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Dutch Parliament Reverses Software Patent Vote
Sanity writes "On May 18th, by a thin majority, the European Council of Ministers voted in favor of throwing out the European Parliament's efforts to keep software patents out of Europe. According to an FFII press release, the Dutch Parliament yesterday voted to change its Minister's vote, which was in favor, to an abstension. This is an unprecidented move and a great coup for those fighting against software patents, never before has a country reversed a vote in this manner. While this is not sufficient to reverse the decision of the Council of Ministers, it does pave the way for other countries, many of which were pressured into an affirmative vote, to do the same. Now is the time for citizens of the EU to put pressure on their national governments to follow the Dutch lead."
> Evil Hollanders!
;-)
That's "Netherlanders", actually
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
It says that the vote of the Council of Ministers was on May 18th, but that the Dutch Parliament's vote to change their minister's vote was yesterday...so it is current news.
The news is that Holland is now maybe the first country EVER to change it's vote in this procedure.
Actually, we are from The Netherlands. And don't forget our tulips. And we lured Andrew S. Tanenbaum to our Vrije Universiteit.
It's a small step on it's own, but that's really good news :) Hopefully some of the countries who were unsure about it but ultimately pressured into agreement will now start to think twice about their choices, and maybe refuse to accept the motion, or abstain, removing the majority that the motion otherwise has.
It'd be better if they had outright voted no, but an abstention is still better than a vote in favour.
If you can change your vote after you see a reaction to it from your financial backers, how is it a vote anymore?
Vote:
1. A formal expression of preference for a candidate for office or for a proposed resolution of an issue.
2. A means by which such a preference is made known, such as a raised hand or a marked ballot.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Please use this link instead, it goes to a static version of the linked page. It would be nice if an editor could update the story itself as well, thanks.
Donate free food here
This is a filthy, dirty vote play. Really, it is.
HOWEVER, it is totally justified.
If your competitor plays dirty and wins, consistently, the only way you can compete is to be just as dirty, if not more-so.
The upcoming USA election should be interesting.
So they were for being against opposing patents. This is your brain on drugs.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
...if this was a good thing (get rid of software patents we don't want them) or a bad thing (yay software patents let's go crazy).
/. post.
i did not rtfa i'm just commenting on the
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
Hopefully more countries will follow the Dutch lead, and loosen the grasp of proprietary software in Europe, leading to more competition in the market, and ultimately Microsoft's downfall *evil grin*
If they had changed their vote to a negative instead of just abstaining then it might have some influence, but the Dutch chose to act as if their man wasn't at the vote.
This won't make any difference the UK vote on patents although the Eurosceptics might enjoy the idea of putting a spanner in the works of the commision on other issues.
Topic of this vote aside how is Europe supposed to get anywhere if a country votes one way and then a couple of months later changes its decision? They had time enough to make up their minds. Decisons this will only undermine political credibility in Europe.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Darn, I wanted to be the first one in Holland to patent the grouped task bar buttons.
Please learn from our mistakes. Don't let stealth legislation ramrod you into 1984. It starts with patents and ends with your freedom. Don't let this opportunity slip by.
If you're a democracy, then you're a constituent, and your opinion matters, as long as it's heard. E-mail works good, but snail mail works better. Better than all of that, however, is a phone call.
voted in favor of throwing out the European Parliament's efforts to keep software patents out of Europe voted to throw out the efforts to keep software patents out? so, now the efforts to keep software patents out have been thrown out, software patents have no resistance? this is good?
voted in favor of throwing out the European Parliament's efforts to keep software patents out of Europe
They've voted in favour (u!) of *throwing out* the effort to *keep software patents out* ?
So they want software patents now?
Uhh, voting in favor of throwing out legislation to keep patents out of europe is the same as voting in favor of keeping legislation to keep software patents in europe. This is what we dont want, right? Stupid double negatives.
The Dutch parliament moved against (well, abstained) the vote against the motion against software patents in europe?
Oh that was clear.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Microsoft has purchased the Netherlands and has patented throwing out software patents.
If we survive long enough to make the floating cities and flying cars a reality, it will be because inventors, software developers and corporations were open-minded and generous enough to give away their inventions/creations for the benefit of everybody, albeit in exchange of a reasonable amount of compensation, but above all the satisfaction of having done something good for the betterment of others.
The current trend seems to be headed in a completely opposite direction - profit (hate that word now) seems to be the only motivating factor (if not for individuals, atleast for the corporations binding creative humans by heavy handed employment contracts/etc) for any development we're seeing at all.
