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NewsForge On U.S. Advice To EU On Software Patents
An anonymous reader points to Roblimo's "interesting article about how the U.S. sold out to software patents and the EU should as well." Should be of interest to Europeans, forced as they are "to suffer from willy-nilly software development by individuals who have not been screened, approved, and trained by corporate human resources professionals."
First of all, why does the EU want the US's advice? The title makes it sound more like we're just running our mouth's. The EU doesn't much like us at the moment, and this just helps to foster the whole 'america gets up in everyone's grill' image. =/
And secondly, why doesn't the EU want advice from the guys down in the trenches? Is it impossible to get some body of government that listens to the people instead of greedy corporations who pay them off?
Yea, well. We can all tell I'm high. A government for the people? Pfft. I must of taken some baaaaaad LSD.
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
the Chinese, Indians, Asia, S-Americans, Africans
are busy laughing at us, innovation wont stop but western buisness might
so i for 1 welcome our new technology masters
We have the elections for the European parliament coming up this weekend..
Are there any slashdotters here that let their vote be influenced by this, and if so how ?
It's a shame to see that this is almost definitely going to happen. With the abundance of bogus patents already granted in the US, it's only a matter of time before people start seeing obvious and old ideas being patented by corporations that exist solely to sue others into submission and profit from the legal entanglements while the lawyers are busy sorting everything out. I can't believe that Europeans would be so dumb as to bring this upon themselves, and can only conclude that the US is strongly pressuring them to come around to their point of view vis-a-vis intellectual "property".
Who's in the US pressuring Europe into this, why are they doing this, and how can we stop them?
Things don't happen in a vacuum. US software corporations are lobbying intensely for software patents. The idea is that if they can patent software concepts, they can provide a reliable and consistent revenue stream.
This has to be the most obvious manifestation to date of the threat that OSS presents to the traditional software vendors, led by Microsoft. I doubt they would be bothering to do this against corporate competition. All corporations labor under the same constraints. They have to pay people to do the work. OSS breaks the rules in a significant way, and is disruptive to traditional proprietary software houses. They don't have any value-add anymore.
Patents are primarily defensive in nature in any event. Most attempts to use them offensively to crush competing technologies, or shake down entire industries, eventually fail.
I don't understand exactly what the current Administration thinks it is doing trying to pressure the EU to adopt software patents. It is not like the revenue stream is going to land in Europe. What goal or self-interest is fulfilled by adopting software patents in the EU? (beside the obvious cash payoff previously documented to the Irish Presidency) How are jobs created in Europe? How does this benefit Europeans of any nation?
I wonder what kind of arm-twisting by the US is going on in the mythical smoke-filled room (where all such decisions are being made).
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Don't forget that already over 30000 (unofficial and not enforcable) software patents granted in the EU. Just imagine those poor corporations. They spent a lot of money on researching and filing out-of-law patents, all for nothing! Any sensible politician would say yes for the software patents I guess.
You have to expect a large amount of corporate (well, American corporate) and even gov't FUD over this. Corporations want a sure thing - secure investments and market control. Patents in every form are a lock (to some degree) on money and a preventative measure on competition.
I personally wouldn't mind software patents if they were truly fundamental breakthroughs or such (RSA cryptography comes to mind), but with Microsoft patenting "To Do Lists" the EU should be really concerned over what kind of silliness is going to be submitted as a software patent.
For that matter, if the EU was to adopt software patents, what % of those patents would be American?
Should the EU choose not to adopt the software patent idea, we'll see the EU become the hotbed of software creativity for the next 20 years. That's something that'll rankle America, but will it bother the U.S. enough to suffer the pain of changing the patent law?
-- "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" [Oscar Wilde]
Open Source development, however, is PEER reviewed. The bullsh*t walks, in any project of a substantial size and momentum to produce, say, an office suite. Someones screws up enough times and they get kicked from the project. Peers have the actual knowledge to say, this guys work is crap. HR can say, well he showed up in a clean suit with a good haircut and had a great handshake. Thats real nice, but Ill take the open source software anyday.
Half the reason proprietary software sucks, aside from not being free, is that its written by the guy with the best handshake, or whatever cosmetic thing the HR weenie was looking for that day. Never trust a bureaucrat HR rep to make a decision that a peer could make better.
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
And that is to get the government and private industry so hooked on open source software that software patents would wreck the economy. The fastest way for the public to begin to realize that this is a terrible legal system is to make it hit home.
But then open source developers often just don't get it either. OpenOffice for example doesn't even have a word count feature nor the ability to print multiple slides on the same page. These are two features that are absolutely critical in an academic environment for students. With academia firmly against proprietary software giants, we can use universities as a weapon against them.
We really need for a group like Knoppix to make a LiveCD with the ability to do a very clean, intelligent install to the hard drive. LiveCDs are the way to go for installations. The user can play around with them all they want and then ideally, just run an installer to copy it to the hard drive and configure the bootloader.
