Bonum Certa Men Certa

Jean-Luc Godard Says "There is No Such Thing as Intellectual Property" and Microsoft Lobbyist Jonathan Zuck Shows Up in IGF

House of money



Summary: Just as the movement against intellectual monopoly is growing, lobbyists continue to find their way into public events and patent trolls thrive

French-Swiss film director Jean-Luc Godard [FR] has just taken a bold step by saying something which I said several years ago. Having just donated €1,000 to an accused downloader (for his legal defence), Godard made some strong remark:



My French is very rusty, and there doesn't seem to be any coverage of this story yet in English-language news... but apparently, the great French-Swiss film director Jean-Luc Godard (above) donated a thousand euros toward the legal defense costs of James Climent (inset), a 37-year-old French citizen accused of downloading 13,788 MP3s.

[...]

Update: Boing Boing reader Paul R. offers this translation of an important Godard quote in the linked news story (emphasis mine):

I am against Hadopi [the French internet-copyright law, or its attendant agency], of course. There is no such thing as intellectual property. I'm against the inheritance [of works], for example. An artist's children could benefit from the copyright of their parents' works, say, until they reach the age of majority... But afterward, it's not clear to me why Ravel's children should get any income from Bolero...


Incidentally, IP Watch has this new article about the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). Its title has to do with consumer rights over "intellectual property"-protected products ("intellectual", "property", "consumer", and "protected" are all weasel words within this context). Here is what it says:

Copyright and patent laws “are often misused” for reasons that have “more to do with limiting competition and preventing consumers from making innovative uses of their products” than they do with stopping piracy, global consumer advocacy group Consumers International plans to tell a UN internet meeting today. Such misuse includes limitations on the use of third-party content on devices such as the iPhone, and regional codes that prevent consumers from playing DVDs bought legally abroad in a consumer’s home country.

The statement comes in the context of a 14-17 September meeting of the UN Internet Governance Forum in Vilnius, Lithuania. The IGF is a “multi-stakeholder dialogue” addressing various matters of public policy relating to the internet. This year’s meeting is intended to focus on internet governance as a tool for development, especially the Millennium Development Goals, according to a press release.


It sure seems like "intellectual property" works against customers a lot of the time. We covered this before and it ought to be obvious, although stake holders resort to reality distortion fields. Well, who's attending this IGF anyway?

Based on what we witness, it also got stuffed by Microsoft lobbyists like Association for Competitive Technology (ACT). Here is what Jonathan Zuck had to 'contribute' to IGF (someone sent us the transcript of [1, 2]):

>> >> WILLIAM DRAKE: Thank you, Steve. Is Jonathan Zuck in the room you got the mike.

>> >> Mike: My name is -- from the association for competitive technology. We represent small businesses all over the world. I think the IGF has been incredible in bringing about a discussion in a wide range of issues. I want to echo Miss Hofmann's ideas about the deep politicalization. A lot of the issues -- again, surrounding the critical Internet resources, that shift from a political discussion to a practical one I think is critical. And I can't be emphasized enough. There are so many challenges facing us, the Internet and bringing on the next billion users, et cetera, that we don't have the luxury to prioritize fixing problems that don't exist or fixing things that aren't broken. Because there are so many things that still need to be done. And so I think depoliticizing the issues and focussing on access and infrastructure development, which is the more critical Internet resource has got to be the priority of the IGF.

>> >> WILLIAM DRAKE: Thank you for that Jonathan. There is another person in the room who's provided a written question. And Markus can read his handwriting better than me.


What is a lobbyist doing speaking fraudulently 'on behalf' of "small businesses all over the world"? Why are these people even invited? They only ever stomp on small businesses because they are hired to lobby by those to whom small businesses are competitors. The only "small businesses" whose agenda Jonathan Zuck is promoting are patent trolls who, according to this other new article, are increasingly a problem, never an opportunity.

Patent licensing has become big business in recent decades. The high technology sector, in particular, places a high value on patents and licenses. Semiconductor companies have traditionally led the charge, given the myriad of competitors and patents in the industry, and the groundbreaking licensing campaigns driven by Texas Instruments in the 1980s. Today, intellectual property groups are firmly entrenched in every major corporation - from large communications providers such as Ericsson to consumer product giants like Apple. Each is responsible for growing and/or defending its intellectual property assets, with stakes often in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Fundamental to building and executing any successful patent licensing program is the ability to find and prove evidence of infringement, often through reverse engineering methods. This article explores the role of reverse engineering in identifying patent infringement, and offers some observations about the future direction of patent licensing and infringement analysis.

[...]

The other trend is the relatively steady state of patent litigations. Despite tough economic conditions last year, the overall number of high-tech patent litigations has remained relatively stable (see chart). This is largely being driven by the licensing activities of a growing number of nonpracticing entities (NPEs). NPEs are companies that assert patents without developing or selling any products of their own. Although companies who find themselves up against NPEs have few defensive strategies at their disposal, reverse engineering can help. It can be used to defend a position of non-patent infringement. It can also be used to find evidence of prior use of the invention, in order to weaken the validity of the opposing party's patent.