It's about time we got over this short-sightedness and moved towards a society which is not encumbered by flimsy lawsuits, overstepping patents, profit mindedness, or constant fear of the former two. Information should be free.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
OK, so they're voting "yes" any more, but they're hardly fighting back. What help is an abstention? Surely what we really want are "no" votes? Maybe it was just too much to do a *complete* turnaround...
-- "There's no explaining the things that might happen; there's now a new home for technology in fashion."
Our only option is to get into their warped way of thinking, and what better way to start than by using their language in /. stories! ;-)
Our dutch political groups were (alomst) all oposed to the law.
The person who was going to vote is the leading person of one of our political groups (that group was oposed to the new law even more than most others)
He decided to vote in favor if the proposal would be changed to be a much nicer law.
The proposal was changed to some extend, but not as far as what he descussed and promised to the rest of his group and the other groups.
He voted in favor of the law, and everyone was stunned!
Things started to rumble as his own party was starting to ask questions.
A dutch digital freedom organisation made a propsition to the different party's to change the vote.
The voter replied that he would not change his vote as that could be harmfull to his party and carreer.
And now all of sudden, probably after more talking and lobying he did change, (or someone else made him)
Shut up: You lost from Portugal, 2-1.
Wow... the Dutch Parliament reversed a European Council of Ministers vote that had been in favor of throwing out the European Parliament's efforts to keep software patents out of Europe.
In other news, my best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with a girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night.
it might not change the outcome directly, I would like to believe this will cause other members of the EU to wonder why they changed their vote; perhaps they will wonder if what their patent lobbyists are saying might not be the total truth?
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
The Netherlands never ceases to impress me with the decisions they make.
>On May 18th, by a thin majority, the European Council of Ministers voted in
>favor of throwing out the European Parliament's efforts to keep software patents
>out of Europe
Uh..doesn't that mean they voted to NOT keep software patents out of Europe?
This vote shows that the Dutch rep to the EU Parliament defied the government, therefore the people, he "represents". While politicians are sent to lead the people, even when leadership is controversial or unpopular, Dutch minister Brinkhorst blamed his "maverick" vote on a typo. The Dutch, with their traditional prudence and deft style, have reversed the result, without even reversing their vote, by appropriately abstaining when their own vote was dysfunctional. Now the question is: who got to this weasel? Who paid him off? Could it be M$, adding his bribe to the big, yet acceptable, bill they're liable to pay the EU for running a foreign monopoly against their people? How much does it cost a corporation to rig property laws in their favor for decades in Europe? And for the politically ambitious European, does Brinkhorst get to keep his bribe, even though he botched the delivery?
--
make install -not war
This law they are trying to pass will allow companies to patent the software (intellectual property) that they have written?
Just like any other company that does R&D (the most costly aspect of producing a product) what is the problem with it being patented?
Let them recoup their costs. If I write some software, I be damned if someone is going to tell me how to market/sell/utilize it (short of national security breach).
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
You obviously don't know much about history, do you? Most great inventions where created by large corporations that made all of that R&D possible. Most of those inventors benefitted *greatly* from those inventions (but not all). Or in many cases, a small guy invented something, then it was brought to market by a corporation which had the money to make it happen. Somehow, I don't see a guy in his garage inventing the next breakthrough in microprocessor technology, or space flight, or medicine, then giving it away. That's a fairy tale.
legalized weed and a sensible outlook on software patents, what more could a geek ask for?
The post is very confusing: he voted against the people that are against voting against being contrary to software patents, something like that...
What the heck, can someone simplify it?
how long until
I was at the previous committee meeting. All the MPs that were there were not happy with the minister and secretary, but the MP (Vendrik (sp?)) who proposed the motion came to the conclusion that a negative vote was unreachable. IMO primarily because of the CDA- and VVD-fractions, who were not happy with the way the EP-EC vote went, but only partially against software patents per se.
Ehm, the majority of the spanish people were against Spain sending troops to Iraq in the first place. (I believe they stated they would let the troops stay if the United Nations took political and military control).
The PSOE stated they would bring the troops home if they were elected. Maybe the bombing contributed to their victory, but AFAIR they were close in the polls even before the bombing. So it's not like the victory came out of thni air like you are implying.
Sounds like how democracy is supposed to work to me. The party that went against the majorities opinion got slapped on the wrist.
Then there's Spain. I find the phrase "undermine political credibility in Europe" to be a laughable concept when an entire country changes its majority party in a radical direction because of a single terrorist bombing.
I live in Spain, and I lived through those days of the bombing and elections shortly afterwards. I can tell you something with certainty -- the election went the way it did not because of the bombing, but because of the governing party's response to it. They tried to very crudely manipulate public opinion in the aftermath of the bombing so that the elections would go in their favour. The public was responding to the governments blatent attempt to manipulate them, not the bombing per se.
