Slashdot Mirror
Sites Shut Down to Protest Software Patents
blueser writes "I went today to TUTOS homepage to check for a newer version, and I was surprised to see that the author replaced the homepage by a 'Closed because of Software-Patents' page, with a brief explanation." Just one site? that's hardly a big deal, but there's more. maliabu writes "Knoppix is closed, apparently waiting for the European Parliament to decide about the legalisation and adoption of so-called 'software patents' in Europe." And still more. SLbigE writes "The Wine HQ website has temporarily shut down its webpage in protest to a proposed law in Europe regarding Software Patents." There's many more sites as well, these were just the first I was alerted to, Feel free to note some more in comments. Looks like they're doing a good job of illustrating what could be lost soon.
Is also shut down.
If you can read this sig - the bitch fell off.
Details of the campaign against software patents can be found at http://swpat.ffii.org/group/todo/index.en.html
This post will enter the public domain 70 years after my death, unless Disney buys another extension.
Nobody patented or restricted the use of hammers and nails in construction.
So why in the hell are algorithms considered 'patentable'?
I can understand if they emulate a proprietary business methodology. Or an entire application (which really should fall under copyright law).
But patents?
Shakespeare was right. We should kill all the lawyers.
The opposite of progress is congress
I went to the FreeS/WAN site yesterday and saw the same "closed" notice. I too thought that it was a single site, but I guess I was wrong.
Microsoft was planning on replacing there page to protest as well. Unfortunately now they are hosted on Unix, they don't have anyone in the company smart enough, who knows how to change the home page.
As has been said in previous article comments, SlashDot could close too, that would have a far larger ranging effect than Knoppix or Wine anyway.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
This must be a european thing, as I can still get to WineHQ and rpmfind.net both. The other two do appear to be down.
Gimp is another...
Who doesn't like free music?
We had an interesting thread about Qemu...
It's closed too...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
MRTG has also joined the fight.
I noticed the protest yesterday on this site although it appears the protest has been removed today. I was thinking about asking him what it was all about.
PicoSQL seems to be the home of an up and coming open source SQL server.
Just adding this one to the list Freshrpms.net
Last time i checked freevo's site, it put up a new homepage.... Although they did have a link to the regular page.
my $.02
I hold the "Words on a webpage" patent. It turns out that all of you will have to pay me royalty fees! I want 1 penny for every word on a webpage... I should be a trillionare by the end of the hour.
Seriously though, does anybody have a link to the actual patents filed that contain references to "scrolling within a window", or "progress bars"? I'd be interested in looking over the legal ramifications in the US...
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
RPMFind and its mirror sites are closed as well. Not the front page, but after a search query you get the warning. They say it's temporarily though.
Like science? Comics? Wicked...
Funny By Nature
That network tool that everybody uses, but pubically denies doing so (or just hides the window behind a fancy HP OpenView screen).
I almost crapped when I thought I couldn't download the software
What message is this supposed to send? Why would the EU change its mind because a few sites decided to protest? How does the absence of a few sites hurt the EU? More likely, they'll only hurt themselves.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
SCO obviously felt so strongly about this that they got started a few days early! They're good folks, always doing their best for the community.
"Are you being weird, or sarcastic?" said Emma. I said I didn't know because I get the two feelings mixed up.
This letter is worth reading ...
gtk is another site that is protesting. Good though, if you look at the rubbish pattens which are already registered (illegally) in Europe, ...
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
Apparently this protest (and the physical one) may have had some effect, in that the EU vote has been delayed according to LWN. Let's hope this additional time is beneficial to the anti-patent cause...
Come on guys, this is what the US community should have done to protest the DMCA, and the range of RIAA abuses that are being seen.
Lets not be silly and take it down for ever, but why not have an official protest day? Slashdot, Freshmeat, maybe even some of the Corporates.
And the time for this ? How about we start it on the same date as the end of the First World War ?
November 11th, starting at 11am GMT, for 24 hours, we declare the internet closed for business.
Are we in ? Slashdot.... are you listening ?
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
You can find a list of sites closed at this link but I suppose many more closed on Ago 27th.
www.apache.org
Now, if Microsoft's European branch went off the web or Netscape or any number of other software companies that are BIG on the commercial radar were to join in on this protest, then more people would notice... But, that's not likely to happen...
I see this too often. We geeks, as a political body, are simlpy blind to reality. Most of the sites that are currently 'down' are only going to affect fellow computer geeks. We hurt ourselves more then we hurt the opposition. There has got to be a better way to actually take some ground in a battle like this one over software patents.
Who seriously came up with this idea with the honest belief that cutting off the Free Software community from Free Software sites would somehow affect the GREATER MAJORITY (That use Proprietart y software) that simply could care less about Free Software?
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Has anyone got any links inside the sites that are supposedly shut down? Are the sites really shut down or has the index.html just been changed?
Well, im a small independant programmer, and my site is closed as well... and i do not plan for the front page to change until they have voted on the patent issue...
next thing you know, and someone patents how to boot a comp. in software....
Let's see some articles about small companies put out of business for no reason by large companies with software patents. I'm not convinced this happens that much. I'm don't mean MS fighting back at a company that tries to sue it. I'm talking about IBM hearing that a new company exists and just suing it out of the blue (no pun intended).
KDE website was down too to protest software patents, Turkish computer related site www.fazlamesai.net was down too yesterday.
Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
It just put up a new index page noting the protest. We did the same thing too on 8/27.
Just click the hyperlink that says Knoppix on the page and you are in.
Freedom Is Universal
Linux-Universe
It has been proven that Software Patents don't work the way that they were meant to because software systems are so big and complex. They are only good for big companies (look at how many Patents IBM have, if I was to write a clever bit of code that affected their business, I would probably infringe some of their patents).
Only in this list, more than 2550 sites currently protest against software patentse moPartner sWebsites.php
http://www.eurielec.etsit.upm.es/OnlineD
Maybe a site like slashdot can participate too.
I don't ask to close slashdot, but to put an informational page like debian did http://www.debian.org/
Oh, yeah, it would be good to have non-geek oriented websites with us. Software patents are not bad only for free software.
The Total Commander site has been reopened again and was closed yesterday. Wrote about it in my journal.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
They've been protesting for days, apparently!
Even though they're not closed probably due to corporate reasons, php.net had an article on this too acknowledging the threat.
European Open Source Development Threatened!
[27-Aug-2003]
Today sees an international day of protest against the move by the EU to make obtaining a patent easier within Europe. Such patents may cause Open Source software such as PHP to infringe on existing licenses and new ones, meaning we would no longer be safe to distribute PHP within Europe. Contact your EU Representative to get this cruicial vote blocked. Find out more at the campaign website
--Mods giveth, Mods taketh away--
http://www.mplayerhq.hu and http://www.ffmpeg.org are both 'shut down'. but they still link to thier old homepage.
www.apache.org
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/OnlineDemoPartnersWeb sites
for a full list of website participating in the action.
You can also add your web site if you participate in the online action against software patents.
While I applaud each site's initiative, obscure nerd sites are hardly going to influence the decisions of techno-illiterate politicians likely to vote on this. Now if amazon.com, wsj.com or freshyoungboys.com closed down, they might take notice.
It should be noted that the "official" day for doing this was the 27th August, and that all the sites I've seen have not shut down, but simply replaced their front page with information on the protest, and then included a link to the original project anyway.
Yes... because it's sooo much better when anybody can rip off years of your hard work/research and incorporate it into their own software without giving you so much as a dime. ...
I guess I should prepare to get modded down, because I know this opinion isn't popular here
http://ant.apache.org/
Although, it looks like this was only supposed to be on August 27th, but they have kept theirs up.
sure us nerds know about it, but joe public or mr european parliament bozo? don't fink it's gonna change their day.
but still, kudos to the sties that did.
"if i'd known it was harmless, i'd have killed it myself"
"Slashdot is not, however, even though some have requested it be taken down for the day..."
Well, someone has to be up to let people know what is going on.
I've been to several sites with the protest page, but they all had a "click here to enter" link.
This protest was already discussed earlyer this week here, so perhaps it should not come as such a big surprise.
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
I really don't want to sound like a flamebait, but Slashdot editors are completely oblivious to the issue that's only 2 days away from being voted on. Every day there are couple of SCO related stories on the front page, but the most important issue is being overlooked for some reason.
This is what happens when editors don't follow the current developments. For them it's business as usual. Americans don't understand the implications of this horrible law if it passes. Even EFF does not have an alert on their page. I've searched their entire patent section and the major categories with no mention of European Commission's Software Patentability Directive Proposal (CEC/BSA).
It's time to call to arms. There is not much time left and people need to mobilize and go to Brussels on Sept 1st.
If this passes, everyone loses. DMCA would look like a fucking joke compared to this patent mess.
..efforts to preveNT free speech, in any form, morons comply.
