Slashdot Mirror
Demonstration Against Software Patents in Europe
bram.be writes "On April 14, FFII is organising a
walking demonstration in
Brussels against the legalisation of software patents in Europe, as
well as a legislation
benchmarking conference. Like in August last year, these events will be accompanied by an
online demonstration whereby webmasters are asked to close their websites
in protest. The reason for the renewed protest is that after the
European Parliament voted for a
great directive, it
is now the Council of Minister's turn, whose working party proposes as
'compromise' to simply discard all good amendments and on top of that to
even make program publication an infringement. Already more then 1300 sites participate in the online demonstration. Among them are some big sites like KDE, the GNU Project and the Gimp. Also, on April 15 the European
Greens/EFA group is organising a Euro-LUG
party inside the European Parliament, 'with a view to enhance the
networking among the free software community in Europe [...], to inform
the EP about what free software is, how it works and which ideas lie
behind.' Speakers will include Gwen Hinze (EFF), Jon Lech Johansen
(DeCSS), Georg Greve (FSF Europe and Alan Cox. Prior
registration is mandatory for this event."
Will /. participate?
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
"Like in August last year, these events will be accompanied by an online demonstration whereby webmasters are asked to close their websites in protest. "
This online protest started April 5th... Why hasn't Slashdot joined this protest? Too European? Too much revenue at stake?
When it comes to reporting about how much they hate patents, Slashdot is tops. But when it comes to action, zero is taken. Arguing impartibility, with the high number of editorial opinions usually appended to story submissions, is weak.
Ths Gimp in a walking demonstration. The visuals are killing me...
--
Retail Retreat
Can't we just DDoS their servers to show them we mean business... err, wait, we're linking to them on Slashdot! Already done!
I'm glad everyone's decided to take it to the streets, I think it will bring a lot more attention to the subject than with only online demonstrations.
Wireless News www.DailyWireless
..when so many corporations own patents on so many intangible things that a corporate dynasty like IBM can bring anyone in the world to their knees financially.
Even foreign governments.
Intellectual property in all of its various forms is being abused by the corporate world - both friends and foes of Linux and otherwise. The madness is the laws supporting this behavior continue to pass, bypassing the individual and wholeheartedly supporting the corporation.
Isn't the government supposed to be working for us? Aren't our rights supposed to be first and foremost in their minds? There is a balance to be maintained, and our rights are not unlimited, but more and more across the entire globe the individual is lost.
Not to be funny but has anyone considered the implications of all these recent intellectual property rights and how it seems more and more that we're being pushed into the draconian future of Johnny Mnemonic and Shadowrun? The only way you get information is to steal it. The only way for another corporation to get information is to hire you to steal it.
I grow more and more distressed at the world my son will grow up in, the conditions he will consider normal, the laws he will break just by trying to think.
Talonius
Why don't we revert to Moses original stone tablets, and be done with it?
Source code specifically, and software in general, are like food recipes.
Allowing patents on such would be like allowing someone to patent "sift 2 cups of flour with 1 tsp baking soda and 1/4 teaspoon of salt into a bowl".
When put in those terms the rediculousness of the idea becomes obvious. Unfortunately, you have to dumb things down for lawmakers to understand what they're dealing with... this should be simple enough for them to understand.
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
Take a look at this demo of things to come w/ software patents:
http://webshop.ffii.org/
And if you're an European citizen, please sign the petition:
http://petition.eurolinux.org/
Not if the patent system alows trivial patents that, if enforced, will bankrupt most developers.
>Patents are good and they have a reason. It protects personal IP and guarantees that other companies gonna pay licenses for using these patents.
This is good and desirable for what reason ?
There is still the lack of a strong corresponding US movement. However US citizens can help us. Mirror http://demo.ffii.org or the other sites, report the event to the media. Write articles, participate in the next WIPO round. Put pressure on your legal department.
And of course you can also organize events in your part of the world, demonstrations at the USPTO or DoJ.
Nobody software professional ever requested that bad old old bureaucratic patent law, the patent lawyers like to sell us. It is not the big against the small ones, it's a patent attorney's conspiracy!
There was no democratic decision ever about software patents in the States.
Living in London, isn't there some way I can participate? Surely this is being organised as some sort of Europe-wide demonstration in several key cities? How else can I join a protest if I don't have the time, money or inclination to fly over to Belgium?
Software is well protected by copyright that even extends beyond the 20 years protection you get by a patent.
The idea with patents is to make ideas public so others can expand on them and after a grace period (20 years in most cases) be used freely by everybody. Software on the other hand like litterature, paintings, poems etc. have been protected by copyright. The benefit of this have been that you do not need to file a costly patent application and your work is protected for much longer. This is in many cases much stronger than a patent, especially for software where I find it difficult to come up with any good examples of ideas worth patenting.
In Europe you have until now not been able to patent algorithms etc since mathematics have been considered a nature phenomenon that can be discovered but not invented.
Please enlighten me... Would this make it possible for MS to get a patent on office suites?
Sig Nature
These companies are only pushing for software patents becuase they want to make money from their products. And your products as well. What's so unreasonable about that?
You hit the nail on the head.
Slashdot likes to talk big, but they are too spineless and unprincipled to actually take action (especially when it might piss off their advertisers).
Although I sympathize with the protester's motives, I'm not sure how wise a website blackout is in the long-run. Were I an enterprise IT manager, I would not want my suppliers to be taking denial of service actions based on political issues that I don't necessarily care that much about. Blackouts will damage OSS' reputation with businesses.
