It's the death of physical media and the rise of the "app store" model.
I have programs for my Apple //e computer that are over 30 years old. Most of the companies that made the software have long since disappeared, and the computer hasn't been supported since the '80s, but I can still use them.
That software is my property. I own it, and I can use it for as long as the disks hold out.
By contrast, the software on my iPad isn't really mine, in any practical sense. I'm licensing it, and it can be taken away, or I can be forced into "updates" that may change it in ways I don't want. Sure, I can avoid updating my apps, keep the iPad offline, and only use apps that run 100% locally, but that's an impractical solution, at best.
Consumers are becoming trained to think of their devices as barely more than hermetically sealed dumb terminals (although they wouldn't use that phrase). The notion of "owning" things by paying for them is fading. "Cloud" apps that are free or subscription-based, music and movies that you stream rather than buy, the books on your Kindle, even the seeds that farmers buy from Monsanto aren't theirs to own and use as they please.
Steven Hawking famously continued using the same 1980s-era speech synthesizer for decades because he felt the voice was part of his identity. The company that made it went out of business, but he didn't lose his voice. He could have gone for constant updates, a new and "better" voice every year, but he chose not to. Because he owned his speech synthesizer, it was his choice to make.
There is a lot of obvious benefit to the app store model, from convenience to cost savings to ease of use. There are also many cases where it's vitally important that people own their software and their data. I don't know if it means we need more options for physical media and manual installs, or legislation protecting people's purchases from unwanted updates and removals, or something else, but I see this as a problem that's not limited to just this one situation.
Connected computing is the inevitable future. We will always hold less physical computing capability in our hands then can be beamed to us from afar on-demand.
What is ridiculous is the systems--the people systems--we have built that fostered this ethical failure. The social system of law that constrains Apple's behaviors. The internal social system at Apple whose 'conservative' default behavior is to remove rather then remit. There's a dude at Apple whose fear for losing his job overrides any sense of disgust he may have felt doing this.
The technology is not at fault. Our contemporary framework for regulating that technology--our society's response to that technology--is at fault.
A living, breathing, thinking person also did the research that this technology is based on, possibly risking their own capital (livelihood) to do so. Are they not entitled to earn anything? Should all researchers be starving artists in garrets?
Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it.
Also it is not a question of physical media vs. downloaded software. Even physical media software now routinely call home to check for a valid license. So I suppose it is indeed legislation that we need, to prevent companies from revoking licenses.
Hardware companies should no be allowed to make or sell or control software.
Software companies should not be allowed to produce, sell or control hardware.
The same way we, user, citizen, forbade our physicians to sell us the drug they prescribe, we should forbid information processing companies to sell us the devices where this information is processed on.
I'm looking at you, Google, Apple and contenders. Everyone belived 1984 was targeted at totalitarian government, but maybe the dark prophecy is being fulfilled under our eyes.
If I were a good pamphletist, I would write a punchy call for arms on the topic.
Actually, Apple has been a follower.
Ubuntu and the Linux world in general has had app-stores long before Apple came to the party.
The Apple app-store is nothing more than a Sony'fied software repository.
Where Apple have succeeded while "The Linux scene" has floundered is, Apple have put the app-store, physically, in peoples pockets. Sony/Sharp could have done it sooner, if they'd made better hardware and been cohesive with their late-90's/early 21st-century Linux/e-Tron strategies, but make no mistake, Apple are a newcomer to the vendor-supplied online software repository scene. Albeit, a very powerful, sexy, one.
The biggest culprit are the customers that blindly accept this model to buy applications and give to such companies money to pursue their practices.
Except this has never, ever been done to anything but malware. Not even apps that flagrantly and blatantly violated the store rules and got taken down are removed from end user devices. Not even apps which were pulled down for patent or copyright infringement.
It isn't going to happen.
Until such time as the killswitch is abused, this remains a slippery slope argument with no basis in reality.
If you're worried about your apps, back up the IPA's. You kept your //e floppies around somewhere, didn't you? Is the problem that once apps are removed from the appstore, you can't redownload them? Can you buy Oregon Trail for the original Apple 2 officially anymore?
Except this has never, ever been done to anything but malware.
I think Orwell might have something to say about that. Or at least, the people who (thought they had) bought his books from Amazon might:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10289983-56.html
Until such time as the killswitch is abused, this remains a slippery slope argument with no basis in reality.
The trouble isn’t just this particular killswitch. As jaysonelliot was suggesting, the really insidious problem is the general trend that even when you think you’re buying a permanent copy of a knowledge work, you are often not getting what you think you’re paying for any more. I’m not sure which is worse, the dubious business models or the fact that the simplest of commercial transactions on-line routinely comes with absurd amounts of legalese attached, but neither is a welcome development IMHO.
I’ve never personally been the victim of an app store revocation, because I saw that one coming and won’t spend my money on unsafe purchases like that. But I’ve certainly seen the damage of phone-home activation, after the boot drive of my main workstation failed. Two pieces of high-end professional software, both legally purchased on physical media by my own company (each at a four-figure price), were at risk from this. It took weeks of chasing the software companies to get the licensing/activation concerns resolved, during which time one piece of software was unusable and the other was reportedly at risk of shutting down any time. It even turned out that both of those companies had completely screwed up the registration and thought my company’s licence keys were registered to someone else, and we really did get to the point of my sending them photographs of original invoices/packaging/serial numbers in one case.
In my country, hacking into someone’s computer and causing that level of damage would surely be a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act. I believe that remote blocking of legitimately installed software by, for example, phone home activation/DRM schemes or post-sale deletion by an app store should also be considered an offence. After all, the end result is much the same. I’ve never had the chance to ask a lawyer why it isn’t (or maybe it is, perhaps even under the same legislation, but for whatever reason the culprits aren’t being prosecuted). And if it can be a criminal offence in various jurisdictions to circumvent technical measures in order to do otherwise perfectly legal things with a copyrighted work you’ve bought (OK, “licensed”, but while I appreciate the need for lawyers to be precise, we all know how most people are going to understand the transaction), I don’t think it’s unreasonable to make it an offence to abuse such technical measures from the other side as well. Maybe we should have some sort of safe harbour provision to protect companies who genuinely make an innocent mistake but correct it immediately on notification, but the basic principle that abusing remote deactivation is illegal seems only fair.
