Sorry not much time to write this week, lots of stuff going on. We got a response from Amazon's Jeff Bezos this morning. He stops short of swearing off using patents against his competitors, which is my sole issue relating to patents.
Unused patents are harmless.
Maybe I wasn't clear in my earlier writing. The concern is about patents used to stop things from happening. The logical outgrowth of that is software developed solely by lawyers. If you want that kind of software and web services, stay quiet. If you care about the future of technology, now is an excellent time to make your point of view known, respectfully of course.