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EU Software Patent Directive Adopted
sebFlyte writes "FTA: "An EU Council spokeswoman said on Monday morning that the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive had been adopted." Apparently it's due to 'institutional reasons' that they're ignoring the outcry from developers and several nation states ..."
THESE FUCKERS!
So if the reason for letting the directive pass now was simply "administrative" and not related to its actual content and meaning, this leaves space for it to be rejected later.
Being personally deeply affected by this directive - I own a software company that does a huge amount of R&D - I really hope the MEPs will do the right thing.
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What the hell on a stick with a bag of chips and a large soda consisting of coke, mountain dew, and a splash of root beer?
These people will cry the day they get a cease and desist from Microsoft because their child programmed a bubble sort in LOGO class, in first grade.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
If you live in a country like France where you'll have to vote the constitution, make sure you vote NO to punish the council and the commission for their behaviour.
I personally don't want to live in a dictatorship where the will of the parliament is disregarded by people who have been elected by no-one.
Today's commission is like russia's communist party. Make sure they go back to home with a lesson they will never forget.
Kno Kmore Knoppix. Mplayer is done, Europe is finnished for inovation.
I guess we have to look to the Chinese now for inovatave software, along with everything else.
I know it isnt over, but it's like the long walk to the gas chamber. you can guess the outcome.
Sad Day
* Carthago Delenda Est *
The only institution that can stop this madness now is the EU parliament and it has shown several times now, that it is willing to do just that.
They even asked the EU-Commission to restart the whole process, but the Commission flat out denied this request. I can't imagine that members of parliament like to be treated like that.
So please, write your local member of the EU parliament and tell him that you ask him to do everything within his power to stop this madness.
Yes, you're right, there's another possibility to reject it. But the matter is that this has been passed against some countries' opinion, the Europarliament and (that's the most important aspect) the stablished procedures and protocols about directives.
You know, the supporters of this directive (the hugest companies) have been able to break the rules of the government council for serving their interests... Sad day for the democracy and Europe.
This has been the one thing that MS before going after IBM, HP, SGI, etc. over Linux. In fact, the only company with a get out of jail free card is Sun (and probably SCO).
Next couple of months are going to prove to be interesting.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In other words, the EU Council has just stated that form is more important than meaning, and that it is more important that the bureaucrats are able to create legislation quickly and effortlessly than the legislation being fair and correct.
This is the crappiest thing I've heard in a long while! What's next, stopping citizens from seeing official documents because it creates unnecessary expenses and only whiners ask to see them anyway? Or removing the right to vote for all citizens of the EU, because recurring elections could hamper the ability of EU politicians to make long-term plans?
--Bud
Have you signed the letter? I have. It took me five seconds. But there were only 30000 signatures when it was delivered. Slashdot alone has hundreds of thousands of members, for crying out loud! All of us waste time posting idiotic flames in every signle story about software patents, but how many of us have devoted five miserable seconds of our pathetic lifes to actually do something about it? 1%? 0.5%? 0.1%?
What have you done for the democracy, liberty and human rights? Yes, I mean you! If all you do is write on Slashdot then you have done nothing. that's what! People, when will we finally wake up? When will we understand that we, the people, have the responsibility for that failure? When will we understand that we are the ones who have the real power? When will we finally do something instead of bitching all day? When will we finally open our eyes? When?
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
From TFA: Last week it was reported that Denmark would attempt to have the directive listed as a B-item, rather than an A-item, allowing the text to be renegotiated.
And so they did. Try, that is. But was told that it was impossible for an A-item to become a B-item. They believed it, and didn't object further. This is bogus, because there's nothing that prevents A-items to be ruled as B-items. I smell a rat!
Underholdning.info
Instead of coming up with asinine excuses, they tell us the truth, we're doing it DESPITE the protest against it!
Or as they put it, "We are adopting the position for institutional reasons so as not to create a precedent which might have a consequence of creating future delays in other processes."
In other words, they want to do what they want to do, and they don't want protests or disagreements getting in their way, now or ever.
I guess Europe just fell to corporate interests.
I think it's shocking that we're giving all tech freedom to China. It'll be the only country on they planet where it'll be legal to double click and include a help icon with your software.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Unfortunately, you have to hope that those "millions" haven't forgotten this and moved on to something else in three years if they don't see immediate results in their favor. Once the corporatists have the upper hand, they just have to hold out long enough for someone to wave some other distraction in the public's face.
Hei elei kuck elei?? :-)
One would have thought that those crazy Luxembourgians would have enough (laundered) money to withstand bribing by Microsoft, Philips and Nokia, but nooooo....!
It has nothing to do with the adoption of the simplified and unified document called the EU constitution. The software patents is another matter. One is good, the other bad. Guess which is what.
Et get einfach Zait dem Juncker eng Kugel an den Kapp ze scheissen, ass schon op d'Mannst 10 Joer iwwerfaelleg....
Now's the time to flood the (soon-to-be) newly formed software division of the EU patent office with patent applications.
