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Europeans, Tweak Your Representatives On Patents
zoobab writes "The FFII is launching a call for
action to push European candidates to answer questions on Software
Patents. Alan Cox has also written a open letter in
which he points out that those European elections are an opportunity for
each citizen to have the choice and to make the politicians listen. Get the
questionnaire and send it to the candidates
of your country!"
(Seriously - their website looks like a brain haemorrhage, can a web designer who cares about software patents and has some spare time help them out here?!)
I think lobbying the MEP's isn't enough.. we have to lobby the central governments of member states.. We don't want some soft-ass patent system like the States.
Simon.
If they want as many valid candidates to fill out the questionnairs as possible, then they should direct it at the people, with sensible people language.
Just a reminder to people that you can't believe a word that a politician says.
Actions speak louder than words and you can find out here how they voted:
http://www.ffii.org.uk/uk_meps.html
It would be nice to see something similar for the other countries.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
and I'll say it again: You haven't got a chance. Why? Because at the end of the day/week/month/whatever the anti patent lobbiests are going to go home and then go back to their day jobs. The Pro patent lobbiests are going to do the same, only their job is to lobby for patents all day. There's just too much money for these greedy bastards to leave on the table. Free software looks good, but it doesn't get money flowing in an economy. Without money flowing, you've got no tax dollars, and you've got fewer people doing less work (which is a good thing BTW, for all but the wealthy bastards that manipulate the poor to satisfy their staggering greed). The trick to economy (and society) is to get people to work really really hard for you so you can live like a God among men. Patents are just one step along in the process.
Not trolling, I'm just a pessimist (and a lazy speller).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The only way to influence politicians is to get column inches and air time. The only sure way to do that is to do something dramatic (a la fuel protests, anti-war protests, anything that mildly annoys the French, etc.)
So, here's the Slashdot challenge: Come up with and implement a scheme to draw the media's attention to this issue. The winner is the first to make it to the BBC evening news...
With the trend toward network services, I fail to see why software can't be protected by keeping it secret. It's just not possible to reverse engineer a program if it's running on a microsoft.com server. There is no need for software patents in this networked age.
BOF (Bits Of Freedom) has an document online [dutch] where they examined what our politicians voted on several "computer/internet related" laws, including software patents. (English version of BOF is here, but I couldn't find an english version of this document)
You're old school? I beta tested the motherf***ing abacus!
I wrote a letter to my MP and MEP and all I basically got back was a nice parliamentary compliment slip and a letter with the lowest signal to noise ratio ever. They're all toeing the party line.
It might also be worth bending your MEP's ear on what the point of the parliament is if the council of ministers can simply retract bills which have been ammended and then resubmit them with all of the ammendments removed. They may be more likely to apply what little power they do have.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Here's what some of the Swedish candidates had to say about software patents http://mnemo.nu/publicerat/2004/may/candidates.php .
FFII Sweden also put together information brochure, which is perfect to print out and leave in strategic places around the office (coffee tables, lunch room etc.)
No this is not the funniest joke ever, but...
If we create the Funniest-Joke-Ever GPL'ed open source project and put our free time, I mean development time, together we could unleash upon those politicians and tax lawyers the most lethal joke ever!
Think of monty Python people! It's frickin' European!
Mod Me Parallel, please.
here
Electronic Frontier Finland ry has already send a questionnaire about software patents, spam, copyright etc. to the Finnish candidates. They have set up a page where you can compare your oppinions with those of the ones who answered.
That is the whole point of the elections in June. If they're not answering to you, vote to replace them.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The elections are on the 10 of june, in little more than a week. I'd be very surprised to get a response before that time even if I rush off to the mailbox right now with this questionaire, and I can't really blame them.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
The only way to guarantee failure here is not to try in the first place, yet that is exactly what your brand of pessimism encourages.
If we win this it will be no thanks to people like you.
I've written my national and regional MP of the department of Work and Economy, and she promissed me to make sure belgium would not vote yes to the proposal of the current Irish presidency. Belgium (my country) subsequently abstained from the vote, along with a few others. Germany, which was expected to at least abstain, and that had said it would vote no, in the end voted yes, which makes blocking the proposal a whole lot more difficult (but not impossible). I won't pretend my writing made the difference, but I would say that yes, it does pay off to make some noise.
The big problem here is that lawyers and rulemakers can be bought, and that the FFII does not represent the kapitalist industry that can apparently leverage any vote it wants, 'xcept for a few small stubborn but harmless ones.
So, open your eyes, ladies and gentlemen, because King Kapitalism, in this case, is ~BAD~. I'm not a commie nor a leftie, but I just wanted to say this loud and clear, so that some people at least for once get the message. And no, I'm not an Anti-globalist, but I very much *AM* a Different-globalist, who wants to bring the power back to the ones who need it (us, the people, in case you were wondering)
Write your MP today, and get your friends to write as well. It's not so difficult to write a well founded email, and at least they will be aware that some groups in society WILL have a problem and at least HAVE warned the EU of the consequences. It will make their case less convincing, and they will never be able to say "uh, we didn't know". Write today. Peace out.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
I have found most MEPs to be quite responsive to email these days.