.asp for va lairIE's whoreabull pateNTdead PostBlock(tm) devise?, used against the truth/to protect robbIE's payper liesense stock markup bosses/corepirate nazi 'sponsors'. yuk.
as for va lairIE/robbIE's censoring/infactdead PostBlock(tm) devise, anywon can see that doesn't work, &/or cannot be shut DOWn, due to the mortgages held on them buy their fellow corepirate nazis. lookout bullow.
that's right, they've (lairIE/robbIE) blocked ip addresses throughout the northeast/central parts of US, in sum inane effort to block the planet/population rescue initiative/suck up the their corepirate nazi sponsors. either behaviour is not good/doesn't help.
no matter. the badtoll for their behaviours will be repaid by you/us.
fuddles'.con is running linux now. no DOWt about that.
fauxking phonIE payper liesense stock markup FraUD execrable/hive that they are.
that's right, after the walking dead finish exterminating themselves, & sadly enough, some of us, it won't take long to clean up this cesspool of greed/fear execrable.
we're calling it the planet/population rescue program (formerly unknown as the oil for babies initiatve).
the Godless wons are helping by continuing to show where their hearts lie.
fortunately, mr stallman et AL, etcetera, is now offering comparable/superior software, to the payper liesense spy/bug wear feechurned models, in almost every circumstance. there'll be few, if any more softwar billyonerrors, as if there's a need for even won. tell 'em robbIE. you are won of the last wons whois soul DOWt, right?
back on task.
what might happen to US if unprecedented evile/the felonious georgewellian southern baptist freemason fuddite rain of error, fails to be intervened on?
you already know that too. stop pretending. it doesn't help/makes things worse.
they could burn up the the main processor. that would be the rapidly heating planet/population, in case you're still pretending not to notice.
of course, having to badtoll va lairIE's whoreabully infactdead, pateNTdead PostBlock(tm) devise, robbIE's ego, the walking dead, etc..., doesn't slow us down a bit.
that's right. those foulcurrs best get ready to see the light. the WANing daze of the phonIE greed/fear/ego based, thieving/murdering payper liesense hostage taking stock markup FraUD georgewellian fuddite execrable are #ed. talk about a wormIE cesspool of deception? eradicating yOUR domestic corepirate nazi terrorist/gangsters will be the new national pastime.
communications will improve, using whatever power sources are available.
you gnu/software folks are to be commended. we'd be nearly doomed by now (instead, we're opening yet another isp service) without y'all. the check's in the mail again.
meanwhile... for those yet to see the light.
don't come crying to us when there's only won channel/os left.
nothing has changed since the last phonIE ?pr? ?firm? generated 'news' brIEf. lots of good folks/innocents are being killed/mutilated daily by the walking dead. if anything the situations are continuing to deteriorate. you already know that.
the posterboys for grand larcenIE/deception would include any & all of the walking dead who peddle phonIE stock markup payper to millions of hardworking conservative folks, & then, after stealing/spending/disappearing the real dough, pretend that nothing ever happened. sound familiar robbIE? these fauxking corepirate nazi larcens, want us to pretend along with them, whilst they continue to squander yOUR "investmeNTs", on their soul DOWt craving for excess/ego gratification. yuk
no matter their ceaseless efforts to block the truth from you, the tasks (planet/population rescue) will be completed.
the lights are coming up now.
you can pretend all you want. our advise is to be as far away from the walking dead contingent as possible, when the big flash o
.. government should only grant patents becuase of a need to force advances out in the open, otherwise it should not interfere. Judging by the fact software seems to progress forward quite nicely without such patents, why do it?
I guess I should prepare to get modded down, because I know this opinion isn't popular here
You're an AC, why do you care about being modded down?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I wondered why this didn't make /. when OSNews posted this on Wednesday...
I totally agree with the parent poster. CLOSE SLASHDOT. A majority of people on these forums are always complaining about software patents and how they are going to stop any and all innovation in software development. Well, here is a chance for slashdot to spread this message far and wide.
If slashdot closed down in protest, there is a good chance that some news agencies would pick up that story. This would be good because it get this message out to people who don't normally visit slashdot, gimp, or wine hq.
Grow some balls slashdot. Shut your doors in protest!!
mplayer isn't actually closed, but has a "what if" 404 page.
I think it is a good thing that they are drawing visibility to this issue.
Remember this ? Personally, I wouldn't have to pay royalties every time I wrote a gif editor.... oh wait.
Well, then I wouldn't want to have to pay royalties if I wrote something that uses LZW compression, oh wait...
It seems very problematic to attempt to patent an IDEA, even though it seems to happen pretty often.
information wants to be free
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned that Apache is down too.
Sigh... they had to choose the last bloody day I can download anything before I move (after which I'll be without Internet access for a week).
(Then again I can probably hold off on installing a webserver until my net access is back.)
i managed to deface some webpages and keep people talking positively about them
List of participating site can be found here.
Join in, and contact your MEPs if you are a citizen of an EU member country.
Seems to me that a lot of the sites that are shutting down for the day are ones that are frequented by people who are already aware of the issue. Also, they aren't sites that most people would visit on a daily basis. It would be nice to see some more general, more widespread sites shut down for the day. I'm not talking about geek sites, I'm talking sites like google, BBC, Yahoo, E-bay, and other big name sites. Could you imagine the effect of these sites closing down? I think it would get the attention of a lot more people, and people who weren't already aware of the issue.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
While the aftershocks of U.S. aggression continue to wreak havoc on the people of Iraq, another war has been waged on the people of the U.S. It's a war against democracy waged by the military industrial complex. Power has been taken from the hands of the people and given to a small group of corporations, aka, the walking dead.
predicted sentence for ALLEGED worm writer:
probation, & a box of worth less sco stock. although painful/embarrassing, that hardly qualifies as 'a world of hurt'.
remember the hurricane?
as for sco, as they are obvious FraUDs & stock markup felons/grand larceners, they'll likely get to keep all the monIE they've stolen so far, without any reprecussions.
lookout bullow. this continuance of the georgewellian fuddite corepirate nazi execrable/unprecedented evile, will be addressed as part of the planet/population rescue initiative.
as for va lairIE/robbIE's fauxking whoreabully infactdead PostBlock(tm) devise, byte me.
Slashdot has a large contingent of non-American readers. It's News for Nerds, not News for Nerds Who Live in the United States of America. Stories about Brazil's attitude to open source and the UK's plans for built-in monitoring of cars make the front page, so why not this sort of demonstration?
Anyway, plenty of people outside the US have protested against the many moronic decisions taken there in recent years (DMCA, Skylarov etc.) - I'm sure there are plenty of people in the US who'd like to reciprocate. Stupid software laws are bad wherever they're passed.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
I guess you don't have software which has European code in it. Here's a revelation: somewhere around half of the code in your linux kernel comes from Europe. Imagine that nullified and declared illegal.
OSDN should be taking part in this. Can we get some kind of official line? At the very least Slashdot and Sourceforge should be.
Free iPods - now in the UK!
I was about to post the same thing, seems like there was a broad interrest in that protest... *ahem*
It's only a small project and I'm a bit late shutting it down, but just shutdown www.gphpedit.org for this protest.
I hope more authors of free software do this.
-- Andy Jeffries Scramdisk for Linux (Change the orgy to org to reply)
If you live in the EU, don't just sign the petition - email your MEPs explaining why they should oppose the motion (and reminding them - gently - that they want your vote!). Yesterday I emailed all 10 MEPs representing London explaining my concerns, and I've already received 2 thoughtful responses -- one of which was seemed convinced by my arguments.
Probably the best arguments to use are those against patenting algorithmic business methods (also covered by the directive) rather than software per se, as they're more likely to be appreciated by politicians. My example was patenting an 'algorithm' that uses a number keyed in by a bank customer to verify their identity against the account details held on their bank card. Hey presto, your "software patent" gives you a monopoly on ATMs.
You can find a list of UK MEPs at the European Parliament's UK Office. For other countries, check out the main EU parliament website. Note that each constituency is represented by several MEPs, allocated between different parites by proportional representation. The vote on the directive is next week, so email your MEP today!
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
I hate that phrase. First, lawyers don't create laws; Legislators/Congress(wo)men do (and judges interpret them). Secondly, lawyers' clients are the ones that hold the patents, not the lawyers. Thirdly, the USPTO (or the european equivalent in this case) is the one granting the patents. Lawyers are the middle-(wo)men in all this. Removing the lawyers won't solve the problem.
Sorry but I see people saying this all over slashdot. I think it's an unjustified statement that people like to throw out there when legislators make bad laws, judges interpret the law incorrectly, or the PTO grants patent they shouldn't have.
Anyone can be a patent agent. There is a separate patent-bar that just about anyone can take. You don't even need to go to law school or have passed the state bar exam.
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Or, I'd have to get work done. Or something.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
My site, http://goatse.cx was also shut down. Needles to say the politicians in Brussels were in a state of panic and despair yesterday and we now expect this law to be thrown out. We just had to show them what they'd lose if they passed it.
Sincerely,
Goatse Man
It would be like saying SCO's victory in US court declaring GPL to be invalid would have no effect on European market and OSS model worldwide. Your reasoning is flawed.
Get real.
www.alsa-project.gr
www.linux.gr
Notice that most sites provide means for you to enter throught a link. They are not completely closed.
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
Great software - hope it's back soon...
Zilch
Most of my coworkers (computer science academics) are oblivious to the whole issue. As another post noted, this is preaching to the choir. Some geeks get inconvenienced, so what?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
If you write software that violates a european patent and distribute it in europe (for example by putting it on a globally reachable web server), you can be sued. Not to mention that I'm quite sure that you are using software written by european developers that would certainly be affected. So stop being such a narrow-minded dork, if you will.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
Looks like granitecanyon.com is down too. My site quit working yesterday and after checking everything, realize the DNS server didn't work...thanks granitecanyon.
