Slashdot Mirror
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..
:
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.
_________________________________________________
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.
---
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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
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
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.
What you mentioned is extremely scary. Think about it. The device is a computer program. Well now you have a patent exclusivity on a way of programming. THIS IS BEZERK...
What gets me about this is the convience that the EU is bringing in patents.
Consider the following:
Although this group numerically dominated (90%) the response, the major sectoral bodies representing the information and communication technology industries, as well as many of the Member States, all supported the approach put forward by the discussion paper.
Yeah lets say you asked my Grandmorther if patents are good or not? She would say yes they are good, without understanding the ramifications. Damm convient if you ask me.
This smells like large corporation pressure. And the leaders of the world wonder why there are violent protests throughout the world whenever they get together?
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
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.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/