I'm sending my copy in. It might not make a difference, but I'd rather try and fail instead of bending over and taking it.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
The first was from a right-wing MEP that stated that I shouldn't get worked up over this, that it wasn't all as bad as it sounded, and that I should trust them to do the right thing (fat chance).
The second was from a MEP of the democratic party (D'66) who did give the response I had hoped for ("software patents bad, open source good"), who I found indeed voted against software patents, and who later got back to me providing the amended text of the proposal, and the further statement that they would keep on fighting the European Commission if it would reject the amendments (which it did).
So you can guess where my vote is going.
The public (even in Europe, where in theory the average schmuck on the streets isn't as apathetic/uncultured as Joe Sixpack here in the US) will just see this as a bunch of lunatic computer geeks rambling on about some meaningless computer-industry "thing", and will let it go in one ear and out the other.
I'm really thinking that it's impossible to fight the tide in Europe, the US, and Australia. (Southeast Asia's next.) It might very well be that the only way to live in a country that doesn't have a repressive "intellectual property" institution designed around the needs of barristers would be to start a geeks-only nation and outlaw lawyers and lawyer-like behaviour via Constitutional edict...
Any nice islands up for sale on which to build Geektopia?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Don't talk bollocks. Not all of the parties have the same policies. You can quite clearly see from the following table which parties vote which way...
t ml
http://www.ffii.org.uk/votes/swpat/country/UK.h
So not only do you vote for one of their opposition, you tell your current MEPs how you are going to vote and why...
The thing about the european parliament is that it is a proportional representation system which means that your vote *DOES* count. If you vote for a Green, it increases the numbers of Greens in the parliament.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
They may have more money, and more time, but on June 13th, it's us who'll be calling the shots. So don't give up too quickly!
Robert Kilroy-Silk is one of their candidates. I think that says it all.
Vote Green!
Allergy advice: Contains eggs.
Roughly, the two largest parties, the social democrats (socialdemokraterna) and the right wing party (moderaterna), are in favor of software patents while the rest, the liberals (folkpartiet), the leftmost party (vaensterpartiet), the greens (miljoepartiet),... are against.
(I'm voting for Olle Schmidt of the liberal party but I'm not affiliated with anything above.)
So you would elect just an 'average person' to represent you in all things that have to do with europe.
Personally I'm going to vote for an Idiot so I can just ignore them.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Compare with the candidate listcandidate list and you have the people with a strong interest in re-election.
I sent all in my region an email asking their opinions, cc: to party email addresses from the paper handouts. So far three replies, all broadly supportive of not allowing software patents.
Andrew Yeomans
I e-mailed MEP Sterckx of the right-wing ELDR group, asked to look into the issue, pointed to the FFII info, and told that, as the head of R&D of a small software company, I felt that the FFII best represented the interests of the Belgian software industry.
I got a nice answer back, and a follow-up pointing to the amendments his group proposed. It was clear that they have studied the matter thoroughly. Belgium abstained (= did not vote for acceptance) in the Council.
Sterckx will get my vote in the upcoming European elections.
But anti-patent lobbyists are not necessary Open Source code writers. Think about a small software business, who will be selling its products, and which will therefore contribute to generating cash flows. Do you really think that this small business selling its product will not be infringing hundreds of patents already filled-in by the big corporations?
And should that small business come up with a really nice idea that could deserve a patent, chances are that this patent will not be enforcible against big corporations (who will surely find that company already infringing some of the patents in its portfolio) but only against other small businesses who compete on the same market. Thereby killing competition early when it should on the contrary be promoted!
Maybe all the Open Source authors are anti-patent lobbyists, but that is not the sole population who should be fighting against that system!
The purpose of the patent system in the indusrty is to grant one the right of acting as a "monopoly" for a limited amount of time, in return for the invention being disclosed. In a competitive industry, this is the way of gaining a competitive advantage, and it is indeed the motor of invention, because if they don't innovate, competitors won't gain a competitive advantage.
This does not transpose well to the software industry because it is already a world dominated by giants who already have tons of patents for silly things. The one-click patent from Amazon is a good example of how deviant the system can become... Not even talking about whether the idea itself was an invention or not, it gives an unfair competitive advantage to Amazon because it is applicable to the way of conducting business on the Internet and not to the business in which Amazon is competing.
I noticed that the questionnaire isn't available in all languages spoken in the EU (yet) - if you intend to use it, please do translate it into your language because that makes it appear much more important to your MEP.
