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EU Parliament to Vote on New Patent Rules
peter_sd writes "The Register has an article discussing the implications to the open source community and small software businesses of the new software patent law to be voted on tomorrow by the EU parliament. According to the article, it is very likely the new patent law will be accepted despite its grave consequences."
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"...the new patent laws would effectively make the use of Linux within the EU a crime..."
I guess all of you America-bashing socialists will have to stop complaining about Clinton's DMCA now.
People to get software patents and license them ONLY for use in GPL'd software. It would be similar to making copyright into copyleft.
So where can we go to unencumbered by software patents?
"According to the article, it is very likely the new patent law will be accepted despite its grave consequences."
For whom? The passer, or the passee?
It is really a pity that they did not listen more to the companies against software patents, user groups, petitions, and people like Smets-Solanes (who wrote a very interesting paper on the subject). The end result will likely be a smaller number of actors on the market, due to higher information costs, the need of negotiating cross-licensing with other actors and other stupid, unproductive patent related invention-stifling activities. There is no such thing as a law that can not be revoked, though, so keep on fighting.
A shift? As if "large multi-national corporations" haven't always had the upper hand anyway?
...only outlaws will have Free software.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Great Newst ml
The vote has been postponed until September 1st.
All info at:
http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/plen0626/index.en.h
This means we must have their attention.
Please contact your national FreeSoftware or digital-freedom group to organise an Adopt-an-MEP campaign. If the vote did take place tomorrow, we would lose but with the help of a few concerned citizens, we will win.
Ciaran O'Riordan
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
int i = 0; //EU Software Patent #00000000001
Pay Me Suckas!!!
"So where can we go to unencumbered by software patents?"
Wherever man isn't.
After listening to you assholes whine about how there "shouldn't be such a thing as intellectual property", the last thing I'd be inclined to do is give you retards even a single inch.
God knows you'd take a foot, and before long you'll end up sleeping on my couch because you can't afford to pay rent. Fucking commies.
If you don't like this - which you should:P, please sign this petition.
0x or or snor perron?!
If this passes, it could slow or even halt the development of the open source community. SCO and Microsoft could claim an open source OS like SuSE stole something from their OSes. We'd like to make the defendent pay all the court costs and we'd like to sue them for their use of the MS logo. - A prosucutor in a Berlin Court
The Register said (at http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/31472.html) :
It is politicians who make the law, and it is politicians who need to be persuaded if the law is to move in the direction that you desire it to. But while they are a peculiar and varied breed, there are three things you can be fairly certain will not hold much sway with them:
1. Ideological argument. Politicians are nothing if not pragmatic. Their very survival is based on seeing which way the wind is blowing and adjusting accordingly
2. Little-man defence. Politicians will not risk upsetting rich and powerful people and companies unless there is a principle at stake: that principle being that the government ultimately decides. Therefore arguing a point on the basis that it will restrict or impair a powerful body is counterproductive
3. Criticism. Politicians do not respond well to criticism. In fact, the more they get, the more stubborn they become. Flattery is the surest route to their heart, and this means making them feel important. Wining and dining, listening, applauding their insight and then putting your point across
1) That means profits over politics. The Open Source movement should have found some weapon to blackmail politicians into not allowing these new patent law changes to pass. For instance: "If you pass these laws these particular (thousands of) businesses will flee Europe and go elsewhere and take hundreds of thousands of jobs with them."
2) Tyranny of the few is still as true now as it has ever been. Hello, feudalism! Er, welcome back. Er, feudalism never really left!
3) Long live sycophantry!
We need less 'irony'ism and apathy, and more hard core fanaticism in this society.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
We have software patents in the US and have had it for many years. I'm not aware of any case where Microsoft or any other big company is trying to shutdown an Open Source project using patent laws. The claim that "with patent law allowed, the floodgates would be opened and Linux distributors swamped and bankrupted by court claims - with Microsoft leading the charge." is baseless.
Please put my balls in your mouth.
-- You are such a fucking fag
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it seems that if one of the 'big' (powerfull) countries decieds to tuffen laws on patents or copy rights all of the others folow suit no matter how terable these new laws are. for instance the u.s. used this justification the last time it extended copy right terms. not once do these polititions consider wheather it is in the best interests of the general public. this shit really pisses me off. :)
whats the point of a copyright that never ends?
There's little, however, that can be done (in today's corporatist environment) to prevent the granting of idiotic patents. That pretty much means there's nothing to be done about companies "buying markets" unless (or until) there exists an organization that would have an economic interest in defending against such practices.
No, in theory that could be the creative commons itself - i.e. acting as an IP defense fund in the interest of registrants and using the income from settlements and judgements to fund more actions. The problem there is, of course, that if it actually became successful at this then it's quite easy to see how people would then become critical of the org itself, bitching that it was an organization of judicial elite exploiting "free knowledge" to line it's own pockets. Whether or not there was any validity to thius would, of course, depending on the leadership of the organization. But it is a start, and there does exist a good bit of potential there - both for good, and for abuse.
i`m british, and this is exactly what the eu is, a piece of shit.
we want, and need to get out NOW.
WTF is a sig?
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It is, dare I say, ironic that Microsoft hasn't engaged in that activity, but there are plenty of other big companies that have and still are trying to shut down open source projects using patent laws. I'm not even going to bother quoting any, there's so many instances.
The claim that "with patent law allowed, the floodgates would be opened and Linux distributors swamped and bankrupted by court claims - with Microsoft leading the charge." is baseless.
You neatly chopped off the start of that quote, "The fear is that with patent law allowed...". They're not claiming anything, they're just giving a likely scenario. The aggressive anti-Linux retoric of the heads of Microsoft and their dubious involvement in the SCO vs Linux nonsense is enough to give weight to that outcome being likely.
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...someone will patent a very general method for patenting and then put the patent in a box and throw away the key. Surely, this patent will be accepted by at least the US Patent Office, putting themselves out of business.
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We have software patents in the US and have had it for many years.
For most of its history, the US software industry developed in the virtual absence of patents. Widespread use of software patents is largely a phenomenon of the late 1990s.
I'm not aware of any case where Microsoft or any other big company is trying to shutdown an Open Source project using patent laws.
People usually don't even start open source software projects that might infringe software patents. If they do, they usually do so in nations where the patents don't apply, and as a consequence will have a hard time reaching critical mass in the US.
Software patents also have had a chilling effect on commercial development. And they are a drag on research, costing enormous amounts of money to obtain and having little commercial benefit.
As for Microsoft, they didn't use to have a patent portfolio. But, in the spirit of mutually-assured destruction, they have been catching up fast. Expect direct or indirect Microsoft claims against open source projects soon.
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20 un-elected council members rule the EU. Its completely non-democratic. The EU sucks.
I see them as a growth industry when software giants try to crush open source developers with bogus software patents.
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This is more a reply to the Register than to Travoltus' post, but did it occur to Kieren McCarthy that blackmailing politicians into action is not the kind of government most people want and that we are trying to exhibit the kind of considered action we want to see more of in our government? I would not consider doing one's homework and presenting a complete case "blackmailing", so perhaps that wasn't the best language for the author to pick.
