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Poland Blocks European Software Patent Vote, For Now
Anonymous Brave Guy writes "Thanks to the Polish Minister of Science and Information Technology, Wlodzimierz Marcinski, Europe has dropped the current proposal for software patents. He made a special journey to Brussels to withdraw the proposal, basically in protest at the way the patents were being pushed through by the back door. Since the European presidency is about to pass to Luxembourg, this has effectively killed the idea, at least for the immediate future." More at FFII (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure). This means that the promised move to delay actually worked.
Good news for everyone, all we need to do is stop it completely and see if we can get the rest of the world to follow suit. Respect to the EFF, FFII and other organisations involved.
Time for the obligatory troll - 7th post =P
No, it is NOT a dupe. If you read the summary it states quite clearly, that this is a follow-up on yesterdays story.
Keep open minded - but not that open your brain falls out...
This may be only a temporary reprieve, but it could also, quite possibly, be a sign that the tides may be changing in the Council. Let's all hope for the best, and do what we can to make it happen.
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
They build upon what they got from poland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine
Freedom or George Bush
They did break the first version, it was later upgraded with an additional wheel, and that upgraded one was cracked by Turing at Bletchley. A few links: http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/virtualbp/poles/ poles.htm, http://www.armyradio.com/publish/Articles/The_Enig ma_Code_Breach/The_Enigma_Code_Breach.htm, http://www.enigmahistory.org/enigma.html.
This and other Polish contributions to WWII were kept quiet at the end of the war to avoid annoying Stalin, and it was carried into history writing (especially in the UK) for a long time. Too many exaples to mention, the Enigma is but one...
It was mostly because of internal pressure from Polish Free Software movement and IT professionals, concerned that software patents would kill Polish emerging IT industry. Poland didn't stand out when it knew it could not change the outcome --- when it came out we can break the majority, we stood out.
However, Poland will not block the directive indefinitely. As soon as some changes are made to accomodate Poland's concerns (mostly lack of clarity in the directive), Poland is going to vote "yes" for the directive. Otherwise, we might face backlash in other areas which are as important for Poland.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
IANAL, but I thought that ideas were patented (such as an alogorithm, or 1 click shopping (groan), or a process to do something in a (supposedly) novel way). . . (I know, there are other things that can be patented but I don't think that software was one of them) Ideas that are implemented in software can be protected by patent so that another person cannot implement the same protected idea in another piece of software . . . but this protection of the idea, not the software.
Software is copyrighted in that the code itself is protected not the ideas. So one can write code to do the same thing but your code and my code can be filed under different copyrights and both be legal . . . so long as we don't copy one another's code even if the two piece of code perform equivalent tasks. In other words, two major encyclopedias or almanacs may be functionally equivalent, but they are not infringing upon one another from a copyright perspective unless one copied the other.
There's actually a lot of pretty accents that go with it in Polish, which Slashdot doesn't allow to enter... but you can copy them from here
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
Thanks for the link. I've added my name to the letter, and included a personal note thanking Wlodzimierz Marcinski and his government for his actions in staving off the undemocratic action of the council in trying to sneak this legislation through the back door.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
For me this is the first really good thing coming out of the bigger EU. If you'd like to comment to the party of Brinkhorst, contact D66 (Dutch, but you probably will understand it), his party, or mail them: international@d66.nl. Here's a quote from their site:
Poland. Saving Europe's ass since 1683.
Or (as I just did) thank the man himself
Yes. *But* there are a lot less lawsuits in Canada and a lot less software patents. The later probably because the market is small. The former probably because you pay for defence of one you sue if you lose. Oh, and the judges tend to throw stuff out that is just frivolous (ie. judges are not elected here, they are appointed so they don't need money from corps. to help them get their jobs :P
Similarly, it will prevent US companies from enforcing their European software patents.
