"Pessimist" is a term that optimists use to describe realists.
And "realists" is a term that weasels often use to hide the fact they are so scared of losing they don't even dare to try anything. So what?
I agree with the grandparent post, there is no point lobbying on this issue because it isn't goint to change the outcome. No amount of lobbying or votes will outweigh the corporate interest.
You are misguided in thinking that this is "the people" vs "the corporations". At large, this is "the people + several corporations + scientists + economists + software developers" against "patent administrators + patent lawyers + patent departments of some large corporations". Did you know FFII's position is supported by e.g. Dassault Aviation and France Telecom R&D?
But hey, knock yourself out and lobby anyway, safe in the illusion that a ballot makes you a part of the political process.
Be realistic and don't post like that, you know you can't change anything anyway <g>
blx is the best mailing list to get involved. I think FFII has more mailing lists than members, and many are indeed badly monitored. Most activists can be found on bxl however.
Interestingly, the FFII website is also closed as a protest against software patents. Isn't that kinda shooting yourself in the foot in this situation? A redirect exists, but the link from the protest page goes to a 404.
Strange, that page is not closed at all when I surf to it.
What I found out was that the FFII side (at least that presenting at cambridge, according to the position papers they have posted on the indymedia website) was not actually arguing against software patents--they are arguing against "bad" software patents, which in their view (and mine) includes certain dubious business method patents that we have all heard rehashed here a billion times and whatever else they happen to disagree with that week.
You understood wrongly. FFII is against software patents as a whole, on the basis that the patent system is completely unfit for software (which is not very surprising, given that it was conceived in the 15th century and was never designed to allow monopolisation of information entities).
Novelty and non-obviousness cannot prevent trivial software patents to get through, even if you apply them according to the most stringent standards. Even the deputy director of the UKPTO argues that patent law was not designed to stop "trivial inventions" from being patented.
The webshop pamphlet is simply there to educate people on what kind of stuff the proposed directive text from the Commission and the Council will legalise. FFII is not only against the legalisation of that kind of patents.
Clearly, this same argument can be made against *any* bad (overbroad, overobvious, etc) patents that from time to time patent authorities issue. however, only idiots (and I say this matter of factly--you have to be a complete idiot--not a free thinker with advanced ideas on information distribution on innovation, not an alternative genuis who sees a bigger picture and thinks outside the box, but an uninformed idiot) favor complete abolition of the patent system.
Although FFII does not argue for the complete abolition of the patent system, there are many economists and even business people who think the patent system has outlived its useful life and indeed does more harm than good nowadays. Several such studies are linked (among others) here.
So lo and behold I would find myself arguing an unwinnable cause. If i brought up the case of my friend who started a small company based on a software algorithm that takes (the data from a lab test) and outputs (useful diagnostic information) and righly claim that the only legitimate way in his case to prevent big business from stealing his and his small staff's four years of work is with patent protection (in his particular case, which i am not going into the details of, other forms of protection would not be applicable), the FFII would say "well, that's one of the good types of patents... we're not against those."
It depends on what the innovation of your friend is. If all he's doing is just performing some statistical information gathering, sorting, classifying etc in his program (no matter how insightful the sequence of this stuff is), then FFII is against granting a patent on those things. If your friend's technique however involves new insights in applied natural science, then there is no problem granting him a patent, because then it wouldn't be a software patent.
Let me give an example: suppose you have a fully automated and computer-controlled weaving machine. You then discover on how to reposition the blades so that the threads can be cut much faster. However, the only thing you have to do to implement this invention, is change the values of a few variables in the program that controls the weaving machine (or maybe you have to implement some kind of mathematical algorithm to describe the path and turning rates those knives have to follow).
Well, that remains a perfectly patentable invention under the EP's proposal (which FFII supports): the invention is not that you are changing the program or the mathematical al
"Are you aware that the directive seeks to make it allowable to claim programs on a carrier?"
"Do you know that in doing this, it restricts the ability of the open software movement?"
This has nothing to do with open (source) software in particular. The direct consequences of this are
If someone puts a developed program on a website (open or closed source), the Internet provider hosting that program can be sued for "contributory infringement" (because he helps spreading the "computer program on a carrier", which is claimed by the patent).