Karma. Moderation. Is my
mod accordingly
They only have surnames on those charts. I can't figure out if Seppänen is Esko or Tytti? :)
I thought we in EUROPE adapted the US patent laws?!
...LIKE THAT..
...and what I'm supposed to do against patent laws? should I tell them that I'll get angry if they do things that suck? Should I tell them that I'll become a terrorist? That I'll go to elections next time? This is all fucked up.
And I thought it was already many different(!) times too late to intervene. But now I keep hearing: "Oh... you in europe.. you must do something... before it is too late!" (again?)
Somehow I feel guided by someone like Homer Simpson in that Dope episode where Homer want's medical marihuana to stay legal but he's soo high that he misses the appointed day for two days or so.
Something that keeps count of the patent laws decisions?/elections? in the manner of groklaw would be much more helpful than any of these buzz slashdot articles..
If elections or opinions would do anything about this they would be illegal like terrorism.
It thinks it handles UTF-8 (puts it into the generated HTML pages) but the editting pages run in ISO-8859-1, making it nearly impossible to enter ISO-8859-x characters for x != 1. And the pages lack email address of the maintainers of the Wiki. Does anyone know how swpatwiki.ffii.org could be fixed to run in UTF-8 fully?
you know what ? patent system is a protectionnist system. now, extend that system, and watch your economy die under the assaults of countries that happen to:
1- have lower salary costs
2- have better education system
3- don't have any patent system, and therefore no barriers on knowledge
4- have or will soon have larger market than the US/EU. (actually, when that happens, the whole patent system will collapse, because its weight is too expensive anyway on the economy already under attack because of the three first points)
this goes for any patents, actually, it justs happens to be even worse for software patents, because for software everything is only knowledge.
what is the reality of patents (any patent) nowadays:
1- they don't protect the individual inventor (they're FAR too expensive and complex to get and to defend)
2- industrial patents don't even protect big companies (there's always a way to find another process to reach the same goal). in that case it is, at best, a commercial argument, to have a patent
3- as no big invention happened since microcomputer revolution in 70's 80's, everything is merely "innovation", ie. rehash of old ideas. heck, i've even seen one company trying to apply for practically the same (industrial) patent that was granted to my great-grandfather almost one century ago (and tha fell into public domain long ago). and they'll probably be granted for it.
4- patent offices are run extremely extremely bad (that goes for USPTO as well a for EPO), and it'd be very very expensive to improve them. they are damn slow, too.
5- because of 4, even "innovation" is permantently under threat of "submarine patents".
6- a lot of companies start to spend more time (and money) to protect their "IP" than to actually do research and development.
Didn't you ask yourself why the US/EU have starting to go into that "IP" craze ? did you see the number of patents applications per year increase over and over again ? look there
till the mid-80's, there were AT MOST 100,000 applications/year, with a mean of about 70,000 per year, and variations. Since then, it's getting an exponential increase, and by the year 2001, it's more than 300,000 applications per year.
But the fact is that since the mid-80's, NOTHING really breakthrough has been invented. there was merely a computer networks spread, which did lead only to make information more fluent (this in fact being a small revolution, but not a technical one, since computer networks were technically long known. it is rather a small revolution in human organization).
what does this means ? it means patents are the direct consequence of the fact that, since information and knowledge have reach an improvment stage in broadcasting (as before when printing was invented, and then radio, telephone, and...), some guys go out of the wood, and try to get monopoly on that knowledge, as it happened before. was it of any benefit when it happened before ? NO. Monopolies are powers, and tend to influence or be influenced governments (sometimes so close that it's impossible to dinsitnguish them). And this system has proven in the past to be bad.
Face it, "IP" craze, and patent system overheat is NOT a consequence of more invention or "innovation". It is a consequence of the new "information age". It does not foster "innovation", and there were never less real inventions than in the past ten years when patent system reached such a high (especially in countries with the most advanced patent systems). Moreover, most big companies cut credits in R&D fields to fund their "IP" divisions. great.
Patents and especially the current patent system were just deprecated by the new "information age", and they need to be suppressed or deeply reworked before it is too late.
I admire the effort, but these are badly formed and "loaded" questions, exactly the kind that politicians prefer to avoid, thus the FFII is not making it easy for politicians to give fair answers (I've dealt with MP's and MEP's, and to be honest, mine have been pretty decent - I can't speak for others: they _like_ to see that constituents are actively interested in issues and actively using them to work those issues - what they _don't_ like are shifty attempts to work them over).
For example, the following takes the issue of "program claims" and rests it on a broader concept of "freedom of publication":
"Will you vote for freedom of publication (against program claims)?"
This is a fairly subjective and loaded connection, and not everyone sees it that way. It would have been better to stick to the facts and ask questions like:
"Are you aware that the directive seeks to make it allowable to claim programs on a carrier?"
"Do you know that in doing this, it restricts the ability of the open software movement?"
