Business Software Alliance Writes European Regulations?

Holger Blasum writes: "The European Commission's proposal for a directive on software patents making software patentable in Europe is announced today (the commission's proposal still will have to pass council and parliament). MSWord's "Author" field suggests that it comes straight from the BSA's director of public policy. See the Eurolinux press release for a brief summary, more details can be found at the FFII website. Or, if you prefer French, zdnet.fr has some coverage too." The EC's site has several webpages about the proposal: a main page, FAQ, and the official copy of the proposal. Comparing the proposal-as-released with the draft obtained by Eurolinux, many sections are identical, some sections are nearly identical and a few sections have been completely rewritten.

Comments

Hold your horses.

[Sarin]

It's just a proposal, which may not pass at all if the politicians have any braincells left from their champagne brunches etc. well who am I kidding here..

Just sign the petition if you haven't done this :
petition agains European software patents

Nice screenshot of our so-called democratic union.

[oddityfds]

This nice shot in compination with the bottom of this page.

Re:What was there before?

[4im]

Of course there's patents, but 'til now there are (in law) none for software. Actually, you could get software patented, but only if that's tied directly to hardware (ex. software controlling your dishwasher)

Several months ago the EUPO started giving software patents, which is not (yet) covered by law.

Only positive thing: they seem really intend on not going the way of the US according patents for totally obvious stuff (like the amazon one-click).

Re:What was there before?

[pieterh]

There is still officially zero patentability for software in Europe. I've spoken to the EPO on several occasions about this and they have confirmed that software may not be patented under European law. It's also worth remarking that the estimated cost of one European patent is about EUR10,000.

Now, there is some discussion about whether EPO rules actually forbid software patents or simply make it very difficult. Some of their more obfusticated rules seem to imply that with enough effort you can patent software by describing an invention of some kind that just happens to be implemented in software.

My take on this is that software patents are possible if you have the money to throw around. It follows that larger corporations (don't we love to hate those guys) will have their main patents in place before the game is opened up.

I have the phone number for the EPO somewhere. Leuke mensen, als je Nederlands spreekt.

RMS on software patents in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a very interesting article Richard Stallman published some time ago.

French Homesite

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to take a look at LinuxFr which talks about the same story. You will then have an European (french) point of view.

Re:What was there before?

[evvk]

> IANAL, but I believe what's here currently is that any software you write is automatically copyright of the author (unless you signed your rights away to a company or academic institution).

I don't know about the rest of the Europe, but in Finland you don't even have to sign the rights away for _software_: the employer automatically owns all software you write. This is sick, BSA has had their will once again. Other copyrightable immaterial works are owned by the author unless he gives the rights away. Everything that is patentable is also automatically the employer's if case it is somehow related to a field the company practices -- even if it is not related to _your_ work. Sick.

Re:Ironic Logo

[Shiny Metal S.]

Its funny, that the image the petition is using as its logo is the Statue of Liberty, which is a United States object. Well, I suppose it came from france.

Very insightful indeed.

I see lots of ignorance about this subject, so let me quote the Statue of Liberty definition from Wikipedia:

The Statue of Liberty, more formally "Liberty Enlightening the World," stands in New York Harbor as a welcome to all--returning Americans, visitors, and immigrants alike.

The statue was intended as a centennial gift, and a sign of friendship between France and the United States. According to the National Park Service:

"Sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was commissioned to design a sculpture with the year 1876 in mind for completion, to commemorate the centennial of the American Declaration of Independence. The Statue was a joint effort between America and France and it was agreed upon that the American people were to build the pedestal, and the French people were responsible for the Statue and its assembly here in the United States. However, lack of funds was a problem on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In France, public fees, various forms of entertainment, and a lottery were among the methods used to raise funds. In the United States, benefit theatrical events, art exhibitions, auctions and prize fights assisted in providing needed funds. Meanwhile in France, Bartholdi required the assistance of an engineer to address structural issues associated with designing such as colossal copper sculpture. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (designer of the Eiffel Tower) was commissioned to design the massive iron pylon and secondary skeletal framework which allows the Statue's copper skin to move independently yet stand upright. Back in America, fund raising for the pedestal was going particularly slowly, so Joseph Pulitzer (noted for the Pulitzer Prize) opened up the editorial pages of his newspaper, "The World" to support the fund raising effort. Pulitzer used his newspaper to criticize both the rich who had failed to finance the pedestal construction and the middle class who were content to rely upon the wealthy to provide the funds. Pulitzer's campaign of harsh criticism was successful in motivating the people of America to donate.