Technically, no. I'm pretty sure that if you cashed for a copy of WordPerfect on Apple II, that software was licensed to you for unlimited time use and you don't own any bit of it.
This "licence" thing is usually a fiction sold to consumers by big companies to try to pull the wool over their eyes.
On the down-side you have the rather transient nature of the platform where bit-rot happens much faster. Theoretically you can keep your iPad in its frozen state in perpetuity, backed up and re-imaged onto a replacement device if necessary. If you start upgrading, the half-life of applications kicks in and you're going to start losing some of them over time.
It's not clear which is better in the end.
The solution to this software problem could be to make an open-source version or one that side-steps the patents, whatever those are, as cleverly as possible. Then it can be distributed, instantly, to those who want or need it.
And with the App Store model, the application is took down from the store. You still have the local copy. There is no updates from the App Store anymore, but do you think there will be updates from the developer when the court injunction finally happens?
Bad laws need to be fixed.
So, iOS apps are like web apps then?
(I'm against software patents, I'm against media licensing instead of ownership for the record)
(1) The answer to this is somewhat ambiguous for any company with investors. Sure, I want my companies to behave in morally responsible ways. On the other hand, there are hundreds of other ways to save and improve lives. If we wanted the companies we invest in to maximize quality of life improvement we would get much further providing vaccinations or microloans to the third world where owning an iPad is as much a pipe dream as winning the lottery (per unit money, energy, whatever). If we want larger public access to scientific advances, perhaps we should fund more public science? Or, we should change the way patents work (2).
(2) This to me seems like a very reasonable question. Aside from patent wars that might hurt your favorite smartphone os vendor, there are real concerns. Drug companies are incentivized to create substances and methodologies that drastically improve the quality and duration of lives in both first and third world countries. On the other hand, intellectual property protection for drugs (until they become generics) does cost lives. But we shouldn't forget just how powerful those incentives are. All the awesome research done in university laboratories (one of which I work in) is nothing without the ability to take a drug from "lab-rat plausible" to "market-ready". Certainly patents don't exist to facilitate personal wealth. But just because they do generate wealth doesn't mean that their intended goal has been forgotten, short-term losses notwithstanding.
Even if we answered (1) and found PRC or Apple to be morally culpable, it misses the larger issue: if society feels that this girl, or others who benefit from patented technology should be allowed to use it, someone's got to pay. Either it's the companies and their investors (the obvious point: not just rich folks), or it's taxpayers through some form of state-sponsored licensing (edit: or some other state-funded mechanism). It's tremendously easy to blame only Apple and PRC (even if they did deserve it). It's a lot harder to put your money on the line, so that families like this one can solve a heartbreaking problem.
One of the patents is for a "method for dynamically redefining the keys on a keyboard". I mean, come on.
I don't know why this is prevalent approach, since 90% of the time it's the big companies initiating disputes. So small companies are taking the hit.
Why do you say taxpayers must pay the license fee? A company might be happy to pay a royalty on a patent but as it is now patent law allows a patent holder to prevent anyone from making or using a patented invention - in other words they could sue Maya directly for infringement. Music copyright law, which issues from the exact same clause in the constitution as patent law, provides for a compulsory license of any song. A band knows before hand exactly how much it will cost to "cover" someone's song.
If you are found to be infringing a patent your financial exposure is almost un-bounded. If there were a compulsory license provision in patent law like their is in music copyright, companies would know exactly how much they were risking if found to be infringing a patent
To use an analogy with razors: I might not be able to make a razor with 4 blades and a cushioning lotion pad above and below because Gillette will sue me, but I can make a razor with three blades set in plastic because it's been so long since that innovation came along. It might not be as snazzy and hence less profitable, but it gets the job done.
I don't know about the broader problem, but for the present situation my first thought was that someone should make a clone of the app that can be sideloaded onto an Android tablet. That's an (almost) immediate fix, but unfortunately it's hardly a solution. It seems like it could only be distributed to one or a few people before it risked similar lawsuits, and there's the long term to think about, too. Besides just OS updates, what will happen as kids using this software grow? For some, but not everyone, reading will open new avenues for communication. For others, ongoing development to increase sophistication seems necessary.
Does anyone know if Speak for Yourself is still available outside the US, where patents are saner? I tried looking, but couldn't figure out how to search iTunes from the website.
I don't believe that. The app has been made, the app has been purchased, and it's not taking away from PRC's sales because PRC's devices are not an option.
I also dislike this culture in that everything has to have monetary value. If my house and food was provided for me, I'd love to develop apps like this for free, because in life, helping others is far more important than material gain.
Many of us would, but we don't have time exactly because our houses and food aren't provided for us.
Patents are a form of feudalism. The very word "patent" is rooted in feudalism, where it used to be "land patents" that were granted to the landholders in the middle ages.
Patents do not disallow you to think of certain things and they do not disallow you to share those thoughts. They only disallow you to implement a specific solution to a specific problem, for a specific period of time. Patents get struck down for being too broad.
If having to be struck down is the problem, then look at the justice system, not the patent system.
I would restrict patent law to force a patent holder to license their patents to whomever for a reasonable price. We already have that for standards relevant patents, but i think it should apply to all patents.
The patent argument would go, "PRC figured out how to do this thing (invented it), we give them a limited monopoly so that they will continue to invest in doing things like this."
Now I completely agree that if there is litigation in progress that it's uncharitable for Apple to pull the app without a court order but it is their playground. And as everyone points out its not like they reach out and delete it on your iPad (which is why VLC still lives on mine btw)
So what exactly is the question?
