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Subject: IPR Policy Review
Members of the Board: While I understand the needfulness of this step, and I have numerous questions as to the specific wording in places which leaves some ambiguity, I suspect that this is inevitable, as will be the subsequent fallout. This will indirectly grant approval for the similar, but far less constrained policy that was floated in the W3C last year and resulted in an uproar that ended with the RAND policy being withdrawn. Just for the record, I do disagree with this policy because it opens the door a crack, however slightly we may think we are allowing, to the whole panoply of nefarious practices we have seen over the last several hundred years in the course of the industrial revolution and development of the current economic system with all its benefits and all its warts and inhumanity. However, that is the world we live in, and it is often the case that one must accept things one dislikes and hope that the longer term consequences prove either less stifling than anticipated in this case, or else that the full consequences become apparent and cause the kinds of problems I expect sooner rather than later. As in my former incarnation within the field of advertising, the only thing that good advertising does for a bad product is to get it killed quicker. In this case, the only thing a well-intentioned attempt at compromise can do is educate us sooner. I'd like to be pleasantly surprised, but I expect that this is going to backfire furiously and the blowback on the large corporations and their ipr lawyers will be difficult to accept for them, but easier than losing legions of developers and the markets they service. We'll see what happens. Regards, Rex Brooks -- Rex Brooks GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com Email: rexb@starbourne.com Tel: 510-849-2309 Fax: By Request
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