CS73N Meeting 03 Notes: Protocols, Business, Intellectual Property

Started by Gio Wiederhold, 16 January 2000, updated  16,23 Jan 2002 16 Jan 2003..

Distributed, autonomous development of standard protocols.

For ARPAnet and continuing: Requests for comments (RFCs) to proposals, collected at SRI International. Implemented and adopted by the community, after discussion, when effective.

Example: SMTP (RFC 8xx): combined messy Telnet and FTP operations into a simple email protocol.

Alternate means of developing standards

·        Implement, show, convince others of usefulness and leverage if major company (now Microsoft, formerly IBM)

·        Committee of wise men, supported government mandates. Governments can set standards, but are rarely competent to do so. Politicians and marketers think it's simple, like electric plugs.

·        Commercial value of getting one's standard accepted. Standards are a major commercial competitive weapon.

·        Now we have a surfeit of standards (look at video storage), confusion, cost, dirty tricks.

·        Standards take long to develop, criticize, implement, get the bugs ou

·        Then they stick around for a long time, often too long.

Two-horse Roman chariot -> grooves in limestone street  --> all carts --> mines --> steam-propelled mine carts -> RRs -> BART.

 

The various protocols communication differ in terms of

  1. Security
  2. Suitability for business
  3. Cost reimbursement.

    4.  

    What is needed to have a business:

  4. Having goods or services -- Real stuff vs Actionable Information, fungible, copyable
  5. Getting the information about yoyr products to potential purchasers - advertising, demonstration, ...  Pay?  Consider focusing on the community that can (1) benefit from your product -- and that can (2) afford and is (3) willing to pay for it.  (examples: Fun Information (when did Stanford hospital move from San Francisco to Campus (bonus question - which department did not move), information to write a paper, information to run a better business (pig food mixes)
  6. Closing the sale -- how to make the contract -- more on that soon --
  7. Assuring delivery -- great deal of variation and cost - real goods versus information
  8. Getting paid
  9. After sales service
  10. Ability to return unwanted goods. (non-actionable information?)

An element is all of these considerations: trust, perhaps backed by guarantees

Types of Information

  1. Data -- Observation, perhaps edited for correctness
  2. Information -- processed data
  3. Actionable information -- helps you select, make actions among choices
  4. Knowledge -- input that controls processing, often human, sometimes encoded into programs or rules in a computer

 

 

Data -- + knowledge --> Selected data + knowledge --> information + ability to make descisions --> actions

Actions change the world

Knowledge gained by you is a byproduct of the experiences you undergo.

((why are you at school instead of performing actions?))

What information consumes is rather obvious, it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it. [Herbert Simon]

 

 

Types of Intellectual Property

Trade Secret: requires employee cooperation, difficulty in imitation

Patents: Originality, implemented idea, not obvious to people `versed in the state of the art'. Can be licensed.

Copyright: pertains to expression

            Fair Use

Sonnny Bono Digital Millenium Act

Also covered in Prof. Armando Fox's Digital Dilemmmas course CS99R Fall 2000, per [Jake Kirsch].

Who is hurt when trade secrets / patents/copyrights are violated?  How can damage be recovered?

What is appropriate when?

See work of Libraries , CS99I class notes.
See work of David Arulanantham , CS99I 1998

Their effectiveness differs in media, settings [ref World-wide Wireless magazine ~1910] (social, ubiquity, ...).

Who should get paid when copyrighted material is distributed: the source or/and: the broadcast service... ? [Napster,  Gnutella]. More discussion needed.

Limiting Broadcast Access

Protecting minors versus First-amendment rights.

See COPA (Child Online Protection Act ) Commission material.

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