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Torvalds And Cox Write EU Parliament On Patents
replicant_deckard writes "Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox have sent an open letter to the members of the European Parliament. They ask for strict limitations to software patents, argue for open standards and ask the members of the parliament to follow FFII's voting recommendations. Vote on the controversial software patents directive will be on Wednesday and it is expected to be a very close one. Well, do you believe these guys have any impact in Brussels?"
I understand that one can patent a process for doing something, but one can also patent an end-product. A program is an end-product of the source code used to compile it, so wouldn't software patents, in effect, cause the much feared "functionality similarity" disputes to become more substantive in the legal system?
Esoteric reference.
Before you start the main purpose and body of the letter you might explain why you are a crediable person to listen to. If they aren't particularly technically inclined then they may have no idea who you are. Tell them who are are, why you are important, and why they should listen to you. Without that, you usually loose your influence.
-Foxxz
So in this case, the only question is whether it can be amended to address our concerns - it will almost certainly pass one way or the other.
Dream on! Your brand of apathy is exactly what we don't need right now. If the large software vendors can change the law to what suits them, then they can certainly stop us from changing it back in 5 years. This is our best, and possibly our last real chance to stop the damage being done to immigration by the unholy alliance of intellectual property lawyers, keen to milk the industry for legal fees, and the monopolists of the software industry, keen to let IP lawyers milk their smaller competitors dry.Ten bucks says they postpone the voting a 9th time.
Open letters are read by everyone else, sure... people on the street might take a look, journalists might use them as an easy out when they're looking for something to write this weeks column about, but does anyone have any evidence to suggest that politicians even know these letters exist?
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
We can and have made a difference - but we haven't won the battle yet. If you live in the EU and care about these issues take the time to contact your MEP and see where they stand on this issue - but remember:
How prevalent are large campaign donations in Europe? Are lobby groups any where near as powerful as they are in the US?
"Please do not make this harder to us that it already is!"
Shouldn't it be "for us" and "than"? Isn't it possible that these members of parliment might think less of this letter based on grammar?
Of course, that sentence could be correct. If so, I'm an idiot. My bad.
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
Linus has always maintained his reputation as a simple hacker-- someone not concerned with politics but rather technology.
.sig
This is the second such letter bearing a Torvalds
Is this the start of a new (albeit, not necessarily bad) trend of more coders voicing their opinions on IP law and its current state of affairs?
First, I want to say that it is fantastic that both Linus and Alan saw the importance of getting involved in this issue. It is very politically important after the disaster with "software" patents we've had in the United States.
And I normally don't publicly criticize anyone about the mechanics of their message because I spent my time playing Dungeons & Dragons in high school rather than paying attention to grammar and spelling, but I really wish that they had run this by a 12th level grammarian with +2 red pencil before widespread open publication. I think that the letter itself will have a large impact, but I wish it were just a bit more refined.
Addressing the letter to "the Honourable Pat Cox" but opening with a salutation of Mr. instead of President.
Leaving out definite articles. Using a mixture of technological, legal, and political terminology but not spelling out or giving background on the different terminologies. Not saying it's wrong or unclear, but just that it might have benefitted from a bit more clarity.
I am really proud of the Linux leaders for doing something so important and inspiring. If not to the leaders of the European parliament then to me at least. I just wish I had no reservations about the form it takes.
That's why I don't think we who value our basic liberties have much time left. Others might ask why I haven't moved (I live in the U.S.), without realizing that there really isn't any place on the globe worth moving to. As far as I know, there isn't a single government on the planet that cherishes liberty and works towards maximizing that for its people. And even if there were, chances are most people wouldn't be able to go there anyway because of strict immigration laws.
You need to talk to these folks...
Free State Project - Liberty in our Lifetime
While not perfect, New Zealand is at least making some steps in the right direction. The Government is currently (albeit very slowly) looking at restricting the power of software patents. This came after a Canadian company sued a whole bunch of NZ online retailers for patent violations. Apparently they had a patent on automatically calculating shipping and currency conversion. The NZ companies balked and said shipping currency conversion was kind of obvious, especially when most buyers from a NZ online website will be from overseas. They have banded together to fight the legal action, and given that this amounted to a large chunk of NZs online retail operators, they successfully lobbied the government to look into this sort of thing.
