Doing Our Best to Cover Software Patents When the Mainstream Media Does Not
Even the FSF has its limits
About 6 weeks from now the FSF celebrates its fortieth birthday (or anniversary) and we were advised by our readers to try to cover software patents, knowing that the FSF's "End Software Patents" initiative has been more stagnant in recent years, more/most likely due to a lack of adequate resources (which is fair enough, no discourtesy intended here).
My activism against software patents predates this site as I wrote about it in USENET and in my personal site, seeing how much damage was caused due to such patents. Nowadays it's difficult to find any media coverage at all about this issue. The media does not "assign" anyone to cover it. About a decade ago the media already stopped "assigning" staff to write about patent trolls. Many people assumed the problem was going away, even if it wasn't. With 35 U.S.C. § 101 and Alice at SCOTUS there was a false sense of calm, no matter if the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) carried on granting many software patents, those patents were leveraged by trolls (no products, only lawsuits), and the ITC helped implement embargoes as a form of blackmail against the accused (without a proper trial or due process, only preliminary assessments).
Last week we saw many media reports about Apple's own ordeals with patents, which had led to the removal of features from its gadgets. That only made it to the news because it was Apple; there was almost no discussion about (or analysis entertaining) patent aspects. We do our best to add such stories to our Daily Links, but sadly there aren't such stories these days. It's not covered so often... not anymore. █