I have some experience working on political campaigns (two local: one Congressional, one for local city council) and I'm active in my community on a number of other issues, so I'm aware of McCarthy's argument and how to wage it. And it would be valuable to do the research to be able to make that argument. But I think this is one of the weaknesses of the free software and open source movements--we don't mobilize our varied talents well.
Does anyone reading this have the skill needed to address the jobs concern? Or know of anyone who can help? We need help now.
I'm quite familiar with Stallman's excellent speech on the matter of software patents and how it adversely affects free software development. Part of that speech encourages us to consider that patents for one area of endeavor doesn't mean all areas of endeavor should have patents. Has this point been made clear to legislators? Has it been supported with examples of areas where patents would be a big problem (two hypothetical examples off the top of my head: legal argument strategies and surgical techniques--either of which could both lead to people losing their lives due to waiting for the patent holder to choose to represent or operate on them)?
Digital Citizen
Can you post a "html tag to text" version so we can copy and paste?
As the Register article points out, one of the reasons we're going to lose is that we didn't even try to convince them. We shouted, we hurled abuse, we held huge meetings and didn't invite the other side, but we didn't actually contact them with an explanation of why the proposed change was bad. ("Open letters" don't do shit, no matter how well-written they are.)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
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anusfeast
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I want to persoanlly thank the EU parlement - for crippling their own software industry and thus eliminating a competitive threat to that of the US.
Now if only India, Asia, South America, and Africa would do the same.
=============
It's like protective tarrifs. "If you keep shooting off your own feet we'll have to retaliate by shooting off ours. So there!"
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Ciaran O'Riordan, what can Americans do to help?
Digital Citizen
In this world the 'regulating' government bodies will call the regulated 'customers' (See mike powell head of the fcc) and consumer will be defacto criminals (see RIAA, MPAA etc)
I have coined a phrase for this, the high-tech dark age.
Gat a lawyer, and be ready to file these patents. Patent everything in the Linux Kernel, and the GNU tools that come with most distibutions.
/. Fallout
If GoodGuy {
Then set it up so that it and anything that could be considered a derivitive is royalty free.
}
ElseIf BadGuy {
demand royalties from anything remotley similiar
}
Else {
Go gat a mocha and wait for the
}
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Good news everyone I have if figured out.
... I dunno I figured if I said it twice maybe I could belive it.
Ok my the new patent system works like this, you have to apply for the patent before you actually invent it, if the invention exists at all at the time you first place you patent you are denied (this would include if you already have a product on the market and you are just now patenting it). Second your patent is put in holding where anyone else can see it and if someone else produces a working model within the time frame the patent is void.
If the point of patents is to encourage research as opposed to monopolistic tactics then this will do it.
If the point of patents is to encourage research as opposed to monopolistic tactics then this will do it.
The current SCO/IBM trials should be a stark warning for how well this will work. You will have lost with the first patent you fail to get. Your enemies will be taking your money to pay their lawyers to steal more or your ideas. That is what SCO is doing, now isn't it? It's not like they developed anything, ever. Is this what you want? In the end, you will be no better than your enemies or you will not exist.
Self preservation is not an ideological argument. If the EU does this, large US companies will crush EU software developers, free software will die and all EU governments will end up running M$. These beurcrats need to do a typical M$ install and push that "I submit" button a few times. There's no two ways about it, dipshits like Bezos will flood their system with junk just like they do the US system. This EU deal with the devil will leave the EU burnt.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
yes, they said wining and dining and flattering were the approved methods, which is another way of saying bribing and scmoozing and conning.
It's all tied together, these and so many other apparently illogical actions on the part of many current governments...
There's a solution, but it involves a more... umm... pro active response on the part of millions of people, all acting in concert with each other, across the EU..and the US....
We will have a few superpowers in name, all run by a handful of multinational corporations.
Hey look! A derivative work, probably violates some law! And I don't care!
ya code sixteen hours
and waddaya get
another day older and deeper in debt...
St. Linus doncha call me
cause I can't g-o-o-o-o-o...
I owe my soul to de company sto...
This story was hit by the biggest crapflood I have ever seen.. Is this what all those trojaned Windoze computers are used for? Trolling on dotslash?
Speaking of patents, one of the most ridiculous software patents I've seen in the US is the interface to the game The Incredible Machine. Nobody can make a game with gizmos used from a gizmo-bar to make things happen.
A solution to the problem with music today
That's an odd comment for the author to make. I think Alan is asserting his answer by the questions he is posing, as they are formed a very certain way: Our current system protects the entrenched rich in their physical properties, and now we need to extend that protection, regardless of the concepts of freedom, liberty, or even (actual) fair trade to continue to protect the entrenched rich. In fact, we should extend it over "Intellectual Property," a vile and deceptive term, recently discuessed by R.Stallman in his column regarding the SCO Saga and what it means for GNU.
Is this really extending the rights of those who need to protect their property, or to squash "unfair competition"?
"Other bands play, but Manowar KILLS"
I guess it's probably because you've never had any original ideas of your own, so you don't recognize the problem faced by those that do.
Although it will of course amaze you, not everyone that has an idea gets it by "stealing" it from others. Yes, it happens, stunning isn't it!
It's not as if having an idea makes it impossible for someone else to have the same idea independently, yet that view is what patents enshrine. The reality of the matter is that we all live in a very active sea of ideas, and the collosal majority of patent applicants gain their inspiration from a common public pool. To then shut out others from germinating the same seeds is simply not right. Except in very rare cases, those ideas are just not theirs alone to gain from.
.. has been patented by the US Senate. EU Parliament can't do that this way...
Software patents - Obstacles to software development
Richard Stallman
[Transcript of a talk presented 2002-03-25 at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, organized by the Foundation for Information Policy Research. This transcript and audio recording by Nicholas Hill, HTML editing and links by Markus Kuhn.]
You might have been familiar with my work on free software. This speech is not about that. This speech is about a way of misusing laws to make software development a dangerous activity. This is about what happens when patent law gets applied to the field of software.
It is not about patenting software. That is a very bad way, a misleading way to describe it, because it is not a matter of patenting individual programs. If it were, it would make no difference, it would be basically harmless. Instead, it is about patenting ideas. Every patent covers some idea. Software patents are patents that cover software ideas, ideas which you would use in developing software. That is what makes them a dangerous obstacle to all software development.
You may have heard people using a misleading term "Intellectual Property". This term, as you can see, is biased. It makes an assumption that whatever it is you are talking about, the way to treat it is as a kind of property, which is one among many alternatives. This term "Intellectual Property" pre-judges the most basic question in whatever area you are dealing with. This is not conducive to clear and open minded thinking.
There is an additional problem which has nothing to do with promoting any one opinion. It gets in the way of understanding even the facts. The term "intellectual property" is a catch-all. It lumps together completely disparate areas of law such as copyrights and patents, which are completely different. Every detail is different. It also lumps together trademarks which are even more different, and various other things more or less commonly encountered. None of them has anything in common with any of the others. Their origins historically are completely separate. The laws were designed independently. They covered different areas of life and activities. The public policy issues they raise are completely unrelated. So, if you try to think about them by lumping them together, you are guaranteed to come to foolish conclusions. There is literally no sensible intelligent opinion you can have about "Intellectual Property" . If you want to think clearly, don't lump them together. Think about copyrights and then think about patents. Learn about copyright law and separately learn about patent law.
