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With my colleagues from Irish Free Software Organisation:
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/fsfe-ie/2011-April/002981.html

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Dear Mr. Crowley,

Irish Free Software Organisation (IFSO) opposes the extension of copyright
which may be put to a vote in JURI today or tomorrow, and we ask that you do
the same. Further, we ask for your support in requesting a new first
reading for this proposed directive.

Software companies with dominant market positions are increasingly using the
copyright of cultural works as a barrier to block other software developers.
Due to Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), music lovers can be required
to use the software of a small group of "approved" large software companies,
or be blocked from listening to DRM'd music.

A few large companies are protected from competition, and the majority of
software developers are locked out - including all the "small artists" of
the software field.

For people who object to DRM, or who don't find any acceptable software
among the "approved" group, there is still public domain works. Extending
copyright impoverishes the public domain and our cultural heritage.

Below is a selection of links to independent studies highlighting the harms
of copyright extension.

Yours sincerely,
CiarÃn O'Riordan, +32 487 64 17 54
Irish Free Software Organisation
http://ifso.ie/

  1. 8 Universities and policy centres issued this 2-page
        statement about how the proposal would harm Europe's culture
        and economy:
        http://www.cippm.org.uk/downloads/Press%20Release%20Copyright%20Extension.pdf

  2. UK government's "Gower's review", which concluded that:

        "The European Commission should retain the length of
          protection on sound recordings and performersâ(TM) rights at 50
          years." (page "56" - which is the 60th page of the PDF document)

        http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/pbr06_gowers_report_755.pdf

  3. Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam:
        "Never Forever: Why Extending the Term of Protection for Sound
        Recordings is a Bad Idea"

        http://www.ivir.nl/publications/helberger/EIPR_2008_5.pdf
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If you are eligible ("a British citizen or resident"), sign the petition against software patents: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/softwarepatents/

And pass it on to everyone you know. It only has 1,800 signatures right now and the deadline is Feb 20th. And if you want to learn more about software patents, try:

• http://ciaran.compsoc.com/software-patents.html
• http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/swpat.en.h tml
• http://www.ifso.ie/documents/rms-2004-05-24.html
• http://ifso.ie/documents/ifso-2005-11-18.html

If you are eligible ("a British citizen or resident"), sign the petition against software patents: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/softwarepatents/

And pass it on to everyone you know. It only has 1,800 signatures right now and the deadline is Feb 20th. And if you want to learn more about software patents, try:

• http://ciaran.compsoc.com/software-patents.html
• http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/swpat.en.h tml
• http://www.ifso.ie/documents/rms-2004-05-24.html
• http://ifso.ie/documents/ifso-2005-11-18.html

For explanations of the changes in GPLv3, I highly recommend reading (or skimming) the transcripts of the GPLv3 conferences. Each transcript includes the subsequent Q&A session, and each begins with a list of links to the topics covered and the questions asked.

The freshest transcript is RMS in Bangalore in August. Here are the others:

• Transcript of Richard Stallman's talk from the 3rd international GPLv3 conference, Barcelona, June 22nd 2006
• Transcript of Eben Moglen's talk from the 3rd international GPLv3 conference, Barcelona, June 22nd 2006
• Transcript of Richard Stallman's talk from the 2nd international GPLv3 conference, April 21st 2006
• Transcript of Richard Stallman's GPLv3 presentation and Q and A from Torino, Italy, March 18th 2006
• Transcript of Richard Stallman's GPLv3 talk from FOSDEM, February 25th 2006
• Transcript of Eben Moglen's presentation at the first international GPLv3 conference, January 16th 2006

Many also include links to audio and/or video recordings, and there's more general information about the timeline and how to participate on FSFE's GPLv3 page.

Also, if you want to help raise the quality of discussion, a useful and really easy thing to do is to pass these links on to others.

For explanations of the changes in GPLv3, I highly recommend reading (or skimming) the transcripts of the GPLv3 conferences. Each transcript includes the subsequent Q&A session, and each begins with a list of links to the topics covered and the questions asked.

