Now I am certain that no-one missed the headline from ZDNET - http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6183105.html?tag=nl.e550 entitled “A California company that makes technology designed to prevent ripping of digital audio streams has accused Apple, Microsoft, RealNetworks and Adobe Systems of violating federal copyright law by "actively avoiding" use of its products.”

Now this must surely be a first in the curious use of the United States litigation system when one company sues others because they failed to use their product in support of legitimate protection of a digital product.

Now is this kind of wild or what?  Let’s try to transfer this to the real world, if that’s at all possible (?).

It’s kind of like saying that you personally can be sued because you did not use some particular product to protect the health of your children, and so you are liable because you did not do everything that is possible.

Now if you feel comfortable about being sued by any Tom, Dick and Harry (or John Doe, for that matter) just because you did (or did not?) purchase their product (that reduces acne, stops dandruff, improves your sex life or does any of a zillion and one other things – or prevents them) then welcome to the wacky world of IT and patents.

You see, this is where the ‘rubber hits the road’ because suddenly people who reckon they know what is good for you can sue you simply because you failed to properly appreciate them (or to put it more obviously, you failed to buy their product).

Now if this goes ahead, and the claim is upheld, you can look forward to a disaster of more than Watergate proportions.  It means that any company selling anything can sue anything that moves for failing to use it’s product(s).

Well, it might well be good for lawyers, but you might not need the brain of a planet to see that it is an unmitigated disaster for the ordinary human being, or even the average enterprise.  In fact the cold, hard reality of the use of IT is that if you reckon you are being screwed (pardon my French) you do whatever you can to respond in kind, mainly because you can.  So internal staffs who figure out that their IT security departments have made their lives unbearable (change 20 completely random passwords every thirty days or we stop you being able to use anything – do I hear some recognition here?) or that the IT people figure they are above the rules that they make and can just do anything they feel like (in reality there is nothing that pisses you off more than an arrogant group who tell you how to behave by setting rules than no human being could ever cope with, and then have the sheer hubris to ignore when it applies to themselves).

In fact, that sums it up.  Not just for IT departments, but for organizations that think that they have patents that compel you to do what they define. 

Because, if we submit to the ‘rule of patents’ that tell us that we MUST behave in the one and only way that they define, then we have indeed lost the ability to be human beings, and have become slaves to the stupidity of law.

Welcome to the Brave New World!