[Top][All Lists]
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
[GNU-traductores] old-gnudist:/home/www/html/philosophy/amazon.html -- N
|
From: |
old-gnudist's file diff daemon |
|
Subject: |
[GNU-traductores] old-gnudist:/home/www/html/philosophy/amazon.html -- New file |
|
Date: |
Tue, 15 Jan 2002 06:28:57 -0800 (PST) |
This is an automated report from old-gnudist.
This appears to be a new file or has only recently been added to
the list of monitored files:
10 -rw-rw-r-- 1 webcvs www 10062 Jul 4 2001
/home/www/html/philosophy/amazon.html
Contents:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Boycott Amazon! - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)</TITLE>
<LINK REV="made" HREF="mailto:address@hidden";>
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#1F00FF" ALINK="#FF0000"
VLINK="#9900DD">
<H3>Boycott Amazon!</H3>
<P>
<A HREF="/graphics/philosophicalgnu.html"><IMG
SRC="/graphics/philosophical-gnu-sm.jpg"
ALT=" [image of a Philosophical Gnu] "
WIDTH="160" HEIGHT="200"></A>
[
<!-- Please keep this list alphabetical!!! -->
<A HREF="/philosophy/amazon.html">English</A>
| <A HREF="/philosophy/amazon.fr.html">French</A>
| <A HREF="/philosophy/amazon.it.html">Italian</A>
| <A HREF="/philosophy/amazon.ja.html">Japanese</A>
| <A HREF="/philosophy/amazon.ko.html">Korean</A>
| <A HREF="/philosophy/amazon.ru.html">Russian</A>
]
<P>
<HR>
<P>
If you support the boycott,
<BR>
<em>Please make links to this page</em>
<BR>
<STRONG>http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/amazon.html</STRONG> !!!!
<P>
<P>
<H2>Table of Contents</H2>
<UL>
<LI><A NAME="TOCwhyBoycott" HREF="#whyBoycott">Why We Boycott Amazon</A>
<LI><A NAME="TOCUpdates" HREF="#Updates">Updates and Links</A>
</UL>
<HR>
<H4><A HREF="#TOCwhyBoycott" NAME="whyBoycott">Why we boycott Amazon</A></H4>
<P>
Amazon has obtained a <A HREF="/philosophy/amazonpatent.html">US
patent (5,960,411)</A> on an important and obvious idea for
E-commerce: an idea sometimes known as one-click purchasing. The idea
is that your command in a web browser to buy a certain item can carry
along information about your identity. (It works by sending the
server a "cookie", a kind of ID code that your browser received
previously from the same server.)
<P>
Amazon has sued to block the use of this simple idea, showing that
they truly intend to monopolize it. This is an attack against the
World Wide Web and against E-commerce in general.
<P>
The idea patented here is just that a company can give you something
which you can subsequently show them to identify yourself for credit.
This is nothing new: a physical credit card does the same job, after
all. But the US Patent Office issues patents on obvious and
well-known ideas every day. Sometimes the result is a disaster.
<P>
Today Amazon is suing one large company. If this were just a dispute
between two companies, it would not be an important public issue. But
the patent gives Amazon the power over anyone who runs a web site in
the US (and any other countries that give them similar patents)--power
to control all use of this technique. Although only one company is
being sued today, the issue affects the whole Internet.
<P>
Amazon is not alone at fault in what is happening. The US Patent
Office is to blame for having very low standards, and US courts are to
blame for endorsing them. And US patent law is to blame for
authorizing patents on information-manipulating techniques and
patterns of communication--a policy that is harmful in general. (See
<A HREF="http://lpf.ai.mit.edu";>http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/</A> for more
information about the broader issue of
<A HREF="http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/patents.html";>software patents</A>.)
<P>
Foolish government policies gave Amazon the opportunity--but an
opportunity is not an excuse. Amazon made the choice to obtain this
patent, and the choice to use it in court for aggression. The
ultimate moral responsibility for Amazon's actions lies with Amazon's
executives.
<P>
We can hope that the court will find this patent is legally invalid,
Whether they do so will depend on detailed facts and obscure
technicalities. The patent uses piles of semirelevant detail to make
this "invention" look like something subtle.
<P>
But we do not have to wait passively for the court to decide the
freedom of E-commerce. There is something we can do right now: we can
refuse to do business with Amazon. Please do not buy anything from
Amazon until they promise to stop using this patent to threaten or
restrict other web sites.
<P>
If you are the author of a book sold by Amazon, you can provide
powerful help to this campaign by putting this text into the "author
comment" about your book, on Amazon's web site. (Alas, it appears
they are refusing to post these comments for authors.)
<P>
If you have suggestions, or if you simply support the boycott, please
send mail to <A
HREF="mailto:address@hidden";><address@hidden></A> to let us
know.
<P>
Amazon's response to people who write about the patent contains a
subtle misdirection which is worth analyzing:
<P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
The patent system is designed to encourage innovation, and we spent
thousands of hours developing our 1-ClickR shopping feature.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
If they did spend thousands of hours, they surely did not spend it
thinking of the general technique that the patent covers. So if they
are telling the truth, what did they spend those hours doing?
