Slashdot Mirror
Major Blow to Opponents of Software Patents in EU
Sanity writes "According to a FFII report, and a Financial Times article, proponents of software patents have just won a significant victory against smaller software companies and open source software proponents as the EU's legal affairs committee rejected most of the effective amendments that were proposed to the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive, which is widely perceived to usher-in U.S.-style software patents in the EU. All is not yet lost as the rejected amendments can be re-tabled when the entire European Parliament has the opportunity to vote next month. If you value the freedom to code without worrying about getting sued, and you live in the EU, now is the time to take effective action." And JasonFleischer writes "Richard Stallman has a piece in The Guardian which does a nice job of explaining the problems with the EU patent directive that will be voted on next month (and for that matter software patents in general), using literary examples."
If people stopped consuming protected media, including songs from iTunes, it would make a difference.
In fact, businesses looking for a niche market in the entertainment business could get in and make it big by selling non-protected media, and marketing it as such.
...to explicitely forbid the use of GPL'ed software for public institutions in countries where software patents are enforced.
Nice that RMS realises he's writing for a UK audience, but we say "program" not "programme".
Here you go, the Grauniad's own style guide.
Personally, I'd like to see the copyright system not be applied to software. The kind of argument Stallman makes about patents not being a good fit for literature can also be made for why copyright is not a good fit for automobiles or planes.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm not sure that we should have hoped for anything different happening here. This was a chance for the JURI to amend the directive ahead of it's vote in July. As they have chosen not to amend it (well, not in a significant way), then there is still a reason for the MEPs to put the effort into turning up to reject/amend it in July. If they had amended it enough to make it look like it was better (without actually changing the fundamental problem with it), then some MEPs might have been placated enough to not bother to vote against it.
Once a battle like this is lost in any one location, then the war is lost in that location.
Don't believe me? Look at the state of copyright around the globe. It has been monotonically increasing over time. Not once that I've ever heard of have we seen a reduction in copyright strength or an increase in the rights of the general public.
And not once has a location gained software patents only to lose them again.
I agree, if we lose in the EU it doesn't mean we've lost completely, but it does mean we've lost completely in the EU.
If the EU adopts software patents (and I guarantee they will -- it's only a matter of time and money), there will be precious few places left in the world where one is truly free to write software.
Not that such a trend would be in any way out of character with the overall trend the entire world is following: a descent into an oppressive global police state in which the masses are only given the illusion of freedom.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
I for one hope some enterprising freedom fighters destroy the USA entirely, before it can further contaminate the actual free world with the next round of infectious pure insanity. If we can't disassemble corporate personhood, maybe we should disassemble the populace? Viva la fucking insanity.
---- death to all fanatics
No, they're not free anymore, actually! You're just an idiot if you've missed the fact that things like mplayer, openoffice and firefox are illegal (or at least exist only at the whim of some MBA waving an overly broad patent) in the USA - the only reason you have them is because currently, the laws are unenforceable on the internet and projects can shelter in free europe.
Patents (not just software patents) are about people wanting to restrict what engineers can do, by definition. They are pure evil. Other industries with patents AREN'T "okay". Most are dominated by cosy oligopolies of long-entrenched multinational corporations - Lockheed-Martin, Ingersoll-Rand, etc.
ALL PATENTS should be abolished. Those who preach "free trade" while at the same time pushing for more and more patents are simply hypocrites (hi, USA!).
and instead arguing your point?
Of course it's possible that the grandparent is afraid of change, so? Does that invalidade his concerns? Is this an argument in favor of software patents?
"Just to get this straight, you think that those of us in Australia and the Unitied States are not free to write software?"
No, he's thinking, and rightly so, that people living in nations where software patents exist, are not free to write software without being threatened by software patents. If you take a look at the many lawsuits about software patents in the US, you might get an idea where the problem might be.
And while I'm at it, I also had the displeasure to read your other posts and here are some answers:
"Have you considered the possibility that the people who want software patents make really good arguments and the people who don't want software patents make really stupid ones?"
If you think there are good arguments, spill them out, but don't use the kind of strawman argument you are making.
"That's a blatantly dumb argument as, for a start, it's the software business that is calling for software patents to be granted in the EU.. "
No, it isn't. It's some software companies calling for them, while others (and if you can believe any of the recent polls, the vast majority) are totally against them.
"That argument is dumb too cause there's amature radio enthusiests. There's amature car enthusiests. There's amature plane enthusiests. All these industries are restricted by international patents."
Sigh, since when exactly did amateur plane enthusiast work on something being in direct competition to the offerings of boing and aribus? Oh, they don't, your analogy is meaningless, stupid and misleading. Not even a nice try.
"Yes, we won't have the 3.6 million bullshit little software companies that we have now, but hey, that's a small price to pay for maturing an industry into something actually reliable."
Yes, monopolies have a great track record when it comes to making something reliable and of high quality. Screw competition.
Btw., did you even notice, that with your last paragraph you essentially agreed to all the arguments of the oponents of software patents you had been arguing against all the time?
I'm looking for existing EU patents that show up the system. In his article RMS mentions patents on progress bars and accpeting payment by credit card... are there any other popular choices, or better still a page with lists of them?
Recently I've come up against one that, while I haven't read the actual text of, seems to cover downloading a file from a central authority that lists rates for several currencies, and using these rates to convert a price from a local currency to a foreign one.
