Contrary to some of what has been written on gg, concern for intellectual property rights to software did not begin with attempts to avoid innovation, it came from a desire to protect investment and productive effort from parasites.

When were copyright laws historically first seriously applied to software? Before the 1976 Copyright Act or the 1980 amendment including software?

By 1970 there were already major companies making money selling engineering analysis and financial software to run on a variety of mainframes without explicit copyright or otherwise reliable protection. Application software independent of hardware vendors for profit had already taken off, but not in the sense of the PC revolution mass market of the 1980s when "anyone could do it". It was expensive software sold to a relatively few companies using expensive mainframes, and there was a legitimate concern to protect it. Without such protection it would have been much more difficult for the later PC software revolution. Protective means would have been much more difficult or impossible in comparison with the earlier arrangements between a relatively few companies. There should have been unequivocally accepted property rights protection from the beginning, but it took years of controversy to begin to make a reliable dent.

The key issue to me is that you do not infringe on a copyright unless you copy the other person's code. This takes a willing act that, if you want to be an honest person, is easy to avoid.

A patent, on the other hand, you can innocently infringe on by coming up with the same idea yourself. Since the patent office has been handing out patents for relatively obvious algorithms, this is actually pretty easy to do and you have no way of knowing you did it until you are sued. Even a patent that would later be ruled invalid would still be devastating to a small company like mine.

The industry is moving very fast -- and we want it to continue to do so. If I come up with a unique idea, and I have (as far as I know), the time it takes to implement it, test it, and get it into the field gives me sufficient time to profit from my idea without trying to stop someone else from starting down that path. I tell everyone that I'd love to compete with someone who is looking at my product and starting to write their own version . They will be two or three years behind me.

Here is a nice paper on the subject. I don't agree with everything they say but I do agree with much of it.

https://www.eff.org/files/2015/02/24/...

Lovely stuff, isn't it? Can you imagine threading those tiny wires through that little donut hole, three in each.

I've followed some of your conflicts with the hallings. To be truthful, I don't know why you're so hung on this issue of software patents. Property rights (patent) for a first objective creator and copyrights for a subjective creator are essentials for nearly every part of AR's theory of rights and further, provide the inventor protection to publish his invention instead of holding onto it as a trade secret. That publishing vs trade secret then leads to increased and accelerated subsequent improvement invention and even other inventions. Of course, it also provides incentive to the pure researcher/inventor to struggle through when he get's a new idea. I can see where a small programming company or individual in the business of providing specific product on customer spec would face the barrier of hassle and cost to get their stuff patented, but what happens should you, after all of your experience, suddenly come up with an idea that you've never seen another programmer come up with at any of the levels of programming. But to make it happen, you have to spend several months of your own time to develop to a working model. How do you get paid for all that work without a patent.

Copyrighting might seem easier and cheaper to accomplish, but the ability to monitor everything that's going on in the industry and then sue for enforcement of the copyright would be a nightmare, even compared to the same issue for patent protection. Copyrights for some material is now essentially for life plus years for the heirs, compared to a patent that has a relatively short duration.

I honestly feel that you're barking up the wrong tree. If your concern is some 'patent troll' firms that are abusing the system, there's as bad or worse going on in the copyright field except there methods include the Shug Nights of this world as well as courts. I would think that it would make more sense to advocate for some corrective action against the abusive troll firms, understanding that some patent buying firms are honest, expecting to make their money from licensing or selling in an up market for the patent, or someone wanting to manufacture are proper and right.

It's free market capitalism. One man's idea, the work of his mind, objectively realized, then capitalized.

Absolutely. How is this the point? It is not at all unusual for a creation to have an artistic side. But the invention has an Objective result-1 click to buy. it has an artistic simplicity with utility. That utility not only included the simplicity of ordering, but reduced or eliminated the risk of "man in the middle" attacks. [edited for clarity in argument]

Control systems could be based on relays and physical switches, but were far too slow for programmable, general purpose computers.