Even if you define the conditions for patentability in such a way that pure software (and software running on a computer) cannot constitute a patentable invention, program claims make sure that you nevertheless can still get patent monopolies on programs as such.
As program claims forbid publication, this can also cause problems for researchers at universities, as those people (me included) most of the time provide tools which incorporate their researched techniques, so the rest of the world can evaluate their work (and check whether what they claim in their papers is true).
FFII is not some open source lobbying organisation that tries to hide it's real intentions by rephrasing questions. Voting for program claims is voting against freedom of publication, it's as simple as that.
but this is what I continue to expect from the FFII: too much "overloading" which does them disservice and makes it harder for other people [e.g. business men] to give them fair consideration)
FFII also has the support from relatively big companies like MySQL, Opera Software, Dassault Aviation, France Telecom R&D and several others. FFII is appreciated exactly because people know it doesn't try to hide behind weasel words and directly states what it considers important. You're right there are people who can't deal with that, but it's the strong point that makes FFII respected and more influential than you'd think at first sight.
Sterckx is indeed a strong supported in the fight against software patents. For Flanders, it's hard to vote "wrong" though. Only the Christian-democrats voted in favour of software patents, along with some extreme right wing liberals (Beysen and De Clercq, neither of which is up for re-election afaik). We've received strong support from Sterckx (and his position was supported by Van Hecke), all Flemish socialists and the Greens.
As far as Walonia is concerned, there you also have the Greens as supporters, the socialists were somewhat divided (Zrihen has helped us a lot), the liberals and Christian democrats were a bit vague. An overview of everyone's voting behaviour can be seen here (both for the software patents and IP enforcement directive).
Whether or not you're creating innovative products has nothing to do with it. Patents were devised in the 15th century to protect inventions: physical products and processes. Software patents (like the one from Apple on transparent Windows) and business method patents (like this one) do not serve the goal of the patent system: promote innovation by spreading knowledge.
The hard work of transparent windows is not to come up with the idea, but to implement proper support for it in your windowing system. By using transparent windows in your system, you automatically publish it, thus there is little or no value in the patent publication. Same with business methods: by using them, you make them known.
The patent system was never designed to allow monopolisation of every cool idea (otherwise we'd also have patents on book plots and drawing styles), because that results in blocking all independent creators who build something based on that idea. Of course, big businesses love that, because a patent on an idea is much broader than a patent on a particular implementation/invention and thus gives them a much broader monopoly, but it's bad for the free market and society as a whole.
Have a look at this presentation for more on the idea/invention difference, the goals of the patent system and how software patents work against them.
FWIW, I'm posting this from my iBook and my other computer is a G4, waiting to be replaced by a G5. So I'm definitely not some anti-Apple zealot, many would even claim the reverse:)
It's impossible to post "the" summary, as you can select how terse you want it to be (between 1 and 100%). Additionally, you can choose whether it should use sentences or paragraphs as basic block. Here's a sentence based summary of the first page of "6%":
Interestingly enough, the technology that underlies the Junk Mail filter began its life as an information retrieval system, developed in the Apple labs to help users who managed thousands or millions of large documents find the one they were looking for easily.
...The main advantage of vector representation is that this technology does not rely on word order to do its work -- you can have a look at our speech article to learn more about why this is important.
...In fact, they do it so well that it is now at the center of many system components as we have seen, requiring them to continuously refine the calculations and develop the formal mathematical representations -- all for your benefit.
The 1% summary only returns the middle sentence above.
Some did, like those from Spain and Belgium. And no, they didn't do it because it was in our best interest, but because they thought it was in their country's best interest. And they were damn right.
You're wrong, today the Council needed a 2/3 majority. The Parliament in second reading needs an absolute majority (NR_OF_MEPS/2 instead of YES_VOTES > NO_VOTES) for each of its original amendments that it wants to reinstate. And because we are going to elect a new parliament next month, they can even decide to start the whole thing all over again.
Here's more than 20. They're only legalising software patents now, and yet the EPO has already granted more than 30,000 of those. Which is exactly one of the arguments they are using to justify this action.