It's a real shame that it was presented in a lot of the American press differently, because Bush could learn a lot from the Spanish public's response to the governing party's attempted manipulation -- lie to the electorate, and they'll punish you for it.
Is there an official record of the proceedings of the Dutch Parliament, similar to the UK's Hansard, to which I can direct the attention of my MP? I'm not sure that a wiki page at the FFII website will carry sufficient authority to prompt her to try the same thing here.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
ahh... thank you, so much clearer now
do we love or hate the dutch right now? im still lost
TIAEAE!
What happened was that the minister representing the goverment voted against its wishes. They had every right to change the vote.
The terrorist attack had insignifigant impact on Spanish electionts. The ruling party was already highly unpopular mainly because the troops in Iraq. Attempts to gain votes from the attacks didn't excactly help but they were going to lose anyway.
Finaally, some saanity haas been restored to the paatent debaate. Congraatulaations to our Dutch friends for their couraageous step forwaard.
Exit, pursued by a bear.
sounds like the check bounced to the Dutch Parliament
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
What gives? It was a pro-GNU comment! :)
The title of the article says the Netherlands reverse their vote. That is just plain wrong. They actually are changing it from a "yes" to an abstention, not to a "no".It's good, but it's not a "reversal".
> It's a real shame that it was presented in a lot
> of the American press differently, because Bush
> could learn a lot from the Spanish public's
> response to the governing party's attempted
> manipulation -- lie to the electorate, and they'll
> punish you for it.
Pa. Bush wouldn't learn anything from it. And, even if he did, it would be useless - in the US, the public are a lot more gullible.
> Explain how it is beneficial for your creation
> to not be protected against theft by
> competitors?
You are a troll... but anyway...
Software patents have been showed to be used
now as a way to prevent innovation and NOT as
a way to protect your invention. Oh and while
I'm feeding the troll, there is indeed a way
to protect your creation "against theft by
competitors" : it is called copyrights...
Here! So, does your belly feel satisfied now ?
Is this a troll? Well whatever, if you look at the economic figures you'll see that software patents don't add to inventiveness, but are actually an extra tax to pay to other people (a currently ever more popular tactic, companies that only earn money by claiming an idea without ever making anything, are becoming more common) as there is no need to have an actual working product or anything, this thus slows down overall innovation. None of the current big corps got big with software patents either, in generally they just use them to fence out competition, which is ofcourse what capitalism is about.
Thus software patents are bad, because they harm the economy, the generation of new ideas and harm the general working of the capitalistic system. This doesn't mean patents are bad in all cases, but the way software patents have been introduced begat what is now an anti capitalistic system.
Quickshot
"Most great inventions where created by large corporations that made all of that R&D possible."
What great inventions?
Steam engine? Nope, invented by a single man.
Internal combustion engine? Again, nope.
Penicillin? Not a corporation.
Radio? Again, no.
Corps only make inventions profitable.
"Somehow, I don't see a guy in his garage inventing the next breakthrough in microprocessor technology, or space flight, or medicine, then giving it away. That's a fairy tale."
Maybe not giving away, but my guess is that radically new technologies *are* invented in garages. Primarily because if you do R&D for a corporations, your boss expects you to find that lucrative new technology. So most things invented by corporations will be more or less gradual improvements of existing technology.
The guy with his garage is free to create totally new things, so he is more likely to come up with something radically new.
Then, after a while this new technology has to be improved, made more reliable, or cheaper, and that costs money. A lots of money. So then you would expect that only big corps are able to afford R&D.
But the radically new ideas? Expect the genius with his garage.
If I get a machine and use it to create a string of bits that then gets used as a set of instructions to tell other machines what to do, then I do get protection for coming up with that string of bits. It's called "copyright". You patent inventions, you copyright expressions of thought. If software running on a computer is a patentable process, then why not allow patents on a new song or movie or picture? It's a string of bits that makes machines do useful, novel, and nonobvious things, so why not patent it?
The issue I have with software patents isn't that patenting or IP is bad, it's that you have to separate IP into different categories for different situations. Or, if you don't want to do that, then be willing to take things to their logical conclusion and allow patents on music and movies and books and all other expressions of thought that happen to be recorded as strings of bits and happen to be used to make machines do things. When people allow patents on music and books and movies and such, I will support software patents. Because then the people who came up with this idea will prove to me that they get it.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
An abstenance vote is a cowardly vote, why couldn't they have simply voted against it.
What is really bad is that the minister had to be forced to abstain. Initially the minister refused to change the vote because it would look bad. It's a pretty sick and sad world when our politicians choose to make a known wrong decision because to do otherwise would look bad from the perspective of looking indecisive. Pathetic!!
