Slashdot Mirror
More on European Software Patents
pdajames writes "An article at ZDNet UK says that the EU bureaucrats aren't even considering the numerous anti-software patenting opinions out there. According to a well-connected lobbyist group, they have determined there will be patents, and the only question is what kind."
In the new world order...
I will continue to hope that progress will be made in the way that societies handle 'intellectual property'. I don't think that any amount of lobbying could possibly end the month of june with the EU not having software patents. Given the political power of corporations in the US and the EU there seems to be no place for free thinking when money might be changing hands due to the outcome of the policy. There will be an EU patent process for software. Open Source Software will continue to adapt and grow while the corporations attempt to twist the judiciary and governments of the various countries of the world to get what they want... more money.
Fnord.sig
Are there any surveys that show that the majority of europeans support this SH**??
We live in a democracy?! WHY HAVE THESE F*CKING COMPANY-LOBBIES MORE RIGHT THAN THE CONSUMER THEY SHOULD SERVE???
Are our governments finally infiltrated by the corporate mafia?!
Sorry for ranting. But I think its pretty clear.
I'm feeling helpless. One notes the unfair situation here by the amount of argument the anti-software-patent-side has to do to let the politicians just LISTEN to their arguments. The pros say: Hey we need software patents because they are good for the economy. And the economy is good for you. Period.
And the politicians follow. Uhhhh....
Maybe I should grow up. Maybe I shouldn't bother. This is clearly the wrong forum to say that, I know...
But where else?
It does not surprise that the European Parliament is taking this attitude! We keep harping on the
Americans and how they let certain laws through. The reality is that politics is not about democracy, but about people keeping themselves in power.
This is reaching almost epic proportions because the politicians think those demonstrating and calling themselves anarchists are in the minimum. I am thinking more and more, are they really in the minimum? Is the talk of anarchists not just another comment to discount opinion that does not fit into the overall scheme of things.
To give you an example consider the following. Bill Gates can have dinner with Tony Blair. Gehard Schroeder can have dinner with Juergen Schremp. When was the last time either of them had dinner with Joe and Jane from the street? Of course I mean not during voting season. This is the problem. The elite are serving the elite!
And it is getting worse everday! Open Source does not fit into the scheme of things, because Open Source is not about being elite! See there's our problem! When was the last time Tony Blair had dinner with Linus, RMS or Eric Raymond? When was the last time any politician met with any Open Source person?
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
One of those assistants told me he's never seen such an enormous amount of public attention for a proposal in the two years that he has worked at the European parliament. He thinks there's actually a very good chance of preventing this proposal from getting approved. Really, it's easy to say "all politicians are alike" and "corporations own the politicians anyway" etc, but that's simply not true (note: I'm not a member of any political party nor politically active, except in cases like this). Yes Virginia, there still are a lot of people with a conscience in politics who want to do the best for society at large, they just need access to the right information. In cases like this, people like us can make the difference.
If a non-programmer or non-ip-lawyer reads a proposal like McCarthy's, I can perfectly imagine that it's not that difficult for that person to be convinced that she's indeed trying to protect the software development community at large. The background text of her proposal is really full of misleading and sometimes outright wrong statements to justify her goals.
For example, she cites one study which shows that software patents are beneficial to small and medium-sized companies. In the same footnote, she states that they also looked at several other studies, however, at least one of those concludes exactly the opposite. Nevertheless, the way it is put forth in her text, it seems as if all those studies show exactly the same results. There really are a lot of things like that...
Donate free food here
If a company does some real research in computer science then it invests millions of dollars and severals years of time into the development of new technologies. However without a strong system to prevent IP theft, any jerk company can come and steal those technologies. Even worse, the original inventor will go out of business because the thiefs don't have the development expenses, so that they can offer the products much more cheaply. And patents are there to prevent such stuff.
And copyright isn't strong enough for protection in such a case. The thiefs can get the technology by reverse engineering. But they are not copying the code, just the technology. So IP laws won't help and you cannot detect the reverse engineering unless some whistle blowers come out. Which is rather unlikely.
Many people fear that stuff like Amazon's one-click patent and other trivial patents will come out. But I don't think this is a real problem. Such trivial patents are cause by a fucked legal system. This is a well-known USian problem. But not a European one. Europe centers on the French system where the creation of new laws is dominated by legislation. Europe doesn't center around the UK/USian one where courts directly or indirectly create laws by interpreting the constitution. Remember that the patentability of business methods in the US came primarily from a court ruling. Europe simply doesn't have this problem.
So, I don't see why we shouldn't have software patents here.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.