As far as I can tell there were two points being made:
1. Apple might have been premature in pulling the app from the App Store. Not being under any immediate legal obligation to block the app, nor a ruling on whether there was infringement.
2. It might be unethical to go as far as having the app removed from the store this early on in their litigation. That move might take speech away from people who depend on Speak for Yourself.
I'm not saying those are good arguments, but they are what they are.
Also worth noting is the cost of SfY vs PRC products:
- The Speak for Yourself app cost $190, on top of the price of an iPad. The least expensive PRC product is $2,595. It seems geared towards the very young, or otherwise those with a fairly limited speech/thought faculties, hence they call it "SpringBoard Lite". The rest of PRC's products range from $7500 - $15,000.
I mention the prices because I wondered why the author couldn't just go buy one of PRC's products. They may be prohibitively expensive.
He covered that: He said that he'd spoken with PRC and Maya couldn't use their device (PRC's).
Yes, it's Apple's playground. But that doesn't mean they won't receive bad PR, lost sales, and a public backlash based on a boneheaded policy.
You clone my app (that I've spent months creating) and sell it for 0.99 instead on 2.99. Now, I'm not rich and can't afford a lawyer or a lengthy lawsuit; it would ruin me. I want your app removed from the store NOW, and the manager of the store MUST have the right to judge what is right or wrong without a court order (that could take months and ruin businesses).
The question of whether or not they've infringed is currently being litigated, so it's premature for you to say "Speak For Yourself infringed". And, therefore, it's premature for Apple to have removed the app. Does this mean you can take any app off of the store just by making a claim against it?
It's not just "uncharitable" for Apple; the action they took hurts people. And the "it's their playground" argument is getting old--yes, it's their playground, but it's perfectly reasonable for the rest of us to have (and discuss) our own opinions about how they run it.
"... the action they took hurts people. "
Yes and no. So my experience has been with VLC and App in the app store where the question of its 'open sourceness' came up and Apple removed it from the App store. I have it, I got it when it was there, and its still on my iPad, sync after sync, upgrade after upgrade, even from one device to another. It didn't go away and Apple didn't 'forward delete' it from my device. I suppose they could but they did not. Its not clear at all that they have made any move to delete anyone's SfY app either, they removed it and new users can't down load it, and the SfY gals get no revenue because it isn't being sold. So it hurts people who don't yet have it, and it hurts the SfY folks who might need that revenue to pursue their legal case, but it won't 'silence' Maya if here parents back up her iPad AFAICT. None of the articles linked mention that Maya's version of the App is in danger of being deleted, and it shouldn't be. Even if you buy a patent infringing device, the manufacturer can be banned from selling them but they cannot be forced to take yours back and destroy it.
Personally I think that patents and similar should be treated as property, and licensing should be required. The patent owner sets the price and it's taxed yearly based upon that price, whether products are made or not. This is similar to how real estate taxes are done in many places.
Also, at some large multiple of the price, it's possible to buy out the patent, putting it in the public domain. This way truly useful things deliver a windfall to their creators, or are licensed (possibly for much longer than patent protection allows today) creating recurring revenue.
Not patentable are:
"discoveries, scientific theories and mathematical methods;
aesthetic creations;
schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or doing business, and programs for computers;
presentations of information."
To me you would just need to remove a few words : "technology shouldn't be patented".
At the very worst, patents should be allowed to last for 6 to 12 months, not 10 years.
Untrue. ASL is its own, unique language with distinct vocabulary, syntax, morphology and grammar. It's actually of significant interest to linguists due to the interesting spatial frames that appear to be unique to visual language.
However, this mechanism for communication does parallel books that have been used for years and electronic devices involving Bliss symbols (a paper from 1981 describing this: http://www.speech.kth.se/prod/publications/files/qpsr/1981/1...)
I wouldn't think so, this patent is #5,920,303 which relates to a way of making is easy and efficient to access a large vocabulary from a screen with limited space. Reading through the patent just now I wouldn't say it is particularly obvious that this would be the best way to go about things. Its got about 5 years left in its lifetime.
Is it possible the folks at SfY saw one of PRC's devices and say "Hey would could code that up in an App!" and didn't check to see if it was patented? I don't know, just reading and wondering.
There's a reason Microsoft has been failing to compete for a while. It's because its practices got so evil that if you got offered a job there, your friends would make ha-ha-only-serious jokes about you going to work for Darth Vader. And so the best engineers, the one with options, went looking elsewhere. We need a culture like this now around Oracle, around Apple.
The founders of the company marketing this app are speech-language pathologists who were trained by PRC, and who used their knowledge of the Unity system to develop a Unity-like app of their own and market it in the Apple iTunes store.
If PRC was able to prove that to Apple, you hadn't read the OP but PRC had posted something about how people they trained stole their technology, would you direct the word "villain" towards Apple, PRC, or the makers of SpeakForYourself?
If I had a choice I'd keep the app on the app store. But, its important to keep a cool head and consider things objectively.
Note 1: MS made $5.11B profit last year.
Note 2: Apple's star is rising with the new devices.But, I agree with you, there should be more shaming when working for certain companies or in certain jobs. For instance, the companies that produce internet filters that are suitable for monitoring the traffic of entire countries.
Their continued support of Motorola Mobility's behaviour in abusing FRAND rules is unconscionable and has the ability to undermine the entire industry.
Unfortunate that a legal battle puts you in that position, but if this app is as important to her life as she says, she should be perfectly fine freezing that iPad where it is and not treating it like an iPad any more. It is now a dedicated appliance, not a general-purpose iPad. Buy another one for everything else.
Sucks, but, best solution given the circumstances, I think. Obviously, it'd be great if the circumstances changed.
(Edited to add backup.)
Modern computer equipment is not designed to last forever. Computer equipment that is heavily used by a 4 year old is even less likely to survive. (I just was trying to talk in my pool/sandbox/mud/...!)
