liquids

by on August 21, 2006 · 6 comments

The Register has an in-depth analysis of the terrorists’ purported plan of attack:

It’s all right to mix the peroxide and acetone in one container, so long as it remains cool. Don’t forget to bring several frozen gel-packs (preferably in a Styrofoam chiller deceptively marked “perishable foods”), a thermometer, a large beaker, a stirring rod, and a medicine dropper. You’re going to need them.

It’s best to fly first class and order Champagne. The bucket full of ice water, which the airline ought to supply, might possibly be adequate – especially if you have those cold gel-packs handy to supplement the ice, and the Styrofoam chiller handy for insulation – to get you through the cookery without starting a fire in the lavvie.

Once the plane is over the ocean, very discreetly bring all of your gear into the toilet. You might need to make several trips to avoid drawing attention. Once your kit is in place, put a beaker containing the peroxide / acetone mixture into the ice water bath (Champagne bucket), and start adding the acid, drop by drop, while stirring constantly. Watch the reaction temperature carefully. The mixture will heat, and if it gets too hot, you’ll end up with a weak explosive. In fact, if it gets really hot, you’ll get a premature explosion possibly sufficient to kill you, but probably no one else.

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More Security Theater

by on August 21, 2006 · 4 comments

This weekend I had the opportunity to experience the TSA’s new, even more secure airline security policies. And boy are they irritating.

You’re still not allowed to bring any “liquids or gels” on the airplane. That includes beverages you purchase after you’ve made it through the security checkpoint. How that has any impact on terrorism is beyond me, especially since you’re not searched again as you’re boarding the plane, so a terrorist would simply ignore the rule.

Oh, and it appears that the requirement to take your shoes off has been promoted from a strong suggestion to a requirement.

But that’s not the most irritating part. I normally carry on my suitcase so i don’t have to deal with baggage claim at the end of my flight. But since I was bringing shaving cream with me, I was forced to check my luggage. I also had some wrapped books that were going to be a birthday present for my father. The TSA helpfully searched my bag and unwrapped the presents, leaving the wrapping paper in a crumpled stack atop the presents.

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Wireless Progress – and the Challenge Not Yet Met

by on August 18, 2006 · 2 comments

Lots is happening in the world of wireless telecommunications these days.  And lots is not.  First, let’s look at a couple things that are happening.

WiMax is poised to move forward as a significant new platform for broadband.  As TLFers know, “WiMax” is the popular name for the 802.16 wireless metropolitan-area network standard.  It’s like WiFi but can travel a lot farther.  It easily traverses the “last mile,” the complicated and expensive rights-of-way that create a high barrier to entry for competitors to DSL and cable.

Recently, Intel announced that a line of its chips will support WiMax.  It also invested $600 million in leading WiMax provider Clearwire.  Clearwire recently pulled back from an IPO, though, fueling speculation that Clearwire and WiMax are not all they’re cracked up to be.  Since then, Sprint Nextel has announced that it would spend up to $3 billion to build a WiMax network.  Nothing is certain, but WiMax looks pretty good right now for bringing more competition to broadband.

Here’s another thing happening: The Federal Communications Commission is amidst an auction of wireless spectrum.  In 1993, Congress gave the FCC the authority to use competitive bidding for allocating rights to use radio spectrum.  This beats comparative hearings and lotteries by a mile because companies that have paid good money for spectrum tend to be well focused on making good use of it.  This redounds to the benefit of consumers and the public through new, competitive wireless services.

But much more can be done to improve how this natural resource is deployed.  It is widely recognized that creating property-like rights in spectrum will foster secondary markets and help move spectrum to its highest and best use.  That work seems not to be happening very quickly, however.

And a report Cato released yesterday shows that much difficult work remains to be done if we are to have a property regime for spectrum, with all the benefits it entails.  In “Toward Property Rights in Spectrum: The Difficult Policy Choices Ahead,” University of Colorado professors Dale Hatfield and Philip Weiser, show why creating a property-oriented system for electromagnetic spectrum rights will not be easy.

“Even though the merits of the case for property-like rights in spectrum is beyond dispute, the details about how such a regime would work must still be defined,” Hatfield and Weiser point out.  Variation in the way radio waves behave means that simple geographic borders cannot define how rights to use spectrum are divided. Regulation of transmitter technology and power can not be replaced wholesale with enforcement of radio “trespass.”  Rather, ownership of rights to use spectrum must be defined and enforced with a model suited to the particular characteristics of radio propagation.

The study is a nice tour through radio for the technically uninitiated – you can find out why radio arguably has seven dimensions.  And it challenges readers (and hopefully the FCC) to think about the set of rules that will best divide and organize spectrum licenses so that Ronald Coase’s vision can be realized in the area where he did his early work.

[Cross-posted, with edits, from Cato@Liberty]

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Software Patent of the Week: The Reluctant Inventor

by on August 17, 2006 · 32 comments

This week’s software patent comes courtesy of my friend Rob LeGrand, a grad student at Washington University who previously worked for IBM. As he recounts on his blog,

I and two other guys filed for four software patents while working for IBM in Austin about five years ago but I never got around to checking whether any of them had made it all the way through the process. Well, we checked, and two of the four are now patents! You can find them at the Patent and Trademark Office’s database; the patent numbers are 6,778,837 and 6,898,628. (Checking the patent application database shows that the other two filings never made it even that far; presumably, IBM’s lawyers didn’t think they were worth the expense. Anyway, IBM gave us inventors little bonuses for all four filings.)

I suppose they’ll look good on my r©sum©, and I guess I’m proud to have my name on something that was deemed important and original enough to be patented, but I’m also a little ashamed. I mean, what is a patent, really? It’s an artificial restriction on the commercial use of an idea. Not an actual piece of property, but an idea. I have no desire to restrict anyone from implementing our ideas. And while most patents cover a specific implementation of a new idea, complete with detailed diagrams of its inner workings, software patents usually just describe what the invention does, not how it does it. Read about our patents and you’ll find prose more conceptual than concrete, written in dense lawyer-speak designed to cover as many potential products as possible.

I think Rob’s take on patents is a little more radical than mine. I don’t have a problem with patenting an idea in principle, as long as it’s novel and non-obvious as required by patent law. But Rob seems to feel that software patents are particularly problematic, given that, as he says, they tend to describe what the patents do, rather than how they do it. (since the “how” is described by source code, which is already protected by copyright law).

As Rob says, his patent doesn’t appear to be an exception. Basically, the patent covers the concept of using one’s GPS location as an input for an authentication process. Although implementing such an idea could be somewhat challenging, the patent doesn’t go into a lot of detail about how such an implementation might work. And while using GPS as an authentication method is a clever idea, it seems likely that it would be a fairly obvious to someone who had an actual application for it, rather than simply writing about it in the abstract.

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