Besides, what kind of dorky attitude is it that nobody should be allowed to build on an idea for twenty years?!? Imagine that somebody has had a trivial idea and you get the same idea from elsewhere, and build something much larger on it. Well, you cannot use your ideas for the next twenty years if the first person has patented it.
This concept can be held to any kind of patent. From engines to circuit boards to anything.
That's not true, because
Circuit boards aren't generally patentable either in Europe (we have a sui generic right for chip design protection)
So, your saying there should be no patents. No IP protections.
There is an immense difference between "no (software) patents" and "no IP protections". Most software developers prefer copyright, trade secrets, NDA's and licenses over patents to protect software. Even if the study is carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute, owners of the mp3 patents.
Business proces patents are a subset of software patents. Software patents are patents on unpatentable algorithms which supposedly become technical/patentable because you are carrying them out on a computer. Business methods are an example of such algorithms, along with maths (e.g. compression), presentation of information (Apple's iTunes interface patent) etc.
You have to distinguish between reasoning and true motive here.
Please see this reply of mine to someone else in this thread. The true motive is quite simple in this case, and does not require conspiracy theories or hidden interests.
It's now the Council of Minister's turn, the European Parliament had its say last September (and will have its next say after the Council decided). Although it's great to see that Irish MEPs will try to influence the Irish government, it's quite unlikely they'll succeed. The Irish presidency is, together with the UK, the strongest backer of software patents in the EU.
Nevertheless, actions like that can create press attention and that is very important. Politicians must realise this is an issue "the people" care about, and not just some technical matter which can be settled in back rooms.
Remember that one of the most important patents - the mpeg layer 3 better known as mp3 - is from Germany, from the Frauenhofer Institute. And they were already able to protect their discovery with an european patent.
With several European Patents actually. This is the basic one:
Digital coding process for transmitting and/or storing acoustic signals, specifically music signals, comprising the following steps:
N samples of the acoustic signal are converted into M spectral coefficients;
said M spectral coefficients are subjected to quantisation at a first level;
after coding by means of an entropic encoder the number of bits required to represent all the quantized spectral coefficients is checked;
when the required number of bits does not correspond to a specified number of bits quantization and coding are repeated in subsequent steps, each at a modified quantization level, until the number of bits required for representation reaches the specified number of bits, and
additionally to the data bits the required quantization level is transmitted and/or stored.
As you can see, this is a patent not just on mp3 compression, but on any audio compression scheme which iteratively tries to compress an audio sample until it fits in a pre-determined number of bits.
The problem with these European software patents is that they are currently in general not enforceable in a court. The reason is that the European Patent Convention forbids software patents. The European Patent Office is an independent institution however, which gets its funding from granting patents, so it creatively reinterpreted that convention. That does not change the law nor the opinion of the courts, however (except for the UK).
You're right however that we have strong copyright laws, and that simply copying other people's code is not allowed (unless they agree, like in case of GPL'd code), not even if it's just a few lines.
You should only be able to patent physical process (algorithms, products) and not ideas.
I thought that was called "copyright". The whole idea with patents is to monopolize ideas, not specific products which is copyright's domain.
Well, first of all the original poster was wrong, as an algorithm is not per definition a physical process. Next, the whole idea with patents is not to monopolise ideas, but inventions. Have a look at this presentation, especially slides 3-6.
Finally, copyright is not for products, but for literary works and works of art. In general, one says only "expressions" can be copyrighted. There are also several other kinds of protection, such as one for chip designs (because they are deemed not creative enough to fall under copyright, and neither inventive enough to fall under patents) and drawings and models rights (for technical schematics/miniatures of constructions).
There is explicitly no protection foreseen for mathematical formula's, business methods etc, because the resulting monopolies would hinder followup innovation more than that they would encourage it and/or because the resulting disclosure is not very useful (as in case of business methods: by using them, you disclose them). There's of course always the "industrial secret" which you can use in certain cases.
No, patents are to protect inventions. Mere ideas are way too cheap to get to protect them with a 17/20 year monopoly (not to mention that you hinder a ton of inventors with it, as none of them can commercialise inventions based on that idea anymore without paying for it).
We in the US think that this is really a poke at the US, but if I recall correctly, aren't the big pushers for the software patents really from Great Britain?