My first computer course started with machine language programming for an instruction set, then assembly language, but it was to show in detail and become familiar with how it worked, not to develop expertise with that kind of programming. That began with Fortran for numerical methods. A very interesting graduate course I took as an undergraduate was "Theory of Digital Machines", which delved into the mathematics and logic of how they actually function and are integrated with logic circuits and the devices to implement them. But mostly I remained interested in mathematics combined with algorithms for software analysis in engineering physics, and have stayed with that theme ever since, along with the necessary systems programming and configuration.

Yes, making things simpler is harder many times. If B&N's programmers were so brilliant at that, why did they need to steal? In fact, there was no evidence it was even on their radar, until they saw the success of Amazon's invention. In fact, they were willing to settle out of court and in court documents admitted they infringed. Never argued they did not. If I were a shareholder I would have been pissed that they took this all the way to the appellate level and wasted over 1 M-when they could have just used 2 clicks.sigh-this has little to do with my post and we are re-hashing the same arguments you have been privy to and resistent to objective argumentation because you have an irrational belief.

The argument I (and others) are having with DB is not that there should be IP protection -- I wholeheartedly agree, but whether this should be by copyright or patent.

DB is using the 'wiring' argument to call software a device in spite of it's lack of physical implementation. I argue for it being copyrightable information. No one (except some libertarian free software people) debates the copyrightable nature of software. It's the patent that's at issue.

While the computer is meaningless without software, a printing press is meaningless without books to print. That does not make a book a device.

There is more artistry in coding development than you would think. There is even the readable code movement where the goal is to write your software in a way that people want to read it.

That's going too far for me, I do want to accomplish something.

The reason I keep going back to this analogy -- and it is an analogy -- is that both processes involve mixing design elements to achieve the desired goal. The elements are not things in and of themselves like components in a radio but ways of thinking. Just like no one should patent the laws of the universe, they should not patent ways of thinking either.

Changing the direction of current usually means reversing it, as in AC. All electronic components change the flow of electrons with various effects. If they didn't they would have no purpose.

Most programs run on a computer, they don't burn new circuits into hardware. But all of them are inherently related to the operation of hardware, without which the computer hardware would be meaningless -- which is all you need for your IP arguments.

Yes switches were invented to avoid having to change the wiring.

regardless of the process, invention has a definition. Fiction writing is artistic, with a subjective result. Why is that important on this post?

The reason the 'one-click' is obvious is that a central part of application design is that you minimize the number of steps the user has to take to accomplish the task. This is programming 101.

The minimum number of steps possible to implement a purchase is one. Amazon would probably like to implement 0 step purchasing and just sell you stuff without you doing anything but you'd probably object.

I know of a few patents, most notably the LZW patent which has lapsed. For the most part, though, we have used copyrights. And I agree with you that strongly protecting software -- with copyrights -- is vital and we should fight back against the "software should be free" movement.

"It's when more obvious things like "one-click" purchasing get patented that patents go from encouraging invention to discouraging it." If it was so obvious why didn't B&N come up with their own version? Why was it not important for B&N to have the tech until Amazon experienced success? We've been over this as well. sigh. It's like arguing with CG

I would argue that encoding a program into a gate array does not make the program hardware any more than burning a movie into a DVD by pitting the the material makes the movie hardware. The fact that your latest novel can be hard written to a DVD and then read from it does not make it a hardware invention.

The mechanism of creating a DVD, or of creating an FPGA are hardware inventions. The data stored using them is not.

I have read what you say. Reading and agreeing are not necessarily the same thing.

I have, in the last three years, discovered that I can write fiction. I wrote a handful of short stories in the 1970's when I was 20, but then nothing more until now. The realization that the same mental processes that I have used for forty years as a programmer are directly applicable to writing fiction has given me confidence in the writing. It feels like doing the same thing.

It is true that the goal is different, but the process is similar.

"Actually until the 1990's software was almost exclusively protected by copyrights, not patents" Lots of patents on software before the 90s, not application level stuff. There are a variety of reasons, not worth it to go into here. Software Industry did not take off until copyrights were enforced (applications) and in fact, the US has lead the way in having the strongest protections for software. BTW, guess who has the the largest, most inventive software industry in the world?