I assume that it's only for malware (given they haven't removed tethering apps, for example) so I wouldn't worry.
1. http://www.dailytech.com/Google+Uses+Its+Remote+Kill+Android... 2. http://www.neowin.net/news/google-to-remote-kill-malicious-a...
Now, if it's not remotely equally useful, sue them for something for screwing your life with false claims.
America industrialized faster than Great Britain thanks to widespread copying -- and this saved countless human lives by lifting millions of people out of poverty faster than otherwise possible. Today China is industrializing faster still by rampant copying, and good for them.
This story is just another great example. The patent holder is reluctant to enter the iOS market because they know it will cannibalize their existing very-expensive-device market. Too bad for them. The market should punish them for being slow to serve people in the best possible way. I don't care how much they invested in the idea. That investment has zero value to customers unless it's actually being applied to serve them on the terms they want.
This completely misunderstands the historical reason for patents. Patents do not stifle copying: they encourage copying by transforming a permanent monopoly of secrets into a temporary monopoly of open information.
Patents were created to break the back of trade guilds. Trade guilds were organizations whose primary job was to protect (often on pain of death) trade secrets such as how to create gunpowder or how to mix a crucial sealant for a boat. Trade guilds completely stifled the advancement of technology. Patents broke them by offering a government-guaranteed but temporary legal monopoly instead of a permanent monopoly which required constant vigilance.
Trade guilds and jealously (and dangerously) guarded secrets still exist in certain trades not protected by patents. Most famously, candy-makers are notoriously vicious in protecting their secrets: indeed, Roald Dahl novelized this fact.
And we have the same situation now, don't kid yourself. If patents were to disappear tomorrow, we'd see the elimination of new generic drugs, industrial companies permanently hiding assembly secrets, and an awful lot more security through obscurity in software -- NOT good.
China's copying is not happening despite the patent system, but rather because of it. Because patents make secrets open, Chinese companies can see them and copy them (illegally). Without the patent system, companies would be extremely secretive about their processes and China would be still be in the dark ages.
[btw, if we're talking about copy cultures, the most famous one by far is Japan, which has been a copy culture for over 2000 years]
The end of trade guild secrecy had far more to do with the advent of mass production than with the patent system. Highly trained craftsman could be organized into a guild. But large numbers of easily replaceable workers necessarily couldn't.
As for the elimination of generic drugs, the drug makers themselves argue that figuring out how to copy most new molecules is so cheap and easy that they need strong patent protection to recoup their research costs. Reverse engineering drugs is cheap and getting cheaper.
Software is not going to get more secretive without patents. It's hardly possible that it could -- almost all commercial source code is already treated like trade secrets. The implication that software developers actually utilize techniques gleaned from patent applications is pretty far-fetched.
Security-by-obscurity is orthogonal to the issue of patents. All the peer-reviewed security algorithms that actually get used are unencumbered by patents, which is precisely why they actually get used. (The slow adoption of elliptic curve cryptography has been blamed on the existence of certain patents.) There's no incentive to design your own crypto algorithm and keep it secret -- that's unnecessarily expensive and stupidly risky. People share these techniques out of self interest, not because they enjoy patent protection.
The cost of spreading information continues to plummet. Conversely, the cost of keeping secrets continues to increase. I don't think the premise of a permanent monopoly of secrecy is remotely plausible. Even military technology (which of course relies only on secrecy, not patent protection) seems to proliferate on time scales shorter than patent lifetimes, though this is a hard contention to prove.
Patenting the workings of an internal combustion engine is one thing, patenting a horseless carriage is another.
He wasn't the only on, but was one of those guys who created this device that's giving this child a voice in the first place. You don't have to give huge chunks of money to charitable causes to be a philanthropic, you can use that money to build a company that makes people's lives better. Not that donating money is bad, just that there are different kinds of philanthropy. Jobs could've retired when he was 24 - he had about 400 million dollars then. But he tried to create a better company and lost almost all of it, and only years later regained his old wealth (in 2000+ he got I think hundreds of million of AAPL shares, and some years later got 7B selling Pixar to Disney).
He spent years and years of his life (yeas he could've enjoyed in Hawaii) building this very device; so, it's really unfair to not credit him for what he always aspired: changing the world (a little) and making a (small) dent in the universe.
And just to be clear: I'm not against capitalism. As much as it looks bad and IS bad, without capitalists we would have less progress in the world. As much as I love communism and socialism, they don't work really well in the real world (due to human nature, that's un-alterable).
So, don't judge entrepreneurs too harshly for not giving away their money.
This might be one of those situations to benefit from that occasional, "direct line" to Jobs.
Regardless of the final determination of intellectual property rights, you don't cut kids off from such transformative assistance. You. Just. Don't.
If you've worked with such kids, you know how precious it is.
P.S. And yes, my grandparent post was somewhat rhetorical. In the small hope that such attitude, expressed more broadly, might provoke Apple into a further review and perhaps a "wait and see" position.
Many anonymous, large donations have been attributed to him.
Most of it is in defense of their lawsuit, while the last paragraph is in defense of their request to remove the app from the Apple store.
Last week Prentke Romich Company (PRC) learned that Apple removed a language assistance app from its iTunes® store pending the outcome of a patent infringement lawsuit filed against the company that developed the iPad® app.
PRC and the licensor of the Unity™ system that powers our language devices jointly filed the lawsuit after our patent attorney found numerous instances of infringement on Unity patents in the “Speak for Yourself” app. Apple has a process that allows third parties to provide notice of infringement concerns as part of its terms and conditions. Accordingly, we reached out to Apple on two occasions. We provided Apple with a copy of the lawsuit, expressing our concerns about the “Speak for Yourself” app. We then responded to a later request from Apple asking for an update on the lawsuit. Last week, Apple elected to remove the app.