Both are big pushers. The UK Patent Office inside the EU, the US as their backup. If we can get the decision postponed on Tuesday, it's possible that we could finally start making things change for the good in the UK as well. Some people are finally getting past the UKPTO civil servants and through to the politicians themselves.
Would it not be ironic if Switzerland (home country of CERN...) votes for them?
Switzerland is not in the EU, so doesn't have anything to say about this.
80% of the jobs in the IT-sector in Germany are in SMEs (Small and Medium sized Enterprises). Those companies don't have the money to obtain a defensive or offensive patent portfolio. The lobbyists did not run out of money, but out of lies to refute hard facts like that.
And politicians (in general) do not just do anything told to them by the highest bidder. In cases like this, they do what they think the "economical majority" wants. We have simply shown them that companies like Siemens, Microsoft and IBM are not the economic majority here, but the minority.
(the following is not directed at you) It's easier though to think that you can't do anything about it anyway, call yourself a realist and just moan about how corrupt everything is. That's of course a self-fulfilling prophecy (which is not to say that there isn't way too much corruption, but at the same time it's complete bullshit that you can't change anything either).
What they said is the same they always said: "We will not vote for it." -- which means they are planning to abstain, not vote against it.
That is correct. But it's almost as good. We have to break the qualified majority in the Council, and Germany has 10 votes of the 36 we need to do that.
So do not misunderestimate the German BMJ.
They are are among the hardest hardliners.
But this is plain wrong. We have a leaked copy of an internal Council document. Look at the footnotes. Germany was at that point in time (3rd May) one of the few that insisted on article 2 of the European Parliament. This article defines "computer-implemented invention" and "technical contribution" so that a "computer-implemented algorithm to do anything" can never fulfill either definition.
Slashdot Mirror
Really strange, this is what I get.
You understood wrongly. FFII is against software patents as a whole, on the basis that the patent system is completely unfit for software (which is not very surprising, given that it was conceived in the 15th century and was never designed to allow monopolisation of information entities).
Novelty and non-obviousness cannot prevent trivial software patents to get through, even if you apply them according to the most stringent standards. Even the deputy director of the UKPTO argues that patent law was not designed to stop "trivial inventions" from being patented.
The webshop pamphlet is simply there to educate people on what kind of stuff the proposed directive text from the Commission and the Council will legalise. FFII is not only against the legalisation of that kind of patents.
Although FFII does not argue for the complete abolition of the patent system, there are many economists and even business people who think the patent system has outlived its useful life and indeed does more harm than good nowadays. Several such studies are linked (among others) here.
It depends on what the innovation of your friend is. If all he's doing is just performing some statistical information gathering, sorting, classifying etc in his program (no matter how insightful the sequence of this stuff is), then FFII is against granting a patent on those things. If your friend's technique however involves new insights in applied natural science, then there is no problem granting him a patent, because then it wouldn't be a software patent.
Let me give an example: suppose you have a fully automated and computer-controlled weaving machine. You then discover on how to reposition the blades so that the threads can be cut much faster. However, the only thing you have to do to implement this invention, is change the values of a few variables in the program that controls the weaving machine (or maybe you have to implement some kind of mathematical algorithm to describe the path and turning rates those knives have to follow).
Well, that remains a perfectly patentable invention under the EP's proposal (which FFII supports): the invention is not that you are changing the program or the mathematical al
- If someone puts a developed program on a website (open or closed source), the Internet provider hosting that program can be sued for "contributory infringement" (because he helps spreading the "computer program on a carrier", which is claimed by the patent).
- Even if you define the conditions for patentability in such a way that pure software (and software running on a computer) cannot constitute a patentable invention, program claims make sure that you nevertheless can still get patent monopolies on programs as such.
- As program claims forbid publication, this can also cause problems for researchers at universities, as those people (me included) most of the time provide tools which incorporate their researched techniques, so the rest of the world can evaluate their work (and check whether what they claim in their papers is true).
