* the analog broadcast channel was for one political party
Of course, this is the point of discussion. The facts stipulated in the verdict: * the radio broadcast channel was announced at a press conference by the party in the Flemish parliament * it was announced there as an "own political radio station" of the party * it is presented by a member of parliament of the party * the party's points of view (and the MEP's own) are given broad exposure in the radio program * from the beginning, the party's home page carried publicity for the radio station
P.S. The reasons it is forbidden to operate a single party radio station in Belgium are historical. We've had some rather nasty problems around World War II... P.P.S. Until very recently, political parties had their own air time on public radio and television channels.
The judgement only quotes existing law when it mentions podcasting: Officially, every "radio service" operator who has Flanders as his primary audience should inform the appropriate government institution of this. Podcasting is also considered a "radio service". The accused didn't do that, but Vlaams Commissariaat voor de Media makes no problem of that. In fact, the verdict sounds to me a bit like begging to do away with that requirement.
The actual conviction has nothing to do with podcasting: * the program was also an analog radio broadcast channel * the analog broadcast channel was for one political party * it is illegal to operate an analog radio broadcast channel for a single political party in Flanders * it is illegal to operate an analog radio broadcast channel with Flanders as its primary market without a Flemish government permit. They didn't have one.
B.T.W. Jurgen Verstrepen is a member of parliament for Vlaams Belang, successors to Vlaams Blok, both generally considered extreme right wing parties. Even if on most issues including part of immigration policy, they are probably to the left of the Republicans in the US or Howard in Australia...
"It is fascinating to see how these companies 'help themselves' to copyright-protected material, build up their own business models around what they have collected, and parasitically, earn advertising revenue off the back of other people's content,"
Parasitically? Symbiotically! User profiling for Google, traffic and sales for publishers. I'm happy to have Google index my publications!
Have a look at my publications of classical guitar sheet music. Yes, small scale and non-profit publishing are also publishing!
The divide is widening between consumer friendly content and consumer hostile content. Commons oriented versus fenced-off content. Without the big content guys molding copyright rules to their will, the result would be obvious. Count in rule bending, and we're in for an exciting match!
Most humiliating would be a developing world country, think Venezuela or Cuba, offering free biology courses with a big label "SCIENTIFIC" or "OBJECTIVE" to Kansas students...
If I look at this addicted friend of mine, I always wonder how to drag him out of this mess... Would you consider implementing any of the following in WoW:
* server-side limits on game play time: Use case: A player wants to limit his play time. He voluntarily opts in to playing a maximum of X hours per day/week/month/whatever for the next day/week/month/whatever.
* public user statistics: Use case: A player wants his (real life!) friends to support him in getting rid of his addiction. He voluntarily opts in to publishing his usage statistics via web/email/blog/whatever for the next x time.
* Slashdotters, be creative and put more anti addiction hints in reply!
"A top European Commission official..."
Wait a minute...
This is the same commission that hands the IT multinationals the patent guns to kill innovativion in SMEs and free software, right?
"IT giants exploiting open source" is a good thing. It helps grow the free software ecosystem. No slavery involved, just people doing what pleases them.
Nothing "uneuropean, controlled by US multinationals" here.
There was no vote. On 2004/05/18, the countries then constituting the coucil had to pass their voting intentions, but an A-item means these voting intentions get counted as votes. Even if the composition of the council (10 new member states), the voting weights required for a majority, and the positions of the countries involved have changed so there is no more majority. This was why the EU parliament, backed by ES, NL, PL, DK, DE parliaments formally asked a restart of the process.
In today's council meeting, at least DK, PL and PT formally asked for rediscussing the directive as a B-item. There were critical comments from several other countries. B-item means reopening discussion, and a formal vote.
Now for the audio: http://mm.ffii.org/ConsAudio050307En
Note that the audio breaks off when Dutch minister Brinkhorst starts speaking. At that point, the link from the council to the press room was suddenly broken. Noone has his speech, not even the council administration, it seems.
And about audio quality: please keep in mind we had to get feed the audio signal through a GSM cell phone. This is the best streaming (!) solution we could get without an internet connection.
Even if in this struggle I would only be a mosquito that makes the elephant feel itchy, so be it. I'll keep on making him feel itchy for as long as I can.
I like well-mannered elephants, and I'm trying to make the others behave.
The guy is nothing but a hippie throwback trying to cling to his fame from the past. Get a hair cut you bum!