The Unity system is the result of the long commitment and hard work of Bruce Baker and his company, Semantic Compaction Systems (SCS). His life’s work, which he has refined over decades, created life-changing technology that has given a voice to thousands of individuals with profound disabilities. SCS and PRC filed the patent infringement lawsuit after we reached out to the app company’s founders and offered various business solutions, but were refused.
It is important to emphasize that while there are many useful language apps in the marketplace, “Speak for Yourself” is the only app named in the lawsuit because of its flagrant infringements on Unity patents.
There’s a reason patents are in place, to protect decades of hard work and research that go into our devices. To take someone’s life work and market it as your own is simply wrong. The founders of the company marketing this app are speech-language pathologists who were trained by PRC, and who used their knowledge of the Unity system to develop a Unity-like app of their own and market it in the Apple iTunes store.
We do recognize that new consumer technology, such as tablet-based apps, are playing a useful role in assistive technology, although it is unlikely they will be the best option for all clients. We intend to participate in this space but will only do so in a way that supports the best possible language outcomes for those clients with severe communications disorders.
This appears to be the crux of it: is the technology that SfY 'copied' actually the direct results of decades of effort, or could it have been created by a few designers and developers looking at the problem of assisting disabled children over a few months?
If the approach that is used is trivial to think of and/or implement, then maybe it's not really "marketing someone else's life's work", but just re-implementing a simple-enough idea. If patents are granted for ideas as simple as that, then clearly patents are broken.
>>> We intend to participate in this space (new consumer technology / tablet apps) but will only do so in a way that supports the best possible language outcomes for those clients with severe communications disorders.
I hope that includes pricing a product well within range of most potential customers, and not at $2,500+ prices.
If the entire approach of an app is easily copied, it hardly has the right to expect to not be copied (except when patent protected). It's funny, we get much more complicated algorithms and systems implemented for free in free/open software, while these families have to pay the economic rent imposed by a patent-holder for a relatively simple design that IMO could be easily re-invented by a few product designers focusing on the problem.
Whenever I start feeling a bit full of myself after battling a week or so on some particularly difficult problem, I try to remember that there are people out there who could kick my ass in the time it takes to air an episode of The Simpsons.
In the end, this is why the whole notion of "software" patents is probably doomed from the start.
You are making the classical developer mistake of thinking that programming is the hard part. Generally programming is the easy part. Domain knowledge is the hard part.
Let me give you an example, anyone could write an app to calculate e=mc^2. It took Einstein years to come up with that formula in the first place. Do you think because you could write that app in 5 minutes, you're as smart as Einstein?
However, despite the convenience and awesomeness of being able to do this on an iPad, is there anything preventing the girl (and her parents) from using written or some other method of communication? Can the girl not write out "I love you, Daddy" and anything else she thinks? Is there something I missed in the article? I've looked at the app, and you can't tell all the intended words just from the pictures (as much as I can see how those would help a young child).
I'm not disputing that this doesn't royally suck; I really have little compassion for software patents. I think Apple could have taken a different course of action in this case, sure. However, I have seen some legitimate praise for Apple (even here on HN, if I'm not mistaken) where they've removed apps that have grossly violated other people's work (though that may have been egregious copyright violation, as opposed to patent violation).
Maybe I'm too rational a parent (though I have plenty of emotion where my kids are concerned), but I just could not buy this:
My daughter cannot speak without this app.
She cannot ask us questions.
She cannot tell us that she’s tired, or that she wants yogurt for lunch.
She cannot tell her daddy that she loves him.
Yes, the iPad is a lovely device. Yes, the app does wonders for getting to hear "a voice" in place of the one the author's daughter cannot use on her own. Yes, that is fantastic and convenient and helpful because we're such auditory beings. But to make the claim that one's child cannot communicate without the aid of an electronic device and an application just goes too far in my view--especially when you read throughout the rest of the blog all the various ways in which they've worked with Maya to enable two-way communication, with varying (but definite) degrees of success. The claim simply disputes the other stories told.
I don't want to seem like a dick or have no compassion--again, as a parent, I can totally empathize with how devastating losing more fluid and convenient communication would be. I'd love to have an iPad helping my child along if s/he wasn't able to speak. But if the alternative is my child not being able to communicate with me at all, fuck the iPad and patents and all that shit. I'll grab a pen & paper and teach my children how to write what they're thinking, or go back for more ASL, or one of the other various methods the author has used ... something that doesn't need disputed technology (you still have to know language and have the device to use this app). Yes, this situation and its impact on this family sucks. Yes, it is totally shitty every which way. But hyperbole isn't the right tactic.
What appears to be truly lost in this story is the convenience of two-way communication introduced by the help of Speak For Yourself's app. Not the ability to communicate at all.
Taking into account the difference in time, how much people communicate on a daily basis, how much more kids talk to parents.
1-3 seconds 45 seconds (less as time goes on and writing gets better.) - 15 seconds. lets assume the kid talks to her parents 30 times a day, each with 1-3 second talks.
Each day this app saves the daughter 11 minutes.
(25sec30talks) = 12.5min-a-day - (3sec30talks) = 1.5min-a-day = 11 Minutes saved Daily.
I used 25 seconds as an average sentence written.
I understand I'm making certain assumptions. But even if writing takes less time then that to get words on paper, we're talking minutes a day, if she talks more then it's saving more, in the course of a lifetime. This app may be saving the girl from wasting days of her life.
That's not getting into the fact that they did try out nearly ALL other options, they did ask if an iPad app was going to be made by their preferred PRC people anyways.
The particular dimension of the story I felt worth pointing out that was disputable, however, were the ways in which the author made hyperbolic claims. I could tell with the reactions in the HN comments that everyone was capitalizing on the anti-PRC/Apple angle and somewhat beating it to death. Speaking as a parent of two, the eldest of whom started speaking later than "normal" and still seems to have some issues (though by no means as extreme as Maya's), it was the claims that there was zero communication without the app that stood out to me (particularly after taking other content on the blog into consideration).