MOD DOWN TROLL!!
It was shown that MS was not usin a *nix based web server. This is a troll!
You'll want travel insurance...probably an annual policy, with automatic renewal. Don't forget to add a friend or relative as the contact, you may be hard to get hold of. Don't answer the "Are you 18 or older?" question, it doesn't matter at Guantanamo.
Exactly! Anyone visiting these sites are likely well aware of this issue, so this effort really accomplishes nothing.
I'm just glad that Europe is such a more free place than America. You know, how, blah blah blah. Europe>America. FREE KARMA!
GIVE IT TO ME!
Imagine you own a small software company. You have written a powerful piece of software. This software is a creative combination of 1000 abstract rules (algorithms) and a lot of data. The rules take a few minutes or hours each to [re]invent, whereas developping and debugging the whole work took you 20 man-years. 900 of the rules were already known 20 years ago. 50 of the rules are now covered by patents. You own 3 of these patents. In order to obtain these patents, you had to rush to the patent office, disclose your business strategy and pay lawyer fees. IBM and Microsoft are meanwhile already turning your patented ideas into profit. You want them to stop? Their lawyer teams say you are infringing on 20-30 of their 50000 patents. So you reach a gentlemen's agreement: 3% of your annual sales revenues go to IBM, 2% to Microsoft, 2% .... Nonetheless, one day you enter the profit zone. You are now an attractive company. A patent agency approaches you. You are infringing on 2-3 of their patents, they say. Their claims are very broad. They want 100,000 EUR. Litigation could take 10 years and cost 1 million EUR. You pay. A month later, the next patent agent knocks on the door .... Before long you are broke. You seek protection from a big company. Microsoft offers to buy you for a symbolic fee. You accept. Under a copyright-only system, you would now be independent and rich. But by means of patents, Microsoft and others were able to steal your intellectual property.
Does this help you understand why many software creators feel that BSA and their patent lawyer friends at the European Commission are among the world's biggest software pirates?
There is a huge rally being planned to take place in front of SCO headquarters. SourceRally. They shut down their site as part of the protest as well.
wow.
How about the fact that a whole load of the linux kernel comes from outside the good ol' us of a.
seriously, think global....isn't that what the internet is about anyways ?
tom-george.comBecause geeks rate higher t
It was shown that TROLL was not really trolling. This is a AC
Most of the sites are not closed they just have an extra cover page saying something about the protest.
also a lot of the protesting sites are keeping these notices up untill the european parliament votes on this.
If you haven't done so already please sign the petition, and consider placing a similar notice page up on your site.
The overview can be seen at http://www.eurielec.etsit.upm.es/OnlineDemoPartner sWebsites.php
It's possible that a number of those websites removed the protest page again after wednesday 27 august. I've decided to leave mine up at least until the vote.
Lame excuse.
Perhaps it interfers with their revenue model.
My VU meter is tilting on slashdot.
Vim.org was also down....
!
The original vote was scheduled for Sep. 1st. The european parliament resceduled the vote to either the 22nd or the 26th of september. I don't know yet what exactly will be done in the meantime but it seems they will discuss the issue once more and maybe decide about changes.
The rescheduling took place because of the protests which means they were heard. Hopefully they will have deeper effects than just another date for the vote.
Does anyone have a plan for getting rid of software patents in the US? I mean, you can't just one day say "Ok, no new software patents and all old software patents a null and void". It'll never happen. There's simply too much money involved and that money is being used to ensure software patents continue.
I think the only way to change things is to convince big business that they are hurting themselves more by patenting software than by allowing it to be free. But to do that when companies are making millions from patents right now?
I figured it was a lame attempt to get me to look at that horid pictuer but figured I would check. Sure enough the gapaing anus is gone. Way to go.
Very few of these sites are "down" as in you can't get any information of them. Most of these are simply splash screens about the patent issue, and then down at the bottom they say "if you still want to continue, click this". rpmfind.net is working just fine if you follow their "if you still want enter, click here" link - I just downloaded RPMs from there. apache.org is doing the same thing.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Also closed >> http://www.adminmod.org/
I'll shut mine too!
I couldn't care less about them patents!
But now I finally have some time to make the switch to PHP.
when the shit hits the fan, it is not equally spread
All the above, If you can.
I was trying to send off the petition but couldn't find my country - unless I'm willing to accept that I now live in Island, and not Ireland as I previously thought.
Another victory for spellchecking software perhaps, or just ignorance? Call me a picky bastard, and you'd be right.
KDE's website is protesting as well.
Black holes occur when God divides by zero.
"We'll go on strike!" yelled Geek Website #1.
"That's right!" agreed Geek Website #2. "You'll have a national Geek Web Site strike on your hands!"
"And who might that inconvenience?" said The Rest of the World.
"Never mind who it will inconvenience! It'll hurt, buster, it will hurt!" yelled Geek Website #1.
That's what google says (Well maybe a little biased...) searching for "Page Closed Software Patents".
I've checked the first 10 pages and all are correct page closings due software patents....
Amazing
xine is also protesting. patents are really bad for multimedia players - essientially xiph's ogg/theora/vorbis is the only really free multimedia format available. luckily they're doing a great job, however the world out there is using other, patented formats like mpeg most of the time.
time is a funny concept
Here is an example: although the GIMP web site is hosted in the US, several of the most active developers are living and working in Europe. So after some discussion with the other developers, I decided to close the home page of www.gimp.org. Even if you live and work in the U.S., you could be affected because some software developed by many contributors from all around the world could cease to exist because of software patents affecting these developers.
Allowing patents on software and business methods in the U.S. was a bad idea. Several studies have shown that software patents in the U.S. have had a negative impact on the industry. But so far, the damage has been limited because these patents are not accepted worldwide. So in many cases, a company that was more interested in litigation than real innovation was not able to sue the developers who (unknowingly) infringed on its patents because some or all of them were not in the U.S. But this could be different if these patents were valid worldwide (WIPO). The patent holders would have a bigger chance to hit the small companies and small developers, especially those working on Open Source or Free Software (because they cannot buy a license or pay royalties for all potential users).
This protest against the changes in the European law would also be a good way to promote a necessary reform of the U.S. patent system. A growing number of economists in the U.S. are raising their voice against the patentability of software. A clear sign coming from Europe could also help the U.S. industry in the long run.
Some people hide in their shell when their neighbors are threatened. Some people try to help them because they know that they could be affected directly or indirectly. The choice is yours.
-Raphaël
With experts estimating that 3.3 million white-collar jobs will be sent overseas by 2015, is America's middle class being hollowed out?
Only a couple of decades ago America's middle class was full of the blue-collar "Joe Sixpack"'s people so lovingly talk about here.
mplayer and xine websites were pseudo-closed with what-if fake 404 pages that you could click through. libxslt and libxml sites also had these pages, which is quite annoying when you are trying to flip through documentation...
Will Stokes Album Shaper http://albumshaper.sf.net
Apache has change a bunch of their homepages to support the protest
Absolutely right. We're talking about sites intended and visited for/by developers. Unless a high-traffic news site(but not for nerds;oPPP) shuts down(very unlikely and NO I'm NO talking about DoS;o))) this whole thing will pass unnoticed. I don't believe that even /. stopping for a nap will change something, but I do believe that the NEWS of /.(and others BIG ONES) actually shutting down will make it to some of the mentionned news sites, that way more people will learn that this law is being prepared(let's face it, nobody knows shit for the moment)....
Anyway, none of this will ever happen....
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
Why? WHY?
How is shutting your site down supposed to be a protest? All it means is that I can't access the sites I want (and, what's more, now I think this one OSS project is stupid because its site was shot down for protest on the day I found out about it).
Do the lawmaker people use any of these shut down sites? I doubt it. Whose mind is changed here? Not mine, I was already against software patents. Who would have converted from in-favour to against, based on this?
This is not even comparable to a hunger strike. The site owners sure aren't suffering (in fact they might enjoy the lower traffic bill).
For a small fee I will make a contract that will aloow you to cross licence your patents. That is way more professional than "call it quits". And is the way all big compagnies do it!
We have software patent laws in the US and slashdot is in the US so slashdot would be protesting a law that were already enacted in the US. I dont think it would be helpful to shut down slashdot. if slashdot were shut down, a lot of people would not know about the protest and lots of other news.
The Television Wiki
The IP assault (insult) to our rights is coming at us from every direction lately -- Software Patents, DMCA, RIAA, MPAA, SCO....
It's time to protest the whole stupid mess. Let's fight back against them all. This will get everyone who is being assulted involved at once.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
All the sites mentions seem to cater to geeks only or people who already know why software patents are a bad idea. Some major site should shutdown like suse or mandrake. Those are the only major open source companies I could think of that operate in europe off the top of my head.
-
Thoughts on usage of the word "spam" check my journal
You don't have to remind them that they want your vote (however gently), and you don't have to use paper mail. Just be polite and argue well.
The MEP's are in general toally ignored by the population at home, even the EP is gaining more and more power. They tend to be happy that anyone back home know they exist.
Yes I can just imagine all those lawmakers up on Capitol Hill trembling in their boots as they discover Knoppix downloads are unavailable.
Is this really the best way to make this point? Anyone who uses or even knows of the existence of things like Wine and Knoppix probably already has a pretty good idea that software patents are bad.