I'm happy the vote for was dropped of course, but totally unimpressed at the ministers lack of guts and inability to admit when you are wrong. Spineless screwing with the economy of countries to save your own ego.
Getting right to the point, we may occasionally laud the EU's political environment as somewhat superior to the American one, but whether the EU is getting better or worse depends to a great extent on whether this "Minister" will be investigated and prosecuted.
To let "Mr. Typo" get off light, you have to have the kind of benighted self-contempt that Americans, Chinese and ex-Soviet citizens are really familiar with.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Not sure... but at least we know why they call it double dutch.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
That's a bit of an exaggeration. "Lack of patents" and "communism" are not the same thing (at least, I don't think that the only difference between China and the US is a lack of patents in China). You clearly don't like the idea of government involment in software choices, why advocate a system in which the government is stuck with the task of enforcing artifical monopolies? If anything, a lack of patents is more of a free market than the beurocratic system you suggest.
Software patents have been abused far too much, and opposing them has nothing to do with liking or disliking big business. It's a separate debate entirely. We've seen too much evidence that the software community (commercial and non-commercial alike) works better without them. My compliments to the Dutch.
"who got to this weasel? Who paid him off? Could it be M$, adding his bribe to the big, yet acceptable, bill they're liable to pay the EU for running a foreign monopoly against their people"
;-)
LOL, why believe in a monopoly? He (actually the State Secretary) didn't blame it on a typo, but actually blamed the *word processor*.
Now somehow I don't get the feeling he used Open Office. And we all know who is the #1 word processor manufacturer in the world
't Erge is natuurlijk dat de altijd vriendelijk lachende Brinkhorst een leugenachtige gluiperd is. Dit is goed nieuws, voor wat het waard is, maar ik maak me geen illusies omtrent de afloop. In ieder geval zeer goed werk van Arend. BJ
Sigh... Last week in the States I had to explain this over and over again: People who are living/born in "The Netherlands" are called "Dutch"; the Dutch people. The Netherland is also nicked "Holland". And no, Amsterdam is not a country itself, it's the capital of The Netherlands. In The Netherlands people speak the Dutch language, not to be confused with the German "Deutsch", although there are similarities. Don't confuse Dutch with Danish, which is spoken in Danmark.
Now would you let me -perfectly legal- enjoy my Mary-Jane spliff while i 5h49 the brains out of this eastern-european rollergirl prostitute in toight pantz
-- Isn't tzat weird ? Goldmember --
I see this writeup was written in the same straightforward style as is the norm in European Union legislative matters:
"European Council of Ministers voted in favor of throwing out the European Parliament's efforts to keep software patents out of Europe."
So they voted in favor. In favor of what? Throwing out something. So they voted against something. Against what? European Parliament's efforts to keep software patents out of Europe. So they voted in favor of software patents. Gotcha.
How do you think Microsoft started? It was two guys writing BASIC for the Altair. If software patents had been in around then, the first person to patent a BASIC interpreter for ANY computer could have stopped anyone in thier tracks from writing an interpreter for that language. Thus there probably would have been no Microsoft.
Copyright is different from patents, the latter protects an idea the former an implimentation of that idea. Unfortunatly the broad nature of patenting ideas will lead to only those with lots of money (i.e. corporations) being able to reap the rewarsds of thier ideas. The barrier to entry will be too high.
You comparison with China is quite apt because instead of the government telling you what software you would be allowed to use it would be corporations.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
Yes, they always lie. BJ (Dutch)
UKIP voted firmly against s/w patents last time when they had three seats. They now have 12. Greens and SNP are against s/w patents (but dont have many seats). There will hopefully be more opposition to s/w patents from the UK this time round.
Time to write to UKIP, Green and SNP MEPS!
(If voting doesnt work this way, apologies, politics isnt something i follow)
Ah, thank you. You put me in mind to go and look up this:
Bernard Woolley: "Now, may I just have your approval for this Local Government Allowances Amendment Number 2 for this year's regulations."
Jim Hacker: "What is it?"
Bernard Woolley: "It is a Statutory Instrument to be laid before the House. As Minister responsible for local government we need you to authorize that the revised Paragraph 5 of Number 2 Regulations 1971 shall come into operation on March the 18th next, revoking Regulation 7 of the Local Government Allowances Amendment Regulations 1954(b)."
Jim Hacker: "What the hell does all that mean?"
