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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.
Does anyone know what sort of protections were in place for software developpers previously? If nothing, this will definitely cause some major upheaval in the business of software in Europe! More monopolies, more globalization of the American democracy-but-with-oligaries paradox.
Anyone who is in Europe now have some insight?
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..
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Just sign the petition if you haven't done this
petition agains European software patents
I live in the USA, where corporate interests hold no sway over our politicans. Clean up your act, Eurpoe!
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.
A couple of months ago I attended a conference on EU IP law as applying to the IT business. The EU Patent Office director was there himself, plus business representants and government officials.
Among other points, that EUPO director admitted to giving out software patents without any legal basis whatsoever.
Also, these officialls were quite obviously loaded very pro-patents. Noone questioned the 20 year duration (hell, thats 3-4 whole generations in IT), and my question about that was answered in quite a ridiculous way: "well if that seems too long for you, you can just drop your patent by not paying the fees any more...".
These guys also were smart enough to ask how many people were pro-patents, but not anti-patent - which of course I had to ask afterwards - the obvious 50/50 result (these were almost all lawyers and practically no techies) was then called "well about 1/3 against only".
Next chance I get to talk to the minister, I'll sure try to express the Free Software point of view. But since I'm from the smallest EU member country, I doubt that will have much weight, even if I can help to convince the higher-ups...
This nice shot in compination with the bottom of this page.
Taken from Ec faq
"Isn't software different to other technologies in that patents can be used to block legitimate independent innovation?
The Commission has seen little evidence that this has been a problem in practice in the present environment. This would be the case only if the scope of protection granted by patents were extended to software as such and, for instance, blocked the use of an algorithmic idea in other
technical fields from the one in which a patent is granted. Since the proposed Directive would not extend the scope of what can be patented, nor the scope of the protection granted by a patent, there should be nothing to fear on this front"
microsoft seems to spring to mind.
"Would the proposed Directive restrict the interoperability of computer programs?"
"..These exceptions include acts performed for the purposes of studying the ideas and principles underlying a program and the reproduction or translation of code if necessary for the achievement of the interoperability of an independently-created computer program. It is also specified that the making of a back-up copy by a lawful user cannot be prevented. Such provisions are necessary in the context of copyright law because copyright confers the absolute right to prevent the making of copies of a protected work. All the acts mentioned involve making copies and would therefore infringe in the absence of any exception."
This part seems to have implications for ebooks among other things, am I allowed make backups of the digital books I own, if I have to circumvent some copy protection to do it ?
"Why would claims to computer programs on their own not be permitted under the proposed Directive?
In recent decisions, patents have under certain conditions been allowed which contain claims for computer programs on their own, for example on a disk or even as a signal transmitted over the internet. In the course of consultations, fears were expressed that if enforced, patents including such claims may be used to prevent "reverse engineering" and other activities considered legitimate in respect of computer programs already protected under copyright law. Moreover, such claims could be said to be contrary to the EPC, which does not allow patents for computer programs "as such". In response to these concerns, the Commission has decided not to follow the direction taken by case law in this important respect. Accordingly, the proposal would not allow claims of this type to be considered valid."
It would seem that I can legitamtely make backups according to this, this also seems to have implications for the windows xp licence among other things.
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Just when it looks like the US might be realizing it's gone overboard with copyright and patent law, now here's a proposal to have the EU copy everything that's gone wrong with US IP law.
I thought originally patents were supposed to cover mechanisms. In the loose sense of the word, I suppose an algorithm is a mechanism, but *not* like Eli Whitney and the cotton gin, for crying out loud! In early landmark cases like Apple vs. Franklin (1983; Apple sued Franklin Computer for copying the ROM's on the Apple II+ directly to make a clone), the courts applied *copyright law*, not *patent law*. (Apparently you can only get a patent on generic ROM chips, not on ROM chips programmed a specific way.) The court used the (at the time) new Copyright Act of 1976 (which IMHO was much more reasonable than the DMCA is now!) to frame their decision. Unfortunately, the Lotus 123 case (Lotus vs. Microsoft), the Pentium name trademark case, and the Apple vs. Microsoft case, the courts significantly eroded copyright's ability to provide meaningful protection to software. So I think that's why companies have turned to software patents, because legally speaking, they're much more intractable. (Although there was obviously prior art for ripping off people through patents, e.g. LZW compression which *wasn't even original* (it was a derivative of the earlier LZ compression), yet was awarded a software patent.