"Do you know that in doing so, it starves the european economy of a growing and innovative economic force: that of open source?"
etc
(but this is what I continue to expect from the FFII: too much "overloading" which does them disservice and makes it harder for other people [e.g. business men] to give them fair consideration)
The Greens have some objectionable policies, but opposing the Euro is not one of them.
Adopting the Euro would be bad on financial and economic grounds for the UK; that is precisely why Gordon Brown opposes entry now.
The detailed arguments are technical and I take it you're not an economist or a banker, but basically they come down to two:
we will continue to sit here and make stupid grammar errors in simple English, like use "a" where "an" would be appropriate, further making ourselves look like idiots...
The BBC produce a nice list of all candidates by area:m
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3708131.st
Whoever moded the parent offtopic is a moron. The e-mail address *is* missing and the encoding *is* strange and MEP will not bother reading a questionarie without proper diacritics because it seems un-profesional (i.e. unimportant).
Just remember theres a June 8th deadline by which time you must have sent your 'donations' and made your policy requests. This will ensure that the correct policy will be considered in time for the election. Might I suggest that slashdot users all go for one candidate and send around $2000 each? Remember cash is prefered and it should be in a brown envelope without the name of the candidate or the amount written on it. I think the European system of doing these things differs quite allot from the American but in the end its the bribe *COUGH* oh shit sorry, i mean the 'donation' that counts.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
In the UK at least, the Liberal Democrats seem to have some idea at least about copyright and patents as they relate to software. This paper mentions software patents as a bad thing, states that allowing only copyright protection on code rather than patents encourage competition in the software market place, along with a bunch of other generally sensible ideas.
The most supportive of ffii and agaisnt software patents in the south east UK are:
Dr Caroline lucas (green party)
Nigel Farage (UKIP)
If you belive in opensource vote for them!
from the analysis of the vote in september it can be seen that:
leftwing parties (communist, sozialists, trotzkists) from the GUE/NGL fraction and/or the EL (european left) and the european greens voted completly against software patens and against IP enforcement directive, etc..
all other parties where split.. usually social democrats where worse then peoplesparty..
liberals where split: some liberals where totaly pro software patents others totaly against..
so my recomendation:
vote for levtwing parties: communists, etc.. or vote vor greens. (the only thing that speaks against greens that they did not manage to change the vote of germany in the council of ministers (voted pro software patens) even thought the greens are in the government coalitions in germany...
what is the reality of patents (any patent) nowadays:
1- they don't protect the individual inventor (they're FAR too expensive and complex to get and to defend)
Bullshit. Hundreds of brilliant individual patentholders make millions of dollars every year from patents that they have transferred to large companies who make useful goods and services for the wide world out of them.
2- industrial patents don't even protect big companies (there's always a way to find another process to reach the same goal). in that case it is, at best, a commercial argument, to have a patent
So your argument then, basically, is that patents foster innovation. I thought you were arguing AGAINST patents. Asshat.
3- as no big invention happened since microcomputer revolution in 70's 80's, everything is merely "innovation", ie. rehash of old ideas. heck, i've even seen one company trying to apply for practically the same (industrial) patent that was granted to my great-grandfather almost one century ago (and tha fell into public domain long ago). and they'll probably be granted for it.
This is so stupid it's not even worth attacking. No new ideas since the 80s?
4- patent offices are run extremely extremely bad (that goes for USPTO as well a for EPO), and it'd be very very expensive to improve them. they are damn slow, too.
Define "very very" expensive. Let's say it cost a billion dollars. That's a pimple on a flea compared to the trillions of dollars involved in revenue.
5- because of 4, even "innovation" is permantently under threat of "submarine patents".
Let me guess.. you just learned about that in undergraduate business 101 today. Yes, there are areas where the patent system needs reform. But somehow, despite your ludicrous claim in point 3, innovation and invention continue. (your use of "innovation" vs "invention" is nonstandard.. I know you probably got it from some MBA for idiots lass, but I think you didn't fully understand the nuances).
6- a lot of companies start to spend more time (and money) to protect their "IP" than to actually do research and development.
so? And it costs 10 times more to promote a bottle of Dasani water than it does to make it. What's your point?
I agree, and a good example of that can be seen here.
Mind Booster Noori
"Hundreds of brilliant individual patentholders make millions of dollars every year from patents that they have transferred to large companies who make useful goods and services for the wide world out of them."
If you are a lone inventor with little captial patents are hard to get. The actual patent itself is not necessarily expensive, but searches, legal fees, and so on, make it out of reach of most of the "little guys". I don't think this is necessarily a problem with patents per se, more that the explosion of knowledge has made these steps more protracted and expensive. Perhaps what is needed is an intelligent automated search engine to look through past patents and prior art to reduce these costs. (No doubt such an agent would be patented).
In constrast copyright confers long term rights at little or no cost.