Bernard Woolley: "It is all right, there is an explanatory note, Minister. These Regulations are to make provisions for prescribing the amount of attendance and financial loss allowances payable to the members of local authorities. Explanatory note: Regulation 3 of the Local Government Allowances Amendment Regulation 1971 ("the 1971 regulations") substituted a new regulation for Regulation 3 of the 1954 Regulations. Regulation 3 of the Local Government Allowances Amendment Regulation 1972 ("the 1972 regulations") further made amends Regulation 3 of the 1954 Regulations by increasing the maximum rates of attendance and financial loss allowances. Regulation 7 of the 1972 Regulations revoked both regulation 3 and 5 of the 1971 Regulations, Regulation 5 being a regulation revoking earlier spent regulations with the effect from 1st April next. These regulations preserve Regulations 2 and 5 of the 1971 Regulations by revoking Regulation 7 of the 1972 Regulations.
Jim Hacker: "And that's an explanatory note???"
From Yes, Minister (of course).
English only here! No soccer talk allowed! Mods, a yellow card for this person please!
English-speaking people do.
Sure, the wheels of European bureacracy are arcane, but the ones in Washington can be just as obscure.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
It meant "it may sound funny now, but eventually that sort of thing will be commonplace".
originally for the opposite inclination to the reverse action of not acting against the motion to prevent software patents from not becoming contrary to the law in Europe.
Yesterday, they changed their vote.
Simple!
when we was robbed by the fucking Swiss greengrocer bastard cocksucker of a referee [OFF] you most certainly know there are quite some of us out there who wouldn't agree with this neither the contents, nor the low language flambait/troll [/OFF] as for the hardly sudden Dutch opinion change, a very good thing in this case; but in my opinion a vote should be a vote, not a money/lobby-dependent joke - once cast, cast for good
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I guess most people wouldn't understand Free University Compiler Kit abbreviated like you did :-) At first, I thought you had flunked a few classes this year and wanted to share your unhappiness...
This is great! Hopefully, Denmark and Poland might follow. They were both very hesitant, but gave up to the pressure in the end.
Even if you think there is something between the idea and the implementation, some sort of 'middle' uniqueness that can be patented, a patent is completely useless at protected it!
Consider the Google pagerank patent, how can Google know if anyone other search engine is using pagerank?
Even if search engines released their binaries, it would be next to impossible to reverse engineer all the binaries and locate the equivalent to the 'page rank' system in it.
So any 'middle uniqueness' patents are worthless because infringements can't be detected.
Setting aside all the history of algorithms not being patentable, this is a basic problem with software patents.
That leaves patents on the idea itself, or patents on the implementation in code (which is already protected by copyrights, and trade secrets).
Why call it a "conspiracy", when the real word is "business plan", or "board meeting"? Why do candlelit anarchists get all the romance from "conspiracy" imagery, when fatcats do it every day in paneled boardrooms?
--
make install -not war
fffoooooommm
-sound of humorous intent flying right overhead-
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
"Okay, how is the loss of a software patent a Good Thing(tm) in a free-market economy? "
Its not a "loss" of software patents, software patents are not permitted by patent law, the Commissioner concern and the EU patent office is trying to change it to *make* software patentable.
All the software you see around today you was written without software patents.
All the software you won't see around you tomorrow will be a result of software patents.
Dutch Parliament Vs. European Council of Ministers
Dutch Parliament - score 3
European Council of Ministers - score 7
ECM wins
the point is, free market is the bad thing but if you change the point of view and look at it from a more non-immanent way of thinking you could understand.
the point is, software can hardly be robbed, if you keep atleast one copy on your machine, for example. and well, the market will grow according to the need of software.
you can spread your software widely over the internet with barely no costs.
and liking someone for making workplaces is strange. i mean i wouldnt like microsoft for making nukes, even if they could give my friends some jobs.
by the way, the most communists dont want maoism, or stalinism-leninism, but marxism (which has never existed like this, not russia, china, kuba and so on). and china is capitalistic too, but that's not the point of discussion. freedom of speech and so on are not part of the capitalistic ideology, its a economy model.
oh and by the way, patents are non-capitalistic. it would be more capitalistic if any company could just take what they want from your ideas and then look who can sell better.
The vote passed in May with the almost the minimum possible margin; only two votes above what was required. The Netherlands hold more than two votes.
Changing the Dutch vote from an Aye to an Abstain (effectively a Nay, since it's the Ayes that count) should reverse the decision, withdrawing more than the two votes of margin. Something here just isn't factually correct.
Perhaps someone from the FFII can shed light on the matter?
These privileges are taken away by software patents. Actually, some people go that far as to say software patents are illegal, because they breach international treaties:
Article 10 WIPO, "Contracting Parties may, in their national legislation, provide for limitations of or exceptions to the rights granted to authors of literary and artistic works under this Treaty in certain special cases that do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author.
Software patents *do* "conflict with a normal exploitation" of your work as an author of a program, so Beauprez certainly has a point.
