I agree it is a downside, but, as you correctly point out, it's impossible to be censor-free and yet censor bad things. While it may be a difference of opnion if it's worth it, I'm getting tired by the argument. I'm always wondering if the posters who have such big problems with it, stop using proxies, encryption, and the whole internet, for that matter.
In the case of FreeNet, your own use of the tool can make you an accomplice to actively helping hiding the tracks of those abusers. That is not the case with any of the other things you mention. You simply may not want to run the risk (e.g. because of moral reasons) to actively participate in that kind of activity (which is again different from writing/creating tools which can be abused for immoral activities, regardless of what you consider immoral; after all, pretty much everything can be abused for wrong purposes, though e.g. a shotgun obviously lends itself more to that than a newspaper).
The point of freenet is neither to be a haven for kiddie pr0n or a place free of any pr0n. The point of freenet is to be a place where no information can be censored ever by higher authorities.
I don't think the grandparent was contesting this. The fact is that in reality, it actually is a haven for child porn, despite the honorable motives of the project and the fact that this impossible to avoid when you don't want to have any form of moderation or censorship or whatever you want to call it.
It is a downside of the system. You may think it is worth to pay this price for the benefits it offers, or you may think it is not worth it (like the grandparent). This has nothing to do with misunderstanding, just with a difference of opinions.
TFA is talking about modifications to process patents, not software patents. While it may affect embedded software (and there's still a question about whether or not that will be legal, according to a previous poster), it won't affect normal software until the law gets changed further.
They try to mask it in exactly the same way in Europe. "Software as such will remain unpatentable, only computer-implemented inventions will become patentable!". Now what is a "computer-implemented invention"? A computer running software fulfills that definition.
It sounds to me that it's similar in India: "only" computers running software will be patentable, but who cares? What are you going to do otherwise with your software? Print it out and use it as wallpaper?
I'm not agreeing that he is troll per sé. Granted, at first I thought so too, but usually trolls don't do that much effort to give understandable responses. It is difficult to see the difference between someone having an oposite view, and believing it and strongly advocating it, and trolling.
The point is that he's not giving any arguments himself, just unfounded statements (without any attempt to explain them) and then tons of questions trying to get you typing as much as possible. The fact that he has a very recent ID and that this story is the first one he posted in doesn't help, of course. And the "Thank you, I will look for those" at the end, while they are directly and explicitly linked from the overview I pointed him to was really quite transparant.
Society has concluded that the net effect of patents on technology is positive, not just less negative. Why is it that you think the net effect on software is negative?
Because of the studies I pointed you to. And society is not certain at all that patents on any kind of technology is positive. If you want to know why software has more problems with the negative effects of patents, read this. Why I think it is different is irrelevant to the fact that it apparently is.
PS: you really should learn to troll in a much more subtle way, you give yourself away much too easily. And now you can post the obligatory "hurt" post, hoping to get me doubting after all. Thanks for playing, better luck next time.
So why is it that it's beneficial for innovation and the economy to issue a patent on the apple sorter, but not the database sorter?
If you'd read some of the studies I pointed, you might find out. An example from the FTC study published in 2003:
Representatives from both the computer hardware and software industries observed that firms in their industries are obtaining patents for defensive purposes at rapidly increasing rates. They explained that the increased likelihood of firms holding overlapping intellectual property rights creates a "patent thicket" that they must clear away to commercialize new technology. They discussed how patent thickets divert funds away from R&D, make it difficult to commercialize new products, and raise uncertainty and investment risks.
The main point isn't so much that disclosure of how apple sorters work helps innovation or the economy that much, but that their monopolisation has less negative effects. And if you want to see more reasons, read e.g. the summaries of the Fraunhofer/Max Planck study of 2001 and the Digital Dilemma book of 2000 (or the studies themselves).
Now I write a new computer program to efficiently sort a database. Didn't this take the same type of mental effort that it took to design the apple sorter? Aren't I entitled to the same type of protection?
This has nothing to do with entitlement, and everything with consequences for the economy and innovation. Software patents are generally not beneficial to either, so it does not make sense to have them.
