Over the last few days, I’ve been watching the status display in my Endicia mail log and seeing packages find their way to their destinations. At this point, it looks like all but two domestic deliveries (out of a hundred or so) have been confirmed. There’s one print still making its way through Atlanta’s post office and another that seems to be out for delivery in Fall River, Mass.

Even better has been seeing people tweet about getting their print, including @kbaxter, @mikesax, @beaucolburn, @jbruesewitz, @Jeffery903, @graysky, @ldbjorh, @miketrose, @simplyimagined, @soljklein, @jwhitmire, @stuarts, and @bringo, to list some from a quick scan of my Twitter feed. John Sturr even stepped it up a notch and make an unboxing video! Totally cool. Thank you all!

Now, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the twenty or so international and APO packages go as smoothly. I don’t have nearly the same visibility into their progress, but I hope they make their way through as quickly and efficiently.

Yesterday, Greg and I had to make the painful decision to discontinue the primary product lines at Luma Labs. This means we’re no longer selling the Loop or the LoopIt. It wasn’t easy and it’s a long story. The short version is that the chilling effect of patents for things that shouldn’t be patented isn’t limited to software.

Read the long version on the Luma Labs website.

When I was in architecture school in the 90’s, one of the things we studied in our design studio was how the economic landscape of small towns had changed and how those changes affected the built environment. One of the prime forces we studied was Walmart.

Walmart established itself in rural Oklahoma—among other places, but Oklahoma is the territory we studied—over the course of multiple waves. One wave was to build medium size stores at the edge of small towns where land was cheap. Their selection and low prices pulled a lot of people toward them and away from small local main street shops. After a significant amount of the local competition was shuttered, the next wave kicked in. Walmart consolidated four or five local stores into one larger store and abandoned the others in the area.

The obvious rationale is that building fewer larger stores was more efficient for Walmart to run logistically and that customers benefited by having a larger selection of even cheaper products to buy. The only catch? Most of them had to drive further since the Walmart wasn’t in their town and most of their local stores were closed down. The local stores that remained open were simply more expensive to shop in.

Now, we were studying architecture, not economics, but it was easy to hypothesize that part of the efficiency gain for Walmart is that they had successfully shifted part of the cost of transporting goods in two ways. First, government had to pay more to build the all the roads, highways, and infrastructure needed for everyone to drive to and from those Walmarts. Second, customers had to pay for the gas and maintenance on their vehicles they used to go back and forth.

To bastardize a telcom analogy, if this is true, it’s a successful shift of the last ten or twenty mile cost of selling goods. Never mind that the governmental cost for building all those roads and the individual costs of consumers buying gas and maintaining cards is probably much larger in aggregate than the savings. Walmart didn’t have to pay it, the perceived prices were lower, and it’s as easy enough to ignore the rest as it is to let spare change build up in your sock drawer.

If it was in any way intentional, it’s brilliant albeit in an evil way.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. I’d love to find a good solid study on that sometime again and read up on it. The idea of shifting costs to a nebulous “elsewhere” also seems to apply pretty well to my current thoughts about the US Patent Office.

I’ve heard from multiple sources that patent examiners only really search for prior art in the existing patent library. If it never was patented, it must not exist. It’s about the only explanation for how patents like the method for swinging on a swing get through.

Now, I get that the patent office is swamped, there’s too much work for the patent examiners, and the fees for patent applications don’t cover the costs of running the office. But, taking a shortcut approach and only searching within the set of issued patents means that they’re shifting—intentionally or not—the cost of rejecting applications before issuance to the people and corporations that pay to defend themselves by challenging the issued patents. At least those that are able to pay without much consequence to their bottom line.

It’s fascinating and maddening all at once.

This month certainly has been an interesting one, and not in a “Oh, jeez, I’m so excited!” way. While I haven’t been posting every last detail, I do want to say thank you to everyone that has been supportive. It’s very much appreciated. I’ve had lots of fascinating conversations—both by voice and email—with lots of people and there’s a few of those thoughts I’d like to share.

First, while the issue I’ve dealt with revolves around a really small company in the Pacific Northwest, it certainly seems symptomatic of a larger issue in American business. Don’t get me wrong. There’s certainly an important role for intellectual property. Patents, after all, are as much about publicly documenting how things are done so that they don’t remain trade secrets as they are about giving somebody a temporary monopoly on an idea. Somehow, however, the mechanics of the system have strayed from serving that role and it certainly seems more destructive on balance than constructive.

