Slashdot Mirror
Software Patent Demonstrations Taking Off
feklee writes "The preparations for the
rally against software patents
on Wednesday are running at full speed. Thanks to announcements in DWN, on KDE, in the Register, and
elsewhere, the Online Demo has already
more than 600 participants such as Savannah
and KDE.de. Now, what about your project?"
And flagboy writes "A group of economists from Europe and the U.S. specialising in patent questions have published a letter to members of the European Parliament calling on them to reject the proposal, accompanied by an analytical paper which casts severe doubts on the reasoning behind the directive and on the methods employed by its proponents." Here's the FFII Press Release.
I'm sure all of us in the castrated portions of the IP world are wishing the citizens of the EU luck with their protests. It would be nice to think that innovation and freedom still have a home somewhere in the world.
How cases of DMCA prosecution have their been? Hardly any, but that doesn't make it any more just.
Unjust legislation must be fought. It is insufficient to simply hope it wont be enforced, like some sort of naive child.
Just one question:
What will I see on slashdot.org tomorow???
Or is slashdot going to mention a great idea and ignore it the day after?
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
... is how the EU will spin the protests. I don't know if EU citizens are any more intelligent than the American sheeple, but a couple well-placed "digital terrorist" or such phrases could easily get ignorant people thinking the wrong way. (Japan, on the other hand, is getting worse and worse due to extreme apathy... you should see some of the election turnout numbers over here. It's scary.)
What people are objecting to is that innovation is being stifled by large corporations; I'm not going to mention any names, because it doesn't really matter who the company of the moment is. It's been like that for a long time, the names change but the principle is the same. The market should have more choice, but patents, buyouts, and monopolistic practices are actually supported by the current (and previous) legislatory systems are just getting more and more power. Like the hippy movement in the seventies against government powers and personal liberties beginning really to make moves against the "establishment", the yuppie move in the eighties towards personal financial freedom against the common good, the nineties technological gadget and consumerism move... and now in the 21st century people are beginning to look at inflation, unemployment and their lack of free time and starting to think maybe there is a better way. But still the rich are fighting to keep everything they have, and middle class people are following the consumer trend like sheep, they're cooling their houses with aircon, running their cars, throwing away more and more tons of garbage every year, getting fatter, and generally using more resources than they really need.
Let us not forget that Free (as in speech) is what we are still fighting for. The medium changes, the spirit stays the same. We should not let corporate greed and a system where each year more profits need to be made become the pillar of our society, but it's been happening for years and years. Globalisation just makes this more blatent, more all encompassing, and more to the detriment of the world's poor.
The rich are still getting richer, the poor are still getting poorer, and however many examples you give me of "land of the free" and personal gain still being possible no matter who you are, the overwhelming trend is that the masses are still being screwed, and there really are people who are born into dead end lives, and it's not getting any better.
And still, many people will respond to my post and say I'm a socialist and the system won't really abide by that, because capitalism is here to stay and it's the only fair system. I'm not really saying that. Just ask yourself one question : are you recycling all that you can, giving a few extra minutes a day to help the looming natural resource problem? Are you using less water, using cooler washing cycles, hanging out your laundry instead of drying with electricity, keeping cool in the shade with iced tea instead of turning up the aircon a notch, eating just enough to keep your hunger at bay and giving a dollar to the bum on the street from time to time?
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
by slashdotting the online demo site itself!
"We can show our concern by physical presence as well as by more or less gently blocking access to webpages in a concerted manner at certain times."
I think that was not quite the original intention
It's not about open source, although there is a similarity in the principle of open and free exchange of ideas.
Patents are government grants to build a business around a specific invention. There is a general issue here, namely that all invention comes from a communual process, exchange and refinement of ideas over time, and the granting of "exclusive" rights is by its very nature an act that ignores the reality of the process in order to create a new reality that favours certain groups over others.
However, we tend to accept that patents are one way of rewarding intellectual endeavour. Why then, are they bad?