The freshest transcript is RMS in Bangalore in August. Here are the others:

• Transcript of Richard Stallman's talk from the 3rd international GPLv3 conference, Barcelona, June 22nd 2006
• Transcript of Eben Moglen's talk from the 3rd international GPLv3 conference, Barcelona, June 22nd 2006
• Transcript of Richard Stallman's talk from the 2nd international GPLv3 conference, April 21st 2006
• Transcript of Richard Stallman's GPLv3 presentation and Q and A from Torino, Italy, March 18th 2006
• Transcript of Richard Stallman's GPLv3 talk from FOSDEM, February 25th 2006
• Transcript of Eben Moglen's presentation at the first international GPLv3 conference, January 16th 2006

Many also include links to audio and/or video recordings, and there's more general information about the timeline and how to participate on FSFE's GPLv3 page.

Also, if you want to help raise the quality of discussion, a useful and really easy thing to do is to pass these links on to others.

• The dangers of software patents (transcript)
• GNU/Linux and the free software movement (his general talk)
• Copyright verses community in the age of computer networks
• GPLv3 (transcript)

There is also a page on GNU.org for audio recordings of (mostly) Richard's talks.

Ugh. Relative/absolute link mixup, here's where to find the first two transcripts:http://www.ifso.ie/documents/#transcri pts

No, some patents affect a small number of manufacturers, for instance, hence they're merely industrial regulations—the patents involved in manufacturing cars are an often-cited example. These are quite different from software patents because people in their homes do make and distribute software which is covered by software patents. Different kinds of patents have different effects on society.

However if you want to argue that patents are not a good idea, you'll have some interesting company: the FTC and the Australian Government. According to a presentation by Ciarán O'Riordan at an event held on 2005-11-18 at the European Union offices, "the United States of America told us that software patents are a bad idea". In a 350-page report from the FTC "in 2003, they published their Report on Innovation, which was a 350 page report about the patent system - every aspect of the patent system in the USA.". According to this presentation, every aspect of the American patent system was critiqued and the FTC's "entire conclusion was negative. This wasn't a report just on software patents, this wasn't a response to anything in particular, and they didn't have an axe to grind, but simply for software they found that their was no benefit.". O'Riordan has a /. account, so perhaps he'll address this point in this thread.

Prior to this talk, and this FTC report, RMS gave a talk on the danger of software patents in which he pulls back the focus from patents on algorithms used in software and talks briefly about all patents:

In the 1980's the Australian Government commissioned a study of the patent system. The patent system in general, not software patents. This study concluded that Australia would be better off abolishing the patent system because it did very little good for society and cause a lot of trouble. The only reason they didn't recommend is that international pressure. So one of the things they cited was that patents which was supposed to disclose information so that they would no longer be secret or in fact useless, for that purpose, engineers never looked at patents to try and learn anything because it's too hard to read them. In fact they quoted that an engineer saying "I can't recognize my own inventions in patents".

Before this case, the GPL was taken to court twice, and it was upheld twice. Something about MySQL in the USA, and another case in Germany.

One of the goals of the GPLv3 consultation process is to identify enforcement issues in all the legal regions of the world. Yet another win in court doesn't give us anything to fix, but it's good to know that Stallman's written a solid licence - GPLv3 should be GPLv2 but better.

I've made transcripts of previous events I've organised so that deaf users can benefit. Having a sign language interpreter would be great, but the budget is usually not there.

Wikinews hasn't been the newspaper-killer that Wikipedia is to encyclopedias. ...but then again, people forget that Wikipedia started in 2001.

Becoming an overnight tech success takes years :-) I still love good 'ould text.

A lot of people get interested in technologies when they hear it examplained and can ask the developer - and face to face is much easier than by email.

To really get the value out of it, try to have your presentation recorded (like these from FOSDEM and other conferences). And if you really want to get picked up by search engines and be accessible to deaf users and others with particular needs, event transcripts make for greppable copies of talks and presentations.

There's a conference this Thursday, March 16th in Belfast called FOSS Means Business where Stallman and Perens are both doing business-orientated lectures, plus presentations by Google, Open Source Academy, and Oracle.