It is unquestionably sad and pathetic when anything that truly helps improve people's lives in a demonstrable way is threatened by crap in the business world. Stories like Maya's are excellent for helping enlighten people to the ways that IP fighting can seriously degrade people's lives. I just still think it's worth being intellectually honest even amid the harshest emotional pulls.
I think your post was longer than the article. That makes you a dick and an imbecile.
I personally feel like they are more afraid of change (which is a legitimate fear) than they are fearing for their daughter to become unable to express herself, which isn't legitimate in my opinion. There is a thick layer of drama over it that some of us fail to see through.
I read the entire article (and its comments). Twice. And then I read through nearly a dozen other pages on the blog to learn more about Maya, her condition, and everything the parents have tried in communicating with their daughter--because the author's statements stood out to me and I wanted to see if they'd tried other things, or if there was something about her condition that made ASL or other methods non-starters.
Look at the picture? Cos that means exactly what? Nothing. The child's physical appearance has no bearing on either the content and meaning of the article or my comments.
At the time of the writing of the Constitution something was needed to help spur innovation. It was written in the time of inventions like the cotton gin (easily copied 100x over by anyone who bought 1). But make no mistake, patents and copyrights have been implemented solely to help improve society as a whole since day 1. Enriching inventors is a by product of the desire to push science and art forward, not the raison d'être.
Now it seems that patents, taken as a whole, inhibit innovation. Most entrepreneurs view patents as an obstacle to be overcome, not a reward for their efforts.
I think it's time we either abolish them or vastly raise the bar on what it requires to get a patent. We have several orders of magnitude too many patents on the books today.
Have you ever wondered why bands are allowed to "cover" other bands music without any kind of prior permission? It is because the US Congress wrote something called a compulsory license into the copyright law. Music was thought too important to our culture to allow one person to have control over a new song.
I say it is time we brought the idea of a compulsory license to patents.
I'm of the opinion that a patent that has not been reduced to practice should be regarded as ineligible for any enforcement action. If you can't make it work, you should not be able to tax the people who did make it happen. And you definitely should not be able to prevent certain technological developments using the legal system just to protect your existing business.
No limits, no greater good…
I wasn't clear on if the author of this piece was simply telling her tale of how the patent system had a profoundly negative impact on her and her family's lives or if it was meant to push ideas about patent reform or both. As far as the author goes, it doesn't matter because it's irrelevant. I feel for her no matter what her motivations were. We all do I'm sure. What is relevant is why it was posted on HN and it's not hard to guess it was to start a discussion on patent reform.
Now, I'm not stating a position for or against anything here (though I agree with the majority opinion here if you really want to know). What I am saying is that if you want to have a serious discussion about any issue you have to leave these emotional stories out of it because it's not fair and it's a cheap trick. People on both sides of any issue, yes, any issue, can come up with a heart wrenching story to get support.
If you want to discuss and debate an issue then debate it on facts and merit. If you want to empathize with people on either side of an issue then you're also free to do that too. One thing you cannot do, however, is both at the same time. Again, I have to reiterate that I'm totally on this mother's side. I have to keep repeating that because that's what these stories do! They suspend logic, get people all emotional, and the next thing you know people are reacting to things out of pure emotion without thinking no matter how logical the person they react to is being. Using emotion to put forth ideas is a manipulation that aims to hinder or completely stop any real, substantive discussion.
At this point, it may be all that's left that can move the political process forward.
My whole take is that a patent for a device that plays a sound when you push a button with a picture on it is a complete joke. Surely there is prior art.
A child is using an assistive technology, but may face its loss at a cognitively critical time in her intellectual and social development.
How is that not a 'real issue'?
Perhaps my definition of a 'real issue' is different from yours.
But it is not a systemic issue that represents the state of patent law.
If for example the child's Ipad was taken away because it was found out to be stolen property it would have an equally negative effect on her development. It would still not be a call to arms to change legislation.
Appeal to emotion is wrong in an adult debate.
I feel very bad for the mother and I wish her and her daughter the best. But if the story was about a guy who lost his fortune to copycats and thus can't feed his handicapped daughter, it would be equally as sad and equally as manipulative from my point of view.
That said I do believe the patent system needs a massive reform. I just appreciate honest and fair debates.
If this were shrink wrapped software, you wouldn't have this issue. This sort of thing only comes up because we have given a corporation the power to revoke access to software. In iOS there is no opportunity to install 'unsigned' software.
This situation also makes RMS's claims much more reasonable. Since this is not open software, it takes away the ability to ensure proper functioning of it upon some arbitrary future iOS update. If this were open software running on an open OS, any corporation, misguided or oppressive government, or judge would find it impossible to deprive people of the use of it, in perpetuity.
The two things that I'll be doing in response to this:
- selling my devices that use iOS. I've always felt uncomfortable giving up control, and I am starting to think it is morally iffy to contribute to a system that allows things like Maya being removed from the Appstore. Voluntarily giving rights, by using a system that requires giving a corporation the power to whitelist all software, seems short sighted, and this story brings it into sharp contrast. Luckily I won't have to return to the dark ages, I can just switch to Android (which is a GPL system that allows me to find alternate sources of software, and use unsigned software if I want).
- not buy the new retina macbook pro. I think I will become even more of a curmudgeon and just use Linux. I've been using Linux for around 5 years, but I almost always have a Macbook Pro as well, because Linux has rough edges. This sort of story reminds me that the more I am reliant on non-open software, the more I give the power to other people. If TextMate stops updating (oh, wait), or OSX goes the way of previous non-Jobs Apple products and becomes an untenable product, the more uncomfortable it will be for me. Since I make my living as a programmer, if I lose access to the tools I use, or they become crap, it is a serious concern to me. Perhaps Linux has some rough edges, but I can rely on it being there as long as it is useful for it to be there. I know Emacs will be available to me.
No. Think about it this way: Removing the App from the App store is like a brick&mortar store removing the shrink wrapped software from it's shelves and not selling it anymore.
