Given recent events, it looks like we probably need to think about this a bit.

Preferably we would come up with a few sound bites to say to people who have never heard of us and have never thought about whether copyright law is fair or not. At the moment what we are saying probably just completely confuses these people.

thoughts? suggestions? opinions? do you think this is the right forum?

I'm completely with you on this.

Copyright law is important to me in as much as the media companies are doing their damndest to punish, well, basically the entire world with their lobbying efforts to clamp down on the Internet and on software tools (like the bit in the DMCA that makes any tools to break DRM illegal). If those companies catch up to the times and offer a competitive service (which means cheap monthly fees for unlimited DRM-free downloads, basically) or we eventually put them out of business - and either is fine with me - then I'll have no particular beef with copyright law; at that point it'll be a lame-duck law no matter what its real legal status.

Software patents are a much bigger issue. I hadn't realized that they were such a problem until recently, but man I would not want to be a developer in this environment - basically any jerk can patent some obscure, vague concept and then when you roll out your own service, you're either stuck paying royalties or getting sued. Yeah, that's really helping innovation isn't it?

The part about genetic/biological patents seriously worries me. The company that recently had a patent on two cancer genes - not the process, not the drug to affect them, the genes themselves - were told to take a hike in court, and I couldn't be happier about that. That sets a bad, bad precedent to think that you can patent a gene or any organism; it doesn't take but 10-20 years of biotech progress to see how that would lead to something out of a sci-fi nightmare in a hurry.



This is exactly what I said in a comment on Techliberty the other day, and I'm 100% in agreement with you. Once that filter's in place and working, it's not going anywhere, and the instant it's possible to do so we're going to see all kinds of "disagreeable" sites and protocols banned. It doesn't matter what they say now; it's just a matter of time and waiting for a convenient moment.

People put entirely too much faith in government agencies over this sort of thing. Power is abuse by definition, and since they absolutely cannot justify any good that this filter will create, they don't need that power, end of story. This goes doubly so given the lack of transparency, and indeed even the outright hostility towards it, given that they wouldn't turn over documents they're required to keep to Thomas Beagle when he asked for them.

No, the filter needs to go away. It has no business in a democratic society.

And our target audience says "tl;dr"

It doesn't matter if the topic is important to us or not, the question is whether the first thing they hear will make them want to listen to the second thing.



This is an important issue, but despite the facts, this sounds like scaremongering to people who aren't already familiar with the discussion around "counterfeit". I don't think it's the first thing we should be telling people.



This is good, but if we don't mention a specific example, it sounds purely academic. I'm sure we can decide on a case where someone has had to do something stupid because of a patent, and use that.



This is even better. If we come up with a few slogans around this, that would be very usefull.



with a concrete example of this happening, this would make a good argument.



Imo this is the sort of thing we say second, once we have already struck a chord with people.

Note: people that have actively searched for us are a different story. I'm mainly talking about when we reach out to people.

Good point!



http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=3 ... 010&ref=ts

Also http://stopthefilter.co.nz

Thomas Beagle's site http://techliberty.org.nz has a few recent articles up that cover the matter as well, but the Facebook group has details on the current campaign.



http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/05/here-c ... first-one/

http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/winksite-patent-suit/

There's also the issue with the Ogg Theora codec (link) being controversial for the same reasons - it's "thought to be" public domain, but nobody actually knows. Somebody could be holding a patent on it and sitting on it until the thing goes into widespread use, then springing it when it becomes popular.

This is actually hampering the development of the HTML5 standard, which will support streaming video in lieu of Flash. But nobody can agree on a codec, in part because of that issue. Mozilla understandably wants to use an open-source codec (Ogg Theora), which should be free of royalites. But all it takes is some guy sitting on a patent, and that bet's off.

This is called a "submarine patent", and it's a common tactic in the software industry. You patent something in the broadest terms, and then either sue or demand royalties when somebody uses it. All the big software companies effectively rely on this "cross-licensing" strategy to stay in business; otherwise they'd get slagged in court.

Not exactly inspiring for innovation, is it?



Right, and I get what you're saying. It doesn't help to preach to the choir.

Unfortunately I'm not the greatest at marketing, but hey I'm willing to play my part if anybody comes up with good ideas.

Some good stuff there



aren't patents publicly available, so you could search for it and conclusively say whether it's patented or not? or do you mean it might be obfuscated enough that it won't show up in a search?

Considering that the mere fact that patents become public domain after their term (and publicly known) is a large part of the appeal of patents... (i.e. there is a publicly available invention that there would not otherwise have been).

Also, american examples are good, NZ examples would be gold. We'll work with what we have though.

"Big Brother Filter" might catch on more than "censorship" which is kind of cliched, otherwise a "one stop shop for identity theft" (or some variation). basically the fact that EVERYTHING is diverted, even if it's not blocked. "would you let the postie read your mail?"

"you can't tell everyone what you think until 2025" and other things derived from other lawsuits might have some appeal, but we should be careful that it doesn't sound like complete bs.

any other ideas?

that's a good argument right there. Patents don't work any more.