As I say, it isn't perfect. The government hasn't DONE anything. But they are at least looking at it - that is, things are at least heading in the right direction for once. New Zealand has also successfully dodged a DMCA look alike so far after heavy public submissions when the government was looking at digital copyright.
Jedidiah
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
I dont know much about the European system but I expect that anything that has taken this long to draw up will pass in some form.
I think that the right thing to do is to demonstrate that the new rules hurt the EU because the only benifit big multinationals that can shift workers to whichever far corner of the globe is cheapest and they hurt small EU software companies.
I think also that we need to convince the EU to have tight rules on what can be patented. Personally, my big wish is to prevent patents of things like file formats (e.g. LZW patent, MPEG patent) and communications protocols and APIs.
Also patents like the patent that prevents e.g. the GIMP from supporting print output options (CMYK or whatever it is)
Keep quiet?
You have to be fucking kidding me. Didn't the last civil war teach you people about living in the "land of the free"?
When some draconian law gets proposed, or your government wants to do something more restrictive with your country, if you don't say anything at all, you're open to everything, good and bad.
It's about time more people noticed the groundswelling of anti-corporate/bush/ashcroft "patriotism" that has been building since at least the year 2000, and did something about it. You can't remain quiet about that! You need to discuss the issues, not hide behind some "Patriot Act" or TIA mandate, or hell, use the DMCA as a club to beat your rights to death.
I don't even like the united states, but I can respect the need for change. The winds of change are building. Listen to what they have to say. Pass it on.
user@host$ diff
I don't think that Linus or Alan has any IP law skills enough to help. Well, it's good that they have sent the letter anyway. But the real guy who must help is RMS. We heard so many IP law related arguments from him, so many battles he was in the middle. Why isn't he there now? Or is he?
Less is more !
Theo will have to speak for himself to this point, nevertheless I have talked with Theo about patenting software and Theo said that there has never been a case of a US firm suing a Canadian individual over patent violations because the way the system works is that in order to do so, the company must pay both sides legal bills. [Theo is very much against software patents as is everyone else that I know with a couple exceptions (and they IMHO are very naive)].
...companies such as IBM, TI, and M$ basically get this for themselves via their cross licensing agreements.
I personally think this argument does not hold water and I hope it is not Theo who becomes a target.
At the time I brought up the idea of we developers in the open source community starting to build a sheaf of our own patents by each of us joining an association and paying say $100 bux per year in order to fund the registration of our patents as well as to litigate infringment.
At the same time, membership in the organisation should give each and every person access to any patents and software held by the organisation while at the same time excuding any companies that want to double dip.
This would mean that if IBM for instance decided to join, then all IBM software patents would become available on a cross licensing basis. Meanwhile if Microsoft choses not to join, then they would be prohibited from using anything "we" might control by way of our patents and agreements.
I feel in very short order the opensource community would hold all the relevant patents.
Of course, there are developers who wish to do proprietary work - these are the startups and small to mid sized companies that Torvalds and Cox warn will be harmed the most by software patents. I suppose that membership in our group could be extended to them. I see no real reason why one could not have 2 classes of software within the patent group: open and closed. So maybe we can solve the problem in this fashion. Remember that the purpose of such an organisation is to create a free patent zone that includes all of Planet earth.
I will point out that I do see a danger here as well. At some point the organisation could control so many patents that they can force every person on earth who owns a computer to join, in which case it is a licence to essentually tax and who knows - maybe it will grow into a world government eh? haha.
[back to reality] Anyone who thinks this is a good idea is welcome to email me. But remember that if this is going to fly people are going to have to put their money where their opinions are because we will have to hire competant legal staff in perhaps several juridictions.
The letter looks like a fake to me. Several typos, no introduction on who the authors are, "signature" without any titles or positions. You'd think that between the two of them, they could have done better. Smells like a hoax to me.
