Reflections on DigiCiv

It's been one crazy semester, but that's college for you. Lucky for me, it was my last full semester! Ok, I do have one class to take this spring, and I may end up doing grad school part-time while I work at Apple (Stanford, please let me in?), but the end of balancing a hectic load of five or more classes, work, and home life is at an end. Whew! So time to review how I have met the five learning outcomes for Digital Civilization this semester:

History

The 19th Century, Participation, and Me
Old News
Beethoven vs. Lil Wayne
Revolutions
Notes on Marx
More Marx: The Communist Manifesto

Picking my top blog posts for each section was difficult considering this is my 30th blog post for this class and I really strived to take a strong stance with each post. In the end, these are the best posts that highlight my historical learnings from this class. I started out strong with an introductory blog post discussing the 19th century and the digital concept of participation. Ariel actually gave a shout-out to my post as a great example of an introductory blog post. A class discussion on Copernicus led me to linking his "discovery" to the Book of Mormon. I compared Beethoven and Lil Wayne after a class discussion on music and how it has changed. I talked about past revolutions and modern revolutions. But my absolute favorite was my study on Marx. I really tried to dive in on Karl Marx and Marxism, and I was fascinated with what I found. There are a lot of things that have a hint of goodness and truth, and a lot of hypocritical things in Marx's life. I could have talked about Marx for days, but I had to try to sum up my most important learnings in two posts.

I had more posts with historical links, but these where the highlights. Connecting history and modern issues is extremely important, for it is crucial that we learn from our past instead of making the same mistakes over and over again, and this class has definitely helped me do that. In fact, pulling historical examples and patterns into discussions on modern topics has become second nature, like comparing the patent stockpiling to the Cold War or the inability of the US government to reform the patent system anytime soon just like it's unable to pay off its national debt anytime soon. Bringing in historical examples gives so much more depth and strength to arguments.

Core Concepts

Steve Jobs
Control: A Judge's Order
Open Crowd Sourcing Fail.
Presentations Done Right.
Continuing to Innovate.
Bringing it all together.
Fifth Amendment for Encrypted Hard Drives

I definitely had fun with the core concepts. As a computer science major and an avid fan of technology, this was my territory. One of my favorites was the recap I gave of the Steve Jobs biography. I appreciated its honesty and open criticism of Steve, as well as the recognition of the way he got things done and revolutionized seven different markets in his lifetime.

I also loved discussing the issues of encrypted hard drives and the Fifth Amendment that were making the news. In fact, the Control group basically presented on my blog posts, and I'm not even in the Control group!

My most popular post in terms of views was my Presentations Done Right post. This was written 10 days after Dr. Burton's post on Making Killer Presentations. I felt the general feeling of the class was that slide-based presentations were of the devil, and though slide-based presentations can be so bad they actually might be of the devil (just kidding), there is actually a right way to use slides to support your argument. I drew upon my time at Apple where I learned a lot about giving presentations, giving one presentation to Apple's CIO and another in Apple's Town Hall where Steve Jobs had presented on numerous occasions. I know I struggled a bit during class rehearsals before the final event, but this was mostly due to a lack of time spent preparing and practicing with my group as other classes with more relevancy to my future as a computer scientist and deadlines closer at hand took precedence. The biggest indication I have that I wasn't just blowing steam was the final event where I really feel Gabe and I knocked our presentation out of the park. We showed passion, told a story, made bold claims and gave a call to action! It was a fantastic event, and our hard work and practice paid off.

Digital Literacy

Consume. I always strived to remain up to speed with current events, especially those relating to our digital concepts and my eBook chapter on Intellectual Property. I even got a shout-out by Hwanhi Chung as "a great, consistent source for the latest news" which was awesome! I would share links to important stories via Google+, and wrote about the ones I was most passionate about like encrypted hard drives and the fifth amendment, and Andy Baio and Yahoo weaponizing his work. Of course, I consumed way more than I shared, filtering out the most relevant things to our class that I was the most passionate about.

Create. This is my 30th blog post on this blog. If I copy and pasted my posts into a normal, single-spaced, size 12 font document, I estimate my posts would come out to something like 60 pages of content. I'm pretty proud, because that's quite a lot to write for one class in one semester. I also shared several links on Google+, and participated in various discussions with class members via Google+.