I can't see the politicians and bureaucrats being moved to action because 0.0000001% of their constituents can't reach the Knoppix website.
FAX Is more appropiate. Document what you did in the community tool http://aktiv.ffii.org Dont' spam. Be polite. Ask for amendments to McCarthys proposal. So read the texts on swpat.ffii.org first. Demand a definition of technical in the directive. Tell them you don't want Amazon vs. Barnes and Noble in the EU. Or MS vs. Eolas (500 mio $) or other patent privateers. Tell them what the W3C says.
Yes, closing Slashdot may be preaching to the choir, but at this late stage in the game, this is exactly what can be most effective.
We need the EU folks reading Slashdot to get a jolt, to say, "Hey, this really is something Big." We need this, because this is the only way that many of them -- just like Americans -- will take the time to fire off their position to their representatives who have both the duty to represent their constituents and the power to stop this in its tracks.
And Slashdot, what is going to earn you more good will among your readership than taking a bold stand like this? Perhaps there would be more willing to subscribe -- at least for a month -- if they were to see you as politically active and not just a disinterested for-profit news portal.
C'mon Slashdot, even just a prominent alert that could stay at the top of front page. Isn't it for the good of everyone?
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
That's the nice thing about open source. You can just shut down your website and screw the people who need your software because you're not worried about getting their money. Another reason why businesses should not rely on open source software.
While it focusses on reforming copyright laws, most of what I say applies to patents. Note that in the U.S. at least, patents have the same legal foundation as copyrights, being authorized by the same clause in the Constitution.
The steps I suggest are:
- Speak Out
- Vote
- Write to Your Elected Representatives
- Donate Money to Political Campaigns
- Support Campaign Finance Reform
- Join the Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Practice Civil Disobedience
Well I don't think the EFF deals with patents but they do a lot of other good work.The above article is going to be put under a Creative Commons license to encourage copying as soon as I have the final draft done. I expect that to happen this weekend. So check back and copy the article to other websites when it's ready.
Also I closed my consulting business website a couple days ago and will keep it that way a couple more days.
While I don't get a huge amount of traffic to my homepage, I also don't expect most of the people visiting it to already be free software enthusiasts who know all about the patent controversy.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Some more that I've noticed:
apache.org
k-meleon.com
Several European OpenOffice.org sites
fvwm.org
The Slackware and KDE sites are also supposedly taking a part in this, but their pages are still up at of 9:15AM EST.
i saw this a couple of days ago. most of the 'shut down' pages have links to their normal, live pages, and the normal content is accessible. at least that's what i noticed w/ tutos, rpmfind and the imap sites, anyway.
If Europe refuses to allow software patents, and their software industries surge ahead of US software companies then maybe the US will see that software patents are bad and limit or get rid of them. OTOH, if Europe decides that software patents are ok, then there's nothing to compare the US system to. (Example: plugins work in Europe, but not in the US.)
:))
I just wish that Eolas injunction had been handed down a few months ago, so European MP's could see how bad software patents can be.
The most important issue is this:
Most people don't understand computers and don't think about how to make them do cool things.
(Hypothetical Example: Oh, I'm a power user, I use email, and the www, and I put my digital pictures online, and I use Kazaa, and I use Word, Excel, and ppt!)
For a person who gets computers, these are interesting up to a point, but they're probably not the "neatest" things you ever tried to make computers do.
They want to do stuff and that's it, and will try out new "cool" things if a product already exists. If they don't get to do some potential thing that doesn't exist yet because of software patents, then they won't notice. They probably never thought about doing that thing anyway so they aren't missing anything.
OTOH, if they have something, like Ebay or plugins, and they LOSE it, then they will notice. That's the time to explain to them the evils of software patents and how there are lots of other cool things that they might have had if not for these evil things. That's why I wish that Ebay had decided not to pay money or licensing fees, but instead just decide to shut down. THEN the general public would understand how evil these things are. Same with Eolas and plugins. I hope MS just eviscerates IE and screws up the whole Internet for everyone. Then people will see how evil software patents are. Unfortunately, they will probably try to mitigate the damage.
So, I think theoretical arguments about possible loss of freedom don't count for much because most people don't get computers anyway. You have to point to specific examples of cases where they lose things that they already have. That makes it concrete instead of abstract. (Cmon MS: gut IE!
Oh, and another thing, I don't think Eolas has a chance in hell of ever making a product. If IE gets nerfed, then Eolas will have pissed off just about everyone in the world, and a lot of those people will have patents that Eolas will need to infringe to make a real product. Therefore, I expect them to get stopped for refusing to "play the patent game" correctly by just taking their extortion money (oops, I meant their rightfully earned patent infringement penalty fees) and going home.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
...and in the meantime, link main page of Slashdot to the EU parliament, asking people to write petitions, visit all its pages etc... Effectively slashdotting it to a crawl - showing what REAL POWER stands behind the protesters.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The Irish Linux users site is also down in protest.
the slackware page is closed too.
Are the organized protests of the people and many small and medium sized organizations strong enough to win against lobbyorganizations like the BSA.
We have individuals mailing members of the european parliament, we have small and medium businesses like Magix (Musicmaker, and other tools) voicing ther opinion. We have sites being hidden. We have political parties in the EU government like the Greens that oppose the change of the patent laws.
It is known that there are forces in the EU government that promote the use of open source software for governments which means members of parliament who want to inform themselves about opensource might even stumble over protesting websites.
Hopefully the rescheduling will give those that are in doubt enough time to see that pushing through a BSA authored change to european patent laws is not backed up by large parts of the people and hopefully all those personal letters and mails will have a stronger impact than whatever it is, the lobby people offer the parliament members.
I just checked and as of 0935 EST, WineHQ was operational. What's up?
I personally don't see the impact of shutting down a website besides irritating a few web surfers who have minimal impact on legislation.
Perhaps that's a US-centric mode of thought.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Just tried to search RPMFind.net and they have temporarily closed in protest as well.
It was, afterall your own idea...
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I noticed the home of my distro of choice: Slackware had this page up the other day. I checked back a few hours later and it was gone. I thought maybe it was an isolated protest, but based on this story I guess not.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Really this protest is just preaching to the choir.
And harming the very people who are already against software patents.
Shutting down a pile of OSS sites isn't going to make the closed source users care any more.
Actually as such a user I would look and say "see they just shutdown and prevent you from doing anything for political aims, how unreliable can you get"
Arbitrary shutdowns are dumb.
We've replaced the front page, not quite closed the site (we need it for our OOo work).
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
BTW, Debian is still up, but the top of the fold indicates their support of the protest.
:-)
Maybe this is totally naive, but what if we setup a "thought bank". Most patents holders need to show their idea was theirs first don't they? If someone else can show prior art (ie. newspaper article, widely available source code, etc, anything to prove that someone else thought of the idea first) then the patent is invalid.
People who think of an idea who don't want someone else to patent it can describe their idea in the thought bank. It would then digitally sign the idea and post it for search engines and archive.org to catalogue it, and thereby providing a central place to create "prior art".
Any comments on why this is a [good|bad] idea?
(and just so you know, I'm patenting the idea of a "thought bank"...just kidding
Ruby on Rails Screencast
What are the chances that the US will want to harmonize its laws with Europe? The US doesn't do anything to make life easier for anyone else anywhere.
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"Vengeance is fine," sayeth the Lord.
Like the European Parliament gives a flying fuck what a bunch of Internet hippies does! Get over it! Better to go and protest in person.
Slashdot, this is your chance to take a stand and really make a difference.
This all seems too much like preaching to the choir. The only people who visit these sites are already of the geek persuasion. It's these faceless career politicians that we need to get to, and that means convincing Joe Public. Who doesn't generally run Wine, or even Linux for that matter.
Our only real hope rests with those heroes who managed to find the time and resources to get to Brussels and protest in person. But I'm guessing they will be so few in number that the bastards behind this legislation will find it all too easy to brush it off completely.
I'm not sanguine about a positive resolution. In fact I despair totally.
With very few exceptions (Gun-toting ESR and stubborn old RMS), the geek community are easy meat. It's in our nature. We're just too focussed on our artificial little techno-world and just don't have the cojones to get out there and fling half-bricks at the police.
Some will no doubt pontificate about doing the right thing and writing letters to MEPs but I've tried this already and the arrogant bastards only ever get some underling to write back confirming their support for the proposal and explaining why they are right and you are wrong. And that's if they even bother to reply at all, which isn't often. They are far too busy sucking co^H^H up to big business lobbyists to give a damn about the public at large, let alone a minority they unthinkingly dismiss as "techies" or "weenies".
Democracy? There ain't no such thing.
Bear in mind that this is just one legislative issue among many threatening the tech community, and there are many many other ways in which government is attempting to stiff local communities, middle income earners, small businesses, and the public in general. Take your pick.
I don't know about you lot but I just don't have the time or energy to fight every issue individually, especially when all the lawful means of resistance are so utterly useless. And it's hard to pick just one.
It makes you ask yourself: what is wrong with this system that we're under attack on multiple fronts from the establishment *all the time*? What the hell do we have to do to get some peace so we can just get on with our lives? Anything's got to be better than this.
Most people would rather try to ignore what's being done to them and just immerse themselves in what remains of their comfort zone. But we can't postpone confrontation indefinitely. It's just a matter of how much of our lives and liberties we're prepared to let our "elected" "representatives" feed to the sharks, before we will finally find our balls and stop burying our heads in the sand.
