24 Nov 2003
Patented Poetry

Ray Kurzweil is a respected computer scientist, philosopher and futurist. He should know better:

On Nov. 11, Mr. Kurzweil and John Keklak, an engineer, received patent No. 6,647,395, covering what Mr. Kurzweil calls a cybernetic poet. Essentially, it is software that allows a computer to create poetry by imitating but not plagiarizing the styles and vocabularies of human poets.

Kurzweil should know the debilitating effects of such patents on innovation and software in general - he, of all people, should understand how intricately our future is bound up in the freedom to think. His contributing to the IP madness is nothing short of appalling - I have purchased my last Kurzweil book.

It's not like this is anything new, either: there was RACTER, of course, and a specific poetry system called JABBER (not related to the IM software): UBUWEB:: The Language of Poetry

[From The New York Times]

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