I also wrote a lot of content related to our eBook chapter, forming the foundation of the chapter and was probably the biggest single contributor to our chapter on Intellectual Property in terms of the amount of content written as well as remained in use in our chapter. I was responsible for synthesizing our presentation into a final form I could feel proud speaking in front of, and I got to use my favorite presentation program Keynote to do the trick.

Connect. I was really excited about my outcomes for this section. Before this class, I was more of a silent digital citizen, always consuming but not actively participating or connecting with others. But this class taught us to dream big and reach out to the thought leaders in our respective areas of study. I decided to take the challenge to heart. After reading Andy Baio's article on Yahoo weaponizing his work, I was really impressed with his writing and decided to reach out to him. Andy writes a weekly column for Wired, which is kind of a big deal, so I wasn't sure if he'd give me the time of day. Still, I tracked down his email and sent him a message describing our class, our final event, and our chapter of the eBook. I even sent him a link to our Google Doc with our final draft we were working on. One day in class, I opened up the document to see a note from Andy! He had read at least part of our chapter, and caught and embarrassing factual error. He left a comment to help set us straight, and he even corrected a typo we had.  I would have loved to have more feedback from him, such as his feelings on our position statements, but this guy writes for Wired! I'll take what I can get!

Another awesome experience I had was on Google+. I decided to track down some other experts who write about Intellectual Property when I came across Gina Smith. She is a tech writer who writes about a lot of things in the tech world, with a recent story on tech vendors funding patent trolls. I read her story, shared it on Google+, and then tried to reach out to her to invite her to our event. Unfortunately, she didn't respond, but she did add me to one of her circles! I just hope it wasn't the "Crazy College Kids - Ignore" circle.

Other than my two small incidents with some pretty big tech writers, I did my best to make my positions public on Google+, and to talk about what I was writing about with my peers. A few of my peers outside of this class commented on my posts, and one was even the inspiration behind my whole position on the patent system! I tried to do all I could to connect my writings to real people who cared, and the small successes I saw were an inspiration to keep reaching out.

Self-Directed Learning

Burned out yet? That's what you get for giving us five sections to report on, and challenging us to strive for rewarding experiences we get excited about and blabber on about in our last post! I honestly strived to take my learning where I was most interested. I didn't wait around for people to tell me what to study or write about; I found the things that interested me, the things that connected in my mind, and I shared them. I think my reaching out to tech writers Andy Baio and Gina Smith is a great example. I hunted these people down, I found out how to contact them, and I reached out to them the best way I knew how. I really made the most of my semester in Digital Civilization, and I loved it.

Collaboration

My experience as a group leader for the Intellectual Property group was honestly a bit challenging. I was so busy with other classes and work, and so were the rest of the members of my group. Two of them had scheduling conflicts that made it impossible to be there for our final event. Coordinating everybody's writing into a single cohesive chapter with a common theme was a real challenge, but I think we did it. We all did some research and writing about stuff that didn't make it into our chapter, but in the end it was for the better. My other group projects were a success as well: my 19th century group had a lot of fun using the idea of voting as a theme for our group, and I got to suggest the voting activity in the beginning that led to our common theme. Our Participation group was also fun, as we discussed the various aspects of crowd sourcing, wise crowds, and crowd decision making. Collaborating in so many different groups on substantial projects was challenging, but it was fun, especially as we leveraged digital tools to get the job done.

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read)

It's been a blast. I learned a ton, I produced a ton, my IP group hit it out of the park at our final event, I connected in some small way to tech writers Andy Baio and Gina Smith, and I finally came out of my shell. Look out digital world, here I come!

Event Recap

Well, our Digital Citizens Unite event was fantastic! I really enjoyed presenting on Intellectual Property with Gabriel Meyr, and after practicing and reviewing our presentation extensively, I feel we nailed it! We made our position clear, we declared our challenge to the world, and we made our voices heard!