If we can't find a peaceful way to take back the political process soon (and I doubt that's even possible now as the existing establishment's grip tightens daily) I suspect many of us will be practising our ballistic bricklaying skills before our lives are done. Just try to remember while you hide in your comfort zones, people, that the longer it takes to get to that point the bloodier it will be for all of us. You included.
Why would the MEPs be concerned about what amounts to 'personal' to 'small community' pages to the 'Greater Majority' of web users?
How many general Windows users, you know the kind that barely know how to use Windows Update, visit the affected web-sites? How many of those people vote? Are they a bigger or smaller voting block then the geek population?
Until this affects those people in the hundreds upon hundreds of thousands. Then they will likely continue to be uncaring and those MEPs can vote however they wish to vote. While it is true that some vocal minorities can gain favor in politics, if that vocal minority isn't going against Monstrously HUGE corporate interests.
In this case, this is a case of going against HUGE corporate interests. I do hope that this campaign succeeds and hope that it raises awareness, but I don't see it raising the general population's awareness all that much.
Capturing the minds of the general population will make this protest work. Cutting off Free Software sites from the people that would actually visit those sites and care about those sites doesn't do anything to capture the minds of the general populace. All it does is inconvenience the people that use those sites.
It is a protest within a bubble that gets geeks riled up, but doesn't expand into the rest of the world's mind.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I have to question the impact this will have. Sure, we who already dislike software patents are upset by it. But will anyone in the closed software world be upset by this? If anything, I think some larger companies will be delighted that their 'competition' in the Open Source world is taking their site down.
Don't get me wrong; I'm against software patents too. But this seems no different than if, say, abortion clinics closed their doors to protest potential anti-abortion legislation -- it's going to make the other side happier, and I doubt anyone in the EU would even notice. Frankly, I think all this is doing is inconveniencing those in the OpenSource community who are trying to download the programs, forcing those who really need it to find a closed-source (and patented!) equivalent. They're hurting their cause, not helping it. The petition someone here linked to would be a far more effective way of protesting.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
I am issuing an immediate cease and disist order re: my patent #654335436543
Which states in part:
"A method or system for demonstrating political opinions through an electronic medium."
You bastards all owe me money!
Again, that doesn't explain how having this protest on the web would affect the average citizen. The web protest only affects geeks, these are people that are already concerned about the issue.
/. story isn't raising the general awareness. This site isn't MSNBC or CNN or Reuters... It is just a web-site for a niche group of people. Sure, there are several hundred thousand registered users, but it is still geared and designed for a VERY tight portion of the populace.
How many regular computer users will actually come across those web-sites? I would hazard to guess that the number would be small. They may start to read the page, most of those readers, if any, would simply surf somewhere else to look for the software or whatever they were looking for.
How many times have you gone to a web-site looking for something, not found your answer quickly and then left that site, never to return? Probably hundreds of times more then you could remember. I have probably done that well over a thousand times myself.
This
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
The idea of having a huge deposit required to get a patent is a Bad Thing. I doubt that my old company would have paid for my first patent, and I certainly couldn't have afforded to apply for my currently pending one, which I had to pay for myself. Maybe ~you~ can afford $10^5, but I can't. Loan officers aren't very good judges of what makes a good patent ("what's a deconvolution?").
;)
Also note that if you reward a patent examiner $10,000 for each rejected patent, none will get through. I can reject patents all day for $10,000 a pop.
However, I can see where you are going with it. It would be helpful to have an incentive for patent examiners to award only proper patents. Currently, it is very easy to get a bad patent awarded. All it really takes is time, some money, and persistence. I know a guy who got a ridiculous patent (of the "perpetual motion" type) by effectively browbeating the patent office and not giving up. Of course, what do we care if someone gets a patent on something that doesn't work? We don't. But it shouldn't have been awarded, according to patent office policy. There are a hundered thousand examples of bad patents which shouldn't have been awarded, and everyone knows it. So what do we do to stop it?
1) Get Congress to stop using the USPTO as a money machine. Let them keep the money they receive to hire new patent examiners; four years is too long to wait for a patent!
2) Provide incentives towards granting proper patents. When a patent is overturned in court, assign a penalty (what that penalty should be, I leave to heads wiser than mine). I think that having the current incentive to process more patents quickly is a good thing, it just needs to be counterbalanced by a quality factor. Good old Quality vs. Quantity.
3) Hire more patent examiners!
4) ???
5) Patent!
So - what's the smallest atomic unit that can be patented? If this hasn't been decided yet, I'd like to announce my EU patents pending for algorithms on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. K'hat
I have encoutered the same thing when I visited the open source anti virus web site http://www.openantivirus.org. Truthfully I realize that something needs to be done. The question is, Do the law makers truly care? Or are they truly affected by such a protest? I want to believe that in our jaded world they would, but I highly doubt it.
Including rpmfind.net...search for a package and you get:
This page is temporarily closed in protest against software patents. Websites may soon be closed down regularly due to software patents. Software patents can get you prosecuted for publishing texts you wrote yourself! ahhh I need an rpm for gcc 3 to use glibc2.3 to use imagemagick!!
Funny...
Slashdot cares so little for Europeans that we aren't even allowed to use our own currency symbols and accented characters in our posts.
But when something happens in Europe that might affect the US, suddenly we're big news!
Yes it is.
But really, I am actually shocked that anyone thinks this site-closing protest helps.
It may, in a small way, help the cause du jour. But, at the same time it most definitely hurts the site/business which is shutting down to a greater degree.
Take GIMP for example. If I were interested in GIMP, especially from a user perspective, and I get to their site and find it shut down, guess where I'm going? Bzzzt! Wrong answer, I'm not going to give a crap, and I'm going to the Adobe site to order Photoshop. I'm Joe average pixel-painter, and I need to get this work done so I can buy my kid the G.I. Joe with the Kung-Fu grip. Your closing your site just sent me off to the site of a software-patent supporting proprietary for-profit vendor.
Congratulations! You've just eroded your user base and hurt the cause more than helping it. You've managed to hurt several open source and free software causes, actually. Major Kudos!
Here's a better idea - devote a major portion of your homepage to "the cause", and make it so it's almost impossible to not read a little about it. Suck some people in... Then, let those who don't or can't care at that time still get to what you have to offer, grow your user base, and produce more users who might give a rat's-ass in the future!
I'm really not attempting to cause a flamefest here - I'm just at a loss as to why folks think this is an effective protest in the big scheme of things.
-- I survived the IPO rush of '99
The AROS (Amiga Research Operating System) site is also shut down.
Well. since the sites are down in protest..... they won't mind the slashdotting, at least this for this time.
- "They misunderestimated me."
There is one site that we would all enjoy taking a little break
.sig
Just what I wanted to hear -- something real happening after all :)
I'm not European, nor have I ever lived there. My website is not hosted in Europe. Really, I have no reason to get involved. However, I believe in the cause, and so I too am shutting down my site in protest. Admittedly, I run a very very small site, so I doubt anyone will care, but hey, every voice counts, right?
Because we don't like you.
Maybe when Europeans learn the difference between dissent and flamebait, Slashdot won't have to cover its ass with the "US-centric" label.
Hmmm, lets think about this logically:
Most 'Free Enterprise' governments are members of the WTO (world trade organization).
Most 'Large' media conglomerates are members of the WTO.
Most 'Large' corporations are members of the WTO.
Now, given that the WTO meets once a year, in private, and from leaks from past meetings we have seen the focus is on two things: instability in revenue streams, and Terrorism (which causes instability in revenue streams), is it any wonder that these organizations are making a concerted effort to protect their revenue?
We are niave if we think that a sea-change that is taking place in the most profitable business in the world (software development and sales) will not be fought against by the people who benefit from the old way of doing business. Since they have contacts in high places (WTO etc.) is it any wonder that they are courting governments in various ways to artificially maintain the status quo? If you can't beat them fair and square, then throw litigation at them is their current mode (patent laws, copyright laws, SCO lawsuit, etc...).
How can we combat this if they succeed in making free software illegal? Are those of us with families willing to put it all on the line - to be subject to censure, loss of the ability to find work, arrest, and persecution? I would have to think long and hard about my carreer choice. It would be the dawn of a digital dark age - when technologists truely become serfs of the corporations that employ them and hold all of the software patents.
Now is the time to do something if we truely value our freedom. Something that impacts everyone in the world would probably do the trick:
On a certain date, all IT workers, programmers, network gurus, web masters, technical support - anyone who considers themselves techno-geeks - everyone the world over arrive at work, and after checking in, simply walk out for a week - take sick leave, or vacation.
No phone support.
No servers brought back up.
No network routers configured.
No communications corrected.
No batches run.
No software written.
NOTHING; NADA; ZIP.
If everyone did this (no scabs) it would send a clear signal to Governments, Businesses, and the Media - as well as the public in general, that the geeks deserve a little respect and consideration for all they do to keep modern society humming along. Perhaps software patents are a bad thing. Perhaps we should reconsider how we view software as a key component of growth and development for society and the public good, instead of as a money making proposition, to be kept locked up in a vault for strategic purposes by rich corporations.
Of course, this is all fantasy, just a plot for a novel. Geeks don't have what it takes to change the course of history, and it would be stupid to think they did.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
According to http://www.vim.org the vote on Sept. 1st is going to be postponed due to protests...