To give you some of the biggest differences between copyrights and patents: Copyrights cover the details of expression of a work. Copyrights don't cover any ideas. Patents only cover ideas and the use of ideas. Copyrights happen automatically. Patents are issued by a patent office in response to an application.
Patents cost a lot of money. They cost even more paying the lawyers to write the application than they cost to actually apply. It takes typically some years for the application to get considered, even though patent offices do an extremely sloppy job of considering.
4:05Copyrights last tremendously long. In some cases they can last as long as 150 years, where patents last 20 years, which is long enough that you can outlive them but still quite long by a timescale of a field such as software.
Think back about 20 years ago when a PC was a new thing. Imagine being constrained to develop software using only the ideas that were known in 1982.
Copyrights cover copying. If you write a novel that turns out to be word-for-word the same with Gone with the Wind and you can prove you never saw Gone with the Wind, that would be a defense to any accusation of copyright infringement.
A patent is an absolute monopoly on using an idea. Even if you could prove you had the idea on your own, it would be entirely irrelevant if the idea is patented by somebody else.
I hope you will forget about
Some people are already working on this, please work with them:
l d=0&commentsort=0&tid=155&tid=99&mode=thread&pid=6 327875#6328000
http://www.nongnu.org/padb/
Development of the database is being worked on at:
http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/padb/
and the software used is Free Software, available at:
http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/topas/
Lobbying EU MEPs is still the best thing we can do right now, people from any country can do this. I gave an example for what an American can do in a later post:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=69331&thresho
Ciaran O'Riordan
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Don't fuck with the open source software community. Right now big companies are trying to knock it out using the goverment and the media because they don't like it, and trust me on this one, if they ever managed to make open software illegal, how many white cap hackers do you think would go black overnight and decide permenantly and perpetually destroying the infastructure of companies like microsoft, ibm, sun, etc is the way to show protest?
I don't know about you guys, but protests aren't working, letters aren't working, e-mails aren't working. Voting is not working, propaganda isn't working. There's only 1 alternative after peacful protest; violent protest and our leaders are too dumb to realize that if they piss enough people off, they are dead meat literally.
So label me a terrorist for conveying the message bitch, I'm getting to the end of my rope and patience.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
You make a serious point. Newsclips of late have portrayed European governments as highly sympathetic to the needs of their local economies. I doubt the EU can survive the damage to their credibility if they pass this and Munich et al. gives them the bird. Despite zealots, governments in Europe at every level have a huge interest in seeing that Linux thrives. It's a home grown OS for them and an enormous chunk of Europe (15%) depends on Linux. Europeans will get along only if the EU isn't pulling stupid stunts that hurt individual member states. Corporate influence is much weaker because of this dynamic.
Laws are for people with no friends.
I like the part about inventors being protected. Any poor schmuck can invent an algorithm and sell it to earn a living rather than allowing some rich jerk reverse engineer it and use it in a business.
Software is typically not locked into a jurisdiction. It's production is not confined to a factory. There is no bricks and mortar as long as the software is not used to run a business with a bricks and mortar element.
If the Internet is fast enough, software can be running on a server far away where no patent restriction exists.
The new patent law will cause a spike in inflation. Initially software developers will pay a lot to get as many patents as possible on many little routines. No one wants to leave any crumbs around. If many patents come into existence, there may be a large number of lawsuits going around with people trying to grab as much money as possible. This will cause all kinds of businesses thinking of new software to raise prices.
The inflationary surge should start soon, even before the vote. Programmers that anticipate a patent deadlock, the situation where patent holders sue each other for every little software tidbit, have to raise capital now to patent as much as possible. Research has to be done to prepare for patent applications. No one wants to miss the boat.
What has to be prepared? I'm not an expert in patent law, but the software developer has to show that the software does something not done before in existing patents, at the very least. This will mean searching the patents as well as explaining what the software does so nicely. Time consuming and expensive but the loser pays the winner so it's worth it.
One can bet that all the large companies that get in the race will try to patent everything and the kitchen sink so a lot of software may be unpatentable due to competing claims received at the same time for the same thing.
All the same, no one wants to find out that quicksort has been patented by IJKIJK Inc. all because no one else competed for it.
A ton of money was spent on Y2K. Now a frenzy of spending will occur for patents.
Let's compile lists of software, patented and yet-to-be-patented.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Why not? Why not find a linux advocate that cares and also is a lawyer. So we set up a community effort to pool our resources and counter the threat that big corporations have always imposed. We could beat their cases in court, ban together to change the law. Since big business has money we need to have cohesion.
Jeoin
How will these patent laws effect governments which are trying to use open source? They might have more pull than anyone.
Hello Cruel World
The Laws will always be owned by the rich and powerful. The way of sharing, free software is alien to them. This way has grown too strong for their liking. They are pybassing the copyright law so far misused for our benefit.
We can't fight on their terms. We can't make free software something it isn't, to make it understandable for them. Open source is a scam. It does lip service, but it is irrelevant, it does no good against attacks like the patent law. At best they are at loss; at worst they abandon free software altogether.
The best options available are resistance and finding ways of making them irrelevant.
I, for one, have hope at peer to peer software. They can never drain that swamp, short of shutting down the Internet. They are a behemoth, able to smash large things, but a multitude of small things can evade it, even bring it down. The swamp is what we must defend and extend. GPL is just a fortress for them to storm. GPL relies on the law, it is vulnerable to it. They own the law.
I will continue to release software under the GPL as thus far. But if they come after me with their petty patent law, you will know where to find further releases.
One reason this has come up as an issue, is because the US (via the WTO) have been applying pressure to countries around the world to "reform" their IP systems -- to match the US' own system -- for quite a while.
The TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) treaty, and GATT, are the main methods used to do this. The FFII page on the treaty notes 'Article 27 has often been construed by patent lawyers to imply that patent claims must be allowed to extend to computer programs' (my emphasis).
FFII go on to make the case that this can be circumvented BTW; here's hoping, since all of Europe has signed up to TRIPS AFAIK.
http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/plen0626/index.en.ht ml
no?
Patent laws apply to processes right? That's how they're able to apply to that stupid "one click" thing. So how about applying for a patent towards various processes that various government beurocracies use? That way massive lawsuites could be launched against the government ordering them to cease and desist from using them, and causing the governments to run into huge problems. So the politicians will alter the patent laws, and thus many if not all of the software patents would become invalid. Sure a valid patent even under the current rules couldn't exist, but there are plenty of invalid patents being given all the time. So all it would take is several filings of various properly obfuscated patents to get one of these.
It looks as though, despite widespread and deep criticism, the report will be adopted. And this will probably mean a shift of power from small software companies and the open source community to large multi-national corporations.
OK, this is laughable. Two reasons. 1) Corporations already have the power, and 2) Without patent law, individuals and small companies would have more power over huge corps. Anyone can file a patent, it only costs a few hundred dollars. And believe it or not individuals can and do prevail in court over large companies in patent disputes.