Patent trolls are described as "NPEs" here (gentler technical term). It is them -- along with patent lawyers and monopolies like Microsoft (who employ the Jonathan Zuck shill) -- that benefit from the agenda pushed by Zuck and fellow minions. It's worth watching out for. It's also them who spread propaganda about "intellectual property" as they try to push software patents into Europe (whilst expelling open standards).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Writing and Coding Isn't Always Enough
Last year we had to assume a role we didn't have before: litigants
Autumn Has Come
Autumn should be exciting in all sorts of ways; it'll also mark our anniversary
 
Gemini Links 01/09/2025: News Corp. WSJ and A Month With NixOS
Links for the day
Slopfarms Already Peaked, They Will Die When Slop Companies Run Out of Money to Borrow
slopfarms will lack an actual "engine"
“Sideloading” Never Killed Anybody
There are many online discussions this week about the misnomer "sideloading"
Slopwatch: Google News as FUD Vector Against Linux and Plagiarism Enhancer, Serial Slopper (SS) Uses LLMs to Googlebomb "Linux"
Slop destroys the Web not just by screwing with search engines and helping plagiarists. It's also responsible for de facto DDoS attacks...
Links 01/09/2025: "Attacks on Science" and China's "Soft Power" Grows
Links for the day
Links 01/09/2025: Fresh Backlash Against Slop and "Norway’s Electricity Crisis is About to Hit Britain"
Links for the day
Links 01/09/2025: Catching Up (Mostly via Deutsche Welle), "Windows TCO" Effect in UK
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/09/2025: Linguistic Barriers and "Web 1.0 Hosting"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 31, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, August 31, 2025
The UEFI 9/11 - Part IV - External Interference
They all seem to be playing a role in crushing Software Freedom and self-determination for users
Links 31/08/2025: Baggage Claim Scams, an Insurrectionist’s War on Culture, and a Sudden Robotics Hype
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/08/2025: Reviewing Netsurf and Slightly Less Historic Ada Design
Links for the day
IBM Has Taken Control of GNOME
Don't expect a successor to be found any time soon
Links 31/08/2025: Google Gmail Data Breach and LF Puff Pieces for Pay
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 30, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, August 30, 2025
This is What Google News Has Become
Moments ago
The Slopfarm WebProNews Has Turned Google News Into a Laughing Stock Full of Plagiarism by Slop
If Google News dies of neglect, that's one thing. It's starting to seem like active neglect by Google is a form of participation.
Do What is Moral, as What's Legal Isn't Always Moral
Do what's objectively moral, no matter the costs and the risks
Slopwatch: Google News Assisting Plagiarism and Anti-Linux FUD, Serial Slopper Rips Off Linux-Centric Journalists
This makes the Web a much worse place and lessens the incentive to do journalism
Links 30/08/2025: NVIDIA Fakes Results to Hide a Bubble Already in Implosion Phase, Data Breaches Galore, Important Win for Workers' Union in Canada
Links for the day
Representing and Speaking for Animals
If I ever choose to take this matter to tribunal with animals-centric NGOs on my side, it'll get some press coverage for sure
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
In Kazakhstan, Yandex Estimated to be 20 Times Bigger Than Microsoft
Bing is measured as down this month
Shutterstock Not Enough? The Register MS Uses Slop Images in Articles (Seemingly More and More Over Time)
Cost-saving trajectory amid office shutdown?
Gemini Links 30/08/2025: Games, PostmarketOS, and Slop
Links for the day
Links 30/08/2025: Imgur Uproar and Many Ukraine Updates (Mediazona Reports Over 200,000 Russians Died for Putin)
Links for the day
How Not to Build Software
code forges that need a Web browser perhaps fill some 'niche' demand
GAFAM and "MATA"
The use of dark humour there hopefully helps illuminate what a lot of "modern" technology became like and how it interacts with human civilisation (to what ends and whose gain)
Birds Are Not "Pests and Vermin", Privacy is Not a Crime, and GNU/Linux is Not 'Hacking Platform'
I could not help but think of Free software analogies
The Sites Should Be Very Fast Again
That issue is now resolved
Flying in 2025
worse than ever before
Activists, Including Technical Activists, Need Not Pursue Affirmation
Techrights doesn't play or participate in a "popularity contest"
The UEFI 9/11 - Part III - Chaos is Scheduled to Happen Second Thursday of September (No Matter What the Microsofters Tell You)
The clock is ticking
Downplaying the Impact of "UEFI 9/11" is a Losing Strategy
we won't publish much whilst on holiday
Government Sites Should Run Free Software
Not proprietary bloatware with buzzwords
LLM Slopfarms Take No Breaks
When people run sites by bots they don't need to worry about "breaks"
GNOME Having a Meltdown Again
Thanks and farewell to Steven Deobald
Gemini Links 30/08/2025: Low Tech and Hunchbin 1.0.6
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 29, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, August 29, 2025