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One cannot patent algorithms in the EU. Well, big business has of course been trying to monopolise software ideas, but so far, they've mostly failed.

See amongst others http://swpat.ffii.org/analysis/epc52/index.en.html

... and the proof is in open source projects like linux and FSF, which does not descriminate upon where you live.

Why in the hell is there such outcry in outsourcing?

Or are there really that many people who feel they need to keep others suppressed economonically?

Not only is the outsource cry wrong but computer science has yet to get Abstraction Physics right.

I bet you could overlay the reasons for the 300 year delay in converting from roman numeral mathmatics to the much easier and more powerful hindu-arabic decimal system with its zero (nothing has value) place holder, over onto this evolution of computer science.

The arrogant and unfair drive to hold onto some social position and high pay, when in fact easier and more powerful means we can open up new values to all of us. (Note: Computer technology could not have been developed with the roman numerial system of mathmatics!)

Maybe the real reason there is a decline in interest to pursue "Computer Science" is due to the underlying feeling that there is something fundamentally wrong the way its being done today. And I suspect such issues as software patentability, or not, battles is a very good indicator of this faultiness in computer science today.

You can make the tying of a shoe sound so complifabucated that even a multidoctorate can't understand it. But doing it, not so difficult.

Its just Abstraction Physics. http://wiki.ffii.org/IstTamaiEn

Instead of crying over the stolen $612.5M, RIM should have pro-actively spent a small fraction of that sum to make the patent system fair in the US. Instead, they allowed the Patent Cartel to fund this monster of a legal system, which of course rewards its creators.

Software Idea Patents are a form of legalized extortion encouraged by the US government. It was put in place in order to protect monopolies like Microsoft, who has recently threatened to sue users and developers of open-source software, including Linux. No wonder the US government intervened on behalf of Microsoft in its European anti-trust case -- Microsoft and the Patent Mafia has Uncle Sam in their pocket. Too bad Europe is heading there too.

With the latest MS Office XML license, I don't think there's any chance royalties might be required. ...

For example, in the US, MS has thousands of sw patents. One of these is on XML serialization. If the EU decides to cut of its own economic balls so to speak and suddenly allow US-style sw patents, then MS won't have to hold back on litigation and will be able to sue the living daylights out of anyone using XML serialization. Note: that's anyone using XML serialization, not writing code, not developing software, simply using it is enough to warrant a letter from MS asking for royalties. So yes, technically it might be possible that the specification for MOOX could be available royalty free, but then the laundry list of patents MS has filed do require hefty royalties or concessions. MS could then sue users or opponents into oblivion and, technically, still allow MOOX 'royalty-free'.

You should read more patents, it cures insomnia. Try this one and tell me what it's about:

"the longitudinally upstanding ribbs, upstanding from said platform with an insulative surface and a conductance-avoiding property in that surface that prohibits the crosstalk between the electrical surfaces for the conductance of electrical information data"

Any ideas? I'll give you a hint, you're using one right now.

Still nothing? It's the patent for the plug that goes in your Ethernet connector. Or rather, one of the patents. Since they are so obscure, several different firms have patented the same thing, just using very different words. I swiped the example from Dr David Martin's speech to the FFII in 2004. You should read it, it's not long and both entertaining and educational.

discovers that Company A has been sitting on the patent, doing nothing.

Ah, but they DID do something. They assigned it to their R&D department who ran into regrettable difficulties with the implementation. You do realize that you are proposing MORE litigation and patent lawyers as a solution to the current patentably obvious problems with the system?

Since they have no R&D costs, they can price it lower and force the company who *did* the research out of the market.

This is oft repeated. And slightly true. But think it through. Think of all fields of human endeavour that are not patentable. That are not copyrighted. They do exist. For instance, not even in the current broken state of the patent system is it possible to patent a car. Or a mobile phone. Or a computer. And still, factories thrive off developing and manufacturing these very products. The reason is simple - it is very much more important to have a recognizable brand name than a patent. You can't market patents, but you CAN sell an image. When Ford put a billion dollars into developing the Focus, they did so knowing full well that they had no way of patenting the car. They had protection for several important design details for the look of the car and they had trade mark protection for the name. That's it. Legally, it would have been perfectly possible for any competitior to plagiarize the entire car, change the exterior a bit and re-name it and sell as their own. This does not happen for the simple reason that re-tooling factories, figuring out manufacturing methods, building spare part supply chains and analyzing every last damned nut and bolt would take as long and be as expensive as just buying the plans from Ford and make licensed copies. And the copy would still be late to market, during which time Ford would have had time to refine their original further, spurred by the competition. All possible, without patents.

And, if it's so damned easy to make copies - why is it that no one, after a hundred years, still haven't been able to copy Coca-Cola's recipe? It's a trade secret, not copyrighted nor patented. You're not allowed to take it from their vault, but if you can reverse-enginner it, it's yours. If it's that easy to copy drugs, why can't we copy a soft drink? The answer is that it is NOT easy.

One of the best ways to do this is to give the original creator of the idea a limited exclusive control over it

No, this is actually one of the worst ways ever devised. This system is, as we have seen, prone to abuse, sensitive to technological breakthroughs and it still leaves the bulk of artists dirt poor while walking all over consumer's rights. Distributors and patent lawyers benefit from it, greatly. Creators and customers do not.

In either case, I think the term of exclusivity on patents should be no longer than 5 years.

Unfortunately, that term would be too short to actually be of much use. The transactions costs of patents, whi

Oh, it's much bigger than that. Read Dr David Martin's speech to FFII.