Anyway, this is unfortunate, but it doesn't surprise me that the BSA would be pushing software patents. After all, they're the same people who estimate "sales lost to piracy" by counting the number of PC's sold without Windows and Office and ASSUMING that everyone having one of those PC's (a) really *is* running Windows and Office, they just pirated it, (b) would have paid for it to begin with. Plus they send threatening letters to companies telling them that "the BSA police might come knocking on their door," while simultaneously telling disgruntled employees to turn in their employers. Nothing like a little backstabbing to make our lives easier, eh. Oh well, the world is full of scumbags. Just my $0.02.
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Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
OK, that's it, I'm off to patent "Hello World".
/. readers suddenly cried out in terror...) and it's just as pathetic.
Weird, but it looks like, according to this legislation, I could as it's "in the field of technology".
Europe has relied on some pretty good Intellectual property and fair use laws.
Companies were protected by applying for patents on core technologies in their products, for instance the ever popular "Dyson" cyclonic vacuum cleaner. It doesn't mean nobody else can build a cyclonic vacuum cleaner, they just have to do so using thier own design of parts.
Unfortunately, European Ministers aren't used to digital technology. Britain is, scarily enough, one of the most advanced countries in terms of digital communications technology - and we can't even get a bloody *DSL line to most of the country! This means that Europe is well behind on incorporating Digital content and technology into it's legislation.
The big companies themselves are generously offering advice and support to politicians who are out of their depth.
When the "Civil Rights" or "Hacker" communities start to pick technical holes in your arguments, if you can say "Well this resspected coalition of Major Digital Dudes says I'm right" then you look a lot better in front of your peers.
The EU is trying to force through a version of the DMCA (I feel a great disturbance in the force, as if thousands of
more on that at http://uk.eurorights.org/
This proposal really only paves the way for this bill, by saying that copyright laws should be considered applicable to software. Once that's been accepted, the bigger and more difficult to swallow, bill will go down a bit easier now that you've already swallowed some of it.
It's nothing to worry about on it's own, except it may let me copyright just about any arbitrary function. When the big one hits, then see teh nasty things I'll be able to do to you if you use "my" Hello World app!
Chris.
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Now, I don't know about you, but I find a lot of this stuff in my desk drawer. Why, several people have made copies of cdroms crammed full of various programs and offered it to me for only the price of a blank CD!
The astute reader will have already caught my drift by now and realized that with Linux and the GPL (and all the other OSI licenses) you don't ever have to say sorry to the BSA. So why not taunt them? Report yourself today!
Actually, before someone jumps up and says something, let me point out that I don't think that reporting yourself to the BSA is really a good idea. It's like walking up to a 300 pound thug and saying something nasty about his mama. But we can dream, can't we?
:Peter
Business writes the laws and gives them to Congress for rubber stamp approval. The idea is that the affected businesses understand the issues better than Congress and can work out fair systems on their own.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
Don't take my word for it. Instead read this article from a couple years ago in Mother Jones magazine. It talks about how BSA offices end up pushing licenses for MS products even on companies that weren't illegally using them, but in fact were using other (competing) products.
For fairness, here is a link to a follow up letters column that disputes some of the facts in the article.
Quite an eye-opener.
"Flamebait=1"
/. moderators, but oh well.
I guess I should have included a link like this. Didn't think a clue-by-four would be necessary with
Software patents are good in theory, but bad in practice. At least the american type of patents.
Patents are often broad and trivial:
I mean, "one click shopping" for crying out loud!
Patents protect Big Corps more than startups and individuals. This renders the entire concept of patents useless. Supposedly, the meaning of pathents is to protect innovators from 800pound (soon to be 400kg, unfortunately) gorillas.
The combination of obvious, overly broad patents and increased Big Corp influens will obviously not favor innovation, since the Big Corps can patent everything and it's uncle no matter how trivial it is (they have the money to do so) and just sit back on their asses and collect money from other peoples work.