Either you're Dutch and really, really weird or you're just pretending to be. No native Dutch speaker would ever write anything like that.
Then there's Spain. I find the phrase "undermine political credibility in Europe" to be a laughable concept when an entire country changes its majority party in a radical direction because of a single terrorist bombing.
Yeah. I always thought that the US reaction to 9/11 was such an impressive display of nuance, balance and wisdom.
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
Okay, how is the loss of a software patent a Good Thing(tm) in a free-market economy?
Short version:
Patents are government-granted monopolies.
Monopolies are bad for capitalism and the free market. Has been proven again and again and again.
I can elaborate if you want, but that's what it boils down to.
so, is there a list somewhere where we can see each member's vote on the matter?
Rather than answer each individual reply, I'll just do a blanket one.
Oops, then. My bad. I was thinking of copyrights vs. patents. Obviously I misunderstood. My post was not intended as a troll, but rather a defense of the wrong idea. I remain unconvinced that patents are a bad thing, but I was unfortunately defending them while thinking "copyright".
-The Libra
"Please be patient--The future will begin momentarily."
"The Dutch parliament opposes their minister's opposition to the amendments which opposed software patents."
PRO - Software patents
ANTI - the amendments oppose (software patents)
PRO - the minister opposes (amendments opposing (software pattents))
ANTI - The Dutch parliament opposes (the minister opposing (amendments opposing (software patents)))
Ok, there. I think I understand.
what do you mean?
I think he's Flemish.
By me just writing some excelling software I can get sued?
Is that it?
I support the Dutch parliament in their opposition to their minister's opposition to the european parliament's formerly denied ammendments to the proposed legislation in favour of ammending the existing patent legislation to include software patents rather than just patents that include software. Do you support me?
Um... that wasn't offtopic, I was asking someone to clarify the confusing logic of what was voted on and what it means...
$8.95/mo web hosting
A simple analogy I think is correct. A songwriter can have copyright on his work for instance a blues song. But it would be very bad if he could patent the twelve bar blues, the technique of rap or perhaps a specific chord progression. Even if he invents a whole new way of playing like Jimmy Hendrix did it would be sad if that was enough for a patent wouldn't it?:) Same applies to software. You can protect your work (implementation) from copying but you shouldn't be able to protect the idéa like the wordprocessor, web browser, internet bank service, see-through windows, desktop themes, firewall etc.
Of course, these can't miss: Minutes of the parliament discussion.
The secretary of state says she doesn't want to ask for a new voting procedure ("it would be quite strange if I would ask for a new voting procedure and abstain from voting myself"), but she does want to send a letter to her colleagues in the other member states.
The supported motion is motion-Van Dam, #52.
Do you support me?
No, but I will oppose any opposition to you.
How is this offtopic? It is clearly trollspeak.
I see it this way:
Software patents are laws in the software world - laws which you can buy if you have enough money!
Not that laws are not bought nowadays in other fields, but I have a problem with explicitely allowing that!
Blair is nothing of the sort. He is a Prime-Minister or 'First' Minister. He does *not* have any legal right to make arbitrary decisions like a president does.
At best he has to agree emergency decisions with the civil service first.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
'Holland' is actually two provinces in the Netherlands - 'North Holland' and 'South Holland' (Amsterdam - the capital city - is located in North Holland).
I wanted to go to university to get laid, but I only realised too late why it was called "The fucking university".
Then our protests in the Hague weren't in vain!
So to the Dutch
George Lucas went
to find those Star Warsy names.
...for the EU council.
For a party other than VVD (which contains many stupid cows, but not the least of them Bolkestein, who came up with the shitty patent idea in the first place).
For a party which had an explicit statement on the Software Patents issue (SP), thereby being one of the very few with more than just general statements concerning the EU.
This certainly feels like my vote was worth it.
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
To paraphrase...
:-)
"There are only two things I can't stand: People who are intolerant of other people's culture... and the Dutch!"
-- N. Powers
Toit since 1965
I'm guessing you live under that system you described in such clear detail (thanks :). Do you like it? As an American, I like the idea of making government jump through hoops to make laws, as long as the hoops are out in the open, the same for everyone, and accept laws initiated easily by members of the public (with no "official" standing, though through official channels). It's expensive and time consuming, and subject to inefficient "design by committee", but that seems better to me than the kind of efficiency desired by people with power.
--
make install -not war
Oh yes they will tell you how to market/sell/utilize it. If the USPTO has accepted their patent application and they think you've reinvented the same thing, they'll try to tell you exactly what you have to do before any kind of marketing/selling/utilizing of your software.