No don't. This is exactly what the bureaucrats want. More work for so-called civil 'servants' and administrators = more money for government departments = more power and influence for politicians = justification for higher taxes = socialism creeping in by the back door.
servers aren't the only issue. you can rest assured that if one lives within the patent zone and is proven to provide patent protected code, they will be sued. i can't comment on the legality of it but i can say that i believe the corruptorations will find a way to do it. additionally, who will protect the end-users? i wouldn't be surprised if the BSA becomes an enforcing arm of sofware patents as well.
When I tell an object to delete this, am I killing it or telling it to kill me?
The number of possible ways to effectively accomplish something in software is limited.
A patent grants EXCLUSIVE rights to one of those ways.
Therefore, you have just created a land war. Only the rich and monied win a land war. Soon, you'll have nowhere to live. Good luck with that.
Put simply, there is no "stealing of ideas". That's ludicrous. I take your car? You have no car. I take your method of bush trimming? Both of our bushes get trimmed. That's life.
That's also the worst case. On the other hand, what if I develop a similar way of trimming bushes? Now who's stealing. I just wanted to trim my bushes, now you can take money from me! Who's the thief?
At some point the businesses of the world are being given the power to own the EXCLUSIVE right to sell something. I think we all know why that's bad. No competition == screwing people.
It's bad when the government mandates it (national telecomm companies). It's bad when monopoly enforces it (Standard Oil, Microsoft). It's bad when the people suffer it.
If I develop MY IDEA independently of you, I'll be damned if your patent should matter to me. Unfortunately, this is now my problem.
Worse, now the only people with significant patent portfolios won't be people. Instead they'll be the most morally reprehesible construct mankind has ever unleashed--corporations. Worst of all, they're pretty much designed to aggregate financial and legislative power.
Someday, this may cause a revolution...I hope.
I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)
It's not socialism that we're trying to aviod in Europe. It's American-style capitalism.
We need to avoid both. A corporation that can influence government policy in its own interests is essentially part of an enlarged state. We even speak of the M$ tax already.
Vote a punitive NO, emigrate or learn a new job (as you may have guessed I'm busy doing). Those are your only options, non-exclusive.
Where are you going to immigrate to? It looks like the whole western world is falling beneath the monopoly behometh of (software) patents. We can expect Trading Technologies to shake down all trading firms, large and small, as well as all western exchanges, and Microsoft will leverage patents to eradicate GNU/Linux as anything other than an underground resistence of shrinking mindshare, and probably stifle most other innovations as well. The Free Software world will likely be looking to China for sanctuary in the near future, which is a situation so loaded with irony it defies imagining, proving once again that fact is orders of magnitude stranger than fiction.
We have about three years before this directive becomes law in Europe. Microsoft may or may not wait those three years before attacking software freedom in America, but we can all be assured that in five years time it will be virtually impossible for us as software programmers to practice our art and our profession in the west, without a patron from one of the major software houses (Microsoft, Apple, IBM).
This isn't the end of the world, but it is the end of a dynamic, innovative industry. This is hardly unprecidented. Poor governance and patents have destroyed and stifled many innovative industries, from the AT&T monopoly that destroyed hundreds of competing phone companies and froze the technology solid for sixty-plus years, to aviation, to chemistry, to biogenetics and medicine, and so on and so forth. Now its our turn, and we didn't stand up soon enough or speak loudly enough. Well, some of us did, but we were too few and too late.
So I ask again, where can we go? What countries are left that have not fallen beneath the Microsoft/IBM/Sun regime of software patents, and how long can we reasonably expect them to hold out against Americas wonton aggression in forcing our corporate interests down the world's collective throat?
Has China truly become our last, best hope for freedom?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Schaiss politiker....
Ech haat Belsch missen blaiwen...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
The EU as is is totally undemcratic, therefore you oppose a proposal to change it? I know this is the logic a lot of people use, but I don't understand it.
What I want to know is whether or not the constitution gives more power to the parliament. The parliament is apparently the body we (grassroots, minor busninesses, economicians) can influence. The closed and undemocratic bodies of the Commision and Council are in the hands of ip lawyers and multinationals.
If the parliament is strengthed, I'll vore for the constitution. If it is weakened, I'll vote against.
Rather than being evil, Corporations provide a strong legal framework and represent one of the highest achievements of modern sophisticated society.
That's an excellent argument. Unfortunately, it sounds very much like the star-eyed idealism that makes communism sound good: "If we all work together, one for another, we can achieve great things." Looks good on paper, but it falls apart under the shear force am individual greed and selfishness.
Corporations as a charter granted by the people to perform specific tasks are good. Corporations with equal rights as individuals are bad. Like Frankenstein's monster, corporations have turned on those they were built to serve. How have they turned on us? Corporations make up the largest single block of money funding lobbyists and politicians. It is well-documented that the politician who spends the most money is most likely to get elected.
So, figure it out. Corporations and individuals representing corporations contribute the most money to political campaigns. And they don't do it simply because they want a particular candidate to win: they do it so that their particular candidate will win, and owe them a favor.
