That's certainly true, but as I understood it, he's arguing that patents that happen to cover software are no different from patents that happen to cover anything else, and then he goes on to describe in detail how patents that happen to cover software are different from others.
I'll attempt to clarify, but these my own words, not Nilay's:
1. There is nothing inherent about "software" that suggests you can't create a patentable invention with it, therefore statements like "software patents shouldn’t be allowed" are wrong, or at least equivalent to "patents shouldn't be allowed".
2. Software has certain properties that result in undesirable side-effects or ambiguities under the patent system at present, therefore we should adjust the treatment of patents on software to mitigate those effects and clarify those ambiguities. An example would be reducing term lengths to something more compatible with the pace of innovation.
> 1. There is nothing inherent about "software" that suggests you can't create a patentable invention with it, therefore statements like "software patents shouldn’t be allowed" are wrong, or at least equivalent to "patents shouldn't be allowed".
I don't understand, how does that work? Let's get rid of the word "software" for a moment. Say I think that patents involving ducks shouldn't be allowed, for whatever reason. There's nothing inherent about ducks that means you can't make a patentable invention with a duck. But that by no means implies that my stance against duck patents means I'm against patents as a whole.
"One thing I do feel pretty certain of is that if you're against duck patents, you're against patents in general. Gradually our machines consist more and more of ducks. Things that used to be done with levers and cams and gears are now done with bills and feathers and webbed feet. There's nothing special about mechanical embodiments of control systems that should make them patentable, and the duck equivalent not." -- http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html
I would also point out the other possibility in what I said before: that statements like "duck patents shouldn't be allowed" are wrong. Maybe "wrong" sounds too absolute, so substitute "incomplete" if you like. "Some duck patents shouldn't be allowed" is a different proposition, and probably closer to what most people actually think, but Nilay is specifically addressing the absolutist rhetorical frenzy on you see on sites like Quacker News.
The ubiquity of software (or ducks) in modern machines isn't really relevant to the implications of the positions people hold. Just because software is used everywhere doesn't mean that being against software patents implies being against all patents. I think what you and others are trying to say here is that if you're against software patents, you should be against all patents, but that's substantially different. It's taking an invalid rhetorical shortcut of assuming the other person has no good reason to make the distinction, rather than actually asking whether he does.
As for "some", you may be right, but I'm hard-pressed to think of any worthwhile software patents. Really, the fix for software patents is probably to reduce the term and vastly increase the requirements for novelty rather than eliminating them altogether, but on the other hand I really don't see much downside to simply disallowing it completely. Maybe I'm missing it, but patents don't really seem to be a requirement for software innovation.
That isn't what's being said in that paragraph at all. You're fixating one one sentence (the second) and completely ignoring the latter two. It's not about ubiquity, it's about software and mechanical parts being equivalent in their ability to comprise inventions. They're just different materials you can build inventions out of. It speaks no more about the merits of an invention than any other material.
Put another way: What's so special about "not-software" or "not-duck" that excludes it from the issue you have with software or duck patents?
> Put another way: What's so special about "not-software" or "not-duck" that excludes it from the issue you have with software or duck patents?
That's pretty much my point. The original construction assumes that not only is there nothing special, but that the person arguing against software (duck) patents thinks that there is nothing special.
My real complaint is phrasing it by saying that a person who argues against software patents must be opposed to all patents, when it would be much more correct and much less insulting to say that this person should be opposed to all patents. One reduces the other person's argument to an absurd degree without allowing for any possibility that they might have a point, and the other just states why you (or whoever) think they're wrong.
I honestly don't know what you're talking about. I'm sorry you were insulted by something I didn't say, and that you feel the argument you didn't make was unfairly reduced to absurdity. I was only trying to help.