And trying to fight a Big Corp in court is next to useless if you are not a Big Corp yourself. More money generally beats less money...
This is not how things should be.
Stop this madness!
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
> The power of suggestion is not the power of authority.
...."
(-1, Naive)
A suggestion is simply a kindly worded threat. Imagine the BSA: "Patent software." Europe: "No" BSA: "Okay, time to find out how many pirated copies of Office you're using
"Old man yells at systemd"
I'm stating public support for the man's opinion. If you think thats a 'me too' crapflood, I have to wonder what the point of the internet is. A black hole for opinions? Where simple 'I agree' posts are not welcome, and public support for opinions are nearly impossible to gauge? And arn't you wasting bandwidth and being redundant in posting a "down with 'me too's" post?
Lighten up bub. I'm sure the mods will do what's appropriate.
"Old man yells at systemd"
MSWord's "Author" field
I love the convenience of M$ Office. It is so wonderful that I named my children after the components..."Quit painting the cat, Excel!!!" "Hey, Outlook, you don't look so good."
Actually, the "Author" field can be meaningless. I've edited files that other people started, and I don't get any credit. The meta-data in M$ Word just isn't very consistent over the life of the document.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
This is something I've always wondered about. If you get a software patent, you have a government granted monopoly on that for ~20 years - at which point it becomes public domain (when the patent expires everybody can reproduce it - this is the whole point of patents). What happens if that software is also copyrighted? Does the turning over to the public domain trump copyright? Does copyright trump patent law? How can something be an invention (patentable) and also speech (copyrightable)? Does anyone know? Is elvis dead?
Jon
then sue all the spammers...
Here is a very interesting article Richard Stallman published some time ago.
From their assorted examples, my favorite is a patent on a Method and apparatus for path name format conversion. Filed by Sun Microsystems perhaps as a way to annoy Microsoft, it's a method of converting Windows 95 filenames to Windows NT filenames. These guys crack me up.
My spoon is too big!
From the faq (In the answer to "Would the proposed Directive restrict the interoperability of computer programs?")...
It is also specified that the making of a back-up copy by a lawful user cannot be prevented.
According to this, wouldn't all of the copy prevention schemes be out the window? If it's unlawful for the companies to make a backup of my , that would make things like SafeDisc a thing of the past...
Unless it's argued that you can make backup copies, but they don't have to work (Which flies in the face of rational logic.. Then again, this is the law we're talking about).
This directive still has to be approved by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, I believe. So write to your MEP and to your national representatives (or minister in charge of this area).
Some countries such as France have given public statements that a move to allowe software patents will not be approved without clear demonstration of the economic advantages (which there isn't), so there's plenty of reason to think this directive can be stopped, just like the previous Commission initiative to 'harmonize' in favour of greater patentability.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
No, the problem with the US patent system is not the patentability of software; it's the patenting of stuff without a proper search of the prior art, the patenting of stuff that is obvious but happens to have no prior art because it's a new field, and the patenting of the trivial last step when the bulk of the work has been done by someone else.
In fact, these problems are true in other areas of endeavour too. It's not just software people who complain about the US patent system.
Not that I trust the EU patent office to avoid these mistakes, mind you.
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
Europe, always copying the US...
Too bad we Americans didn't think to patent legislative stupidity...
Even assuming you have a patent office staffed with geniuses gifted with eidetic memories, software patents mean that _every programmer_ must know the _entire patent base_ (6-7 figures already), and keep up (hundreds of applications per day)! Since this is obviously impossible, every piece of code ever written becomes a ticking time bomb of patent litigation. In American civil court, these cases take years (sometimes decades!) and cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to defend.
They are, in short, nothing other than a naked gift to large companies, with no demonstrable or even plausible public benefit. They are a versatile weapon, with which Microsoft, and a few others, can bludgeon their competitors and enemies.
I was shocked to see the EU contemplating them... but apparently things aren't so different from one hemisphere to the other.
We're on the road to Tycho.
I realize you probably just haven't thought about this very much and are trying to be fair.