<P>
Perhaps they spent some of the time writing the patent application.
That task was surely harder than thinking of the technique. Or
perhaps they are talking about the time it took designing, writing,
testing, and perfecting the scripts and the web pages to handle
one-click shopping. That was surely a substantial job. Looking
carefully at their words, it seems the "thousands of hours developing"
could include either of these two jobs.
<P>
But the issue here is not about the details in their particular
scripts (which they do not release to us) and web pages (which are
copyrighted anyway). The issue here is the general idea, and whether
Amazon should have a monopoly on that idea.
<P>
Are you, or I, free to spend the necessary hours writing our own
scripts, our own web pages, to provide one-click shopping? Even if we
are selling something other than books, are we free to do this? That
is the question. Amazon seeks to deny us that freedom, with the eager
help of a misguided US government.
<P>
When Amazon sends out cleverly misleading statements like the one
quoted above, it demonstrates something important: they do care what
the public thinks of their actions. They must care--they are a
retailer. Public disgust can affect their profits.
<P>
People have pointed out that the problem of software patents is much
bigger than Amazon, that other companies might have acted just the
same, and that boycotting Amazon won't directly change patent law. Of
course, these are all true. But that is no argument against this
boycott!
<P>
If we mount the boycott strongly and lastingly, Amazon may eventually
make a concession to end it. And even if they do not, the next
company which has an outrageous software patent and considers suing
someone will realize there can be a price to pay. They may have
second thoughts.
<P>
The boycott can also indirectly help change patent law--by calling
attention to the issue and spreading demand for change. And it is so
easy to participate that there is no need to be deterred on that
account. If you agree about the issue, why <em>not</em> boycott
Amazon?
<P>
To help spread the word, please put a note about the boycott on your
own personal web page, and on institutional pages as well if you can.
Make a link to this page; updated information will be placed here.
<P>
<HR>
<H4><A HREF="#TOCUpdates" NAME="Updates">Updates and Links</A></H4>
<P>
In this section, we list updates and links about issues related to
Amazon.com, their business practices, and stories related to the boycott.
New information is added to the bottom of this section.
<P>
Tim O'Reilly has sent Amazon an
<A HREF="http://www.oreilly.com/ask_tim/amazon_patent.html";>open letter</A>
disapproving of the use of this patent,
stating the position about as forcefully as possible given an
unwillingness to stop doing business with them.
<P>
<A HREF="http://www.stallman.org/";>Richard M. Stallman</A> has written a
<A HREF="/philosophy/amazon-rms-tim.html">letter to Tim O'Reilly</A> in
regard to the statement by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, which called for
software patents to last just 3 or 5 years.
<P>
Paul Barton-Davis
<a href="mailto:address@hidden";><address@hidden></a>,
one of the founding programmers
at Amazon, <a href="http://www.op.net/~pbd/amazon-1click.html";>writes</a>
about the Amazon Boycott.
<P>
Nat Friedman wrote in with an
<A HREF="/philosophy/amazon-nat.html">Amazon Boycott success story</A>.
<P>
On the side, Amazon is doing
<A HREF="http://www.salon.com/tech/log/1999/10/28/amazon/index.html";>other
obnoxious things</A> in another courtroom, too.
<P>
The FTC has also made several <a
href="http://www.gomez.com/features/article.asp?topcat_id=0&col=16&id=7690";>questionable
decisions regarding Amazon and consumer privacy</a>.
<p>
See <A HREF="http://lpf.ai.mit.edu";>http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/</A> for
more information about the broader issue of
<A HREF="http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/patents.html";>software patents</A>.
<P>
<A HREF="http://www.washtech.org/day2/index.html";>A group of Amazon
employees are trying to unionize</A>.
<P>
<A HREF="http://www.cpsr.org/links/bookstore/";>Computer Professionals for
Social Responsibility have dropped their affiliation with Amazon</A>.
<HR>
<H4><A HREF="/philosophy/philosophy.html">Other Philosophical Texts to
Read</A></H4>
<HR>
Return to <A HREF="/home.html">GNU's home page</A>.
<P>
Please send FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to
<A HREF="mailto:address@hidden";><EM>address@hidden</EM></A>.
There are also <A HREF="/home.html#ContactInfo">other ways to
contact</A> the FSF.
<P>
Please send comments on these web pages to
<A HREF="mailto:address@hidden";><EM>address@hidden</EM></A>,
send other questions to
<A HREF="mailto:address@hidden";><EM>address@hidden</EM></A>.
<P>
Copyright (C) 1999, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA
<P>
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is
permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
<P>
Updated:
<!-- timestamp start -->
$Date: 2001/07/04 22:47:24 $ $Author: bfteam $
<!-- timestamp end -->
<HR>
</BODY>
</HTML>
| [Prev in Thread] |
Current Thread |
[Next in Thread] |
- [GNU-traductores] old-gnudist:/home/www/html/philosophy/amazon.html -- New file,
old-gnudist's file diff daemon <=