Since Mueller isn't a lawyer, and his only other credentials are being a paid lobbyist, yeah it matters. Sure a lobbyist might be correct, but why would you trust them for information to begin with?
And looking at his post with a sceptical mind would have you learn his only third party source is a magazine whose tag-line is "Maximising IP value for business".
Even if correct his post is blatant propaganda. In fact, I'd go so far as to question why he chose today to register an account on hacker news. This isn't the first patent related news we've seen.
Your personal attacks really don't have any relevance to the legal questions at hand. Trying to muddy the discussion with irrelevant speculation about people's motives is totally unnecessary when the legislation is there for any of us to read.
> Trying to muddy the discussion with irrelevant speculation about people's motives is totally unnecessary
In an ideal world, where we all had an infinite amount of time to research any and all items of controversy in their entirity, I would agree with you.
In this hyper-specialized world, where we basically look to others to do the research and summarize for us, motives are extremely relevant and it is the height of naivety to pretend otherwise.
Everyone has motives and biases but it's not fair to attack someone in this forum just because you happen to know their motives and biases. I don't see your contact info or bio listed in your profile -- how are we to trust your motives without knowing more about you?
We should discuss ideas on their merits rather than trying to psychoanalyze or dig up dirt on the commenter.
No-one has time to become an expert on absolutely everything. To some extent, we have to choose who to listen to, and then trust that they are speaking true. Anything else is completely unmanageable. So your argument, while logically correct, is not applicable. In the real world, we don't take the sex offender's word that our child is safe on its pure merits.
When someone with a long and vivid history of acting against the interests of the community speaks, it is on them to overcome the prejudice against them, not on us.
I don't get it. Let's stipulate that he is an Oracle puppet. Why would that incentivize him to lie about what the bill actually covers? Regardless of his incentives, is he wrong that not all software patents would be prevented under this bill?
Disclosure: I'm a Microsoft employee, so I probably have some devious motives, too.
It is his job to create a perception that his side is winning. Because perception drives behavior and affects reality. Therefore every event is spun to make it look as good as possible for the pro-patent side so that actual innovators will get demoralized about resisting that tide.
No, I do not know why someone would consider it worth their while to pay for this. But someone apparently does, as is evidenced by his series of extremely confident, widely covered, and provably inaccurate articles on how the Oracle lawsuit against Google was going.
@btilly My articles on how the lawsuit was going weren't "inaccurate". The district judge ruled against the copyrightability of the declaring code Oracle asserted, and that decision is on appeal. The parties have completed their briefing, numerous amici curiae ("friends of the court") have made submissions, and the appeals court will hold a hearing in a matter of months.
The inaccuracies started with your claim to be an "independent" analyst when you were actually a paid shill, and only got worse from there.
You are right that there is an appeal - there always is. But consider that the judge the first time around ruled nothing like you claimed would happen. On anything. Why should we expect the appeal to be different?
@btilly In district court, the jury identified copyright infringement, was hung on fair use (which means that this would have to be determined by a new jury if the relevant code is found copyrightable), and the judge overruled the jury to the effect that the court additionally ruled that certain test files I had published in January 2011 were indeed infringed. The key thing that was missing was copyrightability. You're right that the appeals court might affirm the district judge's ruling, but we'll know in early 2014 what comes out of this. The decision at the appeals court will be made by a panel of three judges, which is quite different from a decision made by just one person.
Basically, being an Oracle puppet is an extremely negative heuristic for being a useful voice on anything related to software IP. Absent compelling evidence to the contrary, I am inclined to ignore any and all opinions of said puppet.
And FWIW, being a Microsoft employee defending an Oracle stooge doesn't play all that well either.
I can certainly see how being an Oracle puppet would make it hard to trust his coverage of the Oracle/Google spat. I don't see how it affects his take on the contents of the NZ bill, particularly since the text of the bill is available and no one has countered his assertions!
Also, I'm not "defending" him. I don't know if he is or is not a shill, and I don't care. But he made verifiable statements about the content of the bill. All I want to know is, are his statements wrong?
HN is turning into a conspiracy paranoia breeding ground these days. Who cares who he works for, is the information he's presenting sound? Also dismissing it as unsound just because you disagree with his possible motives doesn't make him a "liar" or a "shill", it is just laziness on your part to try and dismiss him out of hand or trying to verify the evidence presented on your own.
The point was that people who have financial interests can still provide useful information for the community. Of course you knew what the point was and decided to take us on a pedantic tangent.
Another point I could make is that analogies don't have to be perfect to be useful.
Another point might be that the people making ad hominem attacks on FM aren't actually adding anything constructive to the discussion while he did. In fact his contribution to the thread added more than everyone elses' combined.
And while I don't really care for FM himself, there are many people who spin and editorialize heavily that are still very much worth reading. If you're interested at all in tech patents, he's one of them along with whatever ends up replacing Groklaw.
> When someone with a long and vivid history of acting against the interests of the community speaks, it is on them to overcome the prejudice against them, not on us.
Who has a "long and vivid history of acting against the interests of the community"? It's clearly not Müller: [1].
And looking at his post with a sceptical mind would have you learn his only third party source is a magazine whose tag-line is "Maximising IP value for business".
Even if correct his post is blatant propaganda. In fact, I'd go so far as to question why he chose today to register an account on hacker news. This isn't the first patent related news we've seen.