For the 'little guy' about the only way to pursue creating a patent if you don't have sufficient capital is via VC, but you have to ensure that you have protected the information regarding your ownership and the provenance of the invention to be on the safe side.
Just a reminder to people that you can't believe a word that a politician says.
Sadly, a lot (the majority) of people still believe that the concepts typically taught in Politics 101 actually operate that way in the "democratic west". That's so naive that it's not even funny. The article linked a pretty good summary of the subversion of the democratic process that should dispell any childish misconceptions about that.
The only means we have of changing the course of history is through voting (I exclude suggestions relating to guns etc, they'll only accelerate the current bad path, afaics), but our voted directives are being entirely bypassed by those who wish a different outcome. This makes it pretty clear what the future holds.
Software freedom is being forced underground. In due course (dozens of years I expect, not one or two), writing a program openly outside of a rigorously patent-controlled corporate environment will be considered an act of economic terrorism or subversion.
Kind of sad really.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
You understood wrongly. FFII is against software patents as a whole, on the basis that the patent system is completely unfit for software (which is not very surprising, given that it was conceived in the 15th century and was never designed to allow monopolisation of information entities).
Novelty and non-obviousness cannot prevent trivial software patents to get through, even if you apply them according to the most stringent standards. Even the deputy director of the UKPTO argues that patent law was not designed to stop "trivial inventions" from being patented.
The webshop pamphlet is simply there to educate people on what kind of stuff the proposed directive text from the Commission and the Council will legalise. FFII is not only against the legalisation of that kind of patents.
Although FFII does not argue for the complete abolition of the patent system, there are many economists and even business people who think the patent system has outlived its useful life and indeed does more harm than good nowadays. Several such studies are linked (among others) here.
It depends on what the innovation of your friend is. If all he's doing is just performing some statistical information gathering, sorting, classifying etc in his program (no matter how insightful the sequence of this stuff is), then FFII is against granting a patent on those things. If your friend's technique however involves new insights in applied natural science, then there is no problem granting him a patent, because then it wouldn't be a software patent.
Let me give an example: suppose you have a fully automated and computer-controlled weaving machine. You then discover on how to reposition the blades so that the threads can be cut much faster. However, the only thing you have to do to implement this invention, is change the values of a few variables in the program that controls the weaving machine (or maybe you have to implement some kind of mathematical algorithm to describe the path and turning rates those knives have to follow).
Well, that remains a perfectly patentable invention under the EP's proposal (which FFII supports): the invention is not that you are changing the program or the mathematical al
Donate free food here
I suggest you get in touch with the Irish Free Software Organisation. I'm sure they could use your help.
David Bowe, MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, has already written to Bertie Ahern to complain about the way the Irish presidency secured political approval for a new draft of the controversial software patents - against the wishes of the European Parliament.
This shows that some of our MEPs are on the right side. For the up-coming election David is third on the Labour ticket. Due to a reduction of MEPs in our area, he's the one whose job is on the line. A vote for Labour is a vote for David - the other Labour candidates will know their fate already - in or out.
It would be a pity if David lost out because of the "Blair effect". He's the one that fought for clean beaches, removing chromium from cement, etc. A very good hard working "green" MEP.
Last September I sent contacted all of the MEPs for South East England on this issue.
I received replies that were anti-software patent from: Caroline Lucas (Green) and Nigel Farage (UKIP).
I received replies that supported amendments to the original legislation from: Chris Huhne (LibDem), Daniel Hannan (Con) and Roy Perry (Con)
I received no replies whatsoever from: James Provan (Con), Peter Skinner (Lab), Emma Nicholson (LibDem), Elles (Con), Watts (Lab), Deva (Con)
AS you can see, none of the labour MEPS cared to even reply to my enquiries, and responses were pretty poor amongst the other major parties.
Draw your own conclusions.
Microsoft patents the "double-click".
vote down pls
"For my part I am more than happy to be judged on my record?for example playing a leading rule in introducing the toughest legislation in the world on the control of GMOs, on the landfilling of waste, on pollution control, on PCBs and the Seveso Directive which aims to prevent dangerous chemicals being released through explosions and other accidents.
"I am also proud that on my home territory, here in Yorkshire the impact of European legislation, backed by Labour MEPs like myself, has ensured that we now have amongst the best beaches in the country...proof positive that we really do make a difference."
Don't contribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
The Dutch Minister of Economic affairs has voted pro-patents as well, despite both the Dutch Parliament (including his own party, D66!) and the majority of the Dutch MEPs not agreeing. The patent lobby at his Department must have convinced him he was voting for something that was a real compromise between pro- and opponents.