If KDE, GNU, and Gimp want enterprise adoption, they would do well to maintain 100% uptime -- appearing to be reliable business-like providers of quality software.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I say patenting software is OK, as long as the patent law only allows you to patent certain things in your software that will stay unique to it, so that it doesn't become a case of 'I can't use this function in my competing program because (x) patented it'
We're being flooded by polls lately. Why not put up a new poll, asking the Slashdot readers if they want slashdot.org to join the protest?
Do you want slashdot.org to join the protest against software patents?
[ ] Yes, the site has to be taken down completely and replaced by a protest page
[ ] Yes, but don't take it down, just replace the main page by a protest page, and let users click through to the real main page
[ ] No, don't take it down
[ ] CowboyNeal likes software patents
You are confused. It is not just 'open source entities' which are opposing this. Software patents help no one but extremely huge businesses and parasite companies like PanIP. Small businesses are overwhelmingly opposing this because they may find themselves locked out of the market once the big players manage to build up a shield of frivolous patents. Some large businesses are opposing this because they don't want to be repeatedly attacked by parasites.
Are you saying small businesses do not provide economic benefit?
Are you saying parasites such as PanIP provide an economic benefit?
This is even without getting into your strange assertion about open source not providing economic benefit (are you somehow saying that SUSE does not provide economic benefit to the EU, but Microsoft Corporation of Seattle, Washington does?) or your underlying assumption that economic benefits are the only kinds of benefits (for example, if the citizenry were converted to slave labor for the corporations, this would provide the maximum "economic benefit" possible, but is this a desirable situation?).
Compete on merit and quality and out sell the competition.
This is the entire problem; this is not possible in a software patent world.
Bah I say, I would have LOVED to go and support this but didn't know it was happening.
After just looking around the cheap flights sites, the cheapest I can now get is like 200 - and for a student thats just not viable. A month ago I could probably have got the flights for 50.
I just wish I'd had a bit more notice, and half of my universities compsci dept would have turned up with me!
Can you show any sign at all that the IT industry in Europe is being at all harmed by, or less able to innovate because of, the lack of software patents?
One thing that could make patents on software a little more palatable would be to reduce the protection period to something that makes a little more sense on internet time. If a software patent was valid for say 3 years after filing this should give a good head start to any bright ideas and make it possible for the market to get full interoperability/documentation within reasonable time.
Except food recipes are patentable.
The only group that benefits from software patent law are patent attorneys.
There is no economic justification or evidence, it is a pure legalistic move with no economic foundation. We won the debate.
Liberal Economists, SME, Programmers are against software patent law. Patent law is no felxible instrument that causes benefit in the area of software.
Only lawyers associations and the Business Software Allicance.
It a common prejudice by those you don't understand the reality of patent law.
Of all the things to worry about...your actually spending "TIME" protesting software patent legislation. Some people really don't have a clue do they. Patents are about ideas, you patent and idea if. The notion is that you have to come up with a better idea. Really linux is all about what. Copying other peoples work. There has been no innovation from linux only catchup and copy.
Still they are still spending time. I mean its not like the software geeks have lets say tried to work on fixing other more imporant issues like hunger, aids, cancer, war, peace etc. No they bitch and complain because they don't have enough time to jake off to doom III pictures and drink more red bull.
The previous Slashdot poll was only up for less than a day, and the walking demonstration will be four days from now. Besides, the protest against software patents has been going on for years now, and it does not look like the protest will stop anytime soon.
So many people would vote for option (1) just because they want slashdot.org to go away that it would skew the results
I doubt it will save to IT world. More like lock it in for a few rich corporation like MS.
A book is protected by copyright laws. But words or letters aren't. Same for software, it makes sense to protect a program, but to protect a button or any other idea, that's ridiculous.
A library to compress an image (like JPEG) deserves protection, but the concept of image compression doesn't.
The last time this came up, a bunch of projects purposely screwed up their web sites as a protest. They made life miserable for the people who are changing the world by using free software.
Earth to protesters: the people you want to reach are the politicians and other puppetmasters with money, not the lowly geek who needs to install some software or look something up. The people who really matter for this kind of stuff aren't going to look at your web sites, and don't care if you take them down for awhile.
These actions annoy the wrong people, and may even hurt the cause by making key resources unavailable due to some badly-implemented plea for attention.
Here's an analogy for those who still don't get it: would you barricade the doors of the public library to protest the crap that's on TV? No? Then why block geek web sites when you're trying to reach politicians?
Parent is a troll ?! Because he disagreed with the idea?
Nice fucking try, opinion suppressor.
Here are some points in favour of the EU legislation:
1- software patents already exist, have been granted and so on (e.g. GIF in the US, for example, but others in the EU) - in the EU, it was confirmed by the Vicom case;
2- the legislation is _merely_ codifying case law practice into statutory to law to reduce the level of confusion (so you don't have to refer to case law);
3- despite the presence of software patents (e.g. gif), the progress of linux and open source has _not_ been hampered - in fact, in most cases, the presence of patents causes people to make workarounds, some of which are _better_ that the original patents (e.g. GIF -> PNG/JPG; VRRP -> CARP/PFSYNC);
4- stopping this legislation will not stop software being patentable because it already is (see 1 above);
5- not allowing patents for software means that you remove individual rights to the protection of the fruits of their labour - you _enforce_ an "open" social model on their inventions;
The FFII information is pure FUD - "for the last few years the European Patent Office (EPO) has, contrary to the letter and spirit of the existing law, granted more than 30000 patents " because the terms of the EPC (european patent convention) have been clearly interpreted that it is only software _as such_ (e.g. a whole program) not (a) systems that incorporate software as an element, or (b) technical mechanisms within the software.