Exactly. We're looking at making copyrights inalienable. Artists/bands would not be able to sell their soul^H^H^H^Hcopyrights to Big Media, instead, Big Media would have to come crawling and offer the bands services like management, promotion, financing and tour planning. Competing on an open market where the artists suddenly are on a much more even footing with Big Media. Put that in yer pipe and smoke it, Sony!

However, there's no reason not to shorten the life of patents from the 14(20?) years they currently are, depending upon the application.

The problem with that is the length of time it takes to get a patent approved (when it's done properly, that is) and the length of time you can reasonably expect a time-to-market gap to close. In both cases, patents that expire in shorter time than around five to ten years (dependant on the industry and scope of the patent, of course) are irrelevant because you get the same kind of "natural protection" just from being first on the market with the new thing - you can plan marketing strategies, set up distribution channels, run ad campaigns, build a brand, whatever, looong before the copycats catch up. Just look at generic drugs - the originals almost always outsell the copycats, even though they typically are more expensive. Or look at all markets and industries that do not offer IP protection or products that are out of patent. They flourish.

Adding in the hidden transaction costs of patents; applications, cross-licensing and prior art searches among them, you wind up with having to have 10-15 years of patent protection to make economic sense even for the patent holder. This does NOT factor in the associated risks of patent litigation because they are too erratic, but judging by the kind of numbers bandied about, we're looking at maybe 20 additional years (since most patents just sit there, never pulling in any dough at all, very few patents have to earn the keep for all patents, making most of them a losing proposition and thus skewing ROI for all patents).

Add to THAT the costs to society where the competitors are barred from utilizing the patent and we're looking at nightmare, from a national-economical standpoint.

At this point in time, I shall cop out and direct you to a much smarter man than I; David Martin - The Deck-chairs speech. Because you NEED to read that. You all do. And when you've read that, read this.

Obviousness is a red herring.

A technical requirement is needed but the USPTO refuses to adopt one.

http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/us-parl

Oh, I expected another article about software patents :-) You know the EU is currently pushing for the Community patent.

But here it's cancer or more explicit death. A student I knew suffered liver cancer and did not write a testament. He died three yrs ago. So his property went to the Government and his friend (he was homosexual) had to move out of his flat.

The advice the adeveloper gives to us is very intresting and should apply to all of us. Truck numbers of projects have to be kept low (A truck number is the number of people that can be hit by a truck without the project collapsing).

The truth is that we will die. Make sure people will not find it hard to hack your code or your code will die too. Intrestingly the gplv3 includes a death provision but it is for software patents.

Open Source Champion IBM is the single largest patenter in the WORLD

That's right. If you lack the cluefullness to observe the obvious in your own oxymoronic illustration: that IBM is no "Open Source Champion" but merely an opportunistic leach; you have clearly checked out of the reality department long ago. Software and business method patents do not have a "quality problem", they are fundamentally structurally unsound. Even Bill Gates understands this.

If you've spent any time at all with an IBM sales executive, you would realize that IBM's open source strategy is simply a way to bait people into using software which will hopefully segue into proprietary upgrades.

As RMS has so elequently and accurately stated over and over again: the greatest impediment to software development is not innovation - we have had plenty of that with no help from the USPTO. The greatest impedement to software development is the creation of large scale systems. Because of software patents, any software project of any substance must navigate a legal minefield. That is an impedement to progress, much more so than any threat to the pretensions of petulant greedy developers who think their little brain farts should feed their grandchildren.

Open Source Champion IBM is the single largest patenter in the WORLD

That's right. If you lack the cluefullness to observe the obvious in your own oxymoronic illustration: that IBM is no "Open Source Champion" but merely an opportunistic leach; you have clearly checked out of the reality department long ago. Software and business method patents do not have a "quality problem", they are fundamentally structurally unsound. Even Bill Gates understands this.

If you've spent any time at all with an IBM sales executive, you would realize that IBM's open source strategy is simply a way to bait people into using software which will hopefully segue into proprietary upgrades.

As RMS has so elequently and accurately stated over and over again: the greatest impediment to software development is not innovation - we have had plenty of that with no help from the USPTO. The greatest impedement to software development is the creation of large scale systems. Because of software patents, any software project of any substance must navigate a legal minefield. That is an impedement to progress, much more so than any threat to the pretensions of petulant greedy developers who think their little brain farts should feed their grandchildren.

... an analogy as to how programming is done today and how much easier it can be and why it needs to be.

http://wiki.ffii.org/IstTamaiEn

AS a matter of dealing with software patents and the scope of non-novel...

some additional relative reading on teh patent issue:

http://lists.osdl.org/pipermail/priorart-discuss/

Which is a mailing list trying to address how to make existing open source software available to teh USPTO in their searching for prior art.

But if Programming is made easier, even automated, then it becomes common place like using the hindu-arabic decimal system today, instead of the Roman Numeral system for math,.

Software will never be genuinely free until it is easy enough to create that the typical end user can do so by directing the computer to do most of the work (like the fictional Star-Trek holo-deck is programmable by a child).

It seems that computer programs _are_ excluded from patentability in India, see http://swpat.ffii.org/players/in/index.en.html, which makes this latest move interesting.

In fact, Microsoft has, though implicitly, argued that it's risky to use Linux in EU because of software patents: EU-only Get-The-Facts ads have referred to Total-Cost-of-Ownership studies that rely heavily on risks for patent infringement.

3. The public interest requires a balance between the public domain and private rights. It also requires a balance between the free competition that is essential for economic vitality and the monopoly rights granted by intellectual property laws.
4. Intellectual property protection must not be extended to abstract ideas, facts or data.
5. Patents must not be extended over mathematical models, scientific theories, computer code, methods for teaching, business ...
* Change must be allowed only if a rigorous analysis clearly demonstrates that it will promote people's basic rights and economic well-being.

