IPR Policy Review

Members of the Board:

While I understand the needfulness of this step, and I have numerous 
questions as to the specific wording in places which leaves some 
ambiguity, I suspect that this is inevitable, as will be the 
subsequent fallout.

This will indirectly grant approval for the similar, but far less 
constrained policy that was floated in the W3C last year and resulted 
in an uproar that ended with the RAND policy being withdrawn.

Just for the record, I do disagree with this policy because it opens 
the door a crack, however slightly we may think we are allowing, to 
the whole panoply of nefarious practices we have seen over the last 
several hundred years in the course of the industrial revolution and 
development of the current economic system with all its benefits and 
all its warts and inhumanity.

However, that is the world we live in, and it is often the case that 
one must accept things one dislikes and hope that the longer term 
consequences prove either less stifling than anticipated in this 
case, or else that the full consequences become apparent and cause 
the kinds of problems I expect sooner rather than later. As in my 
former incarnation within the field of advertising, the only thing 
that good advertising does for a bad product is to get it killed 
quicker. In this case, the only thing a well-intentioned attempt at 
compromise can do is educate us sooner. I'd like to be pleasantly 
surprised, but I expect that this is going to backfire furiously and 
the blowback on the large corporations and their ipr lawyers will be 
difficult to accept for them, but easier than losing legions of 
developers and the markets they service.

We'll see what happens.

Regards,
Rex Brooks
-- 
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
Email: 
Tel: 510-849-2309
Fax: By Request