Prior to the event, I took seriously the challenge to personally invite at least 10 interested persons. Since I am a computer science major and I was presenting specifically on the patent system, it was fitting that I should invite people interested in the technology world. I invited:

1. Five fellow CS majors: Tobias Kin Hou Lei, Dallin Christensen, Jonathan Willis, Matt Berteaux, and Nathan Cerny.
2. A co-worker at Apple who will probably be my supervisor when I start there, Reed Olsen.
3. Another former Apple coworker who is studying at Cornell right now, Javier Campanini.
4. A former computer science professor: Dr. Charles Knutson, who has been called on as an expert witness in several cases.
5. Gina Smith, a tech writer I discovered on Google Plus and wrote a great article on patent trolls for Computer World.
6. Andy Baio, who writes the column "Codeword" for Wired, who wrote a great article called "How Yahoo Weaponized My Work."
7. A former coworker who is a software engineer at Qualtrics, Zack Young.
8. Of course, my wife, Madison Lottermoser.
9. I also posted a general invitation to Google Plus and Twitter about the event, and gave some flyers to some random people on BYU :)

At the time of this writing, the only people I know of for sure who were able to catch the event via the webcast was Javier, who took a screenshot and posted it on his Facebook wall, and my wife, who remembered to tune in to the question and answer period. I was certainly hoping to reach more of my friends, and was especially hoping Gina and Andy would be able to catch the event, but I haven't heard back from any of them yet except Reed, who was busy putting out fires related to his duties at Apple that night and couldn't catch the event. I think part of the problem was that it was the last day of classes, which meant all of my Computer Science friends were too busy to be able to come to the event as they rushed to finish and turn in final projects.

In all of my invitations, I included a description of our class, our goals, the event description, a link to the course web site, and a summary of what I would be presenting on. I did all I could to get people involved, but in the end, it was just a very busy day for a lot of people. Maybe next time :)

Continuos Innovation: Revised

As part of an upcoming e-book for my Digital Civilization Class, I have been revising and synthesizing some of the ideas I've posted about on this blog. The meat of my contribution to the chapter on Intellectual Property and Creative Commons has to do with the idea of continuous innovation. The idea is that companies today should worry less about patents and patent infringement by copycats, and more about continuous innovation: bringing new ideas to the table and leaving their copycats in the dust. I first got this idea from Jared Smith, my manager while I worked as a software engineer at Qualtrics, Inc. The idea stuck with me, and I think its a great solution to going around the broken patent system instead of waiting for it to fix itself. Here's my revised section on the matter:

Patent Law Reform: Continuous Innovation

In the end, there are just too many problems with the patent system. So many people want information to be liberated, and to be done with the patent system altogether. That's not necessarily a good idea. We need something to protect the small guys from the big guys. If I go start a company selling some cool new product or invention, what's to stop some large company from taking my idea and stomping all over me, selling my product for less than I can and running me out of business? And let's say someday I did become big. Does that mean I lose all protection from any further innovations I create? As in other large companies are free to take my product and make it an essentially worthless product, selling it for cost just so I don't get the profits? Or maybe some little guy has some contacts in China that can make essentially the same product (though a crappier version), but sell it for a quarter my price. What protections should I be afforded then?

Some people might say that if other companies can draw customers away from you with a twin product, that's just how the market works. Others want protection and rights to their own inventions. Even if other companies violate patents, enforcing patents is messy. Simply viewing the countless legal battles over patents is a clear indication that the system is broken. Some form of patent law and protection is important, but waiting for patent reformation is like waiting for the US to pay off its national debt. It’s not going to happen anytime soon.

This is why the citizens of the digital world must learn to go around the mountain that is the broken patent system. This takes two forms. First, consumers need to let the giant media and tech companies know how they feel about their pointless patent disputes. Patent trolls should be digitally hazed until they leave others alone and go get a real job. Consumers should send a clear message to other companies like Apple and Samsung that their patent battles are not ok. They need to lay aside their differences and return to focusing all their efforts on innovating and bringing great new products to the market.

This brings up the second form of going around the mountain. Companies need to stop worrying about their competitors and others violating their precious patents. Instead, they should rely on the idea of continuous innovation. I learned this best while I was working as a software engineering intern at Qualtrics. They have several copycat competitors, but instead of whining about it and calling foul, they simply continue to innovate, bring more new and awesome features to the table, and always striving to innovate ahead of the competition. I think their client page is a testament to the great job they're doing.

So that's the best answer. We still need to design the system to protect against big company bullies, but if companies relied on continuous innovation to justify their existence, and left their copycats in the dust, it would be a great start. Consumers can encourage this by acting accordingly in the market, rewarding the innovators and shunning the copycats. As companies cater to the consumer, ditch their patent battles and start competing with each other, the consumer will ultimately win. Competition in the same market-space is always great for the consumer because it drives prices down and brings innovation out. And that's how companies in America and America itself will continue to succeed: by bringing the best ideas to the table and letting the market respond.