"So Opera (we) clearly side with the pro-patent lobby."

Indeed, you can read more about Opera Software's position on software patents. Opera is against software patents.

It is a matter of power. Get organised, build up a strong US movement against software patents and they will be history soon.

Note that we strongly need a Us campaign against Software Patents as the USPTO tries to export its crappy regulation to other parts of the world, see trade agreements with the Americas, see the swpat in india, australia etc.

http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/us-parl

Is this the same Nokia that is pushing hard for software patents?

Software patents held by Nokia
Nokia has over 70% of Finnish software patents
Nokia argues that software patents "provide incentives to undertake research and development in Europe, ..."

How does Nokia reconcile open source with software patents?

Is this the same Nokia that is pushing hard for software patents?

Software patents held by Nokia
Nokia has over 70% of Finnish software patents
Nokia argues that software patents "provide incentives to undertake research and development in Europe, ..."

How does Nokia reconcile open source with software patents?

what if the mistake was within the system, like Machlup wrote in 1958

Get organised so your vouice will get heard.
http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/us-parl

Sorry, this is wrong-wrong-wrong.

Patents for software exist in the US because there is no movement against Software Patents.
http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/us-parl
Give me 500k $ for a campaign and US software patents will be gone soon.

The fight against software patenting in Europe is won. Now the action is related to the community patent and of course it could be a indirect way to get swpat through. At least the people like Jonathan Zuck claim so, because they make their money from Software patent lobbying. As persons like Jonathan Zuck are very counter-productive in lobbying I do not feel very much afraid. We will prevent this as long as you support our action in Europe. At least this time "industry" seems to misunderstand the content of the proposal and a noise strategy will not help them. Do you think Members of Parliament trust a an organisation named "Progress & Freedom Foundation"? No.

Your best bets are to keep an eye on these sites

http://www.ffii.org/ (especially)
http://www.fsf.org/
http://www.eff.org/

They usually have links where you can join them and help them in any way they need it.

How the EU can call itself democratic is mystery to me.

The "EU Software Patent Directive" for me was the first time where I followed its way through the different EU instances:

1. The comission introduces the directive. This version allows unlimited software patentability
2. The directive is serverly amended during the 1st reading of the parliament (in effect disallowing software patents and patents on business processes alltogether)
3. Now it gets funky: The commission pulls the directive and presents the orgininal version to the EU council as a "compromise"
4. Now begins a series of attempts that seem fit for any small banana-republic: The directly is placed last-minute on the agenda of the "farming and fishing" council. We have to thank Poland to block this attempt.
5. After some more pushing and shuffing the directive is added as "A-Item" to the agenda of a meeting of the EU council (A-Item means: No further discussion necessary).
6. The "compromise" is accepted over the objections of some of the council's members and in disregard of the parliament. Now the parliament needs the absolute majority to amend the directive (remember this a version almost identical to the original version introduced by the comission)
7. There are various attempts by JURI to restart the process... All of which are denied.
8. Now the parliament faces a dilemma: The majority needed is relative to all the seats, not the number of MEP who actually show up (which is typically less than 50%).
9. The only way out for the parliament is to block the directive *before* the actual reading... Which, now encouraged by the patent-lobby (they could not have another amended version disallowing software patents), is what happened.

(More information here: http://swpat.ffii.org/news/recent/index.en.html#co ns040408)

Now we were to supposed to celebrate this as some kind of democratic victory.

The only elected body of the EU is the parliament. The results of the 1st reading in the parliament should have been the final word.

The patent lobby is trying with all possible means to push software patents, past the fact that it will hurt EU business (most patents are owned by US and Japanese companies), past the general objection the parliament voiced...

And... What we all new would happened after the parliament was coerced into blocking the directive alltogether: The next attempt.

They will try until they succeed; bringing in new directives, retracting them if they do not like the amendments by the parliament, until they get lucky once. Then we'll have unlimited software patents in the EU, which will guarantee legal monopolies and hence guaranteed revenue streams to the owners of trivial patents.

The likes of SAP and Nokia and all others who fund or participate in the pro software patent lobby would do well to look past the next few quarters of revenue, and see that there is much more money to lose in the long run.
(Just look at Microsoft/Eolas, RIM (blackberry), etc, etc, etc)

We'll find companies building patent arsenals to fend of patent claims of competitors with "cross-licensing-deals", which of course is ultimately doomed once we establish so called "patent trolls" on Europe as well (companies that have no business other then sueing for patent infringment).

Why not subscribe to
http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/us-parl
and stay in touch.

People ARE getting organized.

Note that most software patents come from? The USA, Japan and Germany, in that order. About 1/3 of all software patents come from the USA, if Japan is added you get about 70% (source: FFII). The FFII has already made the point that software patents yre detrimental to the European IT industry. Pointing this out to people is a good idea, though. Many people have never heard of the FFII at all.

http://wiki.ffii.org/IstTamaiEn

Physics of Abstraction (abstraction physics)

Abstraction enters the picture of computing with the representation of physical transistor switch positions of ON '1' and OFF '0' or what we call "Binary" notation. However, computers have far more transistor switches in them than we can keep up with in such a low level or first order abstract manner, so we create higher level abstractions in order to increase our productivity in programming computers. From Machine language to application interfaces that allow users to define some sequence of action into a word or button press (ie. record and playback macro) so to automate a task, we are working with abstractions that ultimately accesses the hardware transistor switches which in turn output to, or control some physical world hardware.

