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."

Comments

Re:My favorite arguement against is...

[FractusMan]

Uh, yeah. That IS what it's like. But you're looking at it wrong. Imagine if "sift 2 cups of with 13 cups of water, a pinch of parsley, and use " was the recipe. Then further imagine that a company is using this awesome recipe to make money. Then - and I know this is taxing your head - imagine further still a bigger company with more resources goes, "oh! That's how they do it!" and then start doing it themselves in massive quantities for lower selling price.

Smaller, inventing business goes OUT of business. Which is why they have /patents/ on the software they create.

... Nimrod.

Re:What happens to the world..

[bangzilla]

Good frief fella. We're talking about Software patents and your "...distressed at the world my son will grow up in..." - get a life. Seriously. Go outside, smell the flowers, gaze at the clouds in the sky. Software patents dim into obscurity compared with the important things in life. And to answer your questions: "Isn't the government supposed to be working for us? " - of course, it's your government. Don't like it, vote a new one in. But don't whine about corporate dynasties or other conspiracies.

Frivolous patents

[donutello]

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.

Re:Only in Brussels?

[MrIrwin]

Cripes.....what an effort.

To put this into perspective for US readers, Brussels is two hours from London by train.