What agreements are there between Europe and the U.S. concerning patent law?
There are several, but the best known is TRIPs. Many proponents claims it requires software patents, although it doesn't. There are even ways to interpret the various international treaties in a way that they forbid software patents.
If so, European developers may not be off the hook. Sure European companies won't be able to create software patents - but that wouldn't stop Microsoft or other U.S. companies from enforcing their patents.
Patents have nothing to do with where or by whom the "invention" was "invented". This directive is not about software patents for Europeans, but about software patents in Europe. In other words, even if the directive explicitly forbids software patents, it won't stop European companies to get software patents in the US and enforce them against US companies, nor will it stop US companies to enforce US software patents against EU companies in the US.
Similarly, it will prevent US companies from enforcing their European software patents.
No, he actually believes in those things. See my other post for more information on him. He does have some pretty weird ideas about concepts like "information" and "forces of nature".
VVD and D66 have clear points on software patents: they are against software patents.
VVD is hardcore in favour. They use similar misleading language like the Commission, Bolkestein and the Council, but they're in favour. They voted against the motion in the Dutch parliament that requested abstention by the minister.
D66 is against software patents, but Brinkhorst doesn't care about his own party (or anyone else for that matter, except for Philips).
The only party not having an easily findable public statement is CDA. This is strange. However, I have email CDA EP members and she said she was against software patents but agreed with the current proposal. I don't have the mail here now, unfortunately.
When did you get that mail? And about which proposal was that? It would be nice to have the name as well.
If these parties want to support Philips in its quest for patentability, they should clearly say so.
Of course they should, but that's not how politics work. You say what people want to hear, unless you're someone like Bolkestein.
I'd wish the Dutch parliament had proposed a stronger motion.
What they passed was pretty strong: they asked to withhold support to the Council text from then on. However, Brinkhorst reinterpreted this as that he only had to change if a new vote was held. He's just weaseling out.
There was also a motion to change to the vote to "no" (instead of abstention), and Van Gennip had said that in that case they would be prepared to ask for a new vote by themselves (although Brinkhorst would probably have found a way to subvert that motion as well). However, CDA didn't support that motion, so it did not pass.
The one to blame is Brinkhorst, and not the Dutch Parliament.
a patent of 2.5 years wouldn't be worth the paper it's printed on
exactly! only those companies that absolutely demand that extra edge will bother.
The problem is that you don't get an extra edge with a patent that's valid only 2.5 years. You pay a lot of money in exchange for a useless trinket.
it will also work as means to dissuade frivolous patents.
No, it wouldn't. A frivolous patent is generally worth a lot more than one on a very complex algorithm, because more people will infringe on it (and most won't be able to afford litigation to have it invalidated by a court).
I didn't know about the TRIPs agreement. It should be expanded to allow for different patent situations. The 17 years was selected (from what I understand) so that the innovations could be utilized at a later date by other companies as means of encouraging the use of innovative ideas.
It was selected because that's what the US government and some large companies wanted.
(doesn't the USPTO contend [counterintuitively] that they exist to further innovation?)
Recently, they indeed changed it to something like that (see slide 5 of this presentation for an overview of their mission statements over the years).
It only makes sense that industries that move at a faster pace should have a shorter time before using patented innovations.
Yet, the patent offices are wary of annoying their largest customers. Once upon a time, the patent system may indeed have been a social contract beneficial for society, but even if so those times are long gone in the mean time (at least as far as most fields of innovation are concerned)...
But it's not like there is no oversight by the ministers.
There's little or none.
The council votes according to the policies set by the national governments. Of course it is influenced by the people appointed to represent the ministers *but* these people are appointed by the governments for a reason. If what they did was somehow the contrary of what the countries wanted they would be replaced.
They are more or less blindly trusted. They're the government inside the government. Ministers come and go, bureaucrats remain. They are the ones that take care of the continuity.
For example, one of the articles in that European Constitution simply states "Intellectual property shall be protected", without further specifying in any way what this intellectual property is. So forbidding software patents may actually become unconstitutional under that text. Maybe allowing free thoughts will become unconstitutional as well, since you may be using thought processes that someone else used before and he has a constitutional right to "protection" of those.