Programming is the act of automating some level of complexity, usually made up of simpler complexities, but done so in order to allow the user to use and reuse the complexity through a simplified interface. And this is a recursive act, building upon abstractions others have created that even our own created abstractions/automations might be used by another to further create more complex automations. In general, if we didn't build upon what those before us have done, we then would not advance at all, but rather be like any other mammal incapable of anything more than, at best, first level abstraction. But we are more, and as such have the natural human right and duty to advance in such a manner.

There is an identifiable and definable "physics of abstraction" (abstraction physics), an identification of what is required in order to make and use abstractions. Abstraction Physics is not exclusive to computing but constantly in use by ... well... us humans. Elements or facets of abstraction physics include the actions of abstraction creation and use, such as defining a word to mean a more complex definition (word = definition, function-name = actions to take, etc.), Starting and Stopping (interfacing with) of an abstraction definition sequence, keeping track of where you are in the progress of abstraction sequence usage (moving from one abstraction to another), defining and changing "input from" direction, defining and changing "output to" direction, getting input to process (using variables or place holders to carry values), sequencially stepping thru abstraction/automation details (inherently includes optionally sending output), looking up the meaning of a word or symbol (abstraction) so to act upon or with it, identifing an abstraction or real item value so to act upon it, and putting constraints upon your abstraction lookups and identifications (when you look up a word in a dictionary you don't start at the beginning of the dictionary, but begin with the section that starts with the first letter then followed by the second, etc., and when you open a box with many items to stock, you identify each so as to know where to put it in stock.)

Abstraction Physics has yet to be established/recognized in a broad "common acceptance" manner, similiar to the difficulty in the acceptance of the hindu-arabic decimal system (which included the concept that nothing can have value - re: the Zero place holder). It took three hundred years (from inception) for the innovation of the now common decimal system to overcome the far more limited Roman Numeral system. (NOTE: mathmatics and the symbol sets used are also abstractions and therefor a subset of abstraction possibilities and certainly an application of abstraction physics.) Though the act of programming is still younger than many who apply it, we are technologically moving at a much faster rate of incorporating innovations and better understandings of reality. There is a physics to abstraction creation and use which can be used to model and create a non-patentable user friendly general use, and dynamic, automation (abstraction creation and usage) tool, that also allows for organized p

We know that patents are bad and unnecessary for software and there is discussion going on in the software industry.

All we need is an incubator like FFII in the United States and Software patents will be history soon. Note that in recent US patent reform discussions it was Microsoft vs. Pharma, no American stakeholder representing the software developer community or Open Source showed up. Get organised and madness will stop in the next few years.

A first step to improve things in the States would be to get subscribed:
http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/us-parl

I would be great to

* get a real US patent reform
* let the US sign the EPC
* cut budget of WIPO
* get rid off the TRIPs inflexibilities.

All this is Libertarian thinking so to speak.

Whatever you want the patent system to be: It is worth to get organised with like-minded people.

For Fighting Software Patenting subscription to
http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/us-parl
could be very useful.

As an European I am surprised by the capacity weakness of the US debate. Either you get organised or your get ignored and evil things just happen.

RMS on Chomsky:
"I don't have as complete and overall philosophy as he does. I agree with some of the things he says. I've seen things that he said that I didn't agree with. But certainly what he says about the engineering of consent seems valid. Recently Chomsky gave a speech about what it means to oppose terrorism which I was very impressed by, because he essentially said that we should put an end to terrorism, and that includes the terrorism against the US but also the terrorism committed by the US... and I agree." --Richard Stallman, November 2001
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky
http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/rms-zer0111/index.en. html

You may learn something about the EU "parliament".

One such detail being bodies called the Commission and the Council of Ministers, who are unelected, and can pretty much ride rough-shod over the parliament.

Also, while we "elect" the euro mps, we don't have any say in which candidate stands for any particular party, and so it's much like the UK national parliament, in that someone I don't know and didn't vote for is (supposedly - in the case of the EU) deciding my fate.

I used our overview of all tabled amendments, available here. It's easy to see which amendments were rejected and accepted: everything marked as EPP/PSE was accepted, the rest was rejected. The +/- on that page were our recommendations.

PRESS RELEASE FFII -- [ Europe / ICT / Information Society ]

EU adopts Big Brother directive, ignores industry and civil society

14 December 2005 (Strasbourg, France) The European Parliament today adopted a directive that will create the largest monitoring database in the world, tracking all communications within the EU. "From today, all EU citizens are to be tracked and monitored like common criminals," says Pieter Hintjens, president of the FFII.

The Data Retention Directive was passed by 378 votes to 197, following deals between the Council and the leaders of the two largest parties in Parliament, the EPP-ED (Conservatives) and the PSE (Socialists). The Rapporteur for the directive, Alexander Alvaro (Liberals) had his name removed from the report in protest.

Jonas Maebe of the FFII says: "Among other harsh measures, the directive mandates recording of the source and destination of all emails you send and every call you make, and your location and movement during mobile phone calls. Additionally, the directive says nothing about who has to pay for all this logging, which will significantly distort the internal telecommunications market."

"Moreover, the directive disregards how Internet protocols work. For example, tracking Internet telephony calls is generally impossible without closely watching the content of all data packets. The reason is that such connections are not necessarily set up via a central server which can perform the necessary logging. On top of that you have techniques like tunneling (VPN's) which make it simply impossible to look at the content", he adds.

The gathered data can be made available without special warrants, and without limit to certain types of crime. There will be no independent evaluation, and no extra privacy and no specific security safeguards. The data will be retained for periods ranging from 6 months up to any duration a member state can convince the Commission of.

