Bonum Certa Men Certa

Intellectual Monopoly Owners Association Wants Patents Off ACTA and the Dangers of Monopoly Are Explained

IPO logo



Summary: The Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) does not want the ACTA to strengthen its funders' monopolies; more news about monopolies and their tactics

"IPO asks US to remove patents from the scope of ACTA, text defines “intellectual property” broadly," says the president of the FFII, pointing at this document [PDF]. It's dated June 25th (a month ago) and it starts by saying that "Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) appreciates the circulation of the Consolidated Text of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)."



IPO correctly points out that "Counterfeiting is making a copy that is a fake – it is forged to look real and intended to be passed-off to the public for what is in fact real. Consumers may even know that what they are purchasing is a counterfeit, (i.e., a “knock-off” DVD sold rather inexpensively at a street corner stand). Furthermore, the counterfeit may also pose significant health and safety risks to our citizens."

“ACTA goes far beyond addressing the subject matter of counterfeiting.”
      --IPO
ACTA basically mixes that with copyrights in order to apply pressure and carry out Hollywood's mission (under the falsehood that ACTA is necessary just to impede fake medicine).

IPO says accurately that "As currently drafted, given the expansive use of the broadly-defined term “intellectual property,” ACTA goes far beyond addressing the subject matter of counterfeiting."

It is true that counterfeiting can cause damages, but that mustn't be confused with intellectual monopolies. That's something which ACTA negotiators/apologists like Pedro Valesco-Martins, Paul Rübig, and Luc Pierre Devigne have been doing in Europe, for example. These people help harm Europe's patent law in the same way that New Zealand's patent law is currently being ruined by adding software patenting through a loophole (the mainstream press continues to report about it somewhat inaccurately). Europe's ACTA boosters have been repeating the counterfeiting talking points while actually referring to a controversial document which encompasses a wide range of issues (patents included), not just counterfeiting. We recently learned that Luc Pierre Devigne fled or got fired. Serves him right for his arrogance.

As a little lesson regarding the problem with software patents, consider patents which are almost everywhere that involves video. We are talking about MPEG-LA, which is a patent parasite that we covered in:



The H currently writes about "commercial licences for H.264 encoder x264" (including the unacceptable terms), but this is not satisfactory for software freedom.

A commercial x264 license is only required by users who link the x264 library to proprietary software or software which is otherwise incompatible with the GPL and who want to sell their software commercially. Interested users should contact x264 LLC. Garrett-Glaser points out that all vendors are obliged to pay license fees to the holder of the H.264 patent, i.e. have to sign a contract with MPEG LA.


H.264 is a good example of quiet addiction that develops without sufficient scrutiny until it's too late. It poisons media files along with their contents.

Well, it's time to break the H.264 'addiction', based on the lessons we learned from Windows. "Get them while they’re young" is the key slogan of the exploiters, who obviously include Microsoft.

Ashlee Vance recently wrote a good piece in the New York Times that touched on a concept well-known to every major company catering to consumers or other mass markets: Try to get them when they're young.


Microsoft developed its business based on this principle (Vance mostly focused on Microsoft in this piece), which helps teach us about the dangers of monopolies and what enables them to develop in the first place (except the aspect of crime). They seed the market with their copyrights or their patents, then charge at a later stage. It's a form of ambush where the trap is the monopoly. Software patents should be rejected, patents-encumbered standards need to be rejected, and proprietary software too should be avoided (because it's related to the former two issues, on top of copyright with draconian licensing terms).

“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

--Bill Gates

Recent Techrights' Posts

Brett Wilson LLP Sent Over 5 Kilograms (or Over 12 Pounds) of Legal Papers! Because Writing About Microsoft Abuses is 'Illegal'.
How do you guys sleep at night? On a big pile of Microsoft money?
Extremism as a Weapon Against GNU/Linux (Microsoft Lunduke)
He ought to know the Halloween Documents. Wasn't he a Microsoft employee when these came out?
 