If you lose your CD you can't buy it again. But you can still use your copy. The same with an App: As long as you don't delete the App yourself it doesn't magically vanish. Furthermore you can back it up to your computer, you can copy the App to external disks or put a copy on Dropbox or whatever.
> The two things that I'll be doing in response to this: a) selling my devices that use iOS. b) not buy the new retina macbook pro.
Really? Since when did get hacker news so stupid? This news article, some third party company has a patent and brings action against another third party company, is so disconnected from a Macbook Pro or iOS that I wonder if I am insane or the rest of the world is.
> This sort of story reminds me that the more I am reliant on non-open software, the more I give the power to other people.
I am also puzzled what the constant pleas for open source in this and other comments want to accomplish. The software by "Speak for Yourself" which gave the disabled 4 year old girl its speech back? Guess what. It is closed-source and non-open software which was sold on the App Store for $299 (sic. Two hundred ninety-nine dollars). I find it hypocritical to only accuse Apple now, but not give them at least equal credit that they enabled with their evil closed garden the ecosystem, that SfY was able to sell their product for a high price in the first place (instead of being pirated out of business).
Google can de-list things in the Play store, but I can just use the Amazon store, or download apps directly. I don't have to jailbreak my phone every time there is an iOS release to enable this.
'Open Source' != Free as in beer. Speak for yourself could easily go to a model like the QT library, where they sell the software, but give the source to a safe third party, with an agreement to release it under an open source license if the software is abandoned, or the company goes out of business, the source is released under a free license.
The reason I am going to sell my Macbook is that unlike a free OS, OSX can turn to crap within a few years. They could lock it down like iOS, or lose key engineers and have it turn into another OS9, where it is years behind the competition and full of problems. I like to keep my options open.
2) You can legally jailbreak your device and install any software you want.
Nothing instills rage in me more than companies, knowing how essential what they sell is, slagging each other for petty, pointless money.
I hate to be dramatic, but these are disabled adults and children for christ's sake, people who need things like SfY. I just do not understand how someone at the litigating company thought "hey, let's go sue a company over some very complex and possibly unfounded patent allegations! Screw the people that rely on the products we're suing about, they won't mind". How dare they take away a person's ability to communicate? Tell me, is there any reasonable situation where it's acceptable to deny a child's ability to speak?
The humanity of it all :/
/rant
Oh, you mean that same money that is literally the only reason that they provide these "essential" products?
That simply isn't true.
I know a lot of people who work on apps similar to this, or in related fields, and money is far from the only reason they do it. Infact, I know people who literally give away their work to make sure people can use it.
Have I missed something here?
[1] http://www.speakforyourself.org/About_The_App.html
Edit: Some interesting links:
Open Source Assistive Technology Software: http://www.oatsoft.org/
A collection of 5000 pictograms, necessary for an AAC application, licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA: http://www.oatsoft.org/Software/arasaac-pictograms/
Edit:
pVoice, open source Augmentative and Alternative Communication: http://www.oatsoft.org/Software/pvoice
I wondered about that, although I am not a programmer. Thanks for the pictogram reference!
Please base the project outside the US, and build it for Android/Linux!
If you want to get rid of a competing app, all you have to do is make up lies about your competitor, threaten that you'll sue then and tell Apple. The iTunes store will take care of the rest.
I would discourage anyone to sell apps on Apple AppStore.
But on the other hand, a lot of developers (oftentimes the same people that cry out when an app is removed) are happy to put apps on the shelves of this walled garden, trying to make a (fast) buck.
When I started reading these arguments and outcries against apple, I really felt with the developers. Nowadays it shifted. It seems to me, that there is (by some/a lot) developers a lot of bigotry involved. And on the user part as well.
Who didn't buy this or that app giving the evil lord of Apple the 30% cut? Who didn't praise this or that developer for their totally cool app, pushing it, promoting it, helping it make a bigger buck (and helping the evil overlord Apple this way)?
Me - I am guilty. I have an old iPhone and I did buy some apps. Yes, I thought the iPhone was cool/great/whatever. So yes I am as guilty as anybody owning an Apple product.
What I'm trying to say here is, that if anyone is really serious about showing Apple the middle-finger (excuse my language) he/she should stop buying products from the evil overlord or his minions (iBooks, Appstore, Macstore, et al.).
This and only this would show Apple, that maybe the removal-policy is wrong. Apple, as nearly any other big corp. will only feel the sting, if revenue drops and share prices drop after that.
Richard Stallman: The Right to Read
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Then, most of what we already live now was only a science fiction. There were no chips that can prevent you from installing your own kernel. Well they are going to be sold soon, together with Windows 8:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Int...
"In December 2011, Microsoft released a document about hardware certification of OEM products, Windows Hardware Certification Requirements[57] which confirms that they intend to ban the possibility of installing alternative operating systems on ARM-based devices running Windows 8. The document insists that they will require x86 and x86-64 devices to have the Secure UEFI enabled. They allow for the possibility that a custom secure boot mode could be enabled providing to the user the ability to add signatures. However, they intend that going to custom secure boot mode or disabling secure boot mode on ARM devices will not be compatible with running Windows.[53 "Microsoft confirms UEFI fears, locks down ARM devices - SFLC Blog - Software Freedom Law Center". Softwarefreedom.org. 2012-01-12. Retrieved 2012-03-06."
There's already a hardware in production that will make impossible installing something else on the device, even if you have an access to the debugger -- on the technical level even a step beyond of the Stallman's dystopia of 1997.
I have concerns about that trend, but this particular case shows how an application running on a device can expand what can be done to integrate a disabled person into society.
Not just a shiny way of doing something we did before, but a real gain.
Stallman's was a name that I thought of as soon as I read the article.
ASL is much richer, faster to actually use and doesn't depend on an external app...