Hartmut Pilch of the FFII says: "This outcome proves that we have to remain vigilant at all times and work on every relevant directive from the start. Even now, the planned IPRED2 directive, also unanimously condemned by industry and civil society, threatens to turn everyone caught by a patent into a criminal."

Background Information

* Two-page overview of the effects of the most important amendments
http://www.ffii.org/~jmaebe/dataret/plen1/summary. pdf

* English video stream of today's plenary session
http://media.vrijschrift.org/ep_vote_datared_05121 4_en.wmv

* Original language video stream of today's plenary session
http://media.vrijschrift.org/ep_vote_datared_05121 4_or.wmv

* Data retention: legislative sausage machine in overdrive
http://wiki.ffii.org/DataRet0512En

* News, position papers on and analysis of the directive
http://wiki.dataretentionisnosolution.com

* Permanent link to this press release
http://wiki.ffii.org/DataRetPr051214En

About the FFII -- http://www.ffii.org

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) is a non-profit association registered in several European countries, which is dedicated to the spread of data processing literacy. FFII supports the development of public information goods based on copyright, free competition, open standards. More than 850 members, 3,000 companies and 90,000 supporters h

PRESS RELEASE FFII -- [ Europe / ICT / Information Society ]

EU adopts Big Brother directive, ignores industry and civil society

14 December 2005 (Strasbourg, France) The European Parliament today adopted a directive that will create the largest monitoring database in the world, tracking all communications within the EU. "From today, all EU citizens are to be tracked and monitored like common criminals," says Pieter Hintjens, president of the FFII.

The Data Retention Directive was passed by 378 votes to 197, following deals between the Council and the leaders of the two largest parties in Parliament, the EPP-ED (Conservatives) and the PSE (Socialists). The Rapporteur for the directive, Alexander Alvaro (Liberals) had his name removed from the report in protest.

Jonas Maebe of the FFII says: "Among other harsh measures, the directive mandates recording of the source and destination of all emails you send and every call you make, and your location and movement during mobile phone calls. Additionally, the directive says nothing about who has to pay for all this logging, which will significantly distort the internal telecommunications market."

"Moreover, the directive disregards how Internet protocols work. For example, tracking Internet telephony calls is generally impossible without closely watching the content of all data packets. The reason is that such connections are not necessarily set up via a central server which can perform the necessary logging. On top of that you have techniques like tunneling (VPN's) which make it simply impossible to look at the content", he adds.

The gathered data can be made available without special warrants, and without limit to certain types of crime. There will be no independent evaluation, and no extra privacy and no specific security safeguards. The data will be retained for periods ranging from 6 months up to any duration a member state can convince the Commission of.

Hartmut Pilch of the FFII says: "This outcome proves that we have to remain vigilant at all times and work on every relevant directive from the start. Even now, the planned IPRED2 directive, also unanimously condemned by industry and civil society, threatens to turn everyone caught by a patent into a criminal."

Background Information

* Two-page overview of the effects of the most important amendments
http://www.ffii.org/~jmaebe/dataret/plen1/summary. pdf

* English video stream of today's plenary session
http://media.vrijschrift.org/ep_vote_datared_05121 4_en.wmv

* Original language video stream of today's plenary session
http://media.vrijschrift.org/ep_vote_datared_05121 4_or.wmv

* Data retention: legislative sausage machine in overdrive
http://wiki.ffii.org/DataRet0512En

* News, position papers on and analysis of the directive
http://wiki.dataretentionisnosolution.com

* Permanent link to this press release
http://wiki.ffii.org/DataRetPr051214En

About the FFII -- http://www.ffii.org

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) is a non-profit association registered in several European countries, which is dedicated to the spread of data processing literacy. FFII supports the development of public information goods based on copyright, free competition, open standards. More than 850 members, 3,000 companies and 90,000 supporters h

PRESS RELEASE FFII -- [ Europe / ICT / Information Society ]

EU adopts Big Brother directive, ignores industry and civil society

14 December 2005 (Strasbourg, France) The European Parliament today adopted a directive that will create the largest monitoring database in the world, tracking all communications within the EU. "From today, all EU citizens are to be tracked and monitored like common criminals," says Pieter Hintjens, president of the FFII.

The Data Retention Directive was passed by 378 votes to 197, following deals between the Council and the leaders of the two largest parties in Parliament, the EPP-ED (Conservatives) and the PSE (Socialists). The Rapporteur for the directive, Alexander Alvaro (Liberals) had his name removed from the report in protest.

Jonas Maebe of the FFII says: "Among other harsh measures, the directive mandates recording of the source and destination of all emails you send and every call you make, and your location and movement during mobile phone calls. Additionally, the directive says nothing about who has to pay for all this logging, which will significantly distort the internal telecommunications market."

"Moreover, the directive disregards how Internet protocols work. For example, tracking Internet telephony calls is generally impossible without closely watching the content of all data packets. The reason is that such connections are not necessarily set up via a central server which can perform the necessary logging. On top of that you have techniques like tunneling (VPN's) which make it simply impossible to look at the content", he adds.

The gathered data can be made available without special warrants, and without limit to certain types of crime. There will be no independent evaluation, and no extra privacy and no specific security safeguards. The data will be retained for periods ranging from 6 months up to any duration a member state can convince the Commission of.

Hartmut Pilch of the FFII says: "This outcome proves that we have to remain vigilant at all times and work on every relevant directive from the start. Even now, the planned IPRED2 directive, also unanimously condemned by industry and civil society, threatens to turn everyone caught by a patent into a criminal."