Just got granted the patent for software process that monitors and keeps track of patent law suits. WooooHooo! Gonna be rich now!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I said this before. Slashdot is a corporate-owned business. It can't just go and shut down its business for a day. It needs to keep posting "Microsoft hole," SCO, and amateur rocket stories to get page hits and money.
"Sufferin' succotash."
The Prelude Hybrid IDS project is closed too...
Sensei's Library, a very useful and complete WIKI-site for information related to Go (the boardgame) also has such a patent-law protest as its frontpage currently.
> These site shutting down in protest is not very professional. This is one of the problems with the free software community, politics plays too heavy of a role in their actions.
First, the protest has nothing to do with Free Software. That's a misguided assumption on your part. The people taking part in the protest could be anyone in the software industry who understands the danger of software patents.
Second, if you don't believe in public protest, then what would you suggest is the "professional" way to influence a political decision? Would you prefer backroom payoffs, like Bill Gates and company?
You forget, that part of the goal of the companies pushing this would be to wipe OSS off the face of the earth..
So you bozos go out and do it for them.. really smart..
*They* DONT CARE about your protest..
While here we all may be for it, the people that are already bought ( ie, legislature ) dont really care.. nor will they notice...
If you doubt me, when was the last time a well meaning protest actually made a difference, other then get a 5 min spot on the evening news..?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If you know the name, its easy, it goes: first letter of surname + familly name attached @europarl.eu.int Hence, the MEP Jean-Louis BOURLANGES has for email jbourlanges at europarl.eu.int You can also try looking them up on their french political party's page - I got the list (with emails) of UDF MEPs of their website without problems.
What do you know about World Politic? Find out in this quiz
Is this like when ethnic neighborhoods burn their own houses down, to protest "the Man" holding them down? ;)
Worse case senario: Free software is defeated.
Free software goes underground. Geeks start sharing software through encrypted peer to peer networks. Non-geeks end up buying high priced crud from M$.
M$ and the RIAA companies get richer, and root out the last vestiges of free software on the net. Geeks build elaborate screen savers that look like a M$ windoze box - for when guests are around, but run Linux and free software underneath the hood.
The Senate convenes a new 'Un-American Activities' commitee, and brings prominent geeks in for public 'questioning' (ridicule). These geeks are blacklisted, and can not find work. This serves to make other geeks 'tow the line', or at least pretend to.
After a decade of low wages, persecution, and social programs intent on 'Microsoftizing' the populance, the well of available geeks runs dry. Geeks, themselves, no longer pass on the arcane subjects of computers to their children, instead opting to teach them candle making, and send them to seminary.
Over the next 20 years all remaining geeks retire from the workforce. There are no new systems built. All existing systems are kept running by non-geeks who use cargo-cult methods, not really understanding how it works. If a system breaks down - it does not get fixed. Slowly the network deteriorates; world wide communications become extinct. The Digital Dark Age lasts for ten thousand years, until some proto-geek reinvents the computer and the silicon chip.
Is this the future we want for our children? Make a difference - now!
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Why /. does not consider joining the demonstration ?
/. admins, show you care about software patents. Join the demonstration !
Shutting down the service might be too restricive for world wide user, but pushing this as a frontpage might be better and should not hurt !
Please
An EU Tux fan.
It's not called email anymore, it's called courriel.
There are two sides of every coin. For every lawyer that is defending something they don't believe in, there is a lawyer that fully believes in their client's side. For every known murderer that is freed, there could be an innocent person that is jailed. The system isn't perfect, but it is designed to make everyone equal. If people do not do their jobs, like in your example a cop not reading an offender their rights, the system breaks down.
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Just google for "closed because of software patents" and there are so many
companies doing the same.
DO NOT PANIC
It's getting harder and harder to get through to the petition.
(Who, me? I just want to watch the number of petitioners get bigger.)
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
Just an aside, but you might want to check out the new OpenGroupware.org. It's a recently open-sourced collaboration application. I downloaded TUTOS, but while reading up on all the commercial and non-commercial options, I stumbled upon it. The setup isn't for beginners, but it's working really good now that I've got it running.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
While it is not shut down, the Debian website has a LARGE statement in support of the protest on it's home page.
I've also noticed that the anjuta website is closed.
utter rubbish
It seems that Rackshack, SCO and OsiruSoft are unwillingly participating in the "shutdown" as well.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
It's actually starting to get to me how commercial this site is starting to feel...
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
VIM.org had a new splash front page for at least a few days, but now it's just the first "news" article there.
MORTAR COMBAT!
I've made a rough translation. Yes I know the english is bad. If You don't like it just read the swedish original. Don't complain about my bad english without being fluent in swedish please. And if You are fluent in swedish, feel free to make a better translation.
I don't really know how to respond to this letter since I can't really understand (nor have I read) the McCarthy report. Does anyone have suggestions for me on how to respond?
--------
"Hello.
Thanks for your question.
It looks like the voting will be prosponed and that there will be no voting next week.
We have listened to both sides in this question. It looks like we're going to support the report by McCarthy and thereby support the EU-commisions suggestion about software patents.
The large majority here in the building don't want to see a development towards the american legislation. This is why we believe that the current suggestion is a good one. It keeps the current european law (with precident from EPO in Munich) which means that software in itself can't be patented, only technical contributions/implementations.
Kind regards
Sofia Strand"
-------------
Perhaps someone else can make a better translation, letter is here:
"Tack for din fraga. Det ser ut som om omrostningen om mjukvarupatentet aterigen kommer att skjutas upp och att det darfor inte rostas i nasta vecka.
Moderaterna har lyssnat mycket till "bada sidor" i den har fragan. Det lutar dock at att Moderaterna kommer att stodja rapporten av McCarthy och darmed stodja EU-kommissionens forslag till direktiv om mjukvarupatent.
Den stora majoriteten har i huset vill inte se en utveckling mot amerikansk lagstiftning. Man anser darfor att forslaget fran EU-kommissionen ar bra. Det bibehaller ju nuvarande europeiska rattslage (med praxis fran EPO i Munchen) och innebar inte att mjukvara i sig kan patenteras, endast tekniska bidrag/losningar.
Med vanliga halsningar
Sofia Strand"
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
"For instance, do you really believe that the labor movement would ever have gotten anywhere if they never held any strikes? That the civil rights movement would have gotten anywhere if they never got in anybody's face?"
That's totally different. It's one thing to stop working on a production line, and temporarily kill a physical product that isn't easily replicated. You're hurting The Mans pockets that way.
Who are these protesters hurting by shutting down their own fuckin' web sites? Themselves, and you that support them. You think proprietary software companies or governments give a flying fuck about Knoppix shutting their website down? Please.
And software companies will just take advantage os this by saying "See? Those open source people are fanatics. You can't depend on them. If they don't get what they want, they'll cry and take their ball home. You can always rely on the steady, rock solid support of *insert software company name here*".
This is just like rioters that disply their rage by destroying their own homes and communities. After its all over, where the fuck are you going to live? Same principal here.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Also, without software patents, the gimp would be allowed do CMYK!
I've been periodically tempted to make a "EuroGIMP" fork with CMYK capability, for use only outside the USA (honest, guv...)
Now we know why the SCO website is down sometimes.
They are protesting the free software protesters.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Whether they know about it or not. It will be imperceptible, unless they routinely look through the offerings at their local software store...
One day, they might notice that the number of available office applications will shrink futher, or they will notice that there is now only one MP3 management software on the shelves, instead of 6 or 7. They might see only one DVD "Mastering" software for the home user, instead of 4 or 5 that I have seen on shelves today...
They might notice, they might shrug their shoulders and furrow their brow and wonder why all the other packages of software disappeared... Then they will come to the 'logical' conclusion that those other packages must have sucked and the developers of those other packages went out of business... They might not even give it that much thought...
So, what is needed is something that will raise awareness to EVERYONE. Not just the niche geek group... Soemthing has to be done to raise everyone's awareness of that law now... Otherwise, it will likely pass and there will be nothing to do about it.
Of course, after the law is passed, if a handful of rather slick geeks were to have hold of a few crucial patents...
Then it would be possible to get some MAJOR commercial vendors to cease shipment of this or that MAJOR software package, like MS Windows, then the regular populace will notice and will likely want to repeal the law.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
What's really a bad thing is that the maintainers of the petitioning site didn't count on heavy load. I'm sure this makes the total amount of signatures quite a bit less than what would've been possible.
Many people don't bother voting if it isn't easy.
my USA sites are bannered in support.
m ing.com
/.)
kausi.com
kausi.mpls.mn.us
revlac.com
kcgroo
poem.kausi.com
(ya i know posting ones weblink is asking for trouble on
posted as coward since i cannot wait for my password to be e-mailed.... DANG! SOMEONE PATENT E-MAIL IN THE EU?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!
**sniff** i am a coward forever **sniff**
I think no one has mentioned it but Slashdot closed its website too. Well, I think so 'cause I was busy all the day preparing things for the demonstration and I couldn't check it myself but I guess I'm right.
The overreaching of the IP monopolists is already creating quite a bit of backlash. EU software patents might just be the straw which breaks the camel's back -- and sends their whole stupid house of cards crashing. (Taking the RIAA, MPAA, etc. down with it.)
In any event, protest all this IP bullshit, not just patents.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
I wonder if SCO is joining the protest, their website seems to be down lately a lot too!