If I invent a new compression algorithm that is patentable, sure I want to _have the choice_ to either (a) patent it and make money from the patent, (b) dedicate it to the public domain for all to use. If FFII had their choice, then my freedom for (a) would be removed, for some "specious" allegation that software patents are hindering innovation, when, in fact, the swathe of open source software and internet protocols/technology are evidence that software patents have not done anything to hinder innovation.
I don't want rights to my inventive creations to be removed. I want the choice, and what I want the open source community is do is to educate me on how to use my choice, not to impose it upon me.
I'm french, you insensitive clod ! Your "socialists" are more liberal than our right wing !
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Of all websites directly or indirectly involved in the discussion about software patents, Slashdot is definitely the largest and most influential. Don't forget that Google News considers Slashdot as mainstream! Any sign of protest, even if it was only a small banner would make a big difference. It's not like those "OSDN Personals" ads are bringing up anything...
...in order to avoid patent stalinism...
Don't forget that patents are a government granted monopoly privilege. This does not sound like Free market, that sounds like a red dictatorship.
Pointing out specific implications, such as that if software patents were in widespread use in the 80s, the Internet would almost certainly not have emerged. Pointing out specific examples of the dangers. Pointing out the fact that there are numerous studies which point out the damaging effects of software patents, but none which demonstrate their value. These are the arguments we should be making.
if they do, the entire demonstration will probably slow down so much that nobody can get to it :)
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I can understand putting a link on your site, changing the colour scheme for a week or even putting big eye-catching banners on the front page, but closing it?? whats the point? sure if it was a well known website out of geek circles like hotmail or google (just picking well known websites here not meaningful ones) then maybe closing it and putting a reason on the front page for a day would make sense, lots of people who have no-idea about software patents would read it and learn something, but im pretty certain that anyone who visits any open-source project site or anything related will already know whats going on and will just be abit pissed off that they cant get to their site! If google changed the artwork for their logo (like they do for various holidays) for a day the number of new people learning about this cause would skyrocket!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Sometimes, I like to get a piece of paper and just fill it up with right parenthesis, because of all the unfinished parenthetical statements in the world, to balance the universe.
If not for patents, every smart idea you have will be ripped off by the BigMonopolisticCompany(TM) as soon as you mention it. Given their market position, they will force their customers to use their version. Given their financiar power, they can hire plenty of brilliant coders to implement your idea in no time. You'll be left with no customers, a window of opportunity of max one year and a huge hole in your personal finances.
By the way, patents are the reason why Sun got 1.6bil$ from Microsoft. Without patents, Microsoft could have just trample Sun into the ground without bothering to spend a dime.
As long as your only dream is to reimplement other people's ideas, then, of course, patents are bad. Be innovative and suddenly patents start to look good.
I forget who pointed it out to me, but it's probably impossible to stop the march of software patents. The people who want them are too rich, well organized and above all persistent. They'll keep hammering away at the legisatures until they get what they want. Why? Because that's their job. They've got full time lobbyist to push their agenda. I mean, this demonstartion's all well and good, but after it's over the demonstrators are going to go to work the next day, and so are the Software Patent lobbyist. Maybe I'm wrong, it'd be nice if I was.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They should have organised demonstrations all over Europe, there would have been more people participating. Students like me can't afford a flight to Belgium.
Yacine.
"Patents are good and they have a reason. It protects personal IP and guarantees that other companies gonna pay licenses for using these patents. For the long run it saves the IT world so people can still make money with the stuff they create."
Thank God we have someone who undertands this stuff, it's all been a great mystery until you enlightened us.
With the same logic - Water is good, it has a reason, you can drink it and irrigate your crops with it. So would you be OK if I took you out in a boat to the middle of the Atlantic and threw you over the side?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Reading the comments on this site, it sounds like what most people are really opposed to is frivolous patents rather than patents on software, even though they are targeting their opposition to software patents.
It's like the people who argue to make it harder to issue a speeding ticket when their real gripe is the fact that most speed limits are unreasonably low.
Software patents are good things. It's the fact that frivolous patents are awarded that are too expensive to contest that is the real problem here.
Mmmm.. Donuts
I'm just wondering really, is it how they want to implement them. If I was developing things, I would want to be sure that I had the rights to it, that some jerk couldn't just go about willy-nilly with it. Aside from some abuses, what's so bad about intellectual property rights?
Stalman is an idiot that does not help us when he is talking about the isssue. He can learn a lot from Georg Greve (FSF Europe) and the work in Europe.
Stallman saying anything against patent attorneys only throws us back. He is a lobbying autist.
Our protesting does absolutely nothing to sway them. We are a minute component of society with no financial clout and no connections. They most likely wouldn't miss us if we all up and vanished. We cannot cause enough trouble to cost people their offices, and our demise would please a lot of people who DO have money and connections. This is not an issue the public is worried about - they have other concerns than software.
