Slashdot Mirror
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?!)
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).
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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...
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!
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.)
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.
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.
You have to challenge them to think about this, if they reply to you with the party line, phone them up, explain that you are familiar with the party position but that it is wrong - and politely ask for the opportunity to explain why.
I contacted my MEP, Avril Doyle (Ireland), and while she was previously unfamiliar with the issue, she actually became a strong opponent of software patents based on my and other's conversations with her.
Don't give up - if your political representatives don't listen, make them listen.
I have found most MEPs to be quite responsive to email these days.
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.
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!
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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.)
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.
The BBC produce a nice list of all candidates by area:m
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3708131.st
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.