EU Software Patents Delayed Again

Lord An writes "It seems the decision about software patents in Europe has been delayed again for at least a week (link in German). Once again we have to thank Poland that the corresponding item was removed from the A-list of the Council of Agriculture and Fisheries. Hopefully this delay will be enough that the opposition vs. the patents will finally get the upper hand." Non-German speakers might find it useful to plug that URL into the Fish.

Comments

Re:Council of Agriculture and Fisheries ???????

[Halo1]

It's because in May, the responsible ministers reached a political agreement on this text (sort of, anyway). Such a political agreement has no legal value however, and must still be turned into a "common position".

Normally, turning a political agreement in a common position is just a formality. That's the reason why it can be done by any kind of Council formation.

Of course, in this case we have the fact that Poland really abstained in May (although they were recorded as voting in favour) and that since November change of voting weights there no longer is a qualified majority because of this, the fact that the Dutch parliament asked its government to change the pro-vote into an abstention, a similar motion by the German Bundestag etc.

Diplomatic inertia is a powerful force to fight, however: political agreements are "always" turned into a common position, so they want to do it this time as well, even though it's completely against democratic principles.

Re:What is wrong with software patents

[bogado]

SHA is a security protocol, the value of SHA is proportional to the number of people who looked at the source and tryed to break it. Sure you probably need a security expert, or even several ones to come up with SHA. It is not simple, but the harder work is on the hand of those others who try to break it, and in this process validate it. Shouldn't those be rewarded also?

DMCA and other laws that protect the "intelectual property" is already harming this. In France, Guillaume Tena, is in jail for the simple reason that he validate a piece of saoftware and found ou that it has bugs. The bad thing is that this not even involve patents, it is copywrite and anti-reverse-engenieer laws.

I believe that copywrite and patents and almost any form of "intelectual property" is harmfull. science and arts do evolve by copying(*) of good ideas of others. How many movies of great directors you saw that "cite" or makes "homages" to other movies and other directors? This is a kind of copy, rewrite and rehash is part of creating, we as a society must learn to live with it.

As it stand, sometimes a copy is better then the original.

(*) Coping here is used refering to rewrites or re-enactments of a piece or many pieces of another work. Not to word-to-word or byte-by-byte xerox copy.