There are many technical issues that make patents complex to grant: knowledge of the area in question, searching prior art, preparing lengthy documentation. This means that patents are expensive - in the EU, for instance, 10,000 Euro is the starting price, before you start looking at defending a patent.
The huge price tag puts patents firmly out of the reach of smaller groups and individuals who are not already wealthly. It is ironic, perhaps that these are also the groups and individuals who work the hardest to create new products and ideas, since they have the most to gain.
It is larger groups that are able to assemble large patent portfolios, therefore. Presumably these are then used to protect and reward innovation? No, most patents go unused in the direct sense, and become instead instruments for patent negotiations.
What is this? It is when a small company with a patent discovers that a larger company is infringing. It raises the question, and the large company discovers a handful of its own patents - previously ignored - that the smaller company is also infringing. The innovater finds that the precious patent is not only worthless, but has landed them in a situation where they may go bankrupt or have to sell their products to survive.
Large companies seek patents principally for this reason: to protect their existing markets and businesses against innovators.
The role of legislators is clear: their mandate, sponsored by big business, is to make this process as easy as possible.
Software patents take this to a new dimension. Software development is - unlike most prodyct creation - a process of almost pure invention. It is almost impossible to develop a complex software product without finding and solving many problems that others have also solved.
Patents are already biased against innovation, but software patents can create insurmountable obstacles. A business with the cash and the lawyers can find hundreds, perhaps thousands of "new" inventions in any complex software product. Needless to say, most or all of these are multiple re-inventions, but have not been previously patented, so are legally open to patent.
Software development, like all creative processes, relies on a pure and unbroken exchange of ideas and techniques across space and time. Software patents pretend that this exchange does not happen, and worse, they make the exchange impossible, and sometimes illegal.
At the extreme, software patents spell the end of not just open source, but the freedom of individuals to create new software. When every software invention has been patented, writing unauthorized code will become a criminal offense.
Large business loves this scenario. They pretend that software patents are essential to protect their "innovation" and "research". But this is a lie, as any honest observer can see.
The EU is, like all governments, manipulated by lobbyists, and the person who pays for the music will choose the dance. Software patents will come into law in the EU, there is no doubt about this.
The realisation that software patents (and all patents, indeed) are tools for monopolists will only come when the West has lost most of its competitive edge. I only hope that India and China realise - from self-interest - that they are being given a silver plate with a blank cheque, marked "please profit, we are in the process of strangling our nascent software businesses".
Ceci n'est pas une signature
As an additional (or alternative) action, people are encouraged to participate in an online demonstration that day, replacing the main page of their website with a text explaining the dangers of introducing unlimited patentability in Europe
Whoever wrote this should think twice before they word something. I took this as a call to hackers to replace their (meaning the people they're protesting against) webpage.
Oh well now onto my oh so eloquent commentary which is worth nothing... Why would anyone want to do something as moronic as protest the patent laws? Suppose you labor extremely hard to create something, it took so much of your time, might have cost you a marriage, every single penny in your account, and someone comes and swipes it from under your feet what would you do? Without patenting there wouldn't be much you could do now could you.
Look laws are sometimes unfair, in fact take a look at some historical quotes:
"Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but lets wasps and hornets break through" Swift 'A treatise essay upon the faculties of the mind'
"Wherever law ends tyranny begins." Locke 'Civil Government'
No one ever said the laws were perfect but trying to remove them is plain dangerous. Maybe tweaking them for kinks is a better idea, and in certain cases a judge should have the discretion to make decisions based on experience and ethics, instead of allowing miscarriages of justice to happen.
Having some country throw patent ideas out is rather lame, and in the long run is only going to hurt those who innovate more than anyone else.
As for this:
Doesn't make much sense. A body of people asking to close their websites to protest. As if people should lose money over something that sounds rather interesting on the outside, but in-depth makes no sense? I would rather pass on it. What will be protested after? Bandwidth usage that connects to the site which offended someone. Sure let's block Amazon's whole CIDR why not.MoFscker
How many cases of patent cases has there really been throughout the years?
Have you heard about the SCO debacle? IBM is suing SCO over patents right now.