FFII is not some open source lobbying organisation that tries to hide it's real intentions by rephrasing questions. Voting for program claims is voting against freedom of publication, it's as simple as that. FFII also has the support from relatively big companies like MySQL, Opera Software, Dassault Aviation, France Telecom R&D and several others. FFII is appreciated exactly because people know it doesn't try to hide behind weasel words and directly states what it considers important. You're right there are people who can't deal with that, but it's the strong point that makes FFII respected and more influential than you'd think at first sight.As far as Walonia is concerned, there you also have the Greens as supporters, the socialists were somewhat divided (Zrihen has helped us a lot), the liberals and Christian democrats were a bit vague. An overview of everyone's voting behaviour can be seen here (both for the software patents and IP enforcement directive).
The hard work of transparent windows is not to come up with the idea, but to implement proper support for it in your windowing system. By using transparent windows in your system, you automatically publish it, thus there is little or no value in the patent publication. Same with business methods: by using them, you make them known.
The patent system was never designed to allow monopolisation of every cool idea (otherwise we'd also have patents on book plots and drawing styles), because that results in blocking all independent creators who build something based on that idea. Of course, big businesses love that, because a patent on an idea is much broader than a patent on a particular implementation/invention and thus gives them a much broader monopoly, but it's bad for the free market and society as a whole.
Have a look at this presentation for more on the idea/invention difference, the goals of the patent system and how software patents work against them.
FWIW, I'm posting this from my iBook and my other computer is a G4, waiting to be replaced by a G5. So I'm definitely not some anti-Apple zealot, many would even claim the reverse :)
Maybe you'll only start caring when the first site goes down for real because of a software patent that became enforceable...
Some did, like those from Spain and Belgium. And no, they didn't do it because it was in our best interest, but because they thought it was in their country's best interest. And they were damn right.
You're wrong, today the Council needed a 2/3 majority. The Parliament in second reading needs an absolute majority (NR_OF_MEPS/2 instead of YES_VOTES > NO_VOTES) for each of its original amendments that it wants to reinstate. And because we are going to elect a new parliament next month, they can even decide to start the whole thing all over again.
- Circuit boards aren't generally patentable either in Europe (we have a sui generic right for chip design protection)
- A normal patent is on an invention, not on an idea like with most software patents. Patents were never designed to protect ideas.
There is an immense difference between "no (software) patents" and "no IP protections". Most software developers prefer copyright, trade secrets, NDA's and licenses over patents to protect software. Even if the study is carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute, owners of the mp3 patents.Business proces patents are a subset of software patents. Software patents are patents on unpatentable algorithms which supposedly become technical/patentable because you are carrying them out on a computer. Business methods are an example of such algorithms, along with maths (e.g. compression), presentation of information (Apple's iTunes interface patent) etc.
Nevertheless, actions like that can create press attention and that is very important. Politicians must realise this is an issue "the people" care about, and not just some technical matter which can be settled in back rooms.
The problem with these European software patents is that they are currently in general not enforceable in a court. The reason is that the European Patent Convention forbids software patents. The European Patent Office is an independent institution however, which gets its funding from granting patents, so it creatively reinterpreted that convention. That does not change the law nor the opinion of the courts, however (except for the UK).
You're right however that we have strong copyright laws, and that simply copying other people's code is not allowed (unless they agree, like in case of GPL'd code), not even if it's just a few lines.
Finally, copyright is not for products, but for literary works and works of art. In general, one says only "expressions" can be copyrighted. There are also several other kinds of protection, such as one for chip designs (because they are deemed not creative enough to fall under copyright, and neither inventive enough to fall under patents) and drawings and models rights (for technical schematics/miniatures of constructions).
There is explicitly no protection foreseen for mathematical formula's, business methods etc, because the resulting monopolies would hinder followup innovation more than that they would encourage it and/or because the resulting disclosure is not very useful (as in case of business methods: by using them, you disclose them). There's of course always the "industrial secret" which you can use in certain cases.
See e.g. this 8 slide presentation, especially pages 3-6.
And politicians (in general) do not just do anything told to them by the highest bidder. In cases like this, they do what they think the "economical majority" wants. We have simply shown them that companies like Siemens, Microsoft and IBM are not the economic majority here, but the minority.
(the following is not directed at you) It's easier though to think that you can't do anything about it anyway, call yourself a realist and just moan about how corrupt everything is. That's of course a self-fulfilling prophecy (which is not to say that there isn't way too much corruption, but at the same time it's complete bullshit that you can't change anything either).