Of course. It may also mean that the RIAA has the right to kill all humans because they could infringe copyright.
I never said anything about punishment or potential infringement.
Don't be ridiculous. Most non-anarchists would support the phrase "Intellectual property shall be protected" what it really means depends on the interpretation.
It's pretty ridiculous to have a broad and all encompassing statement like that in a constitution. The problem is that, as you indicate below, interpretations of that phrase have been running wild lately. And are you going to claim that "software patents" are not intellectual property, and thus do not have to be protected according to that article?
It's not like we haven't seen this before. TRIPs requires patents to be available for "all inventions" in "all fields of technology". The result is that a lot of people claim we need software patents, because according to them software innovations can be inventions and software obviously belongs to a field of technology. So the EP had to make all sorts of definitions to make sure that in the sense of patent law, software innovations do no belong to a field of technology for the sake of TRIPs compliance. This kind of mess is not something you want in a friggin' constitution.
Actually I think it's a victory for opponents of the thought police that in the current political climate IP rights haven't been embraced stronger than that. If you look at the last 5 years most countries have been in a rush to protect every idea from breathing to shitting in woods.
I refuse to accept bullshit like that as a victory.
You need to differentiate between proper patents that do apply, and ones that abuse the rules.
Apart from the fact that they are software patents, the patents on webshop.ffii.org are not abusing the rules. Patent law simply cannot differentiate between "great" and "stupid" innovations. To quote a deputy director of the UK Patent Office: 'it's very difficult to persuade programmers that just because an invention is "easy", does not make it any less patentable.'
Loopholes in the law do not mean the law should be destroyed - it means it should be fixed.
We're not destroying any law. Software patents are currently generally not enforceable in Europe. The other side is introducing them. They have to prove (or at least convincingly show) that within the current framework, software patents are beneficial.
If this means that they first have to find that magical fix for increasing the quality of granted patents to unknown heights, which has been promised forever now, then let them do so first. We've been doing perfectly fine without software patents, it does not make sense to introduce a broken system with the promise that if it ever gets fixed, it might have good effects.
The TRIPs agreement does not allow for different patent policies, all patents must be equal. Further, a patent of 2.5 years wouldn't be worth the paper it's printed on. A trade secret would be much more interesting: free, and it would probably last longer to boot. The last point is not the case if it's a business method or something else which is automatically ideally disclosed by using it, but then society also doesn't get anything for granting a patent on something like that (the disclosure value of the patent is 0).
Not to mention that examination delays of 6 years and more are more the norm than the exception...
Basically what it says is that they are strongly against softwarepatents but support the current proposal, because it does not, according to their minister Brinkhorst, allow for the patenting of software as such. This is completely naive, but a necessary statement the party needs to avoid intern inconsistency
Brinkhorst is from D66, not from VVD. VVD is simply blindly following Bolkestein.
Good news: McCarthy actually seems to be softening her stance! Here's an extract from a speech she gave at a meeting last month of the European Internet Foundation (a politicians-businesses liaisons organisation, but steered entirely by MEPs):
We have had 64 amendments in the EP.
I may not presonally agree with every one of theose amendments, but I
think it is important to have those amendments on the table, for the
discussion in the second reading.
And I have to say frankly to the commission and the council, that we
were not persuaded of having more of the same.
What the EPO does is [...] change that [...] we felt this was an
opportunity which the Council and Commission did not take to actually
taken up what we do in this area.
There is a possibility we think actually to, if you like, lift the
barrier and lift the hurdle, so that we don't have the very legitimate
fears that the FFII have, that we drift towards more and more
patentability.
The fact that she mentioned FFII in a positive context is huge.
No, it is the ministers of economy that decide. But their bureaucrats will try to get an agreement beforehand and if so, only the official signing off of the text is left to do. This can be done without any decision making or discussion at any Council formation.
So it's not a Fisheries Council meeting, it's a: "AOB (and please don't raise any objections) & Fisheries Council" meeting. Still Byzantine by any definition...