If you read the halloween documents, it becomes clear that Microsoft thinks that patents are one of the best ways to stop the Linux spread. When they interviewed users, they thought that IP issues over Linux was something that held them back from Linux adoption.
)9TSS
I consider "stealing" "intellectual property" a bad thing. As in: with this trivial software patent, company X stole an idea that could have been everyone's. You opposing this could be a small or medium sized company, a non-profit, an individual that demands respect of "IP", anyone... This is not something that can be placed solely on the right or the left of the political spectrum. Agreeing to patenting these trivialities can only come from two things: ignorance and opportunism. The difference between these two is that at a certain decision-making level (think member of European parliament), ignorance becomes opportunism. Because it's the decision maker's to carefully examine the decision (s)he makes.
If you are an European and able to visit Brussels tomorrow, please do so! It doesn't occur much that we Europeans have a good opportunity to get ourselfs heard on these topics.
See here for info. You can visit Brussels by train from many a European country; see here
Hope this all isn't slashdotted before I will plan my own trip this afternoon.
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
I am worried that the members of the European Parliament have the impression that the protests are not to be taken seriously, coming mostly from outspoken Open Source enthusiasts. These are too often regarded as not respecting intellectual property, only out to use software, ideas and information without having to pay for it.
While the opposite is generally true: why run Linux and OpenOffice.org instead of an easily obtained illegal copy of MS Windows and MS Office?
I just hope that the MEPs understand nobody has to gain from software patents as proposed in the directive, except a bunch of patent lawyers, patent pirates, and big software companies (and the latter not even in the long run).
Innovation will be stifled instead of promoted.
Small and medium sized software developers (not only open source) and the consumer will pay the price.
Let's see if the members of the European Parliament remember their mandate and vote in the interest of the European citizen!
Er ... so you don't mind your company beying sued by someone because you clean-room-implemented something they did 30 years ago and now use only to sue everyone left and right? You don't mind spending money on lawyers? You don't mind paying UniSys money for your program that generates gifs which is known format since 19xy? Where have you been, man?
Now, if there's any big spender listening: It's time for action now!
I don't understand why being philosophically against software patents is always equated with socialism, and that patents are the ultimate expression of capitalism. I don't agree.
Patents in general are entirely anti-capitalistic devices. Their primary purpose is to inhibit competition, by making it illegal to compete. They enforce monopolies at best, and at their worst totally destroy entire fields of endeavor due to their mutually-assured destruction effect. They are not just about protecting theft of trade secrets, dumpster diving, or espionoge; but about controlling both thought and activity. If I completely and totally independently discover the same trivial algorithm, but you patented it somehow I'm breaking the law...I certainly didn't steal anything. Is anybody else worried about how IBM is dealing with SCO? I'll be as glad as anyone when IBM flattens them, but using their patent treasure chest to do so really bothers me.
And it also drives me crazy when I hear companies say they obtain patents for defense only. Patents by their very nature always offensive, they prevent others from independently working even if they never harm you or your market in any way and you don't sue them. That's agression plain and simple. If you want a defense then publish, don't patent (go to ip.com's Prior Art Database as an example of this approach).
And another misinformed justification is that patents are only dangerous if you try to make money with the patented idea. That is so wrong, go read the actual patent law! (yes it is very long, but still more readable than most patents). Even if you "practice" a patented idea in your home for your own amusement you are still breaking the law. You may get by with it, just like speeding, but patents intrude on everybody's rights.
I had an employer approach me once with the idea of patenting some software I wrote for them, and I took it as a serious ethical threat, and I told them that too. But when that happens, you tend to be very careful about how you apply your talent afterwards...being careful not to invent anything new, which I'm sure has resulted in some less than optimal solutions. But again, this is not socialist thinking. My company makes money from selling software I write, and I give them ownership over it in exchange for a salary, and I'm not distributing this code to the world. But likewise, I'm definitely against preventing somebody else from independently inventing the same software.