Not that I disapprove. It's still better than nothing. But we need other contingency plans, because as far as the governments are concerned the loss of open source would not be a major one, and they will not respond to us. If we want to be effective, I think we need to look in another direction.
Specifically, if software patents are to be given power and we can't stop it, I think we should propose an compromise. If they are going to go through with this, they need to also create a mechanism by which people can document for the patent office intellectual property without any of the large fees associated with the patent filing process. This new filing path wouldn't grant the filer any unique rights to the IP - it would, however, constitute documentation of prior art which has been filed with the patent office and they are responsible for when considering new tech patents. This is the only answer I can think of which might hault the granting of absurd patents. Allow us to document all our ideas cheaply in such a way as to block patents being granted which involve obvious ideas. I would call it a Declaration of Prior Art. The filer doesn't need to be the one who had the original idea - just someone who can properly describe and document it. Then, if the patent office grants a stupid patent, we can point them to files in their own database that rule it out.
So by all means protest the patents, but remember They Don't Care. What we need instead is a method to impact the workings of the patent office. So let's lobby for the addition of a Declaration of Prior Art section to software patents. We can argue that it would help the patent office do its job, and I don't think anyone would actually have the guts to publicly state they want to take advantage of the patent office's ignorance in this field. Let's try and lobby for a mechanism where we can help the patent office be unable to grant stupid patents. That might actually provide us with a defense when (not if, IMHO) they eventually get software patents through. There's just too much $$$ behind software patents - I have zero expectation the political system will stop them based on anything like ideals. So let's get practical, and look for ways we can do more than just protest.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Closing a website is a pretty pointless protest. We would all be far better served if all of the participating sites carryed headline stories about the issue at the heart of these protests.
This would raise awarness rather than simply pissing off a ocuple of users.
what is the point of this? I mean the sites that are being taken down are already anti-patent and the people who visit it are also already anti patent. How often does anyone here even visit the GNU website? we have a minority of the people in a minority group (those who use OSS ) protesting this. i see it as ebinf as effective as me shutting down my site in protest of law x... no one who aready does not does not care will care.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
This protest is going to be inneffective. The proper way to protest software patents, and the reckless issuing of patents in general is to start applying for them left and write. Just like the GPL uses copyright against itself, we should all be applying for software patents left and right (and any other kind of patents) and follow that by sending cease and desist letters to large corportations. If enough of us created a hassle for the corporations, they would be begging for the patent law to change.
What is next on the agenda, protesting ownership of property? Everything should be free, unless it is yours? What a giant waste of time, I have no problem with software patents, if they are issued sanely. The people patenting hyperlinks and such are the exception rather than the rule.
I hate sigs.
That i can protest the way in which my country has joined the EU without even asking the public, once?
In the UK they've never EVER asked the electorate if they like it, I don't, exactly because of crap like this which is forced upon us, unlike in the UK, there's always your own MP to take this up with, in the EU there's no one to talk to, but does my goverment care about this? NO.
Does the EU care? NO.
The whole EU thing is wrong, and a massive mistake, stuff this software patent crap lets just protest against the crap that the EU stands for as it is.
This isn't anti-European, at all, it's anti-EU.
On another note, why is nobody doing something similar in the USA to oppose the DMCA? Yes, I realize it's already a law but laws are made to be repealed. The DMCA is just as dangerous to us as software patents are to Europe (yes, one in the same). Why aren't more people organizing against it in the USA?
Join the protest against European software patents!
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
That doesn't make sense, right-wing's aren't meant to be liberal, infact, the exact opposite, did you mean "than our left-wing!"?
Not the same logic. Stupid reasoning.
internet time. I really like that idea. it makes sense. i agree fully. certain things take more time, money etc to develop (drugs etc) they should be allowed a longer time. but the internet and IT has become a very "high speed world" (no pun intended).
in just 10 years, its like a lifetime of developments.
i think the patent office should have a series of patents.
Though fundamentally different from patents, the EUCD is another broad reaching directive that consistently hurts EU consumers' basic rights... I have (very) recently started a site at anti-eucd.org to rally support against it.
Our protesting does absolutely nothing to sway them.
Absolute nonsense. Over the past few years, we've been protesting and lobbying and last September the European Parliament put through a decent piece of legislation that did exactly what we asked for.
Not it's the European Commission and the European Council who are causing trouble, after lobbying from industry (Nokia in particular), but so long as we keep the Parliament convinced, we're OK.
So no, every EU citizen reading this should lobby their MEPs immediately, because they do care.
All the protests and marches in the world won't change a thing here. You honestly think that the governments of the world can do _anything_ about this, even barring the fact that none will even try to give this more than lip service? First, the politicians are corrupt and bought off. Second, the governments are totally addicted to proprietary SW. Third, no one other than a small minority of nerds and geeks know, or care if they do know. Fourth, even if somehow a popular uprising were to occur, the participants would simply be labeled terrorists, and EFF, FFII, and any other similar groups would earn a cruise missile in their headquarters, and the survivors imprisoned or killed. The membership lists would be seized, and the members rounded up, tried in a kangaroo court and imprisoned or executed. You have _no_ power to change anything, the notion that you do is only allowed to provide a way to let the discontents blow off steam. The corporate-owned governments have already established themselves in power and taken away any ability of the populace to change anything that actually matters. Scream, lobby, march, boycott, whatever makes you feel like your rights or opinions matter. It won't affect _anything_ that would change the direction this is going. It's already far too late.
