PlainSite Exposes 2,000 Intellectual Ventures Shell Companies
You know what's worse than patent trolls gaming the system? It's all of those people in the world who say, "Yeah, IV is smart. They've found a loophole and are exploiting it. Nothing to be done."<p>Wrong. Who runs this place? You and me. And if enough of us want to change the law to put IV and it's clones out of business, we can do it. This place is our home, our nation, and we get to decide what's allowed here. Our biggest challenge is not IV, but all of those people in the world who give IV and people like them a nod, a kind of respect, an admiring acknowledgement that they've abused the system and gotten away with it. It's the same respect given to influential bankers in Wall St and London, it was the same respect given to Bush, the same respect given to wealthy men accused of rape and murder who never serve time. Any and every action taken against these entities seems to either melt away entirely or result in a slap on the wrist. Meanwhile people who hack celebrity emails get 10 years hard time. People making $20k a year get audited and go to prison.<p>It is not okay. There is nothing to admire, and patent trolls are merely smug abusers of our society. Organizations that follow the letter of the law but ignore the principles behind them should inspire our strongest contempt. Their existence's only positive value is as a clarion call to vigorous action by our legislators to amend the law to close the gap between the letter and spirit. The longer we wait, the less legitimacy the rule of law has.<p>Our elected officials, the people we keep voting into office cycle after cycle, are far more interested in playing their political games. They do have some time leftover to actually govern. But governing takes common sense, and whatever they have is shattered by lobbyists who's only job is to undermine common-sense with smooth-sounding arguments - or, if that doesn't work, threats of withdrawing campaign support. Our leaders are dazzled by arguments of complexity when the heart of the problem is genuinely, truly simple:<p>Introduce and pass a bill to eliminate software patents, retroactively, and do it now.