Without patents, anyone can sell tools that do the same things. Who ever has the most resources wins. If, without patents I thought up an innovative software tool, Microsoft could implement it and throw it into windows. With patents, they can't.
I do think patent mania has gone a little too far, but acting like they are pure evil is just stupid.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
If you havn't noticed, here in the US you can patent anything. This is also the country that orgionated the GPL and Free Software. Free software has been around for over 20 years in this environment, and there's no reason to suspect it will die in europe under much more sensible patent laws that do allow software patents.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Can anyone confirm this?
AC comments get piped to
Arising solely out of case law, however, an experimental use exception has been offered as a defense to patent infringement. At this point the experimental use exception can be summarized as offering a defendant an excuse to patent infringement when the use of the patented invention is for the sole purpose of gratifying curiosity or a philosophical taste, or for mere amusement.
Unless the person in your example has a "profit motive" in mowing his lawn, you're wrong.
Look, there are a couple of problems with this database:
(0) They require CVS. That's awkward. Lots of people have ideas who don't use CVS.
(1) It's website is, by the URL, non-GNU. My worst nightmare would be submitting to this site, and later finding that they patented it. Microsoft would love to buy a site like this. How do I know this won't happen? They don't describe their process; they just say "oh, it's here." That bothers me. Can the FSF verify this site?
(2) the PADB should be sending its ideas to the appropriate developers for possible development. Specifically, coders should be able to sign up for the class of coding they they do, and submitters should be able to direct information to them. But there's a name for this: a journal. At the very least, all ideas in the DB should *also* be published on the web. I should be able to go to a website, and either browse or search.
---Now, what I think the PADB should be doing instead:---
(3) Time-stamping is easy: simply submit a copy of your information to the Library of Congress (US) or any other national library.
(4) Both (2) and (3) can probably be accomplished by publishing a journal would do the trick. Typically, as people subscribe to journals, they also pay a small amount -- or advertisers pay.
(5) As available, the PADB should also research true prior art, to break patents that are strangling free software. Those should be published as well, with a reference.
(6) I have no idea whether this site will do this or not, but the site should keep a database of the inventors. Probably the inventors have more ideas, or have done more work than is published. Therefore, they are an ideal consultant.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I believed the EU Parliament had about no power, that its main role was only controlling the other institutions.
After a little research:
The Parliament's powers, which have grown very substantially since the 1957 Treaty of Rome and especially since the 1986 Single European Act, now include: * the right to examine, amend, or reject most proposals for EU legislation and the EU budget; * the right to approve the appointment of the President and other members of the European Commission; * the right to approve all important agreements with non-member countries, including the admission of new members; * the right to examine every aspect of EU activity through questions to the Commission and the Council of Ministers, special committees of inquiry, and regular debates on the Union's annual legislative programme and the work-programme of each six-month presidency.
And more specifically, since the Amsterdam treaty:
The EP's powers were radically altered by the Treaty on European Union signed at Maastricht in 1992 (and hence known as the Maastricht Treaty). As a result of this treaty (which entered into force on 1 November 1993), Parliament wields a power of codecision together with the Council of Ministers on legislation in important policy areas including the single market, culture, education, health, research and the environment. Parliament's lawmaking powers have been significantly expanded as a result of the Amsterdam Treaty, which was signed on 2 October 1997 and entered into force on 1 May 1999. From now on the EP will have an equal say on legislation in 38 areas instead of the current 15. These will include employment, social policy, health, transport, consumer protection, further developments in the single market (e.g. free movement of workers and freedom of establishment), education and vocational training. The basic assumption of the codecision procedure is that Parliament and Council are equal. Its aim is to bring about a consensus between the two institutions. Agreement is reached via the "conciliation procedure", which follows on from Parliament's second reading. Under this procedure Parliament and Council are equally represented on a Conciliation Committee, whose task is to reconcile divergent positions of the two sides. Experience shows that in the vast majority of cases the procedure works. When it doesn't work, the legislative process has failed. This means that, under codecision, EU legislation cannot be adopted against Parliament's will.
So it seems we have to see what the European Council (which holds true power) has to say on this matter.
I should offer one more comment here. I *do not* have good website development skills. I *do* have a prepublishing company. I think that starting a journal and publishing it would be well within the range of possibility and practicability, but what we do not have is money.
So the only way I could publish a journal would be if there were enough subscribers and/or advertisers to cover the cost of page layout and publication. Initially, that would mean black and white print, "text ads", minimal layout, small print, and such. I would be willing to do this, as long as I got as much out of it as it cost me [that is, paper, and I and my family and our workers continue eating].
But there are other prepublishers out there, as well. Any of them could do the job, probably for a similar price. Some could do it for free. But no matter who does it, I really think that paper publishing still needs to be done, both for idea distribution and for the reassurance that the ideas aren't being patented.
If you are doing the publishing, then there are a bunch of methods that can help, including: compiling all information to CD ISO images; printing to polyester paper on an HP DJ5000, and using the polyester paper as an offset print plate; each idea gets its own index number, and the index numbers are then entered into the appropriate classifications. That's for starters.
But I can say immediately that this can't be done without a good web development team, as well [something which I cannot do]. Businesses will want paper and some programmers will prefer paper; but the Free Software developers are too web oriented to let things be limited to paper.
Anyhow, if there is someone who wants to get an FSF idea journal going, and has a web development team, and compiles a list of subscribers, and wants to contact me, they can do so: reply to my journal entry, or to any recent post.
But I probably am not ideal, and if you can get someone who is ideal, so much the better. Look around, especially for those in your own hometown -- but also realize that time is running out. The prior art search service really needs to be up and running *before* the EU patents go through, lest GNU's momentum be destroyed.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
It is known since Thursday 26 June that the vote will not occur on 30 June. Despite pressure from the pro-patent UK labour rapporteur Arlene McCarthy, the conference of group presidents in the Parliament has decided that the vote in plenary will occur only in September.
A little more time to convince Members of the European Parliament of all parties of the the common sense decision: rejecting patents for software ideas and information processing methods.
http://petition.eurolinux.org/index_html?LANG=en
Help out the http://www.ffii.org/en by direct support or just by donation of money.
Sign the Eurolinux anti patents petition
Write to your member of the European Parliament, emails usually can be found at the homepages of the political parties of your country.
And please don't just do the usual british anti eu rants here, the main proponent of software patents is from britain. Everybody knows whom I'm talking about.
It's OK, the Italians will ignore it and create a safe haven for open source in Europe! (Seriously, the Italians are notorious for supporting every piece of EU legislation during its creation, then failing to comply once it comes into force.)
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
This would simply use a software licensing term to send a clear message. Want to patent your software? Fine, but you won't get to use it with any open source software.
Everyone is trying to put their damn finger in the dike regarding this stuff. I say we pull our fingers out of the holes and let the place flood. Then we will see how companies like it when they want to use everyone else's work to their financial benefit while not sharing.
You think Amazon and it's "one-click" crap doesn't use open source software to actually implement the idea?
