| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
12 New Ways Obama Wants to Control Information Through Patents
The Truth Behind The News
)
Susanne Posel
Occupy Corporatism
June 5, 2013
President Obama has announced that under the White House Taskforce on High-Tech Patent issues, 5 executive orders written regarding patent-holding firms (a.k.a. patent trolls) who abuse and corrupt the system.
In remarks made back in February of this year, Obama said that patent trolls “don’t actually produce anything themselves” and are “just trying to essentially leverage and hijack somebody else’s idea to see if they can extort some money out of them.”
Obama has called upon Congress to become involved in his crusade to assist corporations, financial institutions, tech-corps and others who have to shell out thousands of dollars to protect their patents.
The Obama administration is collaborating with the US Patent and Trademark Office (US-PTO) to create new rules that require patent holder to disclose who the patent is held by so that the federal government can decipher where the discrepancy actually is.
In addition, Obama wants Congress to approve 7 new laws that penalize person who abuse the system with frivolous lawsuits.
Executive orders will admonish the US-PTO to scrutinize applications for patent more closely; while adding the aid of the International Trade Commission (ITC) to become part of the legal settlement phase of disputes because the ITC has jurisdiction over specified unfair patent practices and encourages infringement cases to be moved to federal court.
Obama sees Patent trolls are disrupting and hurting American innovation and commerce.
Obama recently commented that patent trolls “don’t actually produce anything themselves” and instead develop a business model “to essentially leverage and hijack somebody else’s idea and see if they can extort some money out of them.”
Mainstream media has suggested that the advent of trolls is a by-product of the structure we have in place that allows US citizens to abuse the system with simply a slap on the wrist for their trouble.
Obama remarked about the executive order that: “Innovators continue to face challenges from patent assertion entities (PAEs), companies that, in the president’s words ‘don’t actually produce anything themselves,’ and instead develop a business model ‘to essentially leverage and hijack somebody else’s idea and see if they can extort some money out of them.’ Stopping this drain on the American economy will require swift legislative action… We stand ready to work with Congress on these issues crucial to our economy, American jobs, and innovation.”
Kevin Richards of TechAmerica, a lobby group for technology corporations commented : “The strong support by the White House adds to the strong bipartisan support that reigning in abusive patent litigation shares.
Protecting innovators intellectual property is a key component to maintaining the competitive advantage the United States has over the world.”
According to a study published by Boston University which found that patent trolls clog up the legal system with pointless and ludicrous lawsuits that end up damaging corporations who legally and rightfully own patent; yet have to spend thousands of dollars trying to prove that point in a court of law.
Earlier this year, the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) launched the 6 strikes Copyright Alert System (CAS) that has major participants such as AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will collaborate to monitor the internet for users who download copyrighted material from websites such as BitTorrent.
Once a user is identified, the ISP will send a warning. There is a 3 tier system of warnings with two per tier. After 6 warnings the user is blocked.
Categorizing the first two warnings as “educational alters”, the user will be informed that their online activity was logged.
Next come the “acknowledgement alerts” that will take over the user’s browser. A message will be displayed that outlines the user was “caught” wherein the user must acknowledge that they have received this warning.
Finally, the last 2 warning are called “mitigation measures” because the ISP will withhold bandwidth from the user and/or block access to certain websites. The ISP cannot disable the internet completely; however the user’s ability to freely choose to go to any website will be severely impaired.
The CCI portrays itself as benign and assisting small internet businesses in keeping their right to monetarily benefit from copyrighted material.
CCI said: “Practically speaking, this means our content partners will begin sending notices of alleged P2P copyright infringement to ISPs, and the ISPs will begin forwarding those notices in the form of Copyright Alerts to consumers. Most consumers will never receive Alerts under the program. Consumers whose accounts have been used to share copyrighted content over P2P networks illegally (or without authority) will receive Alerts that are meant to educate rather than punish, and direct them to legal alternatives.”
Jill Lesser, executive director for the CCI explained: “Implementation marks the culmination of many months of work on this groundbreaking and collaborative effort to curb online piracy and promote the lawful use of digital music, movies and TV shows. The CAS marks a new way to reach consumers who may be engaging in peer-to-peer (P2P) piracy.”
Lesser goes on to say that she hopes “this cooperative, multi-stakeholder approach will serve as a model for addressing important issues facing all who participate in the digital entertainment ecosystem.”
As copyrighted material is better protected, there will be a collective understanding that “we all benefit from a better understanding of the choices available and the rights and responsibilities that come with using digital content, thereby helping to drive investment in content creation and innovative services that offer exciting ways to enjoy music, video and all digital content.”
Lesser is a former employee of AOL/Time Warner “serving as a lead advisor on technology, intellectual property and telecommunications issues as well as other issues affecting the media industry.” Serving on the US Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee (USCICA), Lesser lobbied for the necessities of copyright enforcement on the internet for the sake of protecting consumer, intellectual property, and corporate expression on the internet.
The post Susanne Posel.
Source: http://www.occupycorporatism.com/12-new-ways-obama-wants-to-control-information-through-patents/