See this for more information. There's a lot more out there, too. Corporations in their current form are not the pinnacle of civilisation; they are a threat to democracy and liberty. Until we have divested them of their current legal status as protected individuals, and returned them to their former status as chartered entities, corporations, by their actions, tend to be evil.
(No, not all corporations are evil. But many tend to evil, such as those self-same airplane manufacturers, Starbucks, the pharmacuetical companies, the oil companies, and Wal*Mart.)
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
This entire process has shed light on some serious problems with the proposed European Constitution. Its time to lobby both the public and the left leaning parties (greens, lib dems, etc) into supporting a "no" vote on ratification because of the council's ability to override the democratically elected parliament.
Bring back the website shutdowns, but do it for real this time. No backdoor access, no link that can be clicked. If the European Consitution is ratified in all countries, the future of software will look like this.
Someone should take the Denmark representative's job, by the way. His national parliament required him to move the item to a "B" item, which he is required to do, and he did not do it.
i think you miss the point of the statement. it must be software that, through usage, causes the protective company to attempt mass lawsuits or (rather and) die. when it is proven that it is to the benefit of the people to remove criminal liability, when it is shown that X representative in Y constituency will lose all of his voters because the people want these laws removed, then it will change. until this happens, we will continue to be at the feet of corporations. i could be wrong about how to get out of the mess that keeps getting worse; i honestly hope i am. additionally, you may be right about no one using it but we have to hope and try anyway because, as i see it, it's the only option we have (aside from praying that the eu parliament rejects the bill).
When I tell an object to delete this, am I killing it or telling it to kill me?
In other words, only vote yes for the consitution if you think this is the way the EU needs to be governed for the next couple of centuries. If you need more to feel happy with the EU, vote no. I guess.
Crap...
Let me just say that those of you that think that the fact this only means that the directive is now sent to parliament is any consolation... Think again!
They are NOT going to back down just because a couple of thousand geeks want them to.
The problem is, even if the open source development takes a dive into the underground, and software gets developed without a license and hosted on obscure ftp servers or encrypted BitTorrents, what will it really matter.
If developers can't create and sell their software or services without having to spend thousands of euros every month to check whether there are any prior patents, any independent development is dead in the water.
And sadly just when it started to get interesting (not a coincidence)...
Personally I gave up developing independently, commercially a few years ago. I'm now developing in house applications for a large industrial cooperation. I wonder how the in house development is going to be governed. We hardly buy any software; everything is developed by a team of developers. I don't see it happening that we will pay for the right to create our own 'clickable command buttons' and other bizarre patents.
Hell, we'd probably need to start by patenting all the stuff we made already, not to sell or license it, but just to protect ourselves from other guys who probably thought of the same stuff.
When will people learn that there is no reason why 10 or 100 or 1000 people couldn't come up with the exact same idea at the same time?
It's just so ridiculous.
In other words, only vote yes for the consitution if you think this is the way the EU needs to be governed for the next couple of centuries.
Also constitutions are not set in stone, they can be changed. For example, the German constitution was last changed in summer 2002 (animal protection was added as a 'state goal' to the constitution). Unlike 'normal' laws, however, it takes more to be able to change it - in Germany, a 2/3 majority in both chambers is required. I don't know what is necessary to change the EU constitution, and no doubt it will be more difficult than for other regulations. But it surely is not like we are stuck with it for the next centuries...
To reject/alter on a second reading the Parliament requires an absolute majority of 70%. Not going to happen. Start patenting now.
Oddly enough, I agree with you. I think in the long run the countries that are not shackled by crap like this will be the ones who win the technology race. Innovation is asphyxiating tech in the US, and now the EU is going to draw thier last breath... The PRC will march right on by us. :-(
Murphy was an optimist.
No, it isn't. This is the quick way for the council to send a big "Fuck You" to the parliament and pass it as it stands.
Not only have the council ignored the parliament, and broken their own rules in the process, they've got the directive to the point where only a 2/3rds majority of all members states can prevent it becoming law (which isn't going to happen short of a miracle). No restart happens unless the parliament rejects it.
One click shopping, progress bars and help icons would be "technical effects" as defined by the EU patent office.
Any fixing of the system should also remove any economic incentive to grant or deny patents.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Fuck that.
As I am reading this from both sides of the pond, it seems the best thing to do is live like a cockroach for a few years and bail to South America. In short, outsource yourself.
Seriously. If you can't continue R&D in your native land, why fight the inertia of the 800lb gorilla? Move someplace that won't lockdown your mind. Watch as Brazil becomes an emerging powerhouse of ideas.
I refuse to go to jail to befret some conglomerate. Let them take the 30-year mortgage to oblivion. My curiosity is mine.
Currently, the 'blood of patriots' is worth something less than a hundred dollars on the open markent, and with your spare change you can purchase the integrity and immortal souls of every member of congress. The war is over, and we, the 'have-nots', have been roundly defeated.
However, all is not lost. In order to prevent any sort of cohesive resistance, the powers that be have elected to maintain a plentiful supply of beer at reasonable prices, and insure that you can get 200 channels of daytime television for a reasonable monthly fee. Sit back, watch another MASH re-run, and have a cold one mate. Cheers!