Never mind that software is not statuatory material for a patent in the US. Unfortunately, the USPTO and lower courts have contradicted the Supreme Court on this issue, and nobody has gotten a case back to the Supreme Court since 1981. Expect to be sued anyway.
Some nitpicking first, as you seem pretty confusing (if not confused):
Software is a process, done physically by a machine.
really, now! Software is a set of instructions. What the GP meant is (I presume) that you can emulate the effect of executing those instructions on a cpu, in your head - very slowly indeed, but that's not the point.
Software and programming is not a feild of technology. It is a feild of mathematics.
This is a pure statement of your opinion, and many many many people would argue you (and win) wrong.
This is a big confusing point. In most industries, the 'research' part and the 'implementation' part are treated separately. The first one is science, the second is engineering. The software industry choses to blur the line between 'computer science' and 'software engineering' to serve their benefits. Thus, while coming up with, say, a better crypto algorithm, belongs to applied math, implementing it belongs to programming.
This leads to the main line of inquiry: which part of the software is being patented, the science one? the engineering one? both? The accepted rule was supposed to be that pure science does not get patented, as that would block scientific progress. This is quite blurred in applied science, which is what makes the debate open.
The other point about software patents is the dynamics of the software field. History showed several times that active fields become stagnant when burdened with long-term patents - a short-term patent system is better for the market, as it forces the inventor to move forward instead of encouraging the current 'patent pooling and litigating' business model.
Uhhmm... I wouldn't be so sure about that. You see, theoretically, the minister can ignore the will of the parliament. If that would happen, they can vote to remove him -or the entire government- from power.
This is not about proprietary software but about software patent.
Software maker (proprietary or not) and software user/customer should fear software patent.
Software patent do interest IP lawyer and might interest monopolistic or wanna be monopolistic software maker... But even Microsoft can suffer software patent, maybe they benefit more than they suffer it.
Good analogy. I think that the basic principle should be that you can protect the expression (copyright) or the implementation (patent) of an idea, but you can't protect the idea itself. This is why "one-click ordering" was a bad patent. Sure, protect Amazon's implementation, but if anyone else wants to build their own, they should be free to do so.
I remember your eyes, on the twelfth of July...
You set everybody up with a great troll, but none of the first twelve responders even brought up the connection between Microsoft's success and the anti-trust suit against IBM. I'm afraid that carefully crafted "they are the reason you have a job" part of your troll just fell on deaf ears.
Even though nobody mentioned the anti-trust suit, I should correct myself: there was one response to that part of the troll, the "what if someone else patented BASIC" post.
Both this /. article and the title of the FFII press release are misleading.
"According to an FFII press release, the Dutch Parliament yesterday voted to change its Minister's vote, which was in favor, to an abstension."
This is not correct. The Dutch Parliament does not have the power to change its Minister's vote.
The FFII new release title: "02/07/04: Dutch Parliament forces Minister Brinkhorst to withdraw support for software patents directive"
However, the first line of the same press release states: "..the Dutch Parliament voted to urge Minister Brinkhorst and Secretary of State van Gennip (Economic Affairs) to withdraw the Dutch vote in support of the Council of the European Union's text for the Directive on Software Patents."
In other words, the Dutch Parliament has urged the Minister to change the Dutch vote. The Minister has the right to disregard the Parliament's urging and keep the Dutch vote as it is (in favour of software patenting).
However, if the Minister disregards the Dutch Parliament, he risks a motion for his own dismissal. If the parliament files this motion, though, it risks getting the entire government dismissed, if, and only if, the Prime Minister resigns because of the upstir. The Dutch Parliament may not be willing to take that risk, because many of the MP's are members of parties that are in the government.
The battle on Dutch ground is not over yet. Freedom wins the first round, though.
I went on and read the transcript available from the Dutch Parliament website and it appears there have been TWO motions, the first one (motie-Gerkens/Vendrik, 21501-30, nr. 51, ordering the minister to change his vote) was not accepted, the second one (motie-Van Dam c.s. 21501-30, nr. 52, ordering the minister to communicate the parliament's concern and to not support the patent law proposal in the future) was accepted. Sorry to disappoint everyone (including myself), but that's what the transcript says.
Holland in English, use the other term and nobody will find it on a map....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I always thought it was "holes"
The parent poster is a regular astroturfer. Please mod the parent down.
We (US) AMERICANS have saved their Dutch butts in WWII and again in Korea. What have they done since? Smoke POT and put a SLUT on the ground floor of every APARTMENT building.
Generally you should not expect the laws to help you profitting from your invention/software/whatever, just as they usually should not hinder you from making profit. People have had profit from their inventions before patents ever existed, they just have to do all the protection themselves if they want to limit the use of their technology, and one reason patent laws (and also copyright laws in this respect) are created is just because it seems to be inefficient (not really unfair) to have everyone do the protection themselves. You should also rely on yourself rather than blaming the laws not containing explicit provisions to help you.