Background Information

* Two-page overview of the effects of the most important amendments
http://www.ffii.org/~jmaebe/dataret/plen1/summary. pdf

* English video stream of today's plenary session
http://media.vrijschrift.org/ep_vote_datared_05121 4_en.wmv

* Original language video stream of today's plenary session
http://media.vrijschrift.org/ep_vote_datared_05121 4_or.wmv

* Data retention: legislative sausage machine in overdrive
http://wiki.ffii.org/DataRet0512En

* News, position papers on and analysis of the directive
http://wiki.dataretentionisnosolution.com

* Permanent link to this press release
http://wiki.ffii.org/DataRetPr051214En

About the FFII -- http://www.ffii.org

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) is a non-profit association registered in several European countries, which is dedicated to the spread of data processing literacy. FFII supports the development of public information goods based on copyright, free competition, open standards. More than 850 members, 3,000 companies and 90,000 supporters h

PRESS RELEASE FFII -- [ Europe / ICT / Information Society ]

EU adopts Big Brother directive, ignores industry and civil society

14 December 2005 (Strasbourg, France) The European Parliament today adopted a directive that will create the largest monitoring database in the world, tracking all communications within the EU. "From today, all EU citizens are to be tracked and monitored like common criminals," says Pieter Hintjens, president of the FFII.

The Data Retention Directive was passed by 378 votes to 197, following deals between the Council and the leaders of the two largest parties in Parliament, the EPP-ED (Conservatives) and the PSE (Socialists). The Rapporteur for the directive, Alexander Alvaro (Liberals) had his name removed from the report in protest.

Jonas Maebe of the FFII says: "Among other harsh measures, the directive mandates recording of the source and destination of all emails you send and every call you make, and your location and movement during mobile phone calls. Additionally, the directive says nothing about who has to pay for all this logging, which will significantly distort the internal telecommunications market."

"Moreover, the directive disregards how Internet protocols work. For example, tracking Internet telephony calls is generally impossible without closely watching the content of all data packets. The reason is that such connections are not necessarily set up via a central server which can perform the necessary logging. On top of that you have techniques like tunneling (VPN's) which make it simply impossible to look at the content", he adds.

The gathered data can be made available without special warrants, and without limit to certain types of crime. There will be no independent evaluation, and no extra privacy and no specific security safeguards. The data will be retained for periods ranging from 6 months up to any duration a member state can convince the Commission of.

Hartmut Pilch of the FFII says: "This outcome proves that we have to remain vigilant at all times and work on every relevant directive from the start. Even now, the planned IPRED2 directive, also unanimously condemned by industry and civil society, threatens to turn everyone caught by a patent into a criminal."

Background Information

* Two-page overview of the effects of the most important amendments
http://www.ffii.org/~jmaebe/dataret/plen1/summary. pdf

* English video stream of today's plenary session
http://media.vrijschrift.org/ep_vote_datared_05121 4_en.wmv

* Original language video stream of today's plenary session
http://media.vrijschrift.org/ep_vote_datared_05121 4_or.wmv

* Data retention: legislative sausage machine in overdrive
http://wiki.ffii.org/DataRet0512En

* News, position papers on and analysis of the directive
http://wiki.dataretentionisnosolution.com

* Permanent link to this press release
http://wiki.ffii.org/DataRetPr051214En

About the FFII -- http://www.ffii.org

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) is a non-profit association registered in several European countries, which is dedicated to the spread of data processing literacy. FFII supports the development of public information goods based on copyright, free competition, open standards. More than 850 members, 3,000 companies and 90,000 supporters h

This safe, naturally occurring, unmodified virus [...] an important discovery in the treatment of 2/3 of all human cancers [...] is patented [...]

Seems there's something very wrong about this...

Nope. The links spell it out clearly(well at least the uspto one). They patented a process not a virus.

Do some freaking research.

Methods for treatment of the human or animal body by surgery or therapy and diagnostic methods practised on the human or animal body shall not be regarded as inventions which are susceptible of industrial application [...]

So, Brown's been doing popular things wherever possible. He was very big on the whole debt-cancellation move during the summer, for instance. He's trying to look as good as possible to voters. He's not likely to endorse law changes along the lines of 'hey, people I'd like to have vote for me at the next election: you're not allowed to copy CDs to your iPods!'

And while we are all chatting about this subject, the European Parliament are about to pass draconian anti-privacy laws against all forms of electronic communications.

While these laws have been mooted for some time, it seems that 13 December 2005 is the crunch date, and the UK are pushing for it !

From the FFII newsletter -

PRESS RELEASE FFII -- [ Europe / ICT / Information Society ]

EU introducing "Big Brother" anti-privacy law, warns FFII

5 December 2005 (Brussels, Belgium) The EU is passing a "Big Brother" law to track every electronic communication, warns the FFII, an international information rights group based in Munich.

"Imagine a world in which the state follows everything you do. A world where computers watch every step you make. A world in which privacy is dead and the machines can track down every dissident in minutes. A world ruled by unelected agencies, working hand-in-hand with powerful commercial interests. A world in which citizens have no rights except to consume. Science fiction? The Age of the Machines? No, this is Europe, coming to you in 2006."

So warns Pieter Hintjens, president of the FFII. He says, "the EU is about to pass a directive to track every communication you make. This law makes the old Soviet spy states look like amateurs."

He continues "This law goes against our European traditions of civil liberty. It appears to break Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It will destroy small ISPs and raise prices. To enforce it, the EU will have to shut or monitor every cybercafe, web mail access, and wifi hotspot. Such a regime would be more authoritarian even than China. Even the US, after 9/11, does not have such oppressive laws. The EU does not need this law: it is a bad law, pushed through without respect for the democratic process."

