Slashdot Mirror
European Parliament Rejects Software Patents
heretic9 writes "The European Parliament unanimously rejected the software patent bill recently put before it. Hugo Lueders of CompTIA, a pro-patent lobby group, said that the benefits of the bill had been obscured by special interest groups, which muddied debate about the rights and wrongs of software patents." Meaning, essentially, that the Conference of Presidents got its way.
That's a 1-0 for FOSS. But let's keep in mind that the other side will not give up that easily.
Certain types of software inventions can be patented in Europe, as long as the have a "technological effect". The rules differ between countries (which is presumably why this bill is seen as needed), but what would this legislation permit that isn't already allowable in most countries?
So why is this such a bad thing?
They're paid to convince people to adopt software patents, not to be logical. Don't imagine that what a lobby group says is actually someone's real point of view.
According to Michel Rocard (former France Prime Minister, now European Deputy), companies like US Majors (Microsoft & Co), Nokia or Alcatel exerted pressure on european commission to have a second look at the pattent issue. In this interview (French) Michel Rocard says that the expert group that was supposed to help the commission, was in fact formed by Microsoft and other IT companies.
Rocard said : "We never could have talked a common language with the companies representatives we met - in particular those from Microsoft. Speaking about free ideas circulation, free access to knowledge, was like speaking chinese to them. In their way of thinking, everything that is not usable for immediate profit cease to be a growth vector. They don't seem to be able to understand that an invention which is a pure spirit creation can't be pattented. It's simply terrifying. Many of us, at the Parliament, agree to say that they never have know such a pressure and such a verbal violence during their parliamentary work. It is a huge case."
18 may 2004, Commission presents a new text even more liberal than the first one, and try to impose it during Agriculture Minister Concil, which primary objective was FISHING. Thanks to Poland interventions, the vote is avoided.
"Concerning France, no word from it. Jacques Chirac claimed himself against extensive software pattenting during his presidential campaing. But the current industry minister, Patrick Devedjian said nothing against the text."
I'm all for limiting how and what can be patented in software as, at least in the U.S., to many suits and abuses have come from people trying to collect money on just a few lines of code anyone can easily come up with when they think (read one-click purchasing).
But if someone does come up with something truly unique that is expressed in software, how can this be legally protected so someone else doesn't steal your work after one or one-half year?
Perhaps there should be no software patents at all, just some sort of legal copyright protection for 5 years or so. But how is that uniqueness defined anyway? At what point does a subsection of code become unique enough to be protected?
As me ol' chums would say, this truly is a sticky wicket!
that is, the root of all evil left over after organized religion has taken it's majority share.
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
The problem is that coporations pay taxes. As such, this entitles them to those rights. They pay, they gain. However, what they pay in taxes is minimal compared to what the citizenry pay. The solution is not a constitutional amendment. The solution is to eliminate corporate income tax. If they don't pay taxes, they would no longer be "corporate citizens."
This would also go far in eliminating political finance problems. If they don't have that "freedom of speech" ability to make contributions, the parties would have to rely expressly on federal campaign funds and those from individual voters.
What?
Well, I *do* live in the E.U. and I also like open source, so it's actually quite relevant. I know that most slashdotters live in the good old U.S. of A., but Europeans are quite a large minority, I should think. I also know that it wouldn't affect many people *right now* if the bill were passed, but in a few years it might be altogether different if lots of trivial patents were accepted...
One good turn - gets all the covers.
Is it me, or is Europe more free than USA? We all know that many Europeans migrated here during the colonies because of tyranny. But they came here to create their own oppression. We got religion everywhere, censored television/radio/newspapers. We also got oligarchs telling us what we can and can not do with the shitty patent system. We need to take the USA back from this people.
If a person can be jailed, then we can clearly see that their freedoms can be taken away. Hence, to "jail" a corporation, we should similarly take away their freedoms. After all, we have long had the precedents of "receivership" and other forms of managed bankruptcies; therefore, some variant could be used for the jailed corporation.
... are you really so lacking in enough imagination that you can't come up with these kinds of solution? If anything, you appear to be under the impression that We The People simply cannot apply controls to corporations. We can. And unless we want to continue sinkling into economic slavery, we should.
In other words, the corporation that breaks the law to the degree where jail seems necessary, should effectively be nationalized for a period. That should be a sufficient scare tactic to convince them to obey the law; after all, that's the philosophy of individual legal punishments, right?
So
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]