"Financing for the pedestal was completed in August 1885, and pedestal construction was finished in April of 1886. The Statue was completed in France in July, 1884 and arrived in New York Harbor in June of 1885 on board the French frigate "Isere" which transported the Statue of Liberty from France to the United States. In transit, the Statue was reduced to 350 individual pieces and packed in 214 crates. The Statue was re-assembled on her new pedestal in four months time. On October 28th 1886, the dedication of the Statue of Liberty took place in front of thousands of spectators. She was a centennial gift ten years late."

The statue is normally open to visitors, who arrive by ferry and can climb up into her crown, which provides a broad view of New York Harbor. A museum in the pedestal--accessible by elevator--presents the history of the statue. [The statue and island are closed in the aftermath of the destruction of the World Trade Center.]

Extensive renovations were performed before the statue's centennial in 1986, including a new gold layer on the torch, which now shines over New York Harbor at night.

A smaller scale copy of the Statue of Liberty is placed in Paris, France, where it stands on an island in the river Seine, looking down the river, towards the Atlantic Ocean and hence towards its "larger sister" in New York.

I hope this will help a little.

Lobbyist preparing texts for EU rubberstamping

[SysKoll]

So a director of BSA has prepared the text that the eurocrats will rubberstamp after the required amount of backroom deals. Shock, horror.

Yaaawn.

Well, maybe this is new for some naive readers here, but it's unfortunately very common in Brussels. Here is how the lobbying process works in the EU. Now before you flame me with self-righteous indignation, let me disclaim:

• No, I have no proof. Nobody wants to say anything on record.
• Yes, the previous Commission (or non-elected bureaucrats) was fired for gros mismanagement and the new one is supposed to be under tighter rules. And if you believe that, I have a new appartment in the North tower of the World Trade Center that you should buy.
• No, I do not claim that this apply to other political systems. Your country might be an actual democracy.

First, the context: once, I was sent to provide pre-sale tech expertise for an IT project that was discussed with France's representatives in Brussels. I was baffled about the politics of this project. So the sales engineer gave me a crash course in Brussels politics before seeing the customer. Her knowledge was apparently accurate, since she was quite successful in this market.

There are (or were, at this time) about 25,000 bureaucrats in Brussels. Surprisingly, a similar number of people are working for various consulting and PR cabinets around Brussels. These persons are paid by various corporations or affluent SIGs (special interest groups) to prepare and execure PR campaigns with a public and a bureaucratic facet. The latter is mandatory: You have to convince bureaucrats that they need to do something that will just happen to advance your agenda. The former (public aspect) is an optional media communication plan, complete with astroturfing (fake letters to the editor of major newspapers, etc.) where the goal is to convince EU lawmakers that the public is concerned about an issue.

More than 90% of the Commission's decisions are directives, not laws. These directives are supposed to be strictly technical decisions (e.g., standardizing the sizes of condoms and the labelling of banana, I kid you not). But some decisions pushed into directives are really dictatorial and are so broad they should require major laws with the requisite discussions. Directives are not supposed to be earth-shattering decision, but the EU processes are so opaque and so ill-defined that, in practice, you can make directives about abything. Once a directive has been published (without any debate or feedback), it has to be applied by the member countries, or else. There is no easy way out once a directive has been published.

That's why a good lobbying campaign should end up with the publishing of a directive.

Let's take a not-so-imaginary example. Let's say you are a big agro-food business. Your stance so far was to push for high-margin, high quality products, and you were supporting a law requiring chocolate to contain no fat matter other than expensive cocoa butter, like Lindt or French chocolote. But you've just acquired the largest industrial chocolate company in Europe. It spews forth huge amounts of a cheap, browish crap with less than 10% cocoa, in which cocoa butter is replaced with peanuts oil and lard. Even Americans would find disgusting. But it's very profitable. So you need to reverse your stance.

Now, the eurocrats are not going to accept money from PR agencies. They are not that dumb. So a good PR agency will walk in the offices of the Directorate in charge of food and will tell the manager, "Hey, we are organizing a training session about the chocolate industry in the Bahamas. It's one hour a day for 5 days. Here are invitations, hotel reservations and airplane tickets for you and 20 of your most important coworkers. See you there." It's not a boondoggle, it's a technical vitality training session. Who would object? And it doesn't cost anything.

Of course, if you want these training sessions to keep coming, you should do these companies a small favor from time to time. So you accept the documents they give you and turn it into a directive. As an added bonus, the document is already pre-written in the awful form required by the eurocratic process.

That's how it works, folks. So I am not surprised that BSA is submitting a text for rubberstamping by the Commissars.

-- SysKoll