For the long run it saves the IT world so people can still make money with the stuff they create.
As far as I know, no one can make money with software they create who couldn't do so without software patents.
Instead, with software patents, many people cannot make money with stuff they create (nor create and distribute free software) in cases where they can without software patents.
Of course, those few who can still make money in areas that are covered by patents can make even more money because there is no competition.
Monopolies are hardly what saves the IT business. Some giant IT corporations with large patent portfolios (e.g. IBM, Microsoft) can profit from software patents, but on the whole the IT business loses. Who profits most are patent lawyers - when IT companies have to spend money on patent disputes, which they could otherwise use for research and development.
A Canadian court recently issued a judgement on music copying that the music industry didn't like at all. The Canadian prime minister reacted by saying that the copyright act would have to be fixed.
Is there any organized campaign to 'educate' the government or apply pressure to it? I will be writing a letter to my mp. Can anyone point me to some good 'ammunition'? I want anything I say to sound reasoned and based on fact rather than sounding like a rant.
European "liberal", not US "liberal" you insensitive clod :D!
FFII's lastest political situation report has some pretty choice things to say about about it:
and, later on:In general, I agree with many people here that shutting down websites is pretty much a useless idea. All it will do is inconvenience the protestors themselves. Instead, why don't those groups, websites, and institutions who oppose the patent laws generate a public database where the general public can add every conceivable patent idea they can think of. Then submit them (or propose to) for patent. Make the results/repercussions visible should the patents go through.
it would be expensive. If it were to be done at a scale to have any sort of significance whatsoever, then very, expensive. Which is one of the big problems with software patents in the first place: you have to pay fees which for an individual or small company are nearly insurmountable, and at the same time not even pocket change for large corporations. And then there's paying the lawyers to actually have it enforced.
Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
Just like the GPL uses copyright against itself,
The GPL doesn't use copyright "against itself", it uses copyright the way it was intended: to extract a payment in return for the right to copy. What's interesting about the GPL is that it requires payment in kind rather than cash royalties.
See this good article for a non-technical discussion of this.
However frustrating this is to all of us (especially those among us that went through the trouble of travelling to Brussels and Strasbourg to make our voices heard and those of us who will be visiting Brussels the coming week): there is a big possibility that The European Commission is going to overrule a democratic process by the European Parliament and will vote in favor of unlimited patentability of ideas, including software.
;) )
Although we must continue to resist this as much as legally possible, we must also look further forward and think about how to battle the evil of software patents if they become a reality in Europe as well.
Granted, the current patent system currently works almost excusively in favor of large corporationas and empowers them to squash any newcomers, therefore allowing the large corporations to permanently consolidate their market share and influence.
Let's look at allegories in our past: the exploitation of the working class individual by large corporations during the Industrial Revolution. One man was no match against the large corporations. After all, if someone did not agree to the working conditions, the working hours and the meager salary, they'd just throw him out. There were more than enough others available that were eager to take his place in spite of all this.
The answer to this was found in Trade Unions. One man could not make a difference, but a large group of men could. With the founding of Trade Unions, the companies were forced to negotiate with the Trade Unions and offer better conditions and more reasonable pay.
Now suppose we used the Labor Union example as a model to form a similar foundation. An Open Source Community Patent Trust. (Everyone here that can think of a better name, please step in.
I've been impressed with many new true innovations coming from the Open Source development community lately. Everytime I saw a cool new idea being developed by someone or some group within the Open Source community, my enthusiasm about the coolness of the innovation would be further enhanced by an additional sense of relief: "The Open Source community developed this first and put it on the map. There's no way anyone can take this away from us, now that we have demonstrated prior art."
The point is that we underestimate as well as fail to harness all these impressive innovations.
Now if we founded a International Non-profit organisation that any developer could subscribe to (which would require a periodic subscription fee, just as labor unions do) and would use the subscription money to finance as much patents on Open Source software innovations as possible, then its patent portfolio (which it would manage and protect on behalf of the entire community) whould steadily grow and grow.
A comittee (consisting of both developers and enlightened law experts such as the good people at Groklaw) would evaluate which of the donated ideas would we worth patenting, constantly keeping the current budget for expensive patent applications in mind.
Now in order to prevent all major corporations from collectively turning on this foundation, it would be a very important guideline for it to work purely defensively on behalf of itself and its members. It simply couldn't afford picking unnecessary fights, especially not early on in its existence.
As soon as a member of the foundation were bullied by a company accusing them of patent infringement, the foundation could then bring the entire worldwide community's collective patent portfolio to bear against this company. Alternatively, the foundation could spend some money from its defense fund to fund the victim's legal expenses. That way, the victim could more easily decide to go ahead with a lawsuit, instead of having to back off purely because of the threat of litigation. That alone could force many companies to think twice about starting an infringement case, since actually going ahead with the case could also res
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
No help for you. We support hard-work, we are against communism.
Right on bro!
I said this years ago. But did anybody listen? Noooooooo.
Why fight when we already are sheep to be slaughtered. There's no point......... Nobody cares about me... *sniff*
No, the protests can make a big difference. I don't trust the European Comission, but the European parliament does in fact care, it decided against software patents, and it is important that it doesn't give in. Before the decision in the European Parliament I thought the main danger was that many members would not really look at it. Only the green parties and the radical left were clearly against software patents, and that would be a relatively small minority. Manifestations, letters to members of the parliament, conversations with them probably played an important role - and the majority in the European Parliament then voted for amendments that prevent software patents. That was a big victory, and it is important to go on and not to give in.
