Fergus Cassidy

Patent peeved

THERE is one great beneficiary of these technological times and that's the metaphor.

Then again, metaphors have always been good to technology: radio was sound without wires; television was radio with pictures and cars were judged on the strength of their horses. Pictures were once still and then they were moving.

It's a time-honoured and useful way of trying to explain something new by reference to the past, but what about when something is not just brand new but also has no past, no precedent? Unique.

When a technology is new and unprecedented the metaphoric attempts to explain it usually land way short of the mark. To the Irish government, for example, electronic voting technology is equated with using a bank ATM, opening an electronic door or turning on a light switch.

Years ago, I remember coming across a reasonable explanation of email. Take a small book, rip out the pages and post each one separately. The numbers on each page will allow the recipient to put the book back together. Hey presto!

As regards privacy, there were cautionary reminders that an email was more like a postcard than a sealed letter.

So the postal system was an obvious way of describing what happens with email. At one stage, there was even talk of charging for 'email stamps' as a way of combating spam. But the postal system just doesn't bring home the bacon in fully understanding a new technology like email.

The big difference is at the user end. The post office will deliver the mail directly to your address, but email means going and getting it yourself.

When I send an email to you, it sits patiently on a server waiting to be collected or downloaded. That server could be beside you in your room or it could be on the other side of the world. It makes no difference. This can happen in seconds if the traffic is light and the cost is almost negligible.

Email is still one of the most popular computer applications by a mile. That popularity has not gone unnoticed by the spammers.

For the individual, spam can induce emotions ranging from apathy to anger. But for the big players it can be very expensive to deal with. If one person is using a small scoop to put spam in the bin, the corporations, large companies and internet service providers (ISP) are using bulldozers and landfill. Governments believe it stinks as well.

While there has been endless talk of 'tackling spam', there may be something going on right now that could lead to somewhere. And not a goverment in sight.

Last week Microsoft announced that it is going to submit its anti-spam technology called Caller ID for Email to the main internet standards body, the IETF. A few days before that announcement, Yahoo! did exactly the same. Its technology is called DomainKeys. AOL is testing another called Sender Policy Framework and this has also been submitted for standards approval.

Microsoft! Standards approval! Excuse me while I pull my jaw back up, but it's next or near impossible to get a standard approved if its dripping with patents. For both the IETF and the World Wide Web Consortium, royalty-free patenting, especially with regard to email, is a given.

Both Microsoft and Yahoo! are making their ideas royalty-free, which means there's a good chance that a workable standard (not necessarily any of those I mentioned) will be with us before the end of the year.

If that happens, the technical community, in all its disparity, will have achieved something politicians seem immune to: consensus.

Last week, the European Commission welcomed a decision to allow software patenting in the EU. In the process overturning objections ranging from small and medium businesses to those working with open source or free software. The latter section of the technical community was completely ignored.

What is it with politicians and technology? When looking for workable solutions, they just drop the workable part and bask in the solutions. By the time their 'solutions' have failed, nobody remembers and the politicians have left the building.

Software patents are by no means the sole measure of innovation or progress. In the age of interconnected technologies, they can be downright harmful.

Precisely how harmful is the subject of a talk tomorrow night in Trinity College, Dublin by Richard Stallman. Stallman developed the GNU operating system and founded the Free Software Movement in the mid-1980s. He is a legend in the internet and technical communities and is a very lively and entertaining speaker.

The talk is being organised by the Irish Free Software Organisation in association with Trinity's Netsoc.