In many ways, it’s very much like the situation around copyright. Good idea. Shitty current implementation. No matter how this ends up playing out, I can’t imagine that I will ever not take a strong stance for some kind of reform of the intellectual property regime.

It’s clear that a lot of small business owners—especially those in software—feel the gravity of the situation around intellectual property. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard from other small business owners who tell me that they fear something similar happening to them. A few have said they’ve considered going back to work for somebody else so that they wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. That’s certainly an example of how the chilling effect is felt, isn’t it? That’s definitely not the kind of thing we want to encourage as a society.

Second, it’s very interesting being on the inside of a situation and watching armchair quarterbacks opine away. For the most part, I have to say it’s as interesting to watch from the inside as it is to play armchair quarterback on the outside. I have a new appreciation, however, for how hard it is to communicate subtle things from the inside, and how easy it is to miss that subtlety when you’re on the outside. I also can’t resist pointing out that it’s much easier to be brave and bold when it’s not your own ass or assets on the line.

That said, there’s a sublime satisfaction that comes from watching someone in a forum who happens to be an IP attorney find the patent in question and quickly reach the same conclusion as your own counsel. Or, to be pointed at more prior art by others who want to be helpful. This community thing is powerful, indeed.

Finally, despite having to make several large adjustments of late, I really am looking forward to the future. Flexibility and adaptability are my guiding stars right now. There are lots of interesting things in the pipeline—both at Luma and in my solo business—and I’m really excited that I can work on them. More news on all of that when it’s time.

Today, Congress holds hearings on the first American Internet censorship system as part of SOPA and the PROTECT IP Act. There are a lot of different ways to characterize these bills, but the thing that sticks out to me is that these even though these bills were designed to protect big copyright players—people I have no love for even though I make part of my living by making content—they go one step further and enable massive censorship tools, the kind of which would be valuable to any totalitarian government.

We’ve already got enough of those tools, such as the Patriot Act, which have been abused to our detriment. We don’t need another one, no matter what the good excuse. Not to mention that protecting big copyright holders is a piss poor excuse. Make no mistake about it, these provisions do nothing to help the creative class. Instead, it puts sites like Vimeo and Flickr at risk. It puts FaceBook and YouTube at risk. It puts any blog at risk.

Learn more. Now. Act now. Quickly. Call your congressfolk. Don’t leave it to somebody else.

I may not have been a prime example of a mid-80’s vintage mall rat while growing up, but I certainly wasn’t too far off. The defining locations of where to go during my first two years of high school were the various malls of north Dallas. NorthPark. Galleria. Valley View. Prestonwood. During my last two years, it was all about Woodland Hills in Tulsa which was within walking distance of Union High School—as long as you didn’t mind being a little late to class after lunch. I never minded, much to the chagrin of my parents.

The mix of non-stop advertising on cable TV, fast food, the perfection of the convenience store, and that subtle but powerful feeling of happiness just buying something was a strong part of my coming-of-age experience. In fact, I’d go so far to say that American consumerism wasn’t just any part of my experience, it was one of the defining aspects of it. For better or worse, it will always be part of my psyche at a very low level. The fact that I try to only channel it towards only buying well-made products that embody the values I want to promote doesn’t change the fact that it’s there and is part of how I interact with the world.

And yet, something’s changed over the last couple of decades. Part of that change is certainly within me as I’ve grown up and become much more aware of some of the forces that motivate me. There’s another part of it, however, that seems to be a mutation. A metastasis of sorts. Something about the forces that were in effect when I was growing up seems to have gone through a state change and now they are stronger than ever.

The use of pepper spray in WalMart by people searching for deals on piles of cheap disposable crap is certainly an easy to point at symptom of it. The sheer volume of high-volume advertising on broadcast TV is another, especially on the kid channels. The harshest sign of all for me, however, was spending a day with my youngest sister last week during the Thanksgiving holiday and realizing just how much of her life is occupied with figuring out what to buy, when to buy it, and what storage to buy to store everything else that has been or will be bought. I think we talked about other things for all of about thirty minutes.

It was exhausting.

It’d be easy to blame these uneasy feelings on simply being older. Over forty and all that. I’d love to do that and picture myself as turning into one of those get off my lawn types. It’d be an easy way out, in fact. I don’t buy it. Somethings up.