People trying to encourage IT decision makers to transition to free software have to learn to explain it. Bruce Perens is good at this, but as well as telling people about the value of free software, we have to tell them how to hang on to it - how to not let it slip through their fingers. That's Stallman's angle, as can be read in this transcript of his lecture on GPLv3.

Microsoft isn't top because of their software quality, and free software won't displace them purely based on quality either. We'll win for other reasons.

I can say that the essays aren't quite as informative as the speeches are.

Or as entertaining. To wit:

[A mobile phone rings. It's that of FSF's GPL compliance officer, David Turner]

[Moglen:] Mr. Turner will now be resigning from the Free Software Foundation in the morning.

[laughter]

[Stallman:] If you have brought in a portable tracking and surveillance device, please switch it off and of course if you really want it to stop it reporting your movements you should take the batteries out.

The police have already tracked you here, and of course if they're interested in what we're saying, they are welcome to attend and I believe some of them are here.

When Stallman was at FOSDEM recently, I recorded and made a transcript of his GPLv3 talk.

And last time he came to Dublin, Irish Free Software Organisation recorded and made a transcript of his software patents lecture.

More transcripts and recordings can be found on IFSO's transcripts/recordings page, and the GNU philosophy recordings page.

Stallman will give his rare business speech this Thursday, March 16th, at the FOSS Means Business event in Belfast, Northern Ireland. That should be recorded and made available soon afterward - if the recording goes well.

When Stallman was at FOSDEM recently, I recorded and made a transcript of his GPLv3 talk.

And last time he came to Dublin, Irish Free Software Organisation recorded and made a transcript of his software patents lecture.

More transcripts and recordings can be found on IFSO's transcripts/recordings page, and the GNU philosophy recordings page.

Stallman will give his rare business speech this Thursday, March 16th, at the FOSS Means Business event in Belfast, Northern Ireland. That should be recorded and made available soon afterward - if the recording goes well.

When Stallman was at FOSDEM recently, I recorded and made a transcript of his GPLv3 talk.

And last time he came to Dublin, Irish Free Software Organisation recorded and made a transcript of his software patents lecture.

More transcripts and recordings can be found on IFSO's transcripts/recordings page, and the GNU philosophy recordings page.

Stallman will give his rare business speech this Thursday, March 16th, at the FOSS Means Business event in Belfast, Northern Ireland. That should be recorded and made available soon afterward - if the recording goes well.

You are ignorant. You don't know the difference between free software and open source. Learn more about it. Start here and here. Free software is about freedom... Freedom is, among other things, a human right and civil liberty and should be part of any political agenda.

But let's call a spade a spade here and look at what GPLv3 is about: attempting to hide attempts to restrict developers under the guise of being an update to the world's most popular open source license.

The GPL has always been restrictive in specific ways. And version 3 does have additions to its restrictive nature. Read why. You don't have to agree with him but at least your not ignorant. If GPL is too restrictive for you then don't use for your code.

The threat of DRM is real, you don't have to wait for it to cuff you before you see that. GPLv3 works to prevent the scenario where DRM is widely implemented. For info from the horse's mouth, see what he said about DRM in his FOSDEM 2006 presentation.

I was convinced that this had to be a joke. But here it is. Go figure.

The Tivo got mentioned a few times in relation to DRM during the launch of the GPLv3 drafting process, and during the post-launch press.

Here's a transcript of the opening presentation of the GPLv3, where Richard mentions Tivo:

For instance, the Tivo is designed so that if you modify the program and install it, it won't run. We have written provisions designed to forbid that use of our software. We can't forbid people from making such devices, nasty as it is, but we can, we believe, forbid them to use GPL covered software in that corrupt way.

About a month ago I sent an email to my local MEP (Member of European Parliament), Sean O Neachtain, outlining why I believe Ireland should remain software-patent-free and asked what Ireland was doing to help the EU remain a software patent free zone.

I included the IFSO's top ten reasons "why software ideas must remain free from patentability". He has a blurb on his website detailing one of his priorities is; "To guarantee that the benefits of new and evolving information technologies are spread to all regions in Ireland"

It appears to have been a complete waste of time. Nothing. Not a sausage.