That's how all Council meetings work (for the simple reason that legally, there is only one Council).
FWIW, it's more "Don't you dare to raise any objections". Just look at the fuss they are making now about Poland wanting to change its recorded position in advance to the meeting.
In fact the government is saying they they can vote 'yes' because, as they say, the current proposal does not allow for software patents.
That is not true. They have claimed in the past that the Council text does not allow software patents, but they never used it as rationale for not changing their vote. They simply interpreted the motion as stating "when there is a new vote, you have to abstain, but since normally there won't be a new vote, we don't have to abstain; and we also won't ask for a new vote by ourselves".
In toto, the government does more against than for free software.
This has little if anything to do with free or open source software. The software patent case is all about Philips for them.
I still don't see what Byzantine process allows a Fisheries Council session to concentrate not on fisheries related business but to include swpat business.
They won't pay any attention whatsoever to software patents if it has to be approved by them. Since those A-items are pure formalities, all that will happen is that at the start of the meeting the presidency will ask "does anyone have any objection to the A-items" and if not, that's it. If there are objections (although that's extremely unlikely, since those should have been raised before in Coreper), it simply won't be dealt with at the Fisheries formation and delayed till the next Competitiveness Council meeting.
The reason is simply speed: since there is supposedly already an agreement in place, it does not make sense to wait several more months just to be able to say "no objections".
Now I don't want to interrupt your rant *but* the council consists of ministers of the different EU countries. These governments are democratically elected so the council is democratic.
No, it isn't. The Council's decisions are largely not taken by the ministers, but by faceless bureaucrats holding secret meetings of which the results are often kept secret as long as possible.
In case of the software patents directive, those faceless bureaucrats are the same people that conduct the day to day operations of the European Patent Office. The same EPO that introduced software patents. They are mostly delegates from the various national patent offices.
And of course, the ministers don't decide how to vote on texts by themselves, they have advisors. You can have two guesses who those advisers generally were in this case.
Because the Council operates so intransparently, it's very difficult for the national Parliaments to keep their governments in check. Further, the Council itself does not operate democratically at all. Just look at how Poland is being bullied by the Dutch Presidency to accept a directive it does not like at all.
Even better we should ask ourselves why the "more European" institution -the parliament- is apparently more interested in the good of the people than the council of national governments, which -following the accepted logic around here- are less removed from the local concerns and therefore somehow superior.
Because the MEPs are directly elected by local people and their reports are fully public and their way of working is quite transparent. They obviously aren't all saints, but in general they are quite reachable by "common people" (unlike governmental ministers, let alone governmental bureaucrats).
I also remind you that the Dutch government explicitly *ignored* a decision of the Dutch parliament on how to vote (which was binding iirc.
It wasn't binding, but the government said they would abide by the result. However, they made a peculiar interpretation of it which does not oblige them to change their vote after all.
It was on/. a few months ago but I don't remember exactly and I'm lazy so perhaps someone else could look it up). Me thinks we should be less concerned about what is wrong with the EU and more about what is wrong with our national governments.
There are definitely also problems there.
(doesn't mean that there aren't enough things that are wrong with the EU. Unfortunatly the constitution which would solve some of them -e.g. a more powerful parliament- has no chance of surviving the British referendum)
Many people doubt whether it will improve more than it will hurt. For example, one of the articles in that European Constitution simply states "Intellectual property shall be protected", without further specifying in any way what this intellectual property is. So forbidding software patents may actually become unconstitutional under that text. Maybe allowing free thoughts will become unconstitutional as well, since you may be using thought processes that someone else used before and he has a constitutional right to "protection" of those.
Slashdot Mirror
It is a downside of the system. You may think it is worth to pay this price for the benefits it offers, or you may think it is not worth it (like the grandparent). This has nothing to do with misunderstanding, just with a difference of opinions.
It sounds to me that it's similar in India: "only" computers running software will be patentable, but who cares? What are you going to do otherwise with your software? Print it out and use it as wallpaper?
PS: you really should learn to troll in a much more subtle way, you give yourself away much too easily. And now you can post the obligatory "hurt" post, hoping to get me doubting after all. Thanks for playing, better luck next time.