Anyhow-- if you happen to be a Dutchman representing a company (MKB) please undersign the communiqé at: http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/DebatDenHaagJointStat ement
European politicians are just as bad as their brethren in the US. They will listen and act if you cross their palm with enough money. Anything less and they ignore you, or just give lip service.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
http://swpat.ffii.org/log/intro/index.en.html
Software Patents in Europe: A Short Overview
A patent is a right to monopolize an invention. A would-be inventor specifies a scope of activities from which he wants to exclude others (the claims), and submits it to the Patent Office, which evaluates whether these claims depict an invention within the sense of the law and whether the invention is correctly disclosed and industrially applicable (formal examination). Some patent offices will moreover examine whether the invention is new and non-obvious (substantive examination). If the application passes the examination hurdles, the Patent Office grants the applicant exclusive rights to produce and market the invention for a period of 20 years.
Programming is similar to writing symphonies. When a programmer writes software, he weaves together thousands of ideas (algorithms or calculation rules) into a copyrighted work. Usually some of the ideas in the programmer's work will be new and non-obvious according to the (inherently low) standards of the patent system. When many such ideas are patented, it becomes impossible to write software without infringing on patents. Software authors are thereby deprived of their copyright; they live under permanent threat of being blackmailed by holders of large patent portfolios. As a result, less software is written and fewer new ideas appear.
The core patent law in Europe is the European Patent Convention (EPC) of 1973. In Article 52, the Convention states that discoveries, scientific theories, mathematical methods, rules, methods of thought, business methods, and computer programs are not inventions in the sense of patent law. There is a reason for that: in the legal tradition patents have been for concrete applications of natural science ("technical inventions"), whereas patents on software cover abstract ideas. When patents are applied to software, the result is such that instead of patenting a specific mousetrap, you patent any "means of trapping mammals" (or, for an actual example, any "means of trapping data in an emulated environment").
In 1986 the European Patent Office (EPO) started granting patents on computer programs in violation of the EPC , allowing claims on software distinguished only by the use of the following phrasing:
Unchecked in this practice, in 1998 they began granting claims that literally contradicted the law , allowing patents on software for claims that used the following phrasing:
The number of patents on software that the EPO has granted in this manner is estimated at more than 30,000, and this practice has been increasing at a rate of 3,000 per year.
Most of these patents are broad and trivial and not significantly different from corresponding types of patents that the US and Japan have been allowing.
Given the damaging effects of these kinds of patents, not to mention their illegality, one might expect the EPO would be subject to pressure to bring its practice in acc
Mrs. Piia-Noora Kauppi is the only Finnish MEP that protested against the attempts at strong-arm the patent directive to force. FFII reported this. She has also held a speech at a Linux convention.
Kauppi belongs to the National Coalition, a right-wing party in Finland that favors the rights of enterpreneurs, especially the small enterpreneurs. With excessive power, big corporations are just as bad as a Communist government. (This opinion by Sirpa Pietikäinen, another MEP of the Coalition.)
Software patents would harm small enterpreneurs and freedom, so the right-wing party can't be in favor of them. So, the Socialists or Greens don't represent your opinion against software patents. Remember that one of the key Finnish supporters of software patents has been Erkki Liikanen, a member of the European Commission, who is a Social Democrat!
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Toisin sanoen: Ainoa softapatentteja voimakkaasti vastustanut euroedustaja on Piia-Noora Kauppi. Kokoomuslaisena Kauppi ei missään nimessä voi kannattaa isojen firmojen mahdollisuutta jyrätä pienyrittäjiä. Sosiaalidemokraatti Erkki Liikanenhan on kannattanut softapatentteja.
Ks. lehdistötiedote.
(the mandatory self-evaluation: +5 Informative)
+49-174-7313590 (mobile, me) IRC (apologies)
+49-174-7313590 (gsm,myself)
Irc.
(apologies for the previous accidental ac dupe)
For Swedes, here is a quite short article with tips for who do vote and who to not vote for in the coming election, June 13:th:
1 32647_IDG.se255/20040602132647_IDG.se255.dbp.asp
t emplates/template_77.asp_Q_avdnr_E_11913_A_number_ E_26635_A_avdelning_E_11913
http://www.idg.se/ArticlePages/200406/02/20040602
I'm not too interested in this stuff normally, but for once I have an opinion and I will use this opportunity to show it.
Also, here is a link to one of the guys (in Miljöpartiet) who seems to be on our side:
http://www.miljopartiet.se/default.asp?mainframe=
Well, I don't know about you guys, but I feel much better knowing that people are taking the extremem actions of writing a fucking letter to show those politicians that we mean business.
vote for levtwing parties: communists
My recommendation: never vote for communists, ever. After 40+ years of their ruling, I assure you that they are much more evil than sw patents. (I am Czech.)
They are, they say, hostile to software patents and fighting a rearguard action. Yea, right: Arlene McCarthy our friend. Hell, they've even setup a fund to help small companies abused by large ones - does FOSS count?
Only the Green party response from Jean Lambert was believably hostile to SW patents.
Dear Mr Harris
Thank you for your email.