IP&CC: An Annotated Biliography

In my research about intellectual property, I have mostly focused on the patent system and its problems. This is the are of intellectual property most relevant to me and I am a software engineer, finishing up my degree in computer science at Brigham Young University. My research has mostly drawn on my experience as a software engineer working at Qualtrics, where my manager Jared Smith (formerly head of product over Google Asia) inspired me with the idea of continuous innovation. I also took a class on doing venture startups from Josh Coates, the founder and former CEO of Mozy and current CEO of Instructure where I also currently work. This is where I gained most of my foundational knowledge about the different types of intellectual property. Lastly, must of my research has been done online, searching for great books relevant to my study and looking for the thought leaders on patent reform.

My group is making the claim that laws and systems related to intellectual property are broken in our increasingly digital world, specifically the patent and copyright systems. I have focused on patents, and as such, my annotated bibliography concerns further reading and thought leaders related to the broken patent system and solutions to going around it.

Further Reading

Jaffe, Adam B. and Josh Lerner. (Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It. Princeton, New Jersey, 2004). An important look at how the US patent system is stifling innovation rather than fostering it as it was originally designed to do. Also puts forth a three part solution to fixing the patent system: create incentives to motivate parties who have information about the novelty of a patent; provide multiple levels of patent review; and replace juries with judges and special masters to preside over certain aspects of infringement cases. [I found this as I was looking for others proposing patent reform by going around the patent system and stumbled across this post: Patent Reform without Congress].

Mulligan, Christina and Timothy B. Lee. (Scaling the Patent System, NYU Annual Survey of American Law, Forthcoming, 6 March, 2012). Proposes a simple but novel answer to the question about why firms in some industries ignore patents when developing new products. The answer is that firms are unable to discover all the patents their activities might infringe as the cost of finding all such relevant patents is prohibitively high. Attacks core premises of patent law, and provides suggestions to reforming the patent system to alleviate the problems created by non-indexable patents. [I found this searching for papers about the problems with the patent system].

NPR. (When Patents Attack, 22 July, 2011). A very interesting story about companies (i.e. patent trolls) acquiring and using patents to extort money from other companies, much like mafia shake-downs. Notes the general opinion of most software engineers and their disapproval of the patent system and patents in general. [I found this article mentioned in several articles critiquing the patent system and its existing problems].

Thought Leaders

Paul Graham (The Patent Pledge, August 2011). Paul Graham is a co-founder of the Y-Combinator seed capital firm, one of the most successful such firms helping many startups in their early days. His article The Patent Pledge puts forth the idea of creating a social norm where large companies agree not to go after small companies for patent infringement, and instead letting them gain traction and either licensing the patents or reforming as they get larger to not infringe. He is important as an influential thinker in the technology startup world and his idea of patent reform through social pressure vs. waiting on government reform. [I found a link to Paul's article through an article on patent reform, though Paul Graham and Y-Combinator are well-known in the technology world].

Baio, Andy (A Patent Lie: How Yahoo Weaponized My Work, Wired.com, 13 March , 2012). Andy Baio writes an opinion article each week for Wired, often about things related to intellectual property. Wired is well-regarded in the tech world. His article about how Yahoo used one of his patents in an attack against Facebook, and his point that patents are unnecessary in the software world as software code is covered by copyright law anyway, aligns well with our position on patent reform. [I found this article via a LinkedIn mailing on top headlines on the Internet the week the article was published].

Lawrence Lessig (Lessig 2.0). Lawrence Lessig is an academic an political activist. He has spoken out for copyright reform, legislative reform, free culture and the threat of patents to free/open source software and innovation, and net neutrality. [Found at the suggestion of Dr. Gideon Burton].

And I thought patents used to be cool...

Recently I found an article on Wired called A Patent Lie: How Yahoo Weaponized My Work. The article was written by Andy Baio, a software engineer turned tech writer and entrepreneur who writes a weekly column for Wired and did things like help start Kickstarter. 

His article is all about how Yahoo acquired his company and convinced him and his coworkers to disclose anything patentable to Yahoo so Yahoo could file for the patents. Andy, weary of what Yahoo intended to do with said patents, hesitated, but Yahoo insisted they only wanted the patents for protection against other companies and patent trolls. They just need to build their stockpile of nukes not to ever use them, but to convince the other guy not to set off his. Andy and his group finally complied, and years later Yahoo was filing a patent claim against Facebook, most likely using one of the patents Andy helped Yahoo gain. 