150'000+ people has already signed.
http://petition.eurolinux.org/
A pondering/suggestion:
I think it is time to put our money where our mouths are, since it seems that at the present hour, this is the only way to be heard. The saying "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," seems to be apropos right now. I mean, there have got to be a least a million users of Linux that are aware of the issues at hand, earn their living in large part due to OSS and GPL'd software, either through coding or adminstering it, and/or both combined. I'd wager that at least a million or so of us could donate 100 U.S. dollars each to some general fund to promote the interests of OSS and GPL. I think it's time we all realized that our asses are on the line and if we don't put up a good fight now it's game over. How much is your freedom worth to you? How much is your time worth to you, and then consider the countless hours you will waste using proprietary once you no longer have a choice - not to mention the things you will never be able to do should you be forced to use only proprietary software. You can accuse me of being an alarmist, but it seems to me that this is the intention of the BSA et. al. These are ruthless, amoral people that aren't happy until they have total control, people who consider sharing a trait of "suckers".
Everyone on this site seems to want to bash RMS, but excuse me, where is Linus while this EU putsch is going down? I mean, if for no other reason, he should be a little concerned about his own rearend, because if things keep going the way they are, he'll be next in line for a lawsuit. You may not agree with everything RMS says, but at least he's out there doing battle. It's 5 til' midnight, doesn't Linus have anything to say about this. WTF! If not Linus, somebody in a leadership position needs to standup and ring the donation bell real loud and clear and lead the charge because We are losing the battle.
European Parliament Rejects Attempt to Rush Vote on Software Patent Brussels 20030626 For immediate Release The European Parliament has postponed the vote on the software patent directive back to the original date of 1st of September, thereby rejecting initially successful efforts of its rapporteur Arlene McCarthy (UK Labour MEP of Manchester who acted as a rapporteur for the directive in the parliament) and her supporters to rush to vote on June 30th, a mere twelve days after publication of the highly controversial report and tend days after the unexpected change of schedule. Background Members of Parliament from all parties had complained that it was impossible to react adequately within a timeframe of 10 days. Until Wednesday, leaders of the two largest blocks, the socialists (PSE) and conservatives (PPE), seemed determined to follow the recommentations of their "patent experts" and go ahead with the vote quickly. They explained that there was no reason to wait, because all possible amendment proposals had already been submitted to the committees and translated to all languages, and there was no need for new amendments. This view however became increasingly difficult to uphold, as more and more MEPs in all parties became aware of the schedule change and pointed out that they wanted to prepare new amendments. Within the socialist group, a large opposition group, possibly the majority, gathered around Michel Rocard (FR), Luis Berenguer (ES), Evelyn Gebhardt (DE), Olga Zrihen (BE) and other MEPs who had played a prominent role in resisting software patentability. On Wednesday the climate change became apparent. More and more MEPs rumored that the schedule would not be upheld. Even (11)Arlene McCarthy was quoted as saying that it might be too tight. A spokesman from the (12)General Directorate for the Internal Market of the European Commission, which has been pushing for the directive together with Arlene McCarthy and other allies in the Parliaments Commitee for Legal Affairs and the Internal Market (JURI), meanwhile told journalists: "Arlene McCarthy has tried hard to have the vote conducted on June 30th, but as things now stand, this looks rather unlikely." On Thursday morning, at the meeting of the secretary generals, the representatives of all political groups voted for postponment. Their vote was confirmed by the conference of presidents (i.e. head of transnational party groups) during their session at 3 p.m. At 8 p.m. the decision was made public on the Parliament's (13)schedule webpage. Many software professionals have been contacting their MEPs in recent days. A letter by (14)Tim Jackson, operations manager for Internet Assist Ltd in Chelmsford, UK, reflects the mood : Almost all involved in software in Europe, bar a select few large corporations, and law firms who make money from litigation and legal complexities, are opposed to software patenting. There is a huge groundswell of opinion amongst the real software engineers (who understand the complex process and history of software development) which favours strong and unambiguous prohibition of patents on software. Copyright is the right tool to protect software, not patents. By using grossly misleading and emotive language such as "giving software innovators the protection they deserve" the proponents are trying to give the appearance that software developers and businesses are crying out for "protection" by patents, when quite the opposite is true - we (and society at large) actually want and need protection from software patents! (...) If any of you intend to vote in favour of the proposed Directive, may I ask you to be so kind as to explain to myself your reasons for concluding that this is in the interests of Europe? The eyes of many IT-literate constituents are on you, and you will undoubtedly permanently lose many of our votes (certainly including mine) should you choose to support this assault on our livelihoods and interests. This groundswell of public sentiment, together with a concerted lobbying effort by a group of 2000 software companies
The problem is that todays politicians are not public's representatives anymore - in fact they support the companies that have helped them during election or give them another pay beside their already quite huge daily allowance.
However, stupid public elects those people again and again. So what do you expect?
Of course it happens.
Your are just to blind to see. Check this case in which a german mathematican was stopped from distributing his software by some americn patents...
But in effect there are only three weeks to go, because for most of that time the MEPs are away on holiday.
To be more precise:
- Next week [30/06 - 04/07] we can lobby in Strasbourg (Session).
- The week after [07/07 - 11/07] we can lobby in Brussels (Committee meetings).
... after that there is no official business scheduled all summer ...- Finally [25-29/08] there is one week in Brussels before the September session which starts on 1st September.
Even then, attendence for the two outlying committee meeting session-weeks in Brussels is notoriously poor.The MEPs' UK constituency offices stay open over the summer, but politics in Brussels essentially shuts down.
So the next two weeks are critical.
Most of the political groups will decide in Strasbourg *this week* what line they will take, before all the MEPs go away.
The PSE members from other countries ought to reflect upon the fact that the primary motivation for a representative from the party that is in government in the UK is quite likely to be that the UK government is interested in nurturing its "special relationship" with the US, rather the (dis-)merits of the proposal in an of itself. While this may be a perfectly rational stance for the UK Labour party to adopt, it does not automatically follow that it makes sense for the representatives from other European countries to support it, despite the fact that they may be members of the same political group inside the European Parliament.
For this reason I would urge in particular those Slashdot readers whose political affiliations are with the other PSE parties in other European countries to contact their respective Members of European Parliament, and make the case against software patents to them. It could very well be that some of those MEPs were just intending to support the bill out of loyalty to their political friends, rather than on deeply held convictions, and that they might be quite prepared to listen to reasonable arguments (if they are presented in a polite and coherent manner).
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
The truth is, we have about three weeks to go, because for most of the summer the MEPs are away on holiday.
To be more precise:
- Next week [30/06 - 04/07] we can lobby in Strasbourg (Session).
- The week after [07/07 - 11/07] we can lobby in Brussels (Committee meetings).
... after that there is no official business scheduled all summer ...- Finally [25-29/08] there is one week in Brussels before the September session which starts on 1st September.
Even then, attendence for the two outlying committee meeting session-weeks in Brussels is notoriously poor.The MEPs' UK constituency offices stay open over the summer, but politics in Brussels essentially shuts down.
Most of the political groups will decide in Strasbourg this week what line they will take, before all the MEPs go away.
Predictions of the demise of computing, or even the demise of European computing, seem a little premature, IMO. Whenever this sort of thing is discussed on /., people respond as if we are talking about the law of the Medes and the Persians, ie once it's passed it can't be modified or recinded. A brief look at EU legislation in any other area shows that this is not the case.