Yes, we have no bananas.
According to an FFII press release
A press release in which you collect items and gain experience for multiple characters in order to defeat progressively more difficult opponents. Coming soon for Game Boy Advance!
Then there's Spain. I find the phrase "undermine political credibility in Europe" to be a laughable concept when an entire country changes its majority party in a radical direction because of a single terrorist bombing.
Ill informed as that comment may be, its a very very crude but somewhat apt comparison to the patent topic.
About bombs
In case of spain there was a bombing, some bombs failed to detonate leaving the cell phones that were supposed to be the trigger intact. Tracing the origins of those phones must have taken minutes. They belonged to known suspected muslim fundamentalist (iirc even came from a phone shop owned by one). Yet the elected government kept claiming that they suspected ETA was behind all this. Now when no one knew about the collected evidence people toke these government comments very serious. Then slowly the idea began settling that the ETA which Aznar had been fighting harshly may not be behind the bombing. During this Aznar kept claiming it could very well have been the ETA. Aznar had lied not to protect his people or whatever, he had lied to win have a chance at the election. He didn`t lie about his own past, he didn`t lie about business dealings of himself or friends/relatives, he didn`t lie about his sex life. He lied about a national tragedy that upset *everyone* just to have a chance at saving his power.
Now for the US centric readers another crude "translation" in the tradition of slashdot: Imagine a huge bombing in the US killing hundreds a week before the presidential election. Bush is on the rubble in seconds, vowing to destroy ever left bit of al qaida, hunt "them" down etc. Slowly rumors start to appear that Christian fundamentalist are behind the bombing, perhaps even associated with groups that got controversial funding from the bush administration..... Bush says: It wasn`t Americans, its those al-qaida people I have been fighting so hard, join me in the fight vote for me and I will finish this. Then the arrests of Christian fundamentalist start.... Will you vote for bush after "only two" major terrorist acts? (to quote "wag the dog", "changing a bet mid race?")
I know this isn`t a "nice" neat and PC story but I hope it tickles the imagination just right. Also about the "change to.... a radical direction" wording, few people in spain supported the invasion of iraq. They were not likely to vote for Aznar becouse of his support to the US even before the bombings. (btw: spain wasn`t the only European country that was not mentioned by bush during his infamous irish interview. "Really what you're talking about is France, isn't it?" priceless, where do you get such a guy? Though now somehow half the US seems to think most of the world agrees with them.
Back to patents
In the Netherlands a minister voted in the european commision. He just needed the backup of his national pairlement. He claimed he voted on a technicality (Who cares for "minor" changes to patend law anyway) and that he voted in line with the wishes of the (elected and after some debate clued in ) European pairlment. Thing is if there was consensus in the EP then it would be that the patent law proposals needed lots of amendments to make it work (ie no to software patends instead of yes). Amendments that werent there in the text voted on. Some dutch slashdot readers (You are here right?) dressed up, went to the pairlement explained they were misinformed (lied to) by a minister. Rather then having the minister fired which is the usual procedure. he was send back to brussels to change his erroneous vote. (stupid word processors, who makes these things anyway, on an unrelated note, microsoft will be sponsoring the dutch presidency/hosting of the European commission this year just like the irish one).
The slashdot geeks even toke the time to figure out that changing ones promised vote before the formal vote may be unconventional
"Software is a process, done physically by a machine. I would like to see you run Quake II in your head, and make it work. You can't your example, at least to me, is not making any sense. We coders run segments of code in our head (barely), it is not humanly possible to run millions (billions) of lines of code in our heads."
I find this an extremely irrelevant argument. You say you can run segments of code in your head, well then, logic dictates, since the smallest software can only involve a few lines, it is fully possible for a coder to at least run simple progs in your head.
A brain is in essence nothing more then a biological computer, which is, indeed, slow and not very good at running complex code. So?
In that case, while your example of 'running Quake3 in your head" on itself true might be true, it has no argumental value. Software patents do not, and can not, set an arbitrary line on the amount of codelines to determine if it can or can not be patented. Therefor, if you patent software, you also patent software that is simple enough to be run in the head of a coder.
Thus, all of the above arguments of the former poster stands, and you did nothing to actually counter them in a meaningful way.
I am Spanish. The country name is 'Holanda'. 'Países Bajos' or 'los Países Bajos' is the literal translation to Netherland. It is another to call it, but the official name of Holland in Spanish is 'Holland'. Sometimes 'Países Bajos' not only refer to Holland, but also some parts of Belgium.