8 378
Please read my comments on this:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=28274&cid=303
We're on the road to Tycho.
In Europe you cannot patent algorithms themselves.
However, you can build a hardware device that
implements the algorithm, and patent the machine.
AFAIK the patent will then cover the algorithm, too.
damn you lameness filter
...do you suppose it will be before software vendors eliminate the use of scripting in products because to allow an end user to write their own extensions to the software will inevitably run afoul of some patented idea. I'm just waiting for someone to patent the concept of automatically updating cells in a spreadsheet. (Actually, I'll be surprised if that hasn't already been patented.) Then every business on the planet that attempts to run a spreadsheet with formulas will owe someone a royalty. Won't that be nice.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Tonight we bring to you Patient rights brought to you by HMO Inc.
BRB, after these messages on Gun Control by Remington, and Freedom of speech by China.
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A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul. - George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)
Funnily enough, I've always been inclined to believe that that "naked gifts" of the roofied cheerleader variety played a big part in the corporate-government relationship.
It's phrased to be funny, but it's actually nauseating. Our "democratic processes" (US and EU) allow us to choose between one corrupt politician, another corrupt politician, or (if we're lucky) some honest people that never get chosen because we feel that we have to vote tactically to keep out whoever we view as the most corrupt of the two main candidates. And not voting is painted as being undemocratic (or it's illegal, as in Australia).
Thanks all the same, but I'll vote when I have a single transferable vote, 100% proportional representation, or a "none of the above" option. Voting for the lesser of two evils is not an option that I'm prepared to accept.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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:
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.
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Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
I am a young programmer writing free software in my free time as a hobby. Obviously, I don't search the whole patent base before writing every line of my code. I write something which happens to be patented. I release my program under GPL. My program is used by ten millions of people. The patent holder sues me, because ten millions copies of my program use his patented idea, which he can license to me for 10 cents per copy. Would I go to jail because I don't have million bucks? And I don't think the public opinion would see it as evil corporation suing kids inconvenient for their monopoly, it would be rather seen as evil hacker pirate anarchist punks versus good honest tax-paying corporation hiring thousands of employees.
How would such situation look like in the United States today? Does it mean that people who don't have fortune for lawyers, for searching the patent base every day, for legal defense and for potential licensing fees, should not even start programming because it can be to dangerous? Or should they emigrate to East Europe and South America, seeking freedom?
People seem to not understand that copyrights are enough for protecting software. It's like Van Halen patenting the tapping technique, because he thinks that copyright is not enough to protect is "intellectual property". He no longer needs to be good at it, because now he'll be the only one permitted to use that technique. Unfortunately people don't understand software and can believe in bullshit in which they would never believe if it was in the field of music. And believe me, Van Halen's solo from his first album was much more innovative than LZW, not to say about one-click and other farce.
Even if the patents will be given only to truely innovative ideas it's still to dengerous for me to write free software.
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
This means that any law aimed at increasing the scope and power of copyrights and patents ends up supporting the corporation against the individual.
Engineers as employees lose their intellectual property by virtue of being employees and moreso by signing blanket nondisclosure/noncompetition/IP theft contracts, and are prohibited from using their IP in future projects with different companies. This reduces the value of the engineer when applying for the next job (or asking for a raise).
Independent engineers are much more likely to face a lawsuit if the copyright holder is a corporation. If they infringe upon another human's copright, the issue is more likely to be resolved between the two individuals.
I have been lucky enough to have landed most of my jobs in situations where I had enough clout to make the changes I wanted to make to such agreements, but it has not and will not always be that way.
My father lost a number of patents to such agreements at a time when engineers had very little clout. He never saw a dime beyond his paycheck for inventions which made his companies real money. Furthermore, he got no recognition for his work (actually, I think his name is somewhere on the patent application - whoopee!).
It would be nice if patents and copyrights could only be held by individuals (of course, I have no idea what the actual ramifications of that would be), but the companies that own the government would never let us have that much control.
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually, as this article on ZDnet shows, the EU has gone a long way in making software more open. This is of course only a proposal but if any of it passes, the EU will be MUCH more liberal than the US.
Michael
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BDOS ERR ON A:>