Creative stuff, and more fun (and easier to understand) than the prose version.

When will we start to see YouTube videos of statutes?

Noam says:

So, in technology, Moore’s Law is alive and well. But technology does not operate in a vacuum. No business or government institution can change at 50 per cent a year. While stability and tradition are important, if a fundamental technology progresses far beyond society’s ability to absorb its impacts, a growing disconnection occurs. When, in the 19th century, technology proceeded at a rapid pace while social institutions did not, the results were upheavals and revolutions. Today, again, the key elements of the information economy are progressing at a scorching rate, while private and public institutions are lagging behind.

But, here's the money quote that lawyers those in the tech world should meditate on:

In businesses, competitive pressures lead to a speed-up of internal processes or companies fail. But for government the same is not true, even with globalisation. Courts can take years to resolve disputes. Regulators and legislators require years to establish rules. There is an entire industry out there, the main product of which is delay.

Some of the problems of these decision processes are inherent and based on the need to balance social objectives. But others could be remedied. In the US, the delay in courts could be alleviated by tripling the number of judges. Compared with the overall cost of government, judges are cheap. So are patent examiners. Streamlining administrative law, simplifying the appeals process or creating mandatory arbitration mechanisms should not be expensive. The economic benefits would be incalculable.

One needs focus not just on policy substance but also on its process – the small but constant frictions in the mechanism of government that grind down innovation and threaten to repeal Moore’s Law where physics could not.

Noam makes an interesting observation about patents and patent offices: "Patent offices every­where are falling behind their workload. It may soon take more than five years to get a patent in the US."

Are we already seeing the symptoms of the increasing pace of the pace of change that Kurzweill has called the coming Singularity?

In other patent news, on Slashdot, ScuttleMonkey points to an article on The Register, based on research from a company that provides proofreading and other services, that says:

Almost every US patent contains at least one mistake, according to new research. The vast majority are trivial errors, most of them the fault of the USPTO; but two per cent of the patents examined were found to contain serious mistakes that weakened the core claims.

Most of them the fault of the USPTO?

Technorati tags: singularity patents Moore's Law

I can't resist quoting:

The research note advises enterprises to "stop or delay all mission-critical BlackBerry deployments and investments in the platform until RIM's legal position is clarified," because "U.S. BlackBerry users would lose messaging services...and international users would lose message service while traveling in the U.S."

However, Gartner expects the two companies to reach a settlement within three weeks because an agreement would be "in both companies' interests."

There is a possibility that RIM could bypass the patent dispute by deploying a workaround, but Gartner said this path could be "highly problematic."

"RIM claims its workaround is legally sound, but its history in the courts does not inspire confidence. Moreover, end-user validation and implementation would take time, resulting in a temporary loss of service," the research note said.

Gartner advises enterprises "not to sign any agreements that could involve them in the RIM-NTP dispute" and "demand that RIM discloses its workaround plans."

If RIM deployments are not mission-critical, Gartner said, enterprises could take no action for the moment but rather "assess the potential impact of operation outages of unknown duration."

I believe that advice covers every possible side of this issue and hedges every bet.

In fairness, I read only the article and not the full research report.

Perhaps this is the best summary of the report:

"If you read it closely, we're telling people to sort of take a break here and wait until this case settles within two to three weeks," Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney told Reuters.

Of course, if you expect the case to settle, as everyone seems to believe these days, why report that the sky is falling?

If you know of anyone offering informed insights on the Microsoft/Apple/iPod story, and/or the proposed legislation, please comment and enlighten us.