And the only reasonable argument for patents (as eliquently stated in the US Consitution) is to discourage the hording of information, so that others may build upon and progress technology. But look at how the patent system really works to completely subvert and prevent that one goal: submarine patents (those that through legal trickery stay in a filed state for perhaps decades without ever being divuldged). Patent laywers make sure that patents are entirely unreadable...even most lawyers who don't specialize in patent law are completely inept at reading them, let alone inventors and technologists who supposedly should be benefiting from them. Also it's almost impossible to ever find anything or make any sense of all that knowledge as its locked up so tight that it's completely worthless for anything but legal agression. The patent office should operate like a well indexed library of human knowledge, but instead it acts like a black hole locking away information so it is illegal to use.
I for one mostly agree with the capitalistic society, not the socialistic view. But I'm still extremely anti-patent, especially for non-physicial inventions of thought and expression. Patents are an extreme offense to humankind, captialism is not.
I have contacts at the EPO. Here is how it works:
1. The EPO is self-financed. They do not receive any money from the EU states.
2. The EPO makes money from patent royalties.
3. The EPO does not have much money.
4. The EPO is ready to accept anything to make money as long as nobody complains.
5. Profit!
The way it works at the EPO is the following: Someone submits something to get a patent.
If it is not completely stupid, a provisional patent is awarded, even if obvious prior art exists!!!
If there has been no negative comments after one year, the patent is awarded.
So I am certain the EU will give the EPO the right to award software patents. The only way to stop this is by periodically checking what provisional patents are awarded and bombard the EPO with negative comments and prior arts.
my 0.02 Euro
Tomorrow (27 August 2003) there is a demonstration in front of the impressive EU parliament.
v alues=TYPE%25.Manifestation,SITE!.40
All the peolple who care & can come, please come so that there is a small chance we might impress some MP's...
I'll be there, will you ?
http://pax.protest.net/event.cgi?ID=415100&state_
The European Patent Office has already granted ~30.000 patents on software, logic and the like, totally ignoring current law.
The majority of those software patents are trivial and overbroad. There are patents on tabs, progress bars and archiving emails.
Developing software will become an uncalculateable risk for smaller and even medium sized companies.
How far do you think computer sciences would have progressed if there existed patents on things like parametrisation of functions or on stacks?
I'm rehearsing this for when I jump into the camera's tomorrow :-)
3 issues:
1. General patentability issue
Do patents protect and encourage the new inventor, or do they protect large businesses and monopolies? Practice would sometimes point out the last.
2. Software patent issue
If you invent a phonograph, you make it, sell it, done. Not so for software. Software is a stack-up of tons and tons of previous "inventions" (algorithms, or ways of doing something). You can't write a piece of software without "inventing" something along the way, but you also can't avoid to use previous "inventions". Software inventions should be seen as common field knowledge that needs to be shared. And I say needs; we would not have come past the MS-DOS age without this.
3. Free Software issue
Free Software doesn't only share the ideas of software, but also their implementations. Again, we would not have been far without Free Software of any kind (you can at least forget the Internet and Mac OS X, but there are more detailed examples that will tell you that you can forget A LOT of software). Simply put, Free Software relies on open (unowned) algorithms and program ideas, but has no model (like businesses have) for buying licenses to use "owned" ideas. IOW, the Free Software world would ultimately disappear as a result of patent law.
Summary: while patents MAY stink for business in general, they would simply DESTROY our software world as we know it, and replace it with something where our normal everyday innovation is very hard to find.
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
From "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin" Chapter 8:
In order of time, I should have mentioned before, that having, in 1742, invented an open stove for the better warming of rooms, and at the same time saving fuel, as the fresh air admitted was warmed in entering, I made a present of the model to Mr. Robert Grace, one of my early friends, who, having an iron-furnace, found the casting of the plates for these stoves a profitable thing, as they were growing in demand. To promote that demand, I wrote and published a pamphlet, entitled "An Account of the new-invented Pennsylvania Fireplaces; wherein their Construction and Manner of Operation is particularly explained; their Advantages above every other Method of warming Rooms demonstrated; and all Objections that have been raised against the Use of them answered and obviated," etc. This pamphlet had a good effect. Gov'r. Thomas was so pleas'd with the construction of this stove, as described in it, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole vending of them for a term of years; but I declin'd it from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz., That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.
