Thought this would be of interest to some. Please don't ask me, I'm just
the messanger...
Trish ..
>Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 16:24:23 -0800
>From: "Carl B. Constantine" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: discuss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [discuss] RMS says "Boycott Amazon"
>
>This has been on Slashdot already, but I received the "official" email from
>the LDP list. I submit here for information and clarification purposes only.
>It's up to you what you want to do.
>
>From: Richard Stallman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 23:07:02 -0700 (MST)
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Boycott Amazon!
>
>Could you please forward this to the LDP? If some of the participants
>have written books that Amazon sells, it would be good to have some
>of them put in Author Comments saying don't buy from Amazon.
>
>
> Please do not buy from Amazon
>
>Amazon has obtained a US patent (5,960,411) on an important and
>obvious idea for E-commerce: the idea that your command in a web
>browser to buy a certain item can carry along information about your
>identity. (This works by sending back a "cookie", a kind of ID code
>that your browser received previously from the same server.) Amazon
>has sued to block the use of this simple idea, showing that they truly
>intend to monopolize it. This is an attack against the World Wide Web
>and against E-commerce in general.
>
>The idea in question is that a company can give you something which
>you can subsequently show them to identify yourself for credit. This
>is nothing new: a physical credit card does the same job, after all.
>But the US Patent Office issues patents on obvious and well-known
>ideas every day. Sometimes the result is a disaster.
>
>Today Amazon is suing one large company. If this were just a dispute
>between two companies, it would not be an important public issue. But
>the patent gives Amazon the power over anyone who runs a web site in
>the US (and any other countries that give them similar patents)--power
>to control all use of this technique. Although only one company is
>being sued today, the issue affects the whole Internet.
>
>Amazon is not alone at fault in what is happening. The US Patent
>Office is to blame for having very low standards, and US courts are to
>blame for endorsing them. And US patent law is to blame for
>authorizing patents on computational techniques and patterns of
>communication--a policy that is harmful in general. (See
>lpf.ai.mit.edu for more information about this issue.)
>
>Foolish government policies gave Amazon the opportunity--but an
>opportunity is not an excuse. Amazon made the choice to obtain this
>patent, and the choice to use it in court for aggression. The
>ultimate moral responsibility for Amazon's actions lies with Amazon's
>executives.
>
>We can hope that the court will find this patent is legally invalid,
>Whether they do so will depend on detailed facts and obscure
>technicalities. The patent uses piles of semirelevent detail to make
>this "invention" look like something subtle.
>
>But we do not have to wait passively for the court to decide the
>freedom of E-commerce. There is something we can do right now: we can
>refuse to do business with Amazon. Please do not buy anything from
>Amazon until they promise to stop using this patent to threaten or
>restrict other web sites.
>
>
>If you are the author of a book sold by Amazon, you can provide
>powerful help to this campaign by putting this text into the "author
>comment" about your book, on Amazon's web site. Please send mail to
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] when you do this, and please tell us what happens
>afterward.
>
>
> Richard Stallman
> President, Free Software Foundation
> MacArthur Fellow
>
>
>--
>________________________________________________________________________
> __ _ Carl B. Constantine
> / / (_)__ __ ____ __ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> / /__/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / (2.2.12) http://www.pobox.com/~macman
> /____/_/_//_/\_ _/ /_/\_\ Stormix 0.99b4
> PGP key available on request
> VLUG - Victoria Linux Users Group ICQ: 26351441
>________________________________________________________________________
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