It's up right now. Perhaps if enough slashdotters could visit them and help them protest a bit more?
So why isn't Slashdot participating? Everything that gets posted suggests they support the position; why not participate? Do the editors really only support it enough to get readers and comments? I know your readers are generally informed, but that's true of a lot of the sites that are participating. Come on Slashdot, you can do better than this.
Yesterday, the VIM site was participating in the protest, but today, Bram has posted that the vote has been postponed due to overwhelming protest, and points to ffii.org for more information! And yet, when I go to ffii.org, I don't see any information about anything being postponed... Anybody have more details on this? Egads, life would be a shade darker without VIM on my laptop )-:
don't mess with those geekgrrls
Would the occasional carriage return kill you?
It is, but the problem is bigger than that. Software patents are a threat to Open Source in much the same way that nuclear war is a threat to beekeepers. Almost everyone who writes software has this sword hanging over their necks, the only real exceptions being people who are at companies who have large patent portfolios and can cross-license. Those programmers are a minority.
I develop and maintain proprietary software for a living, and like every other programmer in the world, I have no idea how many patents I routinely violate every week. The only reason it hasn't been an issue (so far) is that our source is closed so it would be pretty hard for a hostile outsider to know what patents I violate, too. But if there ever were a conflict that somehow resulted in us having to reveal our source, the risk .. well, the risk is
unknown. And that's pretty scary.
A litigeous situation like that is unlikely because we're so small and our competition isn't very heated. No one has much to gain from harming us. But I can easily imagine situations where larger companies who are battling for big stakes, could find patent violations in one another products. (Look at how IBM responded to SCO. Never mind that SCO were the bad guys in this fight -- IBM could have done that to anybody.)
The kind of patent violations I'm talking about aren't "IP theft" or lazy followers copying true leaders' work. It's just people doing their jobs and solving problems the way any programmer should solve problems. Problem solving is what we do every day. And it's not like we're all these brilliant Edisons and Franklins who are inventing these insightful things all the time; it's just that with software, there's a simple process (that does not require genious) for arbitrarily piling layer upon layer to create immense complexity. And whatever you come up with, there's a reasonable chance that someone might have a patent on it. This is not what patents were intended to cover!
Anyway, what I'm getting at is that most proprietary and internal services programmers should be just as concerned about software patents as Free Software and Open Source developers. This is a much bigger problem and I think the publicity needs to get that message across.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
GNU II Win was open, they just replaced their front page with an explanation. You can click through after you read it and get to the main site.
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
I really hope this will help to turn public attention in the US to the issue of software patents.
The only US initiative I found was Nader's, and (you may not like it, but it's true) the guy has no political credibility whatsoever and only makes the issue worse.
It'd be really nice if there existed a grassroots effort to abolish software patents in the US so that it wouldn't be a partisan issue.
Alas, there is none...
grisha.org
...although with rpmfind, you'll only see the
"outage" notice when you submit a search.
(....also irked that I submitted this story two
days ago and it was rejected....grumble)
Does that mean we Euros *can* legally break 'copyright protection' then?
Accidentally hit reset on a few well chosen machines all at the same time -- say maybe midnight GMT tonight.
I bet the shock to the Internet would be nothing compared to the political earthquake of headlines reading "Slashdot readers bring down Internet in protest over software patents."
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
Microsoft Patents Ones and Zeros
[news for me, stuff that doesn't matter]
Where will I find software/support for my open-source software projects?
Oh yeah, that's right - nobody supports them anyways.
I say we have another shutdown to protest shitty documentation and tepid support for open source projects as well.
No one's closing any pages, they're just changing the homepage with a reivindicative one, and then link that to the usual homepage.
Not such a big effort, IMO.
... information wants to be forwarded
I'm just waiting for the first Slashdot story about Amazon.com patenting online methods of managing a Flash Mob....whats next!?
up 12 days, 22:30, 2 users, load averages: 993.20, 994.21, 994.56
*makes note to limit user processes...
>>Others include KDE, Gimp, gnu-darwin, GNU-savannah, and most of the French and German linux sites.
KDE doesn't look like they are down due to a protest. Perhaps someone should inform them.
Okay, so they just have a notice on their main page, but it's still enormous, considering they have 60% of the market share for public websites.
Many listings on RPMFind.net bring up the same message. Also, many of the projects they list display it. The sites aren't truly closed down. On the notice, there is a hyperlink to continue on to your destination, but it won't forward you automatically.
It's a good way to get attention to te cause, but I feel that they are only protesting to the geek crowd. They should find ways to enlist the help of the not-so-geeky websites to get more fo the common folk involved.
http://linuxfr.org/
As an example, if this were true someone could sue Suse, because unlike RedHat (which has a bunch of defensive patents) they hace no way to defend themselves, aside from getting the stupidity revoked (or better yet: not have it pass at all!)
After all the bitching people on /. have done regarding the patents amazon.com has gotten for simple shit....you don't like the EU approach of not allowing software patents? Just because you can't patent it doesn't mean you can't trademark and/or copyright stuff to prevent other people from infringing in your ideas and such.
Oh...wait...I forgot...most of us don't obey or respect software/music trademarks and copyrights...why should we expect anyone to respect ours?
Well, someone has to be up to let people know what is going on. From the few sites i've seen, Apache, winehq, and a couple others, it's only the first page.. then it says "You will be redirected to the actual site after 20 seconds" (or 60, on apache).. So slashdot could do the same thing.. it's basically just an informative splash page..
-matt
How does one shut down a website? I mean I can always change the index.[s]htm[l]. But what about other book marked pages? Is there a way I can 'shout down' all links to a website?
Think of how many hits per day Slashdot gets. Now multiply that times the size of even a small HTML page on the issue. I'd that with as large an audience as Slashdot has, doing something like that would be prohibitively expensive from a bandwidth standpoint, especially considering how many people obsessively reload the front page.
Very true.. Maybe they can put an ad on the front page as a CYA type deal.
-matt
http://www.go-mono.com/
Indeed, "a lot of people would not know about... lots of other news." But if /. were to modify their homepage, I think it's safe to say that plenty of people would know about the protest.
There was an almost complete list somewere with the sites registered, but i do not remember were it was.
;-)
BTW, the fact that slashdot do not close annoyed me a lot. I'll not read it anymore
Shutting down web sites to protest idiotic American or European Community laws is not a good action.
In this transistion to the information age, a major battle is going on between the forces of old, who use politics as a means for controlling individuals and the forces of new, who use information technology as a means of liberating individuals. We should avoid using the tactics of the political forces because it means that we will always lose, because they are controlling the legal mechanisms of engagement.
In other words, by shutting down our web sites we are doing exactly what they are trying to get us to do, which is shut down our websites. The fact that the web site is down because of its operator's protest as opposed to an arbitrary decision of the political forces (i.e. a software patent) is irrelevant. The point is that the web site is down.
Which, in the information age, means that the politicians have won this engagement.
It would be to our advantage to prove our strength to our website users and followers by ensuring that our websites are ALWAYS up, running, and available to provide service. To show that we can keep our websites running, regardless of whether the politicians have decided that they must be shut down for one arbitrary pseudo-legal reason or another, would show the world the strength of the global technical community in the information age.
Shutting down our websites to protest a political decision is counterproductive, because it shows that we exist only at the whim and mercy of the political forces and are limited in our response to political oppression by useless symbolic protest. Keeping our websites on-line, through means of third-world mirror sites or advanced internet routing techniques, shows the world that, in the technical fields that world has come to depend on, we are stronger than politicians.
It also shows the world that if the politicians have a disagreement with the way that we choose to provide our services to the world, then they should engage us in civilized dialog in an open international forum instead of assuming that they can simply crush us through violence or its threat.
I would recommend the book 'The Sovereign Individual' by James Dale Davidson and Lord Rees-Mogg for a detailed, advanced, and thrilling discussion of the transfer of power from political forces (using violence) to civilized forces (using technology) that is beginning to occur now.
Thank you,
Simonetta
Just how do you distinguish between 'maths' and 'algorithms'? Who decides what is trivial and what is not? No doubt the satellite based GPS systems use 'non-trivial' 'algorithms' to make the corrections to their calculations that are necessary due to G.R.
Suppose Albert Einstein hadn't gotten around to the G.R. theory yet, but the GPS satellite people had - and had patented every algorithm they could think of that might possibly be of use to them, constituting in effect a statement of the theory. Then for starters you could kiss goodbye to modern cosmology and G.R. textbooks and if Professor Einstein had tried to publish his theory, he would have spent his last days in prison, courtesy of the DMCA.
You may be happy to live in a foul dystopia in which maths and science - ideas - are owned by commercial interests but I for one will fight to the last drop of my blood to prevent the realisation of such a monstrous vision.
There are more people than cops! I still don't get why people don't just ignore stupid laws. Sure, if I get a summons and I don't show up to court, I get my head dented by some "trigger happy peace clown." But if everybody did it ... And yes. I'm listening to punk right now.
That's my kind of protest. Did people cut off their feet to keep from being drafted? No they burned their draft cards! Show some balls software world. Fight. Dirty.
This is what will happen if software patents are allowed (in sequential order):
1) LARGE companies start emeting lots, and lots of patents.
2) LARGE companies start beating small companie (their competitors), and possibly open source producers (when it becomes more then a niche market), into oblivian.