Take farming legislation. At one point, the EU was paying farmers to remove hedges from between fields to allow US-scale farming technology. Lots of people said it was a dumb idea, the EU persisted, the topsoil blew away, and now the EU is paying farmers to put the hedges back. Probably not the best environmental scenario imaginable, but it could have been a lot worse.
On the 35-hour week, one of the cornerstones of EU employment law, countries like the UK never bothered to enforce it, and countries like France who did are now backpeddling like mad before unemployment rises any further.
The EU is not the Beast, it's just not clever enough. It doesn't have much of an ideology, despite France's best efforts to give it one. It's the world's biggest fudge factory. The people who draft the legislation like regulation, but if it hurts national interests those people get stomped on.
IF software patents are approved, and IF they are enforced at national level (in Italy?? Greece???), and IF large companies set out to destroy small companies, the legislation will be changed. The first time a non-French company threatens French jobs through patents enforcement, I would expect the French government to take unilateral action, backed by the majority of their population and the Germans, and simply refuse to budge until the EU caves in, much as they did over BSE (the UK had the law squarely on their side, but what difference did it make?) I saw an article in a national French newspaper six months ago about a powerful French lobby demanding that French computer games be classified as 'art', like films, so that the government can limit and tax US imports, subsidise French computer games, enforce quotas in shops and cybercafes...
So if you guys the other side of the Pond want to see this law withdrawn, lobby a big American company to threaten a French one, and Chirac will do the rest :-)
The same is true for patents in the US, except that the rebound would be faster and harder. Politicians are stupid, but they aren't that stupid.
Virtually serving coffee
I saw him at a conference in 2000 on "Collaboration and Ownership in the Digital Environment" - a big multidisciplinary thing on IP. He was as you say, a prepared, coherent and persuasive speaker.
Then the next speaker came on, an EU patent lawyer, to describe the current system. He pointed out that you can already patent software in the EU, you just have to use the right phrasing. Somewhere in the middle of this, RMS went bersek and started ranting from the audience. People had to persuade him to leave before the lawyer could continue.
If that had been, say, an internal EU consultation on patents, someone would have called security and that would have been the end of the Free Software community's involvement in the process.
RMS is not always a zealot, but flashes of zealotry are just too inappropriate for the modern political environment. A different representative is needed for that, and one has not yet appeared.
I should note that if that is true, then that implies that money has bypassed the popular power already, before the EU has even gotten its constitution.
In such a case, that doesn't mean that the people are without power -- far from it, it means that the people have more power (it isn't reigned in by governmental process), but only with the power modes that are normal to popular voice.
Typically, that's ended up being Russian or French revolution. That's bad; very, very bad.
On the other hand, let us consider: if popular power, not given a voice in the government, becomes more powerful within its realm, then what should we do about the power of money, which is overthrowing the other forms of power (wise counsel/courts, charismatic leader/president, popular power/lower house, ethnic group/Senate)?
I would suggest that if this is the case, the EU's parliament needs to give an official voice to money, but in a way that reigns in it's unsettling characteristics. For example, allow a third house that has *only* bought seats, sold at auction to the highest bidder [365 seats, 1 sold per day, good for 1 year], that has the power to block new law, but not to write or introduce new law.
Of course, they don't have to. But a government's modes of failure depend on its structure. So if they don't, my advice would be to stay out of the population centers (cities, for example) when [not if] civil unrest begins. It's bound to be bloody.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
It's one thing to say that violence comes from ignoring the power of the people. That's a political science theorem. It might be right, it might be wrong.
It's entirely another thing to advocate violence. Be very careful what you say, therefore. Don't advocate violence.
For one thing, violence is a kind of war as are many others, including terrorism, nuclear war, cold war, insurrection, revolution, and civil unrest. Not one war has ever had a winner. Everyone loses in a war, but some lose more than others. It's much better to just skip war entirely, even if it means leaving your homeland.
For another thing, advocating violence is a great way to get labeled a terrorist. At which point you can then say "I'm getting to the end of my rope and patience" as you make a short 3-foot drop on the docks.
Much better than that is to not horriblize, find the best ways for OSS to duck and adapt to the new "biznis" climate, and keep on trying to make ends meet.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I have yet to fully understand the problem that software patents cause OSS. Could somebody explain it a bit better to me? It seems to be that the opensource ideology is that *EVERY* piece of code in an OSS program has been written, ground up, by a developer who has licenced the code to be opensource. This can't possibly infringe a software patent; the opensource program is different in substance from any patented program/code, and was written seperately.
It was my understanding that originally, Linux was written by Linus Torvalds and a group of other opensource developers, who licenced it to be opensource. If Linux contains 'some areas' of the kernel that are patented, why can't some opensource developers just rewrite them, and licence them under the GPL? No patent infringement, no lawsuit.
What is the issue here? Although this rather reprehensible change in law would make it easier to be granted software patents, how would it make stuff like Linux illegal?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
In Europe, both at EU level and in many countries within it, it's quite normal for governments to come down heavily in favour of a particular piece of legislation to begin with, but then to back off rapidly if faced with a backlash of popular opinion. The fact that this has been brought up now doesn't mean it will automatically get passed as it stands.
As for what the US or its big corps want, you're obviously not very familiar with Europe. With the notable exception of Tony Blair supporting Bush's invasion of Iraq (and in that case, look how the rest of Europe acted), Europeans aren't exactly known for towing the US party line. Our legal systems and governing bodies don't seem to be nearly as susceptible to corporate influence and bribes as the US equivalents.
Personally, here in the UK, I put this down to having more than two political parties with significant power, and bizarrely enough to having the House of Lords (our unelected second chamber, whose members normally stay for life, which the government is currently trying to do away with) as a check and balance on the whims of any incumbent majority party. But I digress...
Getting back to the plot, it does matter what the people think here, and if enough people make reasoned, informed objections, the politicians' opinions are likely to change. The problem, as the linked article in el Reg so insightfully noted, is that the average person complaining about this gets up on his holier-than-thou high horse and starts ranting. That will have exactly the opposite effect to what the advocates want, and let's face it, it probably deserves to.
By the way, MEP = Member of the European Parliament, who are elected representatives from European member states. How much real power they have is debatable, because there are other bodies involved at Europe level besides the EP, but certainly they have a significant influence on European policy.
MP = Member of Parliament, an elected representative of a national government (in the UK, and possibly elsewhere, though I don't know of any other country that uses that specific term). These guys do have real power. However, under current international agreements, certain "guidance" from Europe is pretty much required to be incorporated into national law in its member states within a defined timescale after it is passed at Europe level.
Thus MPs must pass laws that respect the European direction, and under some circumstances cases within the UK can wind up being taken to Europe if the UK law is inadequate in this regard. Human rights issues have seen several such cases since Europe passed much stronger HR rules than the UK used to have not so long ago.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The problem with RMS is that he's a wildcard.
He is capable, as you say, of putting together a very coherent argument to support his beliefs, and of presenting it very professionally. This is good.
However, he is also capable of launching into spontaneous rants that are totally one-sided. He will completely ignore the good points of things he disagrees with, while outright exaggerating the damage done by something, or the negative effects he thinks it will have. His extreme views as expressed in these rants are often incompatible with any realistic outcome. Such rants very much do more harm than good, yet he has indulged in them on numerous occasions, both in print and with a live audience.
