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."
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/
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.
You mean like last time?
Seriously tho, c'mon Slashdot!. Even a simple banner!
They are not taking their sites down, they are posting banners on their front-pages. The GIMP and GNU have an entire screen to go through. I prefer KDE's method, which just has a banner on it. That would be like if SlashDot put a banner where the add normally is which said patents were vile.
If you want to be kept up-to-date, register as FFII supporter and in subscribe to the uk-parl mailing list under the "Subscribe to news forums" item of the main menu.
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Completely false.
That may have been how patents used to work, but it isn't anymore. The way patents work nowadays is a large company hires a 'research' department, locks them away in a basement and tells them basically: 'patent every single thing you can come up with'. The company does this to build up a patent portfolio which it then uses as munitions for legal wars. That is all. Software development is left to the big guys.
What's more, there are so many patents over software and they will soon be so fiercely defended that it means little guys won't have a chance at all, regardless of whether they want to release it for free or make a buck. You see, the sheer volume of broad patents means it is impossible to know if your small program is violating anything unless you have a massive legal deapartment going through everything for you. Hence, software development is left to the big guys.
And if software patents are supposed to protect the little guy's ideas, can you think of a single recent case where this has happened? A little guy has patented a software idea that has gone on to become very successful and not trampled by large corps? I can't either. If your argument were true we'd have loads of these small companies with patented ideas being very successful.
To further make my point, we also have large companies trading patents. This is not good. The 'innovator' as you like to call them is no longer the person making money off the patent and it allows large companies to buy up large scary portfolios to push other people out of the market. Let's take Microsoft. Recently they bought up a load of OpenGL patents from SGI. This is not good. Microsoft are a company who are trying to push their own 'technology' (Direct3D) over OpenGL. We are near to a position here where OpenGL could have a stop called to it by Microsoft because it owns vital patents.
At one point in the SCO / BayStar / Microsoft / Novell fiacso we (allegedly) had a situation where Microsoft were close to acquiring vital patents over Unix. Can you imagine what would happen if one company held patents over the two dominant operating system technologies? Even though this didn't happen this time, there's nothing to stop it happening in the future. All it would take is a buyout of Novell or Sun for example.
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.
Why should I care? This is irrelevant. $1b Doesn't even make a dent in Microsoft's finances. It makes no difference. Neither of these two are by any stretch of the imagination a 'little guy'. You think I should be on the side of Sun here just because they're fighting Microsoft? If it were something over antitrust I mgiht be interested, but as it is, it's just two dinosaurs hurling patent portfolios* at each other. It's only lawyers who win here.
* - Patents that have by now been totally seperated from their original 'innovation'.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
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.
Microsoft have already filed patents for an algorithm that's required to use the next .doc format.
Also the techniques for decoding/encoding a JPEG file, and for encoding an MP3 file or GIF file, and for rendering a .ttf font as the font author intended, those things are well known for being patented already. People have been threatened, sued, and lost or settled over all those things.
File format patents are not new, and they're a serious problem already.
-- Jamie
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.
I doubt google would participate, as (a) they have a number of software related patents themselves (see below), (b) it's not in their business interest to get stuck in the middle of the debate.
6,678,681
6,658,423
6,615,209
6,529,903
6,5
I can tell you're not a programmer... software IS just like a recipe - just a very complex one. "Hello World" is like making pancakes from a boxed mix.
So you're saying if IBM patented natural language recognition, that it would be a good thing?
Resulting in a total lack of competition, making them the only company in the world who could produce and sell it?
Hmmm... I'm not sure I can see the value in that.
Personally, I'd much rather see other companies try and out-do the competition (producing a better product)... that IS the whole basis for the idea (of competition) in the first place.
Think about it... if companies can patent software ideas, then they will - every single idea they come up with. The vast majority of these will never see the light of day, they just want to make sure no-one else produces anything that *might* take away their market-share, or that they *might* produce - some day.
Where do you think the idea of "vaporware" came from? They try and keep the competition from developing or selling something that they themselves don't have any plans on producing (or are merely testing the waters for).
Patenting would be SO much easier, cleaner, and faster... no psychology involved.
Now what company is famous for such behaviour?
What company also has nearly limitless reserves and lawyers on staff?
What _software_ company already patents everything they can whether it has anything to do with their business or not (like hinges)?
I worked in a company that did this (not a software company), so don't try and say this doesn't happen... their bonus program was based on how many patents an engineer submits/gets per quarter.
BTW: I used IBM as an example, but it would probably be the opposite, CMU would probably have the patent preventing IBM from working on it.
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