Internet Patents, privacy rights and court cases

 

Today in class we discussed property and property rights. Copy right laws have been established to help protect people’s products and ideas. Protecting intellectual property is a challenging subject because it can be hard to prove that you thought of an idea first. Patents are different than copy right laws and are more used to protect inventions. Trademarks are more used for protecting logos, titles, and sayings. The NET act is a pretty recent law to help protect property rights on the internet. All of these laws have been established to help protect individuals and companies. In 2011 the US passed the ACTA which is a bill to help protect things like copy rights and patents on the internet. One of the most recent famous copy right, and patent disputes was back in 2004 when Facebook was first being deployed on the internet. There was a court battle over Facebook when it first came out at Harvard University. The court battle was over who should get credit (ownership) for the site. The fight had a lot to-do with intellectual property and who owned it. The court case ended up dividing the ownership of Facebook to several people and paying out several others for the use of their rights and ideas. In more recent times Yahoo has sued Facebook over patents rights regarding advertisements. Stated in an article I read “Yahoo sued Facebook over 10 patents that include methods and systems for advertising on the Web, opening the first major legal battle among big technology companies in social media.” You can find a link to this article at the bottom of the post. This court case help sets some guidelines for patent right infringement on the internet. The funny thing is that Yahoo and Facebook have been business partners for a while now and the fact that Yahoo is suing Facebook is a surprising move to some. While companies like Facebook and Google have thrived in recent years, Yahoo has not. Yahoo has over 3,000 patents while Facebook only has 160, according to the article. The ethics involved in deciding who owns what can be a cumbersome task. I think that is important to protect people’s property and intellectual property and court case like Yahoo vs. Facebook will help us figure out how these laws should be enforced. “"If what Yahoo is saying is literally true, then it seems like a lot of companies would be liable," said Shubha Ghosh, a professor who specializes in intellectual property at The University of Wisconsin Law School. But he added, much would depend on whether a judge defines the patents broadly or narrowly.” This was mentioned in the article, and brings up a good point. I think we have an ethical responsibility to better define these policies so there is so much digression of the judge. As professional we should have standard to follow in deciding things like this. Judges should have a set of common standards for judging things because one judge could have a narrow view will another could have a broader view in what a patent or copyright might include.

 
Links:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/12/us-yahoo-facebook-lawsuit-idUSBRE82B18M20120312
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/yahoo-and-facebook-said-to-settle-patent-lawsuits/

 

Emerging technologies

 



Emerging technologies is a huge subject in computer ethics. There are many ethical issues brought up by emerging technologies. Some examples of emerging technologies are: robotics, biomedical, and transportation just to name a few. The main problem with emerging technologies is that their full ethical impact on societies is not fully understood or even researched. Some ethical issues brought on by robotics, and nanobots are invasion of privacy, medical applications, and warfare. Nanobots are an interesting subfield of robotics on a molecular level. Applications of nanobots could be used for a variety of reasons such as mechanical fixes, medical surgeries, spying (espionage) and warfare. My question to the reader is using ethical backing should countries, companies and governments restrict the applications for emerging technologies such as nanobots. Should we only consider the medical applications why or why not? Emerging technologies in transportation also have some ethical implications. We now have the technologies to efficiently make vehicles that produce less carbon monoxide. With global warming being realized as a threat reducing carbon monoxide is an ethical issue every person on the planet is a part of. I think we have an ethical duty as primary care takers of this planet to implement these new transportation technologies more and maybe develop policies to reduce old transportation ways and promote new more efficient transportation, such as: biofuels, solar, and battery operated transportation devices. As new technologies emerge into societies the ethical problems that arise from them need to be addressed differently than technologies are now. These technologies could have many positive effects on society such as decrease in carbon monoxcide into the atmosphere which could lead to better quality of life in urban areas; clearing up issue related to air pollution and could help prevent disease associated with air pollution. If we adopt and make policies that reinforce new fuel sources could help prevent construction site such as the tar sands in Alberta, Canada which is the world’s largest construction site created to produce petroleum based product lick oil and gas. The pollution created from this site could be helped cleaned up on a molecular scale using nanobots that programed to filter toxic waste. There are also negative effects this technology could have nanobots could be used by governments to spy on its citizens and invade our privacy. Deciding what negative and positive effects these technologies have on society are important in deciding polices.  

 

Here is a couple related articles.

http://www.merkle.com/papers/FAZ000911.html

http://www.technologyreview.com/article/418535/tr10-solar-fuel/