An ironmonger in London however, assuming a good deal of my pamphlet, and working it up into his own, and making some small changes in the machine, which rather hurt its operation, got a patent for it there, and made, as I was told, a little fortune by it. And this is not the only instance of patents taken out for my inventions by others, tho' not always with the same success, which I never contested, as having no desire of profiting by patents myself, and hating disputes. The use of these fireplaces in very many houses, both of this and the neighbouring colonies, has been, and is, a great saving of wood to the inhabitants.
Hmm... someone just deleted that long list of websites hope it wasn't me... A wiki doesn't seem to be the best tool for a list
All the benefits of all human endeavour belong to all of humanity. We did not evolve to the state we are in today because one group of ape-like beings, having discovered how to make effective weapons for hunting and fire for cooking, kept the discoveries to themselves, only allowing others to make use of them on restricted terms; handing over ready-made weapons to the hunters whilst banning them from the workshop, blindfolding people whilst fires were lit, and punishing anyone who tried to study how to make axes or start a fire.
I can see a comedy sketch in there somewhere. Only thing is, in real life, it isn't funny.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
The patent may have expired in the US, but unfortunately it is still in force in Canada, France, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan.
But of course there are plenty of technical reasons for switching to PNG as well.
Burn all GIFs!
Blog Ho
Not to repeat what dozens have said, one fallacity is often overlooked:
When you talk about patents, many people have the lone inventor in a mental picture, and it's easy to convince them that he needs protection against the greedy corporations trying to steal his idea.
If you discuss software patents with someone, make sure you wipe out that picture. 99% of all patents are owned by the greedy corporations, not by the lone inventors.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Why not apply the spirit of the GPL to patent law? The GPL's been pretty successful at creating a library of free software (ignoring the current SCO mess), so technically something similar for patents should be doable. I'm thinking:
The Patent Public License (PPL)
OK, I'm not a lawyer, but if you've seen something like the Adobe Acrobat 6.0 splash screen, that lists hundreds of patents used in the product. If someone could patent a blindingly obvious idea under a Public License (let's say clickable links) then they should be able to start the snowball rolling, and gather up the other patents a software package uses under the terms of the License, and so on with more and more programs and companies...
It'd be using patent law against itself
Sure, it'd take a lot of captial to patent one or two initial ideas and press the initial lawsuits, but with some support (EFF/FSF?) it'd be doable. Any downsides people can see?
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Folks, patents are not evil. Throughout their history, they have protected innovation. It is not fair for someone to take the risk and toil to develop something truly new and unique, only to have someone elese who didn't have the foresight or the vision, rip off the idea and get the profits.
What *is* horrible is the US Patent Office and their incompetence in the area of software. They've granted patents for stuff I know isn't new or unique becuase I worked on the same thing 15 years earlier. And many of the process patents are just a joke.
Part of this isn't their fault. A lot of work done in the 70's, stuff that appeared in products, was never published. Most people did bother with software patnets. And most of the products are long gone from the market. SO it is hard to find the prior art, even when it exists.
What we need is a way t grant a provisional patent. The patnet wold be published, and those claiming to have knowledge of prior art that would render the patent invalid can contact the patent office and share the information. If the patent office finds that credible information that counters the claim has been presented, it would invalidate the patent.
The problem with today's system is that once granted, you have to go to Court to get a patent killed and that costs too much time and $$ for any but the ost valuable or outrageous claims to be fought.
petition.eurolinux.org
I wrote to my MEP and explained to him how serious
matter this is and gave him a couple of practical
and easy to understand examples of the bad things
that might follow, if software patents are OK'd.
If you are a citizen of an EU member country,
I suggest you do the same.
The US Supreme Court has clearly ruled software unpatentable. If the USPTO won't listen to the Supreme Court, what makes you think they'll listen to you?