I agree that software patents are a bad idea and I would like to do something to stop Europe from having software patents.
However, I'm not a citzen of the EU.
I don't expect politicians to care about the opinions of those who can't vote in their country.
But perhaps someone with more knowledge of the situation can suggest a way for me and other Americans to help.
Is it just me, or does anyone else find the grammar, scanning and structure of this letter as very, very poor indeed?
Not only is there no explanation as to who the signatories are but also a number of the sentences scan very badly indeed.
I realise that LT is not a native English speaker, but really, it doesn't come across as very well thought through IMHO...
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
Ok, I've watched this for a bit now, but I've never really looked into the whole issue. Now, what is the actual argument against software patents? Has anyone claimed an argument or is this just a grumbling mob saying "patents get in the way of linux so it's better if we didn't have them"?
Obviously someone has to have approached this with some structured, philosophical reasoning. I can hardly attack this or defend it without argument to attack or defend.
So, where is it? Does someone have a link? A reference of any kind?
First, the interaction between patent law and antitrust law needs to be adjusted. If you have a dominant market position, you should't be able to use a patent to prevent interoperability with your de-facto standards. This is an antitrust issue because it's only a big problem when someone has market dominance. Interoperability with Microsoft Word is important. Interoperability with AbiWord is not.
This is not totally out of reach politically. Current antitrust law in the US and the EU arguably support this position, but enforcement is hard. A bright-line standard would help here.
Second, it needs to be clearly established that Government-mandated standards (ANSI, ISO, DIN, EU) preempt patents unless patent holders object prior to the issuance of the standard. The government standards organizations should be directed to adopt policies preventing the use of patented technology in standards unless the patent holder waives their rights under patent for all users of the standard.
Finally, "business method" patents seem to have been a mistake. However, the first one (4,346,442, the Merrill Lynch Cash Management Account, attaching a credit card to a brokerage account) has already expired.
These things do time out, and soon enough that it matters. The GIF patent has expired. The RSA patent has expired. The SyncSort patent has expired. All those technologies are still in use.
That idea would do more harm than good. Did you read the article about Hilary Rosen's retirement party? (Forgot the URL). One of the points was that increasing churn in Congress has made lobbyists more powerful. When congressmen serve for a long time, some become powerful committe chairs, effectively the most powerful people in the US on their particular topic. With more churn, the power goes to lobbyists, because they are the only enduring legislative specialists in their areas. Hilary Rosen is a good example of this new breed of lobbyist who is more powerful than a legislator.
It is hard to compare it, since the EU is 15 (soon 20) individual countries with their own campaigns. The elections for the EU-Parlaments goes quite quiet in my country (Denmark), while the national elections are typically split up in The Liberals/Conservatives (payed by the industry) and The Socialdemocrats/Socialists (payed by the unions). I think many other countries in Europe are the same way?
Lobbism typically happens at the EU-Commision and Council, since they decide the faith of the Internal Market.
(yes this can be compared with sex)
Amen.
Although I can understand the sentiment, the "since when did we have any say?" attitude isn't sound.
Once, I was mid-rant to my housemates, when one of them said, 'yeah, but nothing people say makes a difference'.
I looked around the room. We were all from different backgrounds. One of us came from a more wealthy background than the rest - let's call him Dave. I pointed out that if protest and political engagement had no effect, we'd all probably have been labourers on Dave's land, paid a pittance and obliged to go into battle on his say-so, instead of studying at the same university.
We wouldn't be where we are now without kicking up a fuss, and I don't see any reason to stop now, just because world+dog has equal access to Starbucks.
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
Please excuse my unprecise language. I can't figure out whether you are american, european or something entirely different. But I assume that you're american, because it is a statistically correct assumption.
In the civilized parts of Europe we usually rid our selves of politicians we dont like, by working unpaid trying to swing opinion and removing their support in a democratic way. Talking to people, arranging debates at schools and public squares, writing articles to newspapers and magazines. Etc, etc. It's actually great fun too.
We don'y buy politicians and we usually don't kill them either (even though our swedish foreign minister tradgically was murdered last week by a unknown loony).