Erik Josefsson of the FFII says: "We are entering into an era of 'I don't have time' legislation. With the expanded competence of the Commission (see consequences of the ECJ Judgement September 13, case c-176/03 Commission v. Council), the underarmed and weakened Parliament stands no chance to do its job properly. The 'sausage machine' is far too easy to abuse."

The Big Brother "data retention directive" makes Internet and telephony providers record "communications traffic data" for up to several years. These huge amounts of detailed personal data can be easily leaked, stolen, and abused. The forces - mainly the UK government - pushing the Big Brother law claim it will prevent terrorism. The FFII does not accept this simplistic argument. The real targets, it appears, are ordinary citizens, going about their daily business.

The FFII president points out, "almost everyone carries a mobile phone. With this law, your mobile phone and web browser becomes Big Brother's way of watching you. You will never be alone again. If you do not like this idea, contact your MEP today, urgently, and explain why it worries you. On 13 December 2005, personal privacy becomes history."

Background Information

News, position papers on and analysis of the directive

How Parliament is denied a chance to properly evaluate the directive

Procedural overview of the directive

MEP contact guide

Permanent link to thi

So, Brown's been doing popular things wherever possible. He was very big on the whole debt-cancellation move during the summer, for instance. He's trying to look as good as possible to voters. He's not likely to endorse law changes along the lines of 'hey, people I'd like to have vote for me at the next election: you're not allowed to copy CDs to your iPods!'

And while we are all chatting about this subject, the European Parliament are about to pass draconian anti-privacy laws against all forms of electronic communications.

While these laws have been mooted for some time, it seems that 13 December 2005 is the crunch date, and the UK are pushing for it !

From the FFII newsletter -

PRESS RELEASE FFII -- [ Europe / ICT / Information Society ]

EU introducing "Big Brother" anti-privacy law, warns FFII

5 December 2005 (Brussels, Belgium) The EU is passing a "Big Brother" law to track every electronic communication, warns the FFII, an international information rights group based in Munich.

"Imagine a world in which the state follows everything you do. A world where computers watch every step you make. A world in which privacy is dead and the machines can track down every dissident in minutes. A world ruled by unelected agencies, working hand-in-hand with powerful commercial interests. A world in which citizens have no rights except to consume. Science fiction? The Age of the Machines? No, this is Europe, coming to you in 2006."

So warns Pieter Hintjens, president of the FFII. He says, "the EU is about to pass a directive to track every communication you make. This law makes the old Soviet spy states look like amateurs."

He continues "This law goes against our European traditions of civil liberty. It appears to break Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It will destroy small ISPs and raise prices. To enforce it, the EU will have to shut or monitor every cybercafe, web mail access, and wifi hotspot. Such a regime would be more authoritarian even than China. Even the US, after 9/11, does not have such oppressive laws. The EU does not need this law: it is a bad law, pushed through without respect for the democratic process."

Erik Josefsson of the FFII says: "We are entering into an era of 'I don't have time' legislation. With the expanded competence of the Commission (see consequences of the ECJ Judgement September 13, case c-176/03 Commission v. Council), the underarmed and weakened Parliament stands no chance to do its job properly. The 'sausage machine' is far too easy to abuse."

The Big Brother "data retention directive" makes Internet and telephony providers record "communications traffic data" for up to several years. These huge amounts of detailed personal data can be easily leaked, stolen, and abused. The forces - mainly the UK government - pushing the Big Brother law claim it will prevent terrorism. The FFII does not accept this simplistic argument. The real targets, it appears, are ordinary citizens, going about their daily business.

The FFII president points out, "almost everyone carries a mobile phone. With this law, your mobile phone and web browser becomes Big Brother's way of watching you. You will never be alone again. If you do not like this idea, contact your MEP today, urgently, and explain why it worries you. On 13 December 2005, personal privacy becomes history."

Background Information

News, position papers on and analysis of the directive

How Parliament is denied a chance to properly evaluate the directive

Procedural overview of the directive

MEP contact guide

Permanent link to thi

I believe it's this one.

Why would you need an HTTP server on your intranet to stream media?

So that I don't have to use proprietary protocols supported only by Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition.

AVI Wrapper? Again, why?

So that I don't have to use proprietary, patented wrapper formats supported only by Microsoft Windows.

VSC is open source WMV format

Google vsc wmv fails me. I get links to a British film censorship board. Got the URL of where I could learn more about this?

just have your server convert the codec format of the file when it is requested.

How much CPU time does real-time transcoding take?

This is just simple file sharing

By "file sharing" do you mean CIFS? In that case users of Free server operating systems are covered.

until recently it was entirely clear to the law. Things could have owners and ideas could not.

This is baloney. It's been quite a while since the constitution was written, and right there in Article 1 section 8 clause 8 is the statement by the framers that is the basis for our patent system. Ideas could be owned in 1789, and long before that as well, as England also had a patent system.

Patents (originally) were/are not monopolies on ideas, but on inventions. Those are not quite the same. And originally, all such "inventions" were limited to the physical world. It is only fairly recently that patent offices and courts have started extending what can be protected by patent to the immaterial world.

Even with the latest reform, the USPTO is still paying lip service to the original principle, by demanding a "Concrete, and Tangible Result". Of course, in practice it doesn't exclude much anymore (of course you always want to monopolise real-world actions in the end, and every innovation in the abstract can be applied to the real world if that includes things like "provide a commercial benefit").

And the main problem with these extensions are that they are not based on economic needs, but simply pushed by a small in-crowd who stand to gain from them.