Regardless of this, I'm getting increasingly uncomfortable with Apple's practices when it comes to their App store. Legally, as far as I know, they only need to act on a court order to remove the app and don't need preemptive. So, I don't understand the reasoning behind removing it now...
Think about it: the author writes touching human interest story that pulls at readers' heartstrings by genuinely presenting the dilemma he is faced with. The story resonates with the combined holy trinity of geek social news: "Apple is a soulless and evil," "The patent system is a parasite on the world," and "Indie game/software developers are sacrosanct." Outrage ensues.
What could make this all go away for PRC? Apologizing and offering the author a free copy of their product before he decides to launch a crusade and a PR nightmare. Instead, no such offer came through.
The question I want answered is, Why? Are these companies so clueless that they don't see the PR catastrophe brewing? Do they know and don't care?
I propose a teaching about the nature of social news in the form of an admittedly unlikely third explanation: The company performed a cost-benefit analysis and realized that the intersection of this blog's audience and the company's customer base is so small they can get away with ignoring them.
Your outrage is impotent. You can rage about this on the internet all you want, but it's not going to cause an inch of motion in any direction. If you want to do something other than express frustration, send letters to newspapers, don't post comments. These companies are going to have to lead marketing campaigns. Get the jump on them and make the first impression on their potential customers.
That is how you get things done.
Pay $190 to SfY (via credit card), ask them to give you a provisioning profile for beta testing, install it on your iPad, download updates with TestFlight (https://testflightapp.com) or manually. Problem (partially solved! It sucks, but at least they don't have to fear they might never be able to use this app again, or if the device breaks they life would be ruined.
Then the app will stay on it indefinitely, and you don't need to worry about Apple taking it away.
- If the device gets broken (which isn't hard to imagine with a child lugging it about 24/7) you loose the software - If the device gets stolen, ditto - If the software or OS gets corrupt, ditto - As the child gets older, she can't use it as a general purpose device as well.
Its a good initial suggestion to buy you some time, but not a solution in the long term.
And I can also sympathize with the idea that you might lose the sudden gains. Our son didn't walk until he was 3-4 years old, and then at about 9 years old his knees started degrading. Which leaves me with this ... sometimes all I can do for my son is to pray and I'll do that for you too. But I'm also going to send my elected officials your story. It needs to be heard.
Patents are supposed to be beneficial to society because they give incentive to the inventor to invent. But inventors inventing stuff doesn't seem to be a problem in computer technologies. We don't need these useless patents.
Ditto if you buy an iOS device; the _feeling_ of security and the easy discoverability that come with a closed ecosystem come at a price, and that is that a third party (in this case Apple) really controls your device, not you.
It's just really sad that Maya's parents discovered the above in such a harsh fashion :-(
WTF?! That is all kinds of arse-backwards. If the patent dispute had not yet been resolved then you should not have removed the application, simple as that. The courts do not march to Apple's timetables.
Since the app is a basic necessity for its user, customers wont mind going extra mile and root their device and use the app.
I get the fact that the way apple handled this is fairly standard, but it is still disheartening.
[1] http://seekingalpha.com/article/654641-apple-s-ceo-presents-...
When the patent holder is a non-practicing entity, there is no incentive for the holder to interfere with the creation of competing products (abusive attempts to extract a settlement notwithstanding). Anything covered by the patent is a potential source of licensing fees, simple as that.
I'm going to start thinking out loud here: Imagine patent holders are disallowed from directly exercising the techniques covered by their patents. Corporations that patent technology in their field essentially have to sell their patents to NPEs and license them back. The researching corporation gets an up-front return on their R&D investment (and a potential head start in implementing the new patents before the rest of the public actually sees them) and the public suffers none of the side effects of a government-granted monopoly.
The biggest wrinkle in a system like this would be the whole mess of submarine patents. If NPEs could be incentivised to make their patents broadly known, and approach licensees before they implement those patents, they could actually become a real value-ad to the system rather than a parasite: Imagine a one-stop shop where you could license a patent, get a reference implementation, and access experts who could help you apply that patent to your product. It could be similar to companies like ARM that license reference chip designs to manufacturers.
Again, I'm just thinking out loud here, so feel free to let me know if I'm off-base here.
Lee and Mulligan (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2016968) make a good case that software firms "are unable to discover the patents their activities might infringe", because software patents are not "indexable" (unlike chemical patents, which are indexable by molecular formula) . Any companies know what their patent assets are, but not their liabilities, as testified by the fact that tech companies put pro-forma statements to this effect (with suitable weasel wording) in their SEC filings. Now we are seeing that due to the app store model, this risk is propagated to ordinary customers.
----
The ipad should be a) backed up, b) put in airplane mode.
"SCS and PRC filed the patent infringement lawsuit after we reached out to the app company’s founders and offered various business solutions, but were refused."
"There’s a reason patents are in place, to protect decades of hard work and research that go into our devices. To take someone’s life work and market it as your own is simply wrong. The founders of the company marketing this app are speech-language pathologists who were trained by PRC, and who used their knowledge of the Unity system to develop a Unity-like app of their own and market it in the Apple iTunes store."
There's obviously some undercurrent here, since apparently the folks behind the application are former employees of these companies. Of course, none of that changes the fact that what these companies are doing is unconscionable, since it benefits only themselves and not the people they are purportedly setting out to assist with these devices. Amazing, considering those same people are the ones putting bread on the company's table.
Maybe he is, maybe not, but this example begins to show the moral dimension
The only way to stop this type of abusive behavior is to stop giving money to companies like Apple.
Don't like their dictatorship behavior?
Instead of buying stuff and then complaining it does not work, or jailbreaking, don't give them any money, not even a penny.
Sorry, but fuck patents when its comes to human life. And silencing this kid is like taking life out of her and her parents.
It's possible to imagine a patent system that has far fewer problems (though no doubt massive armies will form to oppose any major reform).
I wonder if this removal will be a net loss for them.
[1] I've linked it twice on this thread, and its in the original post's conclusion