As I read the daily news feeds from the digital
realm, I am often struck by the casual absur-
dity of our laws and regulations regarding
ownership of intellectual property. In the
words of the ACLU’s Christopher Hansen as
quoted in this month’s net Worker cover story,
“Patently False,” federal courts have recently
interpreted patent laws “so broadly as to make it possible to pat-
ent anything,” no matter how obvious or abstract. And copyright
laws have been stretched to the point where big media companies,
especially, seem comfortable with the idea that customers should
never actually own the digital content they purchase. Any change
of venue—from laptop to television to iPod—and typically we are
asked to pay again.
Of course, it gets worse: I recently received a pitch for a single
30-second ringtone that gently asked me to schedule annual pay-
ments for the rest of my life. It would have been funny if it weren’t
so troubling (actually it was funny) and so contrary to what copy-
right laws were originally intended to do: promote the creation of
new works by allowing authors to reasonably profit from the sale
of existing works.
In the world of computer software, patents have been granted
for basic, widely shared ideas ever since the misguided State
Street ruling of 1998. But it may actually be time for common sense
to prevail. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to hear
the crucial Bilski patent case, and preliminary signs suggest that the
court is warming to the idea of repairing the U.S. patent system via
an enlightened ruling. If the result is that software patents disappear
entirely, they will remain protected, in a different way, by copyright.
Perhaps the coming “regime change” in Washington will inspire our
public officials to tackle copyright issues next. Until then, I know I’ll
stay busy scheduling all those reasonable annual payments.

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DOI: 10.1145/1377016.1377017

Ken Korman,