Not to mention the fact that money is an idea, equitable servitudes are ideas, usufructs are ideas, loans are ideas, contracts are ideas, and, now this will really blow your mind --

options on options...

I think you're extending the term "idea" beyond the context in which the author used it. That's easy of course, since "idea" has no legal definition and can be interpreted quite broadly. My interpretation of the article is that the author used idea in a more abstract sense, as in "the idea of using money instead of property", "the idea of lending money" etc.

In this world, size is no protection. It just makes you a more succulent target for enemy lawyers.

I would just like to point out that both sides have lawyers -- this makes it sound like lawyers are the enemy. In fact, lawyers are just the guys that help their clients get what they deserve under the law.

But in general society is better off when less lawyers are needed. After all, (and please don't take this personally) all money that goes into lawyers is money which cannot be invested in useful things (like R&D). It's an overhead cost. And by creating more "rights" you automatically increase the number of lawsuits, license agreements etc.

I'm not saying that a world without rights or lawyers would be ideal, but on the other hand extending rights and adding more rights does increase the overhead and at a certain point starts reducing the overall "justice" and "efficiency" of the system.

People with more money have always been able to hire better lawyers in our legal system, and that problem has nothing to do with intellectual property.

It is an argument to balance the situations in which you may need a lawyer though.

The system is supposed to work this way. It incentivizes companies to research and patent things as fast as they can, pushing the limits of technology, and then disclosing them to the public.

That's the theory, but in practice it doesn't always work that way. Witness e.g. Machlup already saying in the fifties:

If one does not know whether a system "as a whole" (in contrast to certain features of it) is good or bad, the safest "policy conclusion" is to "muddl

Scenario one: I'm writing software. I come up with a brilliant idea and put it in my software. When I release it, someone pops up with a patent and says I have to pay royalties.

Scenario two: I'm writing software. I come up with a brilliant idea and put it in my software. When I release it, someone else steals my idea for their own software and releases a competing product.

Both of these scenarios are clearly wrong, but no patent plan thus far has dealt with any way to prevent both cases. Overuse of software patents creates the first scenario, while lack of software patents creates the second.

Your "brilliant thinkers" rant is quite amusing.

Concerning your simple solution to all the problems with (software) patents: people have been saying for decades already that all problems with the patent system can be solved by just doing this or that (better application of novelty/non-obviousness requirements, more funding of patent offices, better training of patent examiners, patent pools, ...).

The fact is however that today, things are as bad as ever. And that's not just my opinion, but that of Dr David Martin, CEO of M-CAM, a company specialised in establishing the value of patents and technology transfers.

Until that whole mess is sorted out, the patent system is costing the software economy millions and millions of dollars in patent application fees, costs of setting up licensing deals, fighting lawsuits (have a look at the last slide) etc.

So I suggest you with your brilliant mind first work out the economic model and studies that shows that with your adjustments the patent system is in fact overall beneficial (as opposed to the current situation), then get it turned into a law in the US, that we see whether it in fact works in practice and that only then we start with the legalisation of software patents in Europe under the same regime.

Until then, I prefer not to have that whole administrative and juridical burden imposed on the European software market. And I don't see why people shouldn't argue for removing the burden in the US as well.

Scenario one: I'm writing software. I come up with a brilliant idea and put it in my software. When I release it, someone pops up with a patent and says I have to pay royalties.

Scenario two: I'm writing software. I come up with a brilliant idea and put it in my software. When I release it, someone else steals my idea for their own software and releases a competing product.

Both of these scenarios are clearly wrong, but no patent plan thus far has dealt with any way to prevent both cases. Overuse of software patents creates the first scenario, while lack of software patents creates the second.

Your "brilliant thinkers" rant is quite amusing.

Concerning your simple solution to all the problems with (software) patents: people have been saying for decades already that all problems with the patent system can be solved by just doing this or that (better application of novelty/non-obviousness requirements, more funding of patent offices, better training of patent examiners, patent pools, ...).

The fact is however that today, things are as bad as ever. And that's not just my opinion, but that of Dr David Martin, CEO of M-CAM, a company specialised in establishing the value of patents and technology transfers.

Until that whole mess is sorted out, the patent system is costing the software economy millions and millions of dollars in patent application fees, costs of setting up licensing deals, fighting lawsuits (have a look at the last slide) etc.

So I suggest you with your brilliant mind first work out the economic model and studies that shows that with your adjustments the patent system is in fact overall beneficial (as opposed to the current situation), then get it turned into a law in the US, that we see whether it in fact works in practice and that only then we start with the legalisation of software patents in Europe under the same regime.

Until then, I prefer not to have that whole administrative and juridical burden imposed on the European software market. And I don't see why people shouldn't argue for removing the burden in the US as well.

Like it or not, [patents are] also a way to encourage innovation.

You can find links to a dozen or so studies that come to the conclusion that software patents are in fact harmful to innovation and the economy as a whole here.

Reform the patent system. Don't burn lawyers at the stake. Your hate is misplaced.

• Shyster
• Shyster

Reform the patent system. Don't burn lawyers at the stake. Your hate is misplaced.

• Shyster
• Shyster

They have succeeded again

Well. You probably know that Nutzwerk is known to sue everybody who negatively reports about their business, including media and NGOs like FFII. So they probably want to impose their no-complaints-policy on the whole market.

See e.g. http://nutzwerk.ffii.org/

• A bunch of raving lunatics attempting to legitimize software patents
• A website about how Nokia support open source that itself runs on proprietry software and fails to adhere to basic web standards

This is just the latest (somewhat pathetic) deceitful PR courtesy of the pro software patent brigade.

Nokia suck