Right now we have about 1.5-2 years before the next version of Windows comes out. Now is the time for the major projects to conduct user surveys to find out what is missing, add the features and get the product out the door. The fastest way to take down Microsoft, the biggest threat on patents, is to make them stop growing their profits. Since the company makes a lot of its payments from stock, if we can stop them from growing, maybe even cause them to actually have slight negative growth, it would unbalance their payment system which would cause them to have to burn through more cash.
And as an aside, ironically to those who are thinking G-ddamn he is a socialist.... I'm voting libertarian in 2004.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
OpenOffice.org does have a word count feature, click on File > Properties and then look under the Statistics tab.
(Besides, it'll be hard to forget him, no matter how hard we try.)
Back to the issue at hand...
Software/Maths patents cannot co-exist with Free Software. Ether one will survive and the other will die, or both will destroy each other in the fight.
Patents of any kind no longer serve the purpose of protecting investment, as you can patent ideas that you have no intent of ever turning into anything real. So-called "Defensive" patents. With the minimal screening, you don't need to provide any evidence the idea would even work. Just front up the cash and take your turn in line.
This kills innovation, for two reasons. First, nobody else has any incentive to actually build the damn thing (and risk being sued to oblivion). Second, the patent-holder (if the patent is any good) can just wait until someone pays them royalties to implement the idea.
In short, unless a LOT of money is at stake (as in the pharmacutical industry), it's infinitely cheaper to collect as many patents as possible - like stamps or coins - on the off-chance someone else will eventually think the idea valuable enough to buy.
Look at the patent serial numbers, and compare that with the number of items you can think of that are sufficiently distinct and unique to warrant a patent for the idea.
I'm going to guess that the number of patents issued is maybe six to seven orders of magnitude greater than the number of inventions in existance.
Now throw in software and algorithm patents, where any process that can be formally described can be patented. In fact, not all descriptions are that formal. They just have to be descriptive enough to pass muster.
Software development on any scale will simply die. There won't be any point to it, any more. It'll either be done (and patented), or theorised (and patented anyway). Either way, smaller companies and garage developers won't have a snowball's chance in hell of surviving. Any more than garage developers and cottage industries have survived in the physical world.
It's not because they can't compete, or produce the work. It's because the initial costs involved are just too high. The hurdles are too great. The days when you could go into the shed and come out with a multi-million dollar idea (eg: Hewlett-Packard, Jobs & Wosnik, etc) are over. Not because - as Apple once claimed - it's all been done. No. It's because the right to invent has been killed, in favour of a right to stifle, plus the right to profit off marketroid daydreams.
Patents for hypertext? Patents for one-click purchases? Patents for list processing? Is this what civilization has come to?
Yeah, I know, I sound cynical. I probably am. I'm tired of the fiction we call the patent system. I'm tired of companies profiteering from obviously bogus patent and IP claims. These days, you don't invest money in the stock market, you invest it in the patent office!
The system assumes people will play nice. Well, they don't. It's time to retire a system that has been falling apart for decades, and replace it. I suggest using the toss of a coin. For a start, coins are cheaper. They'll also make the correct decision half the time. A much better score than what we have right now.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It is very sad that in the countries I've heard about (France and Germany: I am French but happen to be living in Germany atm), only two parties (the Liberals and the Greens) have a solid European platform. :(
Those are not mainstream as they usually hover between 5 and 10% of the vote. The larger Socialist and Conservative Parties never seriously dealt with Europe in their campaign - it was rather all about bashing the other party on a strictly national basis. No wonder voter turnout is going to be dismal once again
I originally intended to vote for the (German) Liberal Party. Out of habit maybe, since I usually vote for its French sister party, the French Democratic Union (UDF).
Then I saw their voting record on the software patent issue. Screw them, I'm going with the Greens this time.
A previous poster was modded down as offtopic for this, but offtopic it sure was not. Indeed, the Greens are the only party that has consistently opposed any kind of software patents on a European basis. Besides, by voting for the Greens because of software patents, you are also rewarding one of the very few parties that actually care about Europe.
Come to think of it, anyone know what happened to the voting records on the FFII website (http://www.ffii.org.uk/votes/swpat/)?
The URL now returns 404 Errors at this very crucial time!
Times have changed though and unfortunately they have changed for the worse. Now it seems that coprorations are using the patent system as a tool to stifle competition. The claims for patents are getting more and more vague, thus covering a broader and broader scope. In the not too distant past it would have been unheard of to pantent "Software Compression", it would be considered imprudent, where patenting as specific method of software compression using a specific library and a specific algorithm would have been ok. I think the current patent laws would suffice quite nicely if the US Patent Office would wake up and reject patents applications that are frivilous and obviously not in accordance with the spirit of U.S. Patent Law.
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