I used to think patents and patent-holders were awesome. To be recognized as the inventor of something is really cool. Too bad the patents have been turned into weapons and totally abused. Andy thought he was just helping Yahoo protect itself, but years passed and leadership changed several times. Now his work is being used in ways he never intended and never would have agreed to. All software engineers and other people out there take note: when considering whether or not to help your company obtain patents for your inventions, be weary. They may claim it's only for protection and not for evil, but things change. 

Of course, they can always file the patent for you anyway, listing you as a non-compliant inventor...

Intellectual Property: Summary of Types

People often get each of the different types confused. A patent lawyer is not the same thing as a copyright lawyer, just like a patent and a copyright are two different things. Here is a quick summary of each form of intellectual property:

Patents can be granted for new, useful, and non-obvious inventions for which the inventor applies for in a formal patent application, and grants them certain protective rights. Inventions qualifying for patents in the US fall into three categories: utility, design, or plant.

In contrast, copyrights are automatically granted to the creator of an original work at the time of creation, and apply to things like books, movies, music, and art.

Trademarks refer to a mark used to promote a brand or product, like a word, symbol, phrase, or name. They can be unregistered or registered, with registration indefinitely renewable.

The last form of intellectual property is a trade secret. It’s a company’s secret sauce they haven’t disclosed to the public, like Google’s search engine algorithms. They last indefinitely, but there’s no protection. If someone discovers it or invents it separately, it’s fair game.

Each of the forms of intellectual property is different, has different requirements to qualify as that type of intellectual property, and different protections afforded to owner. In the following sections, we will examine in depth each form and the problems that have risen with each in the digital era.

Intellectual Property: Copyright, Trademarks, and Trade Secrets.

Copyright

A copyright is the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the matter and form of something (as a literary, musical, or artistic work). The power to administer copyrights is given to Congress in what is known as the “Copyright Clause” in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

How do you obtain a copyright? Unlike a US patent, a copyright is created automagically upon creation of the “Original Work of Authorship.” Optionally, one can file with the US Copyright office, but that’s not strictly necessary. A copyright applies to:

1. Any writing (including code)
2. Drawings
3. Paintings
4. Computer generated image, etc
5. Sculptures
6. Architectural designs / drawings
7. Music
8. Videos
9. Audio
10. Video games
11. Film
12. And more!

Things that can’t be copyrighted that sometimes people think can be:

1. A process or method
2. An idea
3. A machine
4. A title of phrase

A copyrighted item must take substantive and nontrivial mental activity, be a fixed creation of the mind, nonfunctional, and original. A copyright expires like a patent does, though lasts much longer, currently expiring when whichever of the following comes first:

1. 70 years after the death of authors(s)
2. 95 years after publication
3. 120 years after creation of anonymous works or works made for hire.

Copyright law is rather strict, so some choose to place their items under the public domain, meaning anyone can use them. Others have come up with the idea of copyleft, a less restrictive form of copyright. There is a spectrum of copyleft implementation, most notably in the software world, from less restrictive to more restrictive. The BSD or Berkeley Software Distribution License is restrictive only in the sense that you must cite the author of the code. Other than that, it can be used however you’d like, and is on the less restrictive end of the spectrum. LGPL is a little more restrictive in that the originally source code under LGPL license must remain open source, but it can be linked to and use non-LGPL (most likely closed-source) code. GPL is the most restrictive. It requires its source code to always remain open, any modifications to the code must be made open, and cannot be linked to non-GPL software. Many companies that make their own programs they don’t want to make GPL and open to everyone have to take care not to use GPL code.

Trademark

A Trademark is also nown as a product identifier. Its a device (as a word) pointing distinctly to the origin or ownership of merchandise to which it is applied and legally reserved to the exclusive use of the owner as a maker or seller. A trademark is automatic when you user it in commerce for a while. Optionally, it can be registered with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The little ™ or SM marks on packages don’t really mean anything as those are automatic and anyone can use them on product labels, etc. The ® actually does mean something: the trademark is actually registered with the USPTO. Trademark registration lasts 10 years, and can be renewed indefinitely.

Trade secrets

A trade secret has no expiration. It’s simply something a company has chosen to keep secret instead of applying for the appropriate intellectual property protection. There’s no expiration to a trade secret, but is someone discovers your trade secret or independently comes up with it, the company that originally had the trade secret has no protection.