The European Parliament, has voted for limits to the patenting of computer-implemented inventions. The Member States i.e. the Council of Ministers have chosen to ignore Parliament's views, which has disappointed us greatly and we are now preparing for some very tough negotiations with them.
However, fortunately the Council of Ministers and the Commission cannot ignore our views as democratically elected Members of the European Parliament. I can assure you that the Parliament will defend its position and there will be no final law without the agreement of the Parliament. If both the Council of Ministers and the European Commission refuse to reinsert Parliament's amendments, there will be no Directive. Our power on this piece of legislation is very strong we can modify it or block it if we choose to do so.
The position of my colleague Arlene McCarthy as Rapporteur and that of the Labour MEPs remains unchanged and in the negotiations she will be defending Parliaments position.
We are not in favour of patenting software as in the US.
Europe needs a uniform legal approach to stop the drifting towards extending patentability to inventions, which would not have been traditionally allowed, and to stop patentability of pure business methods, algorithms or mathematical methods.
Software products as such, must not be patented.
Opensource software must be allowed to flourish and the Commission must ensure that this Directive does not have any adverse effect on opensource software and small software developers. Patents and the threat of litigation must not be used as an anti-competitive weapon to squeeze out small companies. Furthermore we are supporting a UK campaign for a defence fund for small companies to protect themselves from litigation abuse by dominant market players.
Yours sincerely
[some MEP clone]
-he who laughs last, is a bit slow.
journal
Are they relaunching FFII? I've never played, but have heard that it was pretty good. The platform was not mentioned in the article, but I'm assuming that it's PS2...
See the rest of the letter above.
This doesn't sound like some MEP clone to me.
Lugradio, A linux based radio programme from the UK, has an election special where several people from different political parties are interviewed. The Lib Dems come out looking pretty good from the snippets I have managed to hear today.
;-) so don't think this is blatent self promotion (that's next week with the regular issue)
I don't feature in this episode
I personally will vote green in the euro elections as they have sensible views on europe wide issues such as software patents and environmental issues with none of the nationalistic shite that goes with the everybody skeptic upip. Don't waste your vote on the ukip they are fascists wearing fake smiles.
blog and junk
If you read that form letter casually it sounds OK, as your quote shows, but knowing the true aims of the Labour party (and Conservatives for that matter) you can read between the lines. In the letter for example;
"Software products as such, must not be patented". Sounds pretty good but that's already the law; what the letter deliberately doesn't address is the technical effect issue: it should be curtailed to prevent its current use which in practice does allow software, as such, to be patented. the letter is silent because the Labour party and the Commission want it to continue to have that effect.
Likewise for the doublespeak in the letter about pure business methods and algorithms etc.
the letter sounds very credible if you dont know the hidden agenda & who sponsors the MEP clones; Microsoft/IBM for example, and what the agenda of the patent offices in much of the EU are.
I'm not in the least persuaded by form letters designed by PR people to sucker voters into thinking they are on side. they aren't.
-he who laughs last, is a bit slow.
journal
I want to help! When will polls open in North America so I can vote on this?!? Or can I vote online?
I wrote a longer response, but alas Firefox ate it. My fault. So, you're getting the abbreviated version.
First you accuse me of mischaracterizing the FFII. If you read carefully (I believe the first parenthesis in my response) I clearly wrote that this was the view of the one cambridge ffii presenter.
Next, you attempt to equate a sound bite's use of the word "trivial" with "nonobvious", which sounds to me like a bit spin-doctoring by you. But, even if you were right, the fact is that airplanes crash occasionally too, and yet it's still better than walking.
Your macroeconomic study link is very useful and your comment about software patents being an economic issue is dead-on. I will read your links for more.
Your comment about no software patents being the default argument position is dubious at best as the counter argument (which in fact you allude to using the term 'intertia') could be made quite easily - patents have worked quite well for many years. Yes, i agree the system has been flawed and needs reform, but the fundamental idea is sound. Why should software be any different? To claim that you have absolutely the default position is nonsense; it's a debate tactic, not a reality. In reality, neither side can claim absolute right to this claim.
To answer your question about my friend's patent: it is a pure mathematical manipulation to produce a result. there is no lab test equivalent, though it took deep insight into the structure of the underlyng physical mechanisms to devise this algorithm.
Put another way: if a computer scientist today devised an algorithm that could look at a computer screen and identify the people on it (say, using a database of mug shots or something) should not this person be able to patent this? this is novel, nonobvious, requires considerable expertise, has extreme commercial applicability (ignore any ominous political implications of the example--just use it as an example), and is also purely mathematical / algorithmic. why should this person not be able to benefit from such an invention any more than a man who invents a clever vaccum cleaner?
Open Source Note: Indeed, open source advocates should in this case WELCOME software patents: without them, the developer of the facial recognition algorithms would have to be very very selective in releasing even binaries of his algorithms in order to guarantee fair reward for his investment. with strong patent protection, he could release his work under a variety of open source licenses (not necesarily GPL) to allow people to build great systems on top of his work while, again, maintaining his fair reward.