Someone so unpredictable is simply not a good figurehead for a political movement hoping to see something changed. The first rant would convince the politicians that he was an extremist whose views were unrealistic and whose goals were unattainable, and thus someone who contributes nothing useful to a constructive debate.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
You just became the idiot described in the Register article, whose outright evangelism and hyperbole cause the politicians to ignore them and their viewpoint in favour of more reasoned replies.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The Article Very, Very, Very True and Good for US (us) and EU (you), I suspect globally applicable. The Buzzard article expresses great strategy and tactics for, US and EU OSS community and small company confederations/Associations. For developing political clout hire lobbyist and pay for politicians elections as a group.
We should all remember: "Patronize Political/Religious Egos", "Money Rides to heaven and Shit Floats down stream, and "Capitalist Democracies" is a literal phrase/philosophy not in any way plural, inclusive, or figurative.
So always praise the PTB (powers that be), and backstab the political and religious enemies of humanity where possible.
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
All of the EU institutions involved in legislation (Council, Parliament, Commision) are either directly or indirectly elected by the people. The council comprises the directly elected member state governments, the parliament is directly elected in EU wide elections every four or five years, and the commision is elected by the member state governments.
My post occurred on Sunday June 29, @10:39PM. The copy occurred at 10:54. I enjoy /. but this changes everything. If some loser admires my posts then that's great but it's still plagiarism.
I don't see the point to stealing a post. This is deflating. I never log in under any other name or IP. This should be a clear cut case for banning that guy.
I don't flame anybody or remotely insult people here so I'm not sure why somebody would do this.
Laws are for people with no friends.
That's my post and my signature. You think you're clever, right? I wonder how many other posts you've stolen.
Laws are for people with no friends.
The French newspaper Liberation has an interview this morning with Michel Rocard MEP, who wrote the opinion of the CULT committee, and is firmly anti-swpat.
A former prime minister of France, Rocard is one of the most senior and influential figures in the Social Democrat group, and his words probably speak for quite a following amongst their MEPs.
(Translation to follow)
http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=121303
Michel Rocard s'oppose à la brevetabilité des logiciels:
Tout le monde se copie et c'est bien ainsi Par Florent LATRIVE et Laurent MAURIAC
lundi 30 juin 2003
Il faut préserver une civilisation où la part du non-marchand et des savoirs humains est respectée.
On ne trouve pas d'ordinateur sur le bureau parisien de Michel Rocard. Il l'admet volontiers : il n'est pas de la génération qui a une pratique facile de l'ordinateur. Président de la Commission de la culture au Parlement européen, il a pourtant dû se plonger, avec un mal fou, dans la brevetabilité des logiciels, des mots qui étaient pour moi inconnus il y a encore un an. Aujourd'hui, s'il en parle avec autant d'animation, c'est que derrière les aspects techniques se cache un vrai sujet de civilisation. Pour l'ex-Premier ministre, l'introduction de brevets sur les logiciels en Europe serait très grave. Elle remettrait en cause la libre circulation du savoir humain. Jusqu'à présent, les logiciels sont officiellement exclus du champ de la brevetabilité en Europe, tout comme les équations mathématiques ou les recettes de cuisine. Depuis plusieurs mois, un projet de directive très polémique est soumis aux institutions de l'Union européenne et vise à modifier ce régime. Il sera soumis au vote du Parlement européen début septembre.
Pourquoi estimez-vous que l'Europe ne doit pas autoriser les brevets sur les logiciels ?
Depuis la grotte de Lascaux, il n'est pas sûr que l'humanité ait progressé dans ses capacités esthétiques. Quant à ses capacités éthiques et morales, on s'entre-tue toujours autant. En revanche, dans le domaine du savoir technique et de la maîtrise de la nature, les progrès sont foudroyants. La croissance vertigineuse du savoir est la clé de cette histoire. Le savoir s'est répandu par la copie, tout le monde a recopié tout le monde, et c'est bien comme ça. Avec la brevetabilité du logiciel, on change le statut du savoir humain. Tout le commerce intellectuel des produits de l'esprit humain, les moyens de connecter les savoirs passeront de plus en plus par des logiciels. Si on introduit une brevetabilité, c'est-à-dire un coût, une interdiction, on met en place une règle inédite. C'est inquiétant.
Il ne paraît pourtant pas anormal de rémunérer les créateurs et les inventeurs...
Il faut distinguer deux choses : les oeuvres, protégées par le droit d'auteur, et les inventions, protégées par le brevet. Au XIXe siècle, on s'est d'abord intéressé aux premières. On a considéré comme normal de rémunérer les créateurs et de garantir la préservation de l'intégrité de leurs oeuvres. On a ainsi créé le droit d'auteur. Plus tard, on a mis en place le brevet d'invention, soit l'interdiction à quiconque d'utiliser une invention sans payer une redevance. Pendant le XXe siècle, nous n'avions pas de problèmes pour différencier les deux. Contrairement aux oeuvres protégées par le droit d'auteur, l'invention se définit par la mise en jeu de la matière ou des forces de la nature. La conviction que le savoir humain doit circuler impliquait qu'il n'y ait pas de breve
hi,
just try going to http://www.ffii.org or http://www.eurolinux.org and sign up as a supporter.
ffii even has free rooms for member lobbiests at bruessels to lobby against patents.
all you need is sign up, go there, protest.
whats so difficult when you can defend your rights ?
sign the petitions, voice your opinion.
thats politics.
This is the email I got back after sending my opinion to my Politians (green germans) in the European Parlament:
Thank you for your email concerning the McCarthy report on computer implemented inventions (com 2002-092). Like all Green parties in the European Union, we share your concern that software patents and patents on business methods are a threat for the European software developpers.
The Greens/Efa in European Parliament are fighting on this dossier in order to prevent software patents to be legalized in the Union; we have organized two conferences with Richard Stallman (in November 2002 "Is software patenting necessary?" and in May 2003 "Software patents and SMEs" with David Axmark, Opera, Graphic Convertor,...). You will find more info on our website http://www.greens-efa.org
Regarding our work inside European Parliament we tabled amendements - and won- in the culture committee and again in the industry committee but we lost in the committee for legal affairs as the rapporteur (Arlene Mac Carthy, member of the Social Democrat Group, UK Labour) refused any compromise. We thus voted against her text.
Lately we opposed the very fast and very discrete attempt to add the report on the plenary of July : it is now scheduled for September (see http://www.europarl.eu.int).
You can be ensured that we will defend software freedom in plenary as well.
Sincerely yours,
mit freundlichen Grüßen
Kathrin Kummerow
persönliche Referentin
Heide Rühle, MdEP
Die Grünen/EFA
Unter den Linden 50
10117 Berlin
030. 227 78411
030. 227 76392
info@heide-ruehle.de
www.heide-ruehle.de
test im just testing right now ignore me
Fine. It's the first time I do these things, probably the same for other peole involved, and we may have much to learn.