Certainly, the rich and well-organised lobbies, such as BSA, are influential. But it would be wrong to think that all members of the parliament are bought by them. If nothing is done, they may follow these influential organisations, but if good arguments are presented, many of them can be convinced.
Democracy in the EU is far from perfect, but it is not doomed or inexistent, either.
Anyway, you already have a head start. If you introduce a new super-duper program, how long is it going to take for the competition to reverse engineer it, make their own implementation (if they just copy it, they infringe your copyright), test it and sell it? Thanks to copyright and trade secret, you already have a head start.
The trade secret part obviously doesn't work as well for things like interface ideas and business methods, since they are immediately public by virtue of their nature (although you still have to re-implement them completely). Then again, a patent is supposed to give society information in return for a monopoly to the creator. In this case, the information is already in the hands of society, so why would it still grant a monopoly?
That's exactly why software patents are a lawyer's and mindless CFO's wet dream: yhey have to innovate anyway (otherwise they can't compete), were going to publish their innovation anyway (what's the use otherwise?), and now they can get a monopoly on it "for free" (minus patent costs, but society doesn't profit from those costs). You get something for nothing!
Donate free food here
You are completely incorrect.
The European Coal and Steel Community was founded in 1951 by Belgium, West Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. It evolved into the European Economic Community, then the European Community, and finally the European Union.
The United Kingdom joined the EEC (as it then was) in 1973.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
instead of closing the sites, use them for coordination of email. I will be polite here and NOT recommend DdOS attacks,but the effect of a polite but overwhelming presence becoming felt. Just encourage millions (whatever) of people to send a LOT of emails to every place that can take an email,places like newspapers (every editor and reporter there, and their advertisers), those patent offices (every employee email addy that can be found), the various politicians (all of them, their staffs, etc), broadcasters,lawyers, academecians etc, etc,etc along those lines. Make the email usage during the protest spike severely across the net. Many many emailers sending out a LOT of emails apiece. Every protester send a well written detailed statement of opposition, outlining the "why" of the protest and offering a "better solution" than software patents to every single email addy that can be found to a relevant person who has anything to do with the patents, and to anyone in a position of legal influence or in the media.
You are very naive my dear friend. If you have a valid patent anyone who wants to use it is going to walk all over your intellectual property rights. You DO NOT HAVE THE RESOURCES to defend them and you will lose them as a result.
On the other hand you also do not have the resources to fight against absolutley insane and invalid patents which form much of the portfolio of [typically large USA based] companies who have been amassing HUGE numbers of patents. These companies have been cross licensing so that they run no risk of infighting, yet they create their own select group that excludes everyone else.
Any website which deliberate inconveniences its visitors as part of a "protest" does not deserve the visitors it receives, since it clearly thinks that these visitors are incapable of appreciating a political viewpoint unless they are absolutely forced to do-so.
Grow the fsck up.
Where the law becomes highly distruptive is in our current era, where businesses making money by pushing around information are not only possible but highly successful. Patents in this context are harmful for two reasons:
First, in a purely conceptual business world, any barrier set on accessing an idea imposes significant economic loss not just on competitors but also on consumers and businesses only indirectly related to the market, because now time and money must be spent creating an alternative solution that otherwise could have be spent on something genuinely innovative and benificial. Music formats, for example....MP3 works, but the cost of using it in software has set back any technology based on it's use, and has encouraged society to develop alternatives like OGG.
Second, with the advent of PCs and the Internet, illegal uses of patented(or copyrighted for that matter) concepts can go undetected for quite a while. Only large corporations are capable of taking on the world. And at least on the file-sharing front, it's proving to be a massive struggle. Patent violations are easier to pursue, but even so, a small owner can do little to stop it. Another example...
If Joe's small(shareware?) business, ABCsoft, sells ABCwork 1.0 containing patented Foo technology, and Bob decides to make a free clone, XYZwork, recreating the Foo technology, what is Joe going to do? He can go through the courts and penalize Bob, but if we assume that Bob has already released XYZwork, some unscrupulous person will always be around to host it. Joe may have lost $500k because of the continued presence of XYZwork, but can he get that much out of Bob? Not likely. Big companies have some advantages here if only because their products are larger and harder to recreate, and can contain more sophisticated legal minefields. Yet at the same time they too are vulnerable; it will be only a matter of time before the system collapses due to the impossibility of indefinitely maintaining these shields.
...are working almost like monopoly grants. The concepts they patent are so broad that any anti-trust legislation should strike them down. Imagine if Xerox had been granted a patent on "copying a sheet of paper to another".
The same kind of test should be applied to patents in general. It should only patent a specific instance, not an entire class of "selling stuff.... over the Internet". Particularly since you can patent the idea, without ever showing an implementation.
Imagine that Joe Nobody patented "selling music over the Internet". Does it matter that he has no rights to music, s psthetic interface, nothing? No. The iTMS would still infringe on his rights, even though he never made it into a commercially viable idea.
Patents were created so that the general public would get the knowledge, when the patent time was up. That was the entire reason for granting it special protection over trade secrets. The way it is today, with only patent lawyers able to read patents, the entire system should have been disbanded.