3) A monoculture of products will apear, choice will cease to exist. Prices for these products will skyrocket and the quality will drop.
4) All money will flow to those large companies. The economy will start depending on those same large companies, who can then do nearly anything they want (best example: Microsoft)
5) Corporate states are born (example: the U.S.)
Please note: in my definition a corporate state is created at the moment big companies control what happens in national politics.
It'd be bad if everyone could patent software. It'd be even worse if some people could, and others couldn't, based on which country they live in.
I'm surprised nobody posted about Apache which has been protesting this for several days now.
And now for the solution to all patent issues (if respected countries would just enact it):
Patents are devised to protect an entities investment in their research and promise the possibility of gain from doing the research. Unfortunately patents last an arbitrarily long time, and can really stifle advancement in the field (duh). So all we need to do to counteract these problems is to provide monetary incentive to companies without sacrificing the rest of the market. To suffice this equation: all you need is a R&D market. People invest in the R&D market on problems which they think have a likelihood of being solved. This finds a natural balance of urgency which companies see and invest their time and money into finding the solution to the problem. First company to the solution, files with the R&D, R&D verifies, then company gets paid. Thats it!
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
Sure, code from the Apache Software Foundation may be free, but that does not mean that our core purpose -- providing softwre to the public -- should be held hostage to political demonstrations and statements. We altered our web page because we care about the EU patent situation (well, anywhere really!). But to completely shut down our site would fly in the face of our entire reason for existence. The ASF is a public charity, chartered to help people. Just because we make our software available for free doesn't mean it is right for us to deny access to it whenever the whimsy strikes us.
-- Greg Stein, ASF Chairman
That depends why you're shutting down the websites (or, as in this case, mostly adding an extra page to explain the patent problem). Obviously your MEP isn't going to be jumping up in outrage at the fact that the Gimp website is showing a different homepage for the day. This is about spreading awareness among people who are going to be hit by software patents, but don't yet know it.
The idea that the best way to protest is by doing absolutely nothing (making sure that websites that are up every day stay up), which you're suggesting, is frankly laughable. What you're suggesting is only of any relevance if we wait until the decisions have been made and don't bother protesting until we're directly effected by the new laws - and until the sites that we're trying to keep up are illegal. Call me old-fashioned if you will, but despite anything Lord Rees-Mogg might have to say (and judging by the synopsis of the book at Amazon he has many offensive and misguided things to say) attempting to address problems proactively is far better than merely being reactive.
If the politicians have a problem with how we choose to provide our services to the world, then if the laws back them up, they can arrest us, confiscate our property, drive our companies out of business or whatever. We've already seen some of this happen in the US. I'd rather try to avoid that in Europe, if you don't mind.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
The fact of the matter is that Copyright and Patent law is completely outdated and can no longer effectively cover the sphere of creativity in the marketplace. 100 years ago, the scope of what was a written work and what was an invention was pretty easy to comprehend. It was also very clear who was the patent holder, the originator of the work.
;-)
Today, the issue is a real mess.
Software-
Software is a written work that becomes a machine when compiled and executed. It is a work that spans the two and should clearly have it's own category. Software patents for REAL innovation is appropriate. However, applications of derivates of well known concepts are simply not deserving of 17years of exclusive use.
I once had a colleague who had effectively patented the bit. Basically he had determined a scheme by which a record would either be a "summary" or a "detail" if a bit was switched. They actually successfully sued AT&T and succeeded in getting royalties.
While the use of such a technique does show a level of adaptivity and creativity, it doesn't rise to the level of "NEW IDEA". Certainly not one warranting 17 years of exclusive rights. The fact is that fundamental computer science is MEANT to apply to a limitless number of scenarios.
As far as copyrights go, it's pretty foolish to copyright something that you don't publish. Software code is virtually NEVER published. It's really a bad fit for copyright as no-one has a clue as to whether they did or did not infringe.
Clearly a new classification of intellectual property is needed in this category.
Bio-Tech-
A tremendous new force is emerging to literally turn biological information into machines. The pharmeceutical industry has existed for nearly a century treating drugs as "inventions".
The thing about modern pharmeceuticals is that their is way more at stake than the invention itself. Pharmecuetical production involves
1) Identification of a substance (or class of substance) that produces specific effect in anatomy.
2) Processes to synthesize that agent in a manner that is cost productive.
3) Development of an appropriate delivery agent.
4) Clinical trials to determine the efficacy of the product so that it can be marketed.
Each of these steps require uniquely different skills and techniques. In a way, each represents a uniquely different type of intellectual property.
Furthermore, when we look at the real "new age" biotech, there core product is often "knowledge". For example, knowledge of the human genome and how individual genes effect human anatomy. Our law is now recognizing the patent of individual "genes". Those are FACTS.
Patents aren't supposed to recognize scientific facts and truths, only inventions. However, patents are now issued to biotech firms for the knowledge of functions for individual genes or clusters of genes.
Clearly this fundamental research is a form of intellectual property. But it clearly IS NOT an invention since the knowledge does not produce a workable product, device or machine. It certainly is not a copyright, only god could copyright the human genome
Again new forms of intellectual property law is warranted to account for expensive research. Such a research is VERY valuable to humanity and an economic incentive may clearly be warranted (though perhaps not 17 years worth of protection).
Beyond that, perhaps research that produces new uses for older "inventions" should be relevant. For example, pharmeceutical companies simply will NOT invest research into known substances going of patent. There is no economic motivation. Perhaps a "IP" that would allow royalties for NEW uses of existing substances would be appropriate.
Another aspect of biotech firms is "process". The concept of "process" is embodied quite boldy in patents now. Though their relevance and applicability is often questioned. Indeed, I would claim that the a GUI software appli
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
I do not think people understand how sneaky this directive is... I suggest you drop by here...
c h/ index.en.html
BTW if this directive is good ?
Why is the one click amazon patent now also approved by the EPO ?
Read this
http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/te
Simply cannot get to the web site today... It's pingable, can browse site initially with telnet://www.php.net 80 and do a GET /index.html.
Elsewise, no cookie when using browser...
Just hangs...
=8-(
I've heard an opinion recently, that the GPL is just a hack around the normal legal system. Basically, the free software movement did not start with changing the law. It wasn't like there were demonstrations or petitions against copyrights. Instead the legal system was simply hacked. I just wondered if that could be done again, this time with patents. Wouldn't making simple adjustements to the GPL work? Here are my (very rough) proposals ..., in any program covered by this license free of charge, however you are forbidden from using this patents in any product not covered by this license :)). Basically, what I am saying - if you cannot change the system, use it to your advantages. Any thougths on why did would or not work?
I) if you agree to use this software you must not claim infrigments of any of your patents by any software covered with the GPL 3 or greater
Also, the FSF, OSDN or whatever free software organization could register patents and then license them under the GPL with the following another adjustement
II) you are free to use the patents no. aaa, bbb,
I am writing this from mozilla, so I have some
simple patents proposals (I don't know if they are valid)
a) type ahead search
b) spam filter
c) mouse gestures
I know they are stupid (just like every patent out there). Imagine next time a nuisance like SCO happens (hey, but you infringe 100 of our patents
What is up with the need to start off all their proggies with K's anyway?
:o/
Reminds me of...
"With new membership came new names and titles: Klavern (brick meeting house), Kleagles (organizers and recruiters), Exalted Cyclops (president), Klaliff (vice-president), Kligrapp (secretary) and Klandom (entire organization).
Shortly after, the Klandom was designated 'The Invisible Empire'; the president became known as the Grand Wizard. His cabinet was composed of ten Genii. Their internal system became Klancraft and their language was termed Klanguage."
There was a better quote, but none of the search engines are availing it to me.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
First, lawyers don't create laws; Legislators/Congress(wo)men do (and judges interpret them).
As Rogerborg pointed out, 39 percent of U.S. federal legislators have been admitted to some state's bar association at one point. If that's not enough, remember that legislators have little free will nowadays. The biggest lobbying organization in the U.S. Congress is the American Trial Lawyers Association, whose members' job security depends on having laws that are too long and too complex for the layman to follow.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Software patents in the USA has done great harm to the IT industry. Most every software program, user interface, and algorithym worth a tinker's damn is based (at least in part) on prior art. The short-term winners are the monopolistic companies, that have extended their reach with DCMA and RIAA. What possible reason to extend copyrights, beyond things like sweezing more cash from Mickey Mouse (how old is he?). The other big short-term winners are the politicians who have been bought and paid for by these same monopolists. Of course, one of the best examples of this is Sen. Hollings, of South Carolina. It is all the same tactic of "pump and dump" that brought us AOL-TW, Enron, WorldCom, etc. All the parties guilty of breaching the public trust are bailing out with their ill-gotten gains. I think it was Samuel Clemens who said "Congress has provided us with the best politicians that money can buy."
Still as ass-inine as ever. If goatse.cx was down, it was brief.
Close Google for a day or two and see how many people notice. They use opensource software a lot so they'd be a good example. If only someone could convince them to do it.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
If a site with hundreds thousands of visitors a day changes the front page, than a lot of people would know about the protest. Also the suggestion never said to shutdown the site completely. It says you should replace the front-page with information about the protest and this replacement page may link to usual site front page.
what was the saying: first they came for ... and then there was nobody to speak for me ...
Comment removed based on user account deletion