Microsoft-Sponsored Propaganda Site Has Removed False 'Hit Piece' About Dr. Stallman (With Fake and Misrepresented Imagery) But Only After 4 Years
So they only removed that page some time around 2025, i.e. about 4 years after it had been published
Always Check Your Inputs
Garbage in, garbage out. Or wrong assumptions, wrong corollary.
Dan Neidle Said That Tax Evasion Facilitator Mr Zahawi (Working to Silence Bloggers Through Brett Wilson LLP) Targeted Not Only Him (But The Others Kept Quiet)
"Mr Neidle said after repelling Mr Zahawi he was contacted by bloggers and tweeters who had received similar threats. They deleted their work “and in most cases never commented publicly on anything again”."
SLAPP Funding Transparency Urgently Needed in the UK and Elsewhere (in Practice, Not Just in Theory)
Writing about crime - including Microsoft crime - is not a crime
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 09, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 09, 2025
Elodie Bergot Still Doing Illegal Things at the EPO, Based on the Local Staff Committee Munich
They keep taking away from the staff while compelling the staff to do illegal things
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: Extreme Testing and Golang Documentation in Geminispace
Links for the day
Vice President of the European Patent Office (EPO) Complains That Techrights Gives Visibility to Legal and Technical Issues at the EPO
"Follow-up on enquiries relating to Dir. 1218 and 1001"
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com and Various Slopfarms That Lie About "Linux" and Are Promoted by Google News
Google does not seem interested in tackling this problem
Links 09/07/2025: War Updates and Microsoft Moving to India to Cut Costs
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Was Always a 'Movement' of Inclusion of Tolerance
Even the licences themselves remove access barriers
Links 09/07/2025: "Subprime AI Crisis" and "OpenAI May Be in Major Trouble Financially"
Links for the day
Huge Piles of Legal Papers ('Paper DDoS') Do Not Impress Judges and Regulators
they just make judges and regulators even more suspicious of the eagerness to resort to 'paper DDoS'
Lunduke Isn't Even Hiding His Anti-Linux Agenda (From "Linux Sucks" to "Linux is Pedophiles")
just trying to make a lot of trouble
Some People Use Computers to Get Actual Work Done
Tolerance and inclusion must extend to acceptance that some people don't agree with you, might never agree with you, and imposing what allegedly works for you on them is unreasonable
Example of "Old" Things That Still Work
The notion that something being "old" implies it must be discarded is typically advanced by those looking to sell more of something
Some Scheduled Maintenance Later Today
Typically the most vulnerable service during short interruptions is IRC
Computers Are Just a Tool
People don't get married because they love weddings, folks don't join the army because they love war, and most drivers don't drive to work because they love cars
Apple Way Past Its Prime
Apple deserves a decline
The FSF's SysOps Team Recovered From Serious Hardware Issue Within Hours
About half a day ago I noticed that all/most GNU/FSF sites were not reachable and thus reached out to a contact for any details
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 08, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 08, 2025
Slopwatch: Turning Bugs Into FUD About "Linux", Getting Basic Facts Wrong
all the screenshots are of fake articles; we don't want to link to any
Technical Reasons, Not Politics: With Wayland "it feels a lot like Linux from 20-25 years ago, which is horrendously frustrating, because it feels like we wasted one or two decades of progress and stability"
Lately, quite a few benchmarks were published to show Wayland compares poorly compared to what we had
PCLinuxOS Recovering From Fire
It looks like a nightmare scenario, where even backups onsite get destroyed
Links 09/07/2025: More Heatwaves, Officials Culled in Russia
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: XScreensaver and Resurrection
Links for the day
Links 08/07/2025: "Cyberattack Deals Blow to Russian Firmware" and "Cash Remains King"
Links for the day
FSF40 T-shirt message
by Alex Oliva
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Creativity, Gotify with NUT Server, and Sudo Bugs
Links for the day
More on "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
"pepe the frogs"
Links 08/07/2025: Sabotage of Networking Infrastructure, Microsoft XBox Game Pass Deemed “Unsustainable”
Links for the day
Dalai Lama Succession as Evidence That Determined, Motivated People Can Reach Their Nineties
And we need to quit talking about their death all the time
Many Lawyers (for Microsoft) and 1,316 Pages to Pick on a Litigant in Person Who Exposed Serious Microsoft Abuses
Answers must be given
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Ancillary Justice and Small Web July
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 07, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 07, 2025