Donate free food here
just a minor nitpick
\ but Alan Turing (amoungst many others) at Bletchley Park
\ managed to figure out a systematic way of breaking any
\ cipher system based on the enigma
the Polish mathematicians had first a systematic way of
breaking enigma, they called it the 'Bomba'. When they
gave the information to french and british this also
included the designs for Bomba upon which Alan Turing
expanded.
Further more, polish mathematicians later joined at
bletcley park the efforts of further decyphering Enigma.
Out of more interesting notes:
1) submarines used stronger variations of enigma, this
was because the ships required higher security and
were more expensive.
2) japanese had built own variation of enigma (called
red enigma I think) that was much harder for to crack
and desperate americans after the war with Japanese
opened own cryptology unit, NSA.
Last time I visited there (1994), the answer to your question would be: the police, the Russians and other eastern bordering nationalities. Haven't been there since, so I can't tell you if the situation has changed.
two things:
1. Polish broke the enigma, Polish created Bomba,
mechanized machine to speed up finding enigma keys
(or rather the wheel configurations)
Alan Turing continued the work when Poland got
invaded. Polish mathematicians responsible for
cracking enigma worked with Alan Turing
Great Britain and France both promised to help Poland
if we were to be invaded. Poland did more damage to
German forces in first month of World War 2 than
France and the Great Britain did for the first year.
And afterall this great help we gave them Enigma.
2. US started the jokes about Poland. Chicago has more
Polish people than the capital of Poland (Warsaw).
Most people who migrated from Poland two centuries to
last 50 years were the proles, the masses, the
village country folk who never went to school, who
lost their land, and had no where to go but the
America that provided them with a future. Ofcourse
these people earned Poland not the best name, but
then they never were our intelectuals.
CO2 metric tons/capita in 1996
Germany = 10,51
France = 6,20
USA = 19,99
In other words, the US has almost twice the CO2 output per person when compared to Germany.
As a side note: I can kind of agree that the Kyoto treaty is "designed to hurt the US economy" as some say. With pollution numbers like that, of course the US economy will be hurt! "Made your own bed..." and all that.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Its common knowledge. That doesn't mean its true though, but you can google that for yourself. The first link I hit is suggestive. Even the CIA factbook acknowledges that the USA is the largest per-capita (and absolute) emitter of carbon dioxide.
Donate free food here
Lord Sainsbury, the Minister for Science and Innovation, although you could also write to Patricia Hewitt, who's Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and e-Minister in Cabinet (whatever that means).
This is actually the back door that the FFII is talking about. They tried to take software patents the "Should we restrict fishery of endangered species, and by the way, patents on intellectual property should be allowed as proposed two months ago, right?" way.
\begin{rant}
That my friends, is NOT democracy as it should be done. In Sweden there is at least a law demanding that documents treated by court and parliament should be (as long as they are not threating personal integrity (and some other corner cases (they have lawyers/legal council/paralegal/whatever it's called in english, y'know))) made public so that anyone and everyone can se what their representative is doing. That is the main thing I lack in the overly bureaucratic EU.
\end{rant}
Geek rants since like... 2000 or something.
It wasn't always like that. Like many countries that just started developing democracy after 45 years of communism, we had, still have and will probably still have problems with our politicians.
The thing is, Poles were always good at throwing away government that didn't satisfy the citizens, and because of that we have one of most "mature" democratic systems amongst countries east of Iron Curtain.
There was quite big initiative of Open-Source activists (grouped mainly around linux site 7thguard.net) to inform and press Polish politics to use all means possible to stop software patents. While our diplomats screwed some occasions up, this time they've shown (at least, one of ministers of science and informatics) they deserve the payment and power.
The Polish politicians are most certainly ahead of Germany in more then one regard if they actually bother to listen to their electorate. The Green party only got my vote because they were the most enlightened party in regard of software patents and then their members of government just caved in. Pretty depressing and appalling performance. Thank god for Poland! Now there is another chance to stop the tide.