A recent article that I read somewhere recently was discussing technologists and how they are not represented very well in parliament. It made me thing a bit about the subject area and I have to say that I do wonder whether the technologists are overlooked a little when some acts are passed through the house of commons.
The reason that this particular subject came up was due to the identity cards and software patent acts that the current government have been trying to pass as legislation. Fortunately for some of us the house of lords threw out the software patents act, which I think was a huge blessing. Why would we want legislation to stop us doing our job? Most of us don't completely copy program code line for line, and it would definitely be wrong to patent code snippets. Such things are used by programmers all the time, and there are only so many ways to write a piece of code. Apart from which who would want to spend loads of time writing up software patent applications rather than getting on with the job that they should be doing, creating software. It's not like drawing a picture where there are billions of ways of showing and creating the same thing without it being identical. Software (un-) fortunately is different.
Some people who know me would be very surprised to hear me talking like this about software protection methods. As a general rule I tend to like things that help the small business protect their property and guard against larger businesses from stealing it, but in the case of software patents I see it as a way that big businesses with lots of money can cut small businesses out of the market and make things very difficult for other developers, not necessarily even in the same product market. So you see, I really do think that this is a blessing in disguise. From the feedback that I have heard about software patents in America, they aren't really worth the paper that they are written on. Any big business with enough money can get round the patent and use the ideas. So what is there to protect your software that we don't already have?
We have the copyright of the pseudo code… now that is worth knowing about! Also we can obfuscate the code… but this doesn't necessarily do the whole job, it just stops others reverse engineering the code. There is nothing stopping someone else from stealing your idea and creating their own version of your own software. On that note, maybe someone should make a secure windows…. (oh that would be Linux? Or maybe java desktop… or something else new and on the horizon that I don't even know about!)
Don't even get me started with the government and their ID card scheme… It is already written all over it that it is too expensive, very complicated and prone to failure. So why are they still so insistent that this should go through. Is it so that they have more data on the people that are in their country? Personally I don’t think it would make any difference on illegal immigrants and terrorism. It just has no way to impact on people other than that they have to carry around yet another form of identification with them. The stage after that would be implanted GPS trackers…. Rather than mobile phones… The irony of it all… People just don't seem to realise how easy they are to trace. Take your average person, through their every day credit card spend you can work out their general movement patterns. This can then be mapped over a period of time and then they can be tracked for unusual movement and spending. A similar idea can be used with mobile phones and where people are phoning to and from. The government already have access to all this data along with salary details, tax information and passport movements. So then include retina scans and biometrics on top of this. I'm just waiting for the day that advertising companies can do facial recognition and personalise adverts to an individuals or groups of peoples interests. It wouldn't just be the advertisers that would be interested in it either…
I have a feeling that I have deviated from the subject area a bit but hey… You know how these things go.
posted @ Wednesday, July 13, 2005 6:04 AM