But it is a bit easy to simply say "no,no. We did it wrong". It would be most kind of you if you could:
- Please explain the work you did to convince MEPs or the public or whatever you spent you time on to avoid software patents in Europe (or wherever). I don't mean to attack you, simply to learn from someone who seems to think (s)he knows better, and might as well know better.
- Please go through this history of attempts and explain concrete errors and other ways to handle it. For example, how would you have written this document?. This could prevent further mistakes from us.
Thank youComment removed based on user account deletion
Perhaps you can provide some citations to prove your meanderings, huh?
Lots of bitching about stupid patents... but no one offers any practical solutions - on either side of the argument.
Thanks for your reply. It's good to know, because that implies that there will be peace for a while, anyhow. When, not if, can still happen later rather than sooner.
Hmmm... so it sounds as if the Hansiatic League is in full effect. No joke, our european bank is "Hansabank". That's ours, as in we use it, not ours, as in we own it.
I'm glad to hear that people are a bit drowsy, specifically because I *don't* want war of one kind or another to happen.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
(1) *CAN* you get FSF verification (and better, support: a link from GNU or the FSF)?
(2) Does Denmark have a national library where paper copy can be submitted and registered?
(3) Can you set up an easy web search / submission engine?
(4) Can you also set up an "area of interest" subscription form, where people can sign up to recieve e- or paper- copy?
If you think you can do these things, and if you think you want me on the prepublishing end, we are located in Silute, Lithuania. Our labor costs are probably cheaper than elsewhere. We also have a US business (that is, we have a US business and a Lithuanian business), and I would be interested in possibly helping to prepublish all this if it can be made to pay our expenses.
I suspect that businesses and developers would like and pay for targeted mailings or paper-copy indexes to CD-copy information, within their specific range of development.
Anyhow, if you're interested, let me know. If there is a specific roadmap to becoming profitable, and it is not too long or expensive [looks feasible], and you have FSF verification and support, I would also be willing to donate some amount of time ahead of time to get things going.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
(1) *CAN* you get FSF verification (and better, support: a link from GNU or the FSF)?
Your fear on /. is unfounded. It seems you do not know how the patent
system works: If something is published then you cannot patent it (and if
it - by mistake - is patented after the publishing date you can invalidate
the patent with prior art). So let us assume that Mr. Bad reads PADB then
he will not be able to patent the ideas described here.
(2) Does Denmark have a national library where paper copy can be submitted and registered?
I believe so. Feel free to contact kb.dk (Danish national Library).
(3) Can you set up an easy web search / submission engine?
Submission should be possible to set up: A magic-mailaddress could simply add the mail to CVS. Anyone with CVS access can do this. It is not feasible to do the search engine. The reason is that fortune seekers will look for new ideas and patent variations of the ideas in the database. You may say: The harder it is to read the database the better.
(4) Can you also set up an "area of interest" subscription form, where people can sign up to recieve e- or paper- copy?
This would also not be a great idea: The reason is that fortune seekers will look for new ideas and patent variations of the ideas in the database. Also it would be classifying the ideas which would defy the idea of PADB which is to publish but not order the ideas.
The way ideas should be spread is not through PADB but through specialized mailinglists/forums such as the Linux Kernel Mailing List.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Submission should be possible to set up: A magic-mailaddress could simply add the mail to CVS. Anyone with CVS access can do this. It is not feasible to do the search engine. The reason is that fortune seekers will look for new ideas and patent variations of the ideas in the database.
Two points: (1) fortune seekers already do this, and will do this
(2) It isn't a problem, and is less a problem if more people can access the database. You have to remember that fortune seekers make their money doing this, so this can be a career for them. Once they stumble on your site, if they are able to read it [that is, if it is really published], then they will have every incentive to spend the effort to get all the information.
But the goal for an anti-patent database shouldn't be to prevent them from making money, or taking it from gullible companies/investors. That's not worth my time or anyone else's. The goal should be to open up paths for free software to successfully develop. Indeed, you want development then to proceed along those paths, to be sure that your software is patent-free. For that, you want things to be better known [thus becoming a standard], not worse known. If, for example, ogg-vorbis predated mp3, then there would have been little incentive to pick the closed-source mp3 standard.
Moreover, you never know when one developer's solution may help another developer in what he's doing. For example, suppose that someone found a way to use video cards [yeah, just turn off the monitor] to improve sound-processing music programs for live sound compression?
Finally, you'll get the fastest growth of patent-free ideas if it is well published. We want to outstrip the forces of darkness, because that is the strength of open-* systems.
So I really think that publication should occur.
You may say: The harder it is to read the database the better.
In that case, the publication could be said to not really be published, which presents a legal weakness.
This [item #4, to set up a subscription form] would also not be a great idea: The reason is that fortune seekers will look for new ideas and patent variations of the ideas in the database. Also it would be classifying the ideas which would defy the idea of PADB which is to publish but not order the ideas.
The way ideas should be spread is not through PADB but through specialized mailinglists/forums such as the Linux Kernel Mailing List.
That is closed-source at its worst. Open source should be more open, not less open. Let's not make this a version of "your version of closed versus my version of closed" [paraquote: if you keep shooting your feet off, I'll have to retaliate by shooting one of our workers' feet off, so there!] but rather "open is better, and we'll outstrip your closed. You can be closed, but you'll never be able to stop or block our development".
P.S. Please do reply to this, as long as you disagree. I really think this is important. If you have other responsibilities, then simply reply less often, but please do reply.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
But without proper indexing it will make it harder for fortune seekers.
But the goal for an anti-patent database shouldn't be to prevent them from making money, or taking it from gullible companies/investors. That's not worth my time or anyone else's. The goal should be to open up paths for free software to successfully develop.
Ahh. Now I see where we disagree.
PADB was never meant for opening paths for free software, but to avoid others closing the paths for free software. It seems you think that ideas are better collected in a large pile no matter how different they may be, whereas I believe it is better to exchange the ideas in specialized forums where the people interested in the subject is anyway. I believe it is highly unlikely that crypto experts would like to read about ideas for vacuum cleaners and loud speakers. I am pretty sure they would much rather read about bad crypto ideas than genius vacuum cleaner ideas.
The ideas should be submitted to PADB only to avoid closing the path - not to inspire others to follow it as there are much better ways for doing this.
Finally, you'll get the fastest growth of patent-free ideas if it is well published.
Yeah - for what? I know no developers that would like to read about every subject imaginable - they tend to focus on they speciality. I believe the only one that will gain from this is fortune seekers who will find "holes" in the ideas that are patentable.
So I really think that publication should occur.
I can't stop you. But I will not help you either.
The way ideas should be spread is not through PADB but through specialized mailinglists/forums such as the Linux Kernel Mailing List.
That is closed-source at its worst.
Actually no. That is how free software is developed today.
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That is where it stands at this point. Sorry, I forgot to do this as anonymous coward for PADB, and the formatting isn't the best. But I did clarify who was who with the subject lines.
I kindof felt like I should post this conversation, because it does clarify what PADB is. I disagree with it stopping where it does, but not everyone will, and if you agree with it, well, maybe it will still do some good.
I still don't know whether they can get the support of the FSF. I don't know if it will actually protect anything. But I think that this is a good thing to post, since I did find out the answers to the questions that I posted. Well, some of them, anyhow.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's