The EU-Direcorate for the internal market conducted a survey in re. to software patents during the consulting process end 2000. They got 1450 responses, 1200 of those were in opposition to software patents. The only possibility they found to manipulate this into a positive result was to invent the concept of "economic majority" since the few positive responses came from cash-heavy companies.
The report that came out of this, stated that while 91% of the individula responses were negative, and "economic majority" of the respondents favoured the introduction of software patents.
There is one specificity in this case, which does not make it al out "ISP is responsible for user content" case. MSN Germany had, at the time, a clause in their user agreement, that gave MSN the rights to the content that users published. Also, one of the court's points was, that MSN published the user's content framed with links and ads by MSN.
We have to wait for the written court record to be published for complete arguments.
Slashdot Mirror
The EU-Direcorate for the internal market conducted a survey in re. to software patents during the consulting process end 2000. They got 1450 responses, 1200 of those were in opposition to software patents. The only possibility they found to manipulate this into a positive result was to invent the concept of "economic majority" since the few positive responses came from cash-heavy companies.
The report that came out of this, stated that while 91% of the individula responses were negative, and "economic majority" of the respondents favoured the introduction of software patents.
There is one specificity in this case, which does not make it al out "ISP is responsible for user content" case. MSN Germany had, at the time, a clause in their user agreement, that gave MSN the rights to the content that users published. Also, one of the court's points was, that MSN published the user's content framed with links and ads by MSN.
We have to wait for the written court record to be published for complete arguments.
Heise online has an article (in german)