Why? Because it contributes nothing to society. Nothing. Nada. Zip. They're patenting concepts much broader than their actual inventions, not revealing the inner workings of their inventions as the original idea is. Since they're not keeping their end of the bargain, I don't see why society should either.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
. . . as long as you open up again afterwards. Otherwise you just make yourself irrelevant.
---
Q: What do we want?
A: No software patents!
Q: When do we want it?
A: (mixed shouts of "Now!" and "Never!")
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Actually, nothing special needs to be done to cause something to qualify as prior art. So far as published materials go, basically if it's available to the public somewhere, it qualifies already. There are a lot of problems with the patent system, but what counts as prior art isn't really one of them.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I know. But, if the prior art is documented IN A PATENT OFFICE DATABASE, they will look very bad if they approve a patent and find the prior art later in their own files. Something being published "somewhere" is hard to find. Let's make it easier for them, and we might have less nonsense to deal with down the road.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
I've always dreamed that we who bitterly oppose all of these bad governmental actions get off our asses, get organized, and DO SOMETHING!!! Nobody is going to notice what is wrong if we just talk about it.
We need to pull off something big. Something everyone will notice. Marching in protest is one of those things.
In order to right injustices, you have to make sacrifices. (Haven't we learned anything from the various protests of the past fifty years?) You have to get the message out; you have to force people to notice. Perhaps sacrificing the time and money for many of us to come together in protest could happen.
The reason the DMCA, software patents, copyright law, and the like are not issues is because nobody knows they are issues except for us.
It may be a pipe dream, but I would love to see a Million Hacker* March on Washington.
* This is the closest match I can think of. If you wish to suggest a different word, go ahead.
Interesting. OK, point conceded in Europe - you guys are lucky. I guess my thinking tends to be dominated by the US situation - I didn't realise things were that different abroad. BUT - here's something else to consider. How will they react if the US insists the EU allow software patents as part of some treaty or other? Is the EU in a position to tell the US to go to hell if they get bullyish about software patents? Because it is a real possibility. If the EU political system will stand in the face of that pressure, I might need to reconsider my cynical outlook on political thinking. Or maybe move to Europe :-).
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
OTOH, bear in mind that as things stand now, if the PTO has the prior art in hand -- typically because it's an earlier patent -- then once the to-be-challenged patent is granted, such prior art cannot be used against it. This is because the PTO is assumed to have done their job and would've already considered it, even if in fact they did not.
This, and the high burden of pursuasion (clear and convincing evidence) are two things that seriously need to be reformed in favor of challengers; more than implementing a prior art database, IMO.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
1. (This one will probably cause me to get modded flamebait) It seems that the most outspoken of the Slashdot community are in fact stupid and immature. No offense intended.
2. There is a very big difference between copyright and patents, and you would do well to learn it. Journalists can't legally plagiarize each other because of copyright. If news could be covered by patents, the vast majority of news media would cease to exist. Patents are about inventions. A patent can be infringed upon even if the infringing party has never heard of the invention that is patented.
3. I can't claim to know of a solution that would satisfy both the FOSS camp and the proprietary software camp. However, it seems to me that FOSS and software patents can't coexist. They only seem to coexist now because not all possible building blocks of software are encumbered by patents...yet. If this were to ever happen, FOSS would cease to exist beyond a vague memory (and likely a black market). If software patents are allowed to continue, this will inevitably be the result, and that scares a lot of people, myself included. I think that the fear of this possibility is what is causing people to become "overly emotional" and attack software patents in any way they can. This is an act of desperation.
Every time you run "emerge", a Microsoft drone dies.
Source code specifically, and software in general, are like food recipes.
.DOC format?)
Protecting software is much worse than protecting a recipe. Someone could try to reverse-engineer a food recipe. Science can discover exactly what elements exist in the finished product, guess how much burned off during cooking, and then figure out how much cinnamon was used, but they still would not have the exact recipe. It would be more difficult with a great chef's special dishes, because they vary the recipe each time to suit the weather or their mood.
Every computer program can be duplicated. Just make an exact copy of the hardware and software.
Every computer program can be reverse-engineered. OK, maybe you are stuck looking at a pile of assembly language, but you can create something that can be modified and recompiled. (Why hasn't anybody actually done that with MSWord to discover every permutation of the
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I have a startup. We have an original idea. It depends on the use of software. We are developing software to implement the idea. As soon as the first implentation is done, the whole world will see the revolutionary idea.
We are getting a trademark. Great. Nobody can pretend to be us, so they have to name their product something else. I doubt that will slow anybody.
We are copyrighting the programs. Great. Nobody can steal our code. But they can reverse-engineer the UI from the visible screens. The backend is not trivial, but the data source and outputs are known, so the processing is easy but time-consuming. There are many companies with the resources to invest the time.
The lawyers are trying to write patents so they are granted, defensible, and useful. Getting them granted seems trivial, but the process is costly. Making them defensible and useful means covering every permutation of how our software is used in a way that others cannot infringe without legal hassles from us. One patent will say that we are applying technology where nobody else has applied technology: we saw the market first, so it is ours. That won't stop competitors, but it may slow them down. If they do infringe, it would probably be years of court before the patents have any effect on their business. Then the competitor declares bankruptcy, and we get nothing.
The legal protection is almost useless, but we have to have it. If we did not have the resources to protect it, we would not recover our investment because competitors with more resources would quickly push us out. I would prefer to keep it quiet so we can make enough sales first, but the application is revolutionary enough to make the news.