I bought my first app for an HP calculator in 80 and it was on a small 'chip' that slid into a slot about the same size as todays photo memory chips. The first I bought for a computer was probably Microsoft Lotus 123 on a floppy in 83/84 for a COMPAQ PC the size of a large carry on luggage with a screen that might have been 8"x8", and you had to boot with the floppy every time you started up. God I hated DOS and all those damn floppys, and I was tickled to death when I found and got my first MAC a year or two later.

We're contemporaries. I started programming professionally in 1973, but my experience was more in mainframes and commercial applications than process control. Primarily Univac (Unisys) although I did nominally manage a PDP 11/35.

While in the commercial environment I gravitated toward systems programming and helped maintain the OS. I've done a lot of assembler programming.

I just bought a core memory plane board from an HP2100 on ebay for an office display. It's the same machine I used in college. I'd never actually seen the cores before because they were always deep in the machine and generally never needed replacing. My Univac 1106 definitely also used core.

writing fiction is a form of Art. Invention is a human creation with an Objective result. We have been through this several times before, and people wonder why my temper gets short. It's as if you have not read one thing we say until we get frustrated.

Other components retard, change the voltage or current verse time or hold charge a switch changes the direction or path the electrons take - that is rewiring the circuit.

A software program can be implemented in a microprocessor/controller but also can be implemented in a FPGA. One type of FPGA is "programmed" by using a laser to sever the wires between two components. In a microprocessor the same thing is done by opening a switch. Rewiring.

Yes, I've worked with the DEC's in industrial control applications and engineering in the mid-70's before the DEC VAX in the 80's. By the late 70's we started working with Programable controllers, though I did have to design and build one system with the Intel 8080 and EPROMs for control of an op-amp MOOG servo valve application and a few other devices. I've even worked with Analog Computers and Analog/Binary hybrids in the 60's, very similar to those used on the Apollo flights. Prior to the advent of reliable printed circuit boards and transistors, nearly all large industrial machines control and automation was done with multi-contact relays wired in Boolean format including I/O from switch and step switch as well as various other devices, such as temp, selector, speed, current, indicators, control boards, manual input, etc, etc. Designing such circuitry was essentially no different than designing for machine language step by step instruction with varied input, except you didn't have to convert to octal. But developing the ladder logic and wiring diagrams were a real art, by the way, not taught in Engineering.

You're very right that the programs weren't conceptualized by the compiler and language, but the programmer is writing, as you say, in the specified procedures and syntax of the language, from which the compiler designed for that language can then convert into the acceptable language of the machine. I think I was luckier than a lot of my later brethren in that I got my start on the actual machines themselves doing the step by step programming and compiling from algorithm through binary to octal, then to punched tape, and switch setting. Analog was considerably different. But then moving on to IC's and finally into DECs and PC's was a short curve, Remember that my Senior year for my bachelors was 75. The HP25 had just come out, but we weren't allowed to use them on campus. Had to use the trusty old slide rule.

The usage of mini vs micro was finally settled about 80 when machines started showing up that were about the size of some of the desktop printers of today and considerably smaller than the DEC's of the 70's. The first 'main frame' I worked with used hand threaded magnetic donut frames. 1K was about 14"x14". Those Korean ladies doing all that threading by hand, each donut about 3/16"diam, three wires per donut hole must have gone home with some really sore fingers.

Writing fiction is a form of invention which I consider very similar in nature to programming. Combining different activities into the same collection and declaring them identical ignores the perceivable differences between them.

I could say that basket balls and foot balls are both balls used in sports, therefore they are the same A is A, but that's only for a limited definition. In reality they are not the same and Tom Brady is never going to take the field with a basketball, even a deflated one.

I'm happy to stand by the level of reason portrayed by my arguments.

Actually until the 1990's software was almost exclusively protected by copyrights, not patents.

Computer languages have not been either patented or copyrighted, anyone can write a compiler that implements one of the major language or, God help us, design yet another one. I have done a lot of coding at the machine language (assembler) level and the process is not inherently different than programming with a compiled language -- just a lot more tedious and error prone (Now what's in register BX at this point?)

My problem with patenting this is that copyrights prevent you from copying someone else's work, patents prevent you from thinking of it on your own. I think you own the right to your own creativity.