Ignore software for a moment. Two things are bloody obvious to all but the extreme fringe: one, the patent system as we know it has deep fundamental problems and anachronisms that need to be addressed such as length of copyrights, some stupid patents being given, internationalization issues, and so forth.
Two: having a patent system is much better than not having one at all. I challenge you to find me one legitimate study that would claim that countries and regions without strong patent systems today woud be better off without them. Yes, if you're Angola it might make strategic sense as, in a manner of speaking, you've got nothing to give (sorry Angola). But for the developed world, it's just not tenable. Go back to even the ideals of the french revolution and see how far their attempt at patentlessness went (a few months, before they ran back to it).
Self-determination as determined by con artists who would get Kashmiris to trade their Indian democracy for Pakistani control: military dictatorship at the brink of nuclear sharia. Standard geopolitics from the mosques which brought you Afghani self-determination.
--
make install -not war
Some quick googling will instantly help everyone recall the politics of this guy.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Cashman+spam
BTW unsolicited advertising has actually been yet another topic to prove how (on the European level at least) "we the people" do have an influence on our representatives, and ultimately can achieve reasonable results through the parliamentary veto in the so-called codecision procedure:l ?tid=111
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/02/05/30/1640210.shtm
Mind you, the outlook was just as bleak with respect to spam, until a massive "grassroots" lobbying effort put an end to those dismal days, just in time for the vote in the European Parliament:
Now the number of spam mails most people are receiving from Europe is literally zero.
To let the number of software patents be the same, this time... it's election time, so you won't even need to "convince the proxy", just make sure to elect MEPs worthy of "the geek vote".
Put the right people in the European Parliament now and you'll get the right decisions from it for years to come.
That can happen with a comment title like the one above...
Who was that? James Heald? I'd be extremely surprised if he'd say something like that (though not impossible I guess, we all make mistakes).
How else is the patent system supposed to stop trivial patents, other then through careful application of the novelty and non-obvious conditions? Without software patents, there's still the "technical character" test in Europe, but that one has been completely eroded by the EPO so it doesn't mean squat anymore... Virtually everything has become "technology" in their eyes. See the page I referred to in my previous post.
I argue that patent law is so unfit for advances in abstract reasoning, logic and mathematics that you can't but end up with tons of trivial and/or very broad patents if you allow software patents. The end result is that the resulting monopolies hamper innovation much more than they encourage it.
Some studies to back up my claims:
Many more are linked on the page I gave you earlier.
No software patents is the default position in Europe. The European Patent Convention excludes them, and so did the European Patent Office until it started with its creative interpretation claiming that "a computer program executed by a computer" is not the same as "a computer program as such". When you change the law, and on top of that adapt it to accomodate the behaviour of the people that started breaking it, then you have to provide quite convincing arguments (preferably in the form of macro-economical studies) that this is a good thing.
Donate free food here
IIRC he used to support Lord Sutch (Official Monster Raving Loony Party)...
Yah, sure. While it would be nice to have such a thing, it doesn't really help in selecting candidates for your vote in the upcoming elections.
I don't know how it is in the UK, but Danish candidates for the EU parliament are usually either young and untested or over-the-hill in one way or another. There is a tendency to view the EU parliament as a "second choice" in political affairs - something you do if you can't cut it in the national elections. In any case, few of the candidates running for election have a track record on the issues that concern Europe - apart from what they state their opinions to be.
So, selecting a candidate in Denmark becomes a question of picking someone you distrust the least. Not an ideal situation, but doable, one might think.
However....
I've written to four candidates (the ones that best matched my own opinions, according to a poll on a number of issues in a Danish political website), asking them for a clear answer on the subject of software patents (which, due to its undeservedly low profile, was not mentioned among the issues in the poll).
To date, my response rate has been: ZERO.
That's right - not one of the candidates even bothered to respond.
Oh boy oh boy oh boy, I feel such confidence in the future of democracy in Europe!
- Peter Ravn Rasmussen
I asked David Bowe's office for a copy of the letter after reading the comments on Slashdot. He had told me of the letter when I tackled him on the issue on his recent visit to York.
I just can't believe that he wrote a stock letter to Bertie Ahern dictated by some party functionary so that I could draw it out of him to later post it on Slashdot.
I am actually a Labour Party member - rather uncomfortable at the moment - and Arlene McCarthy would certainly not get my vote. But it seems to me that David Bowe has listened to representations from constituents like myself and done something about it. So in in this case Labour get my vote - and I have been known to vote otherwise!
We should ally with the music industry lobby effoft to protect copyright and patent law
If anyone's still reading this thread, please mod this up. I'm listening to the Lib Dem's interview now, and it's very informative.
fuck in the ass pls