Wow. I wish I'd thought of that.
NoimsThis is not the greatest sig in the world. This is just a tribute.
Seriously, is there one single true argument for s/w patents? In your little rant, you haven't shown such a argument (except for the fact that you'd like the industry being monopolized),
Right, me, Adam Smith, the father of Capitalism and two Nobel prize for Economy winning free-market capitalist supporters.
"Extremists". Sure.
I think you need to reevaluate your position a bit. And maybe study some economy instead of repeating corporate propaganda.
"It seems to me beyond doubt that in these fields a slavish application of the concept of property as it has been developed for material things has done a great deal to foster the growth of monopoly and that here drastic reforms may be required if competition is to be made to work. In the field of industrial patents in particular we shall have to seriously examine whether the award of a monopoly privilegie is really the most appropriate and effective form of reward for the kind of riskbearing which investment in scientific research involves."
(F.A. Hayek: "Free" Enterprise and Competitive Order, 1947)
SME's are the hardest hit here, but as the FFII organisers suggest, SME's need to make direct contact with MEP's, ideally in Brussels itself.
Fat yet hungry wolves like Apple and Microsoft et al http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=1
http://wiki.ffii.org/Bsa050609En
It's not just that there is much to lose from unbridled software patenting, so much as there is arguably much to gain from disallowing them altogether.
Personally I would have thought the moment US mega-corps become involved, would be glaring reason for MEP's to become anxious over the interests of the directive, but as they say "follow the money".. in this case off a cliff.
That we'd have better cars and planes and drugs today if the patent system wasn't around? How can you possibly think that?
In my case (not the OP): Because I was once a mechanical engineer? And I've seen the wasteland of engineering thanks to patent law, which allows oil companies to stem the tide of progress for 20-year stretches to avoid challenging their cancerous (literally in the case of particulate pollution from the infernal combustion engine?) stranglehold on society? Who owns the patents preventing use of techniques necessary to build efficient electric cars? Oh yes, shell oil...
And in fact I left engineering to become a programmer because at the time, computing was blessedly free of such idiocy?
It hasn't been a short period of time. Technologically, we should have colonised chunks of the solar system by now. Our growth in the engineering world has been horribly stunted, and I for one place part of the blame on patent law (and the other mostly on miseducation and public ignorance of actual science thanks to big media and religious propaganda - there are people in america who believe in semitic creation myths instead of evolution ?! Unbelievable...)
Perhaps you should read up a little on the subject before you start declaring your views as absolute truths.
And yes, patents do cover ideas. That's the whole point with them. As opposed to copyright, which covers the expression of ideas.
Please feel free to Google for more background information before making you next post. Perhaps you will want to start with something that Dr. Stallman has written. He appears to be considerably more well informed on the subject than you.
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
Fair enough. If you look at my other posts you'll see that I don't think too favourably about small software companies. I use the term fly-by-night and I think it is valid. Of course, I'm also against "obvious" patents. If you're a small software company you simply should not "accidently" infringe someone's patent. If you do the algorithm is too obvious. Of course, if you create an algorithm of value you should do a patent search and be aware of the happenings in your industry. Plenty of other industries get by being regulated by patents.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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I'd prefer the patent law equivalent of the GNAA - an organization that acquires as many broad patents as possible and then proceeds to sue everyone. If the Patent GNAA gets hold of some REALLY generic patent they might sue the entire software business for using, say, menu driven software. The USA are releasing some internally-developed software? Sue the agency that dared infring on your legally acquired patent.
If 90% of all software products have to be temporarily pulled from the shelves because they are involved in patent lawsuits, maybe certain people see what patents acn be used for.
Just an idea, of course.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Sure, a novel isn't an idea, it's the end product, just as the end product of software is a computer game, a word processor or whatever - things which themselves cannot be patented. It's the software algorithms which are patented.
Generally speaking, patents do not cover products. Patents cover procedures, methods or specific implementations which are novel or innovative. I'm not sure I am following your train of thought here.
But a novel still has ideas and methods behind it, just as with software. If an author has a "clever or innovative idea for a product", where the "product" is a novel, such as a way of resolving a plot in a certain way, or a new genre, why shouldn't this be patented in the same way that software algorithms can be?
Again, I'm having difficulty understanding your train of thought. As impossible as it seems, discovering or developing a new plot device isn't quite a way of coming up with a better book. The value in a book lies in the ideas and the story which is expressed, not the paper or binding. In the same vein, software is not an expression of ideas or story; it's a procedure to end up with a given goal. As artsy-fartsy as you want to make it, software is still a "mechanical" procedure. You put stuff in, turn the crank, and more valuable stuff comes out. Pulp authors aside, this is not how books work.
No, because they would still lead to monopolies and they would still require expensive lawyers to enforce.
I think you need a couple whackes with the good'ol Clue-Stick;
1. Copyrights do NOT apply to programs, Copyrights apply to the source code that a compiler uses to generate the program,
2. Patents apply to the implimentation of an idea, but not the idea.
The present system where vague descriptions are used to sneak an idea into a overly broad patent is a corruption of the original system. Personally I'm not totally opposed to software patents, my problem is the patent period is way to long for our rapidly progressing world, and the standard for uniqueness is way to low; I'm not opposed to the Idea but I'm opposed to the implimentation.
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