Similarly, it will prevent US companies from enforcing their European software patents.
80x86 has 80 bit precision floating point, PowerPC 64 bit. So yes, you have to work harder on a 80x86 to get errors like that
No, he actually believes in those things. See my other post for more information on him. He does have some pretty weird ideas about concepts like "information" and "forces of nature".
He is also a person who believes that information comes in physical quantities.
You can find some more information on him here.
D66 is against software patents, but Brinkhorst doesn't care about his own party (or anyone else for that matter, except for Philips).
When did you get that mail? And about which proposal was that? It would be nice to have the name as well. Of course they should, but that's not how politics work. You say what people want to hear, unless you're someone like Bolkestein.There was also a motion to change to the vote to "no" (instead of abstention), and Van Gennip had said that in that case they would be prepared to ask for a new vote by themselves (although Brinkhorst would probably have found a way to subvert that motion as well). However, CDA didn't support that motion, so it did not pass.
The one to blame is Brinkhorst, and not the Dutch Parliament.
It's not like we haven't seen this before. TRIPs requires patents to be available for "all inventions" in "all fields of technology". The result is that a lot of people claim we need software patents, because according to them software innovations can be inventions and software obviously belongs to a field of technology. So the EP had to make all sorts of definitions to make sure that in the sense of patent law, software innovations do no belong to a field of technology for the sake of TRIPs compliance. This kind of mess is not something you want in a friggin' constitution.
I refuse to accept bullshit like that as a victory.If this means that they first have to find that magical fix for increasing the quality of granted patents to unknown heights, which has been promised forever now, then let them do so first. We've been doing perfectly fine without software patents, it does not make sense to introduce a broken system with the promise that if it ever gets fixed, it might have good effects.
The TRIPs agreement does not allow for different patent policies, all patents must be equal. Further, a patent of 2.5 years wouldn't be worth the paper it's printed on. A trade secret would be much more interesting: free, and it would probably last longer to boot. The last point is not the case if it's a business method or something else which is automatically ideally disclosed by using it, but then society also doesn't get anything for granting a patent on something like that (the disclosure value of the patent is 0).
Not to mention that examination delays of 6 years and more are more the norm than the exception...
No, it is the ministers of economy that decide. But their bureaucrats will try to get an agreement beforehand and if so, only the official signing off of the text is left to do. This can be done without any decision making or discussion at any Council formation.
FWIW, it's more "Don't you dare to raise any objections". Just look at the fuss they are making now about Poland wanting to change its recorded position in advance to the meeting.
The reason is simply speed: since there is supposedly already an agreement in place, it does not make sense to wait several more months just to be able to say "no objections".
In case of the software patents directive, those faceless bureaucrats are the same people that conduct the day to day operations of the European Patent Office. The same EPO that introduced software patents. They are mostly delegates from the various national patent offices.
And of course, the ministers don't decide how to vote on texts by themselves, they have advisors. You can have two guesses who those advisers generally were in this case.
Because the Council operates so intransparently, it's very difficult for the national Parliaments to keep their governments in check. Further, the Council itself does not operate democratically at all. Just look at how Poland is being bullied by the Dutch Presidency to accept a directive it does not like at all.
Because the MEPs are directly elected by local people and their reports are fully public and their way of working is quite transparent. They obviously aren't all saints, but in general they are quite reachable by "common people" (unlike governmental ministers, let alone governmental bureaucrats). I also remind you that the Dutch government explicitly *ignored* a decision of the Dutch parliament on how to vote (which was binding iirc. It wasn't binding, but the government said they would abide by the result. However, they made a peculiar interpretation of it which does not oblige them to change their vote after all. There are definitely also problems there. Many people doubt whether it will improve more than it will hurt. For example, one of the articles in that European Constitution simply states "Intellectual property shall be protected", without further specifying in any way what this intellectual property is. So forbidding software patents may actually become unconstitutional under that text. Maybe allowing free thoughts will become unconstitutional as well, since you may be using thought processes that someone else used before and he has a constitutional right to "protection" of those.