I doubt the legal measures (including patents) can protect us. Our best bet is to capture the market quickly. That will take much more resources than we have, so the business managers are already looking at VCs, even though we do not have a sale yet.
I do not know how we can have patents that would protect my business without having patents like Amazon's one-click. At what point is the patent trivial and obvious? But without software patents, we would not be attempting to better the world.
For the record, this idea for using technology may not be a pure "software patent", but it comes very close.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
I was going to further the troll but instead got mesmerized, that binary led clock in think geek looks sweet :D~
In the drug industry and the software development industry (the two industries where people are called "users"), patents are the only reason we have the medicines and the software that are available today. If you can't protect your idea, then you can't make money off of it -- not gobs and gobs anyway. There are investors and stockholders and bottom lines all involved in the R&D process now, who must be answered to.
That's not to say that the entire patent system is good. The problem is not patents, but how the law protects and upholds them in the digital age. People with really good, creative ideas ought to be rewarded for them somehow. I cannot recall the exact quote, but to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, patents add the fuel of profitability to the fires of genius.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
I don't run softwares, I'm a cyberjunkie directly neuro-linked to the web, you insensitive clod. (Sory, I know this joke wasn't that funny, but I couldn't resist)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The orgininal FFII servers seem to be down. A mirror is available at www3.ffii.org
Webshop.ffii.org is still available thanks to Google's cache
Why don't you use the train? It is much cheaper. You go under the Canal after which you arive at Calais. From there, you go to Brussel. I estimate it to be ~3 hours. I know a friend of mine who travel from London to the Netherlands and he says it is relatively cheap and he gets to see some places. Nice, uhhh? You could also hitchhike some parts. G'luck!
:/// )
(Unfortunately i live 100 km from Brussel, but i have to work that day
Another suggestion is to organize a locl action in GB somewhere like with the Iraq wars. You know, local protests in every country and even in regions of countries. That's prety much cool if there are any numbers which isn't the case here. In any case, time to mobilize!
Time for action/demonstration. If you do activism/action and you make it apparent your opinion can become more known than with a 1000 protestors. It matters how you do it, not the numbers. So start thinking creatively:)
One could organize a boycott of the greedy, moneygrubbing corporations....
But for that to be successful, the organizers would have to overcome the inertia and complacency of the masses in order to mobilize them to their cause--a 'longshot' proposition I'm afraid....
Nokia is actively campaigning pro software patents in Europe, and spreading misinformation doing this.
Software patents are bad. They do not protect huge investments in research, they protect trivial ideas. The European Parliament reached a good compromise. The parliament's decision to limit software patentability has the support of more than 300.000 citizens, 2.000.000 SMEs and dozens of economists and scientists.
For consumers, software patents lead to higher prices, less choice. For (Open Source) developers, investors and users alike, software patents would mean legal uncertainty: a patent minefield. With the current flood of trivial patents legalized, software innovation would become a dangerous enterprise in Europe.
More info on software patents at FFII.
The Council of Ministers is pushing for unlimited patentability of software, heavily lobbied by patent lawyers. Here Nokia is very active, campaining pro software patents, and spreading misinformation doing so. Nokia's behavior is irresponsible. Do you want to buy products from a company that is untrustworthy? I would say no.
I call upon everyone around the world not to buy Nokia products.
You may copy this page.
Imagine many copies of this call for action against Nokia on the web. Nokia makes much more money selling phones than it can from software patents. Nokia is vulnerable: it needs to be hip. It is not hip. It needs to choose. Pro phones, against software patents.
For Nerds only: unite!
Nerds are often in an advising role. Advise against Nokia. Be proud. Use legal ways. And win. Don't let the dinosaurs win. Is this the information age, or not? Defend your freedom. After the Boston Tea party, the Brussels Tea party. Stand up. Make this a revenge of the nerds.
Nokia is out.
Spread the word.
Unfortunately the Parliament is not as powerful as the Commission and Council. After they are finished reversing the Parliament's amendments, the Parliament will have a chance to change it back. However, at this stage amendments must be approved by a majority of all members of the Parliament, not just a majority of those voting. (See rule 80, paragraph 4 of the Rules of Procedure.) So far this year average attendance has been 510/622 (better than I thought) so amendments would require support from at least around 60% of attending members.
Liberal means liberal in Europe and the US.
Thank goodness the great science previous to the XXth century was mostly unencumbered by patents.
If that would have been the case we would still live in the dark ages, since the invention of thew wheel would be under dispute.
Patenting algorithms is the most abhorrent idea that ever ocurred to anybody, a true crimental mentality.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What about a non-profit open patent portfolio organization? You submit an idea, they examine, bear all costs, defend the patent in court. In return the entire portfolio is licensed to you free of charge, and you get free legal assistance and the weight of the portfolio to negotiate deals when your software is threatend by other patents. They get all revenues from licensing your patent to third parties.
France's left-wing is communist, and their right-wing is passably socialist ;) Refer to their Prime-Minister's recent public declaration, where he mentioned 12 times the word "social" and only twice the word "reform".
Copied from an earlier post by someone else.
Sadly, this is so; another example is lossy audio formats: Slashdotters are quite interested in MP3s even while they chat up the technological superiority of Ogg Vorbis. It's a popularity chase that grabs the attentions of many here, not that of ethics (the grounds of the free software movement--how should we treat other people) or even consistency on technical grounds (picking the best tool for the job as I've read so many say here as they champion the open source movement's message).
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