You think of RMS as a hippie. One could disagree, about that, but one shouldn't forget hippies are people too. Friendly, freedom loving people with no intent to hurt anyone.
I really don't see any reason for you to spit dirt at RMS.
Of course the earthquake problem should be given priority, but I don't agree at all with your conclusion that because of that urgent problem, one shouldn't care about software patents.
The sane thing to do for the Indian government in an emergency situation like this would be to pause non-critical legislative activity for a few weeks, so that proposed laws can get the attention they deserve.
Here in Belgium, as in most EU countries, dentist already have to pay. I don't know if that's a bad thing or not.
But the real scandal:
Even if my dentist ONLY plays CREATIVE COMMONS licensed music, he STILL must PAY. And Creative Commons artists have no way to get their fair share of these retributions from the monopoly (http://auvibel.be) that collects them.
What would you say if you saw the WordPerfect and MS Office teams get together to think about how to implement a feature in their programs? Fosdem is really much closer to that kind of activity than to a trade show.
This is a "Free and Open Source Developer Meeting". That means it's targeted at _developers_.
Maybe similar events don't exist in the proprietary software world? Or are they just less visible and accessible?
Their network. Their protocol. Their hardware. Their cost... MY contacts!
If I can only get in touch online with my contacts on terms that comapny X sets unilaterally, there is a problem.
Some kind of regulation is desperately needed here.
A more healthy situation for the IM world would be like:
Companies X, Y and Z provide instant messaging services. * X, Y and Z must fully disclose all their messaging specs. * The user must be able to export all of his/her user information (contacts!) from the company X, Y or Z network painlessly. * X, Y and Z can't offer any messaging clients themselves (no messing with specs, guaranteed). ? X, Y and Z aren't allowed to check what messaging client is being used. Just to make sure they don't discriminate. * X, Y and Z can charge every user a uniform, transparent access fee, flat or usage based. No fee discrimination based upon client paltform.
These conditions look fair to everyone:
The offering companies can make money from competing for the user's IM traffic.
I consider "stealing" "intellectual property" a bad thing.
As in: with this trivial software patent, company X stole an idea that could have been everyone's.
You opposing this could be a small or medium sized company, a non-profit, an individual that demands respect of "IP", anyone...
This is not something that can be placed solely on the right or the left of the political spectrum.
Agreeing to patenting these trivialities can only come from two things: ignorance and opportunism. The difference between these two is that at a certain decision-making level (think member of European parliament), ignorance becomes opportunism. Because it's the decision maker's to carefully examine the decision (s)he makes.
Software patents have been granted on such things as the progress bar.(1) If any developer uses as much as a progress bar in his software, he'll potentially be at risk.
Software patents kill our intellectual property. They grant a company a monopoly on a common idea. Doesn't matter if it's a patent litigation firm or IBM, we can't use the idea anymore. The monopoly renders OUR copyright on OUR code worthless. They're stealing our intellectual property, and we should do something about it.
Software patents are not there (yet?) in Europe. A plenary vote on a very negative proposal is scheduled for the beginning of september.
FIGHT for digital freedom, or tell your grandchildren how you did... nothing.
As the Register article points out, one of the reasons we're going to lose is that we didn't even try to convince them. We shouted, we hurled abuse, we held huge meetings and didn't invite the other side, but we didn't actually contact them with an explanation of why the proposed change was bad.
Why do you think the vote was moved to september? Because we DID invite the other side, we DID contact them.
Personally, I DID go. I went to Brussels physically. And I know of many others that did.
As I see it the problem with software patents is that it will mainly affect open source projects which are easy targets for patents (obviously you can search through the source code) and in most cases don't generate profit. Free software projects DO generate profit. For the USER.
Maybe, just maybe, some very specific software patents that required exceptionally much research could be justified for a short term of let's say five years.
Only problem: megacorps and small patent litigation sharks would be pushing the gates open wider and wider by lobbying the legislative powers. Under their pressure,
* "some very specific software patents" would very soon become "anything that even remotely looks like a software idea".
* "required exceptionally much research" would become "woke up this morning, saw this idea on a tech hobbyist site"
* "for a short term" would become "for a short term + 20 years, +50 years, +100 years...".
Software patents in the UK, France, Germany are prohibited by EU treaties, so not enforceable. But those things are likely to change in the near future, mind you...
Great job, Munich. I know OpenOffice has it's share of problems (it really isn't all that compatible with Word documents)
It's MS Word that isn't an Open Standard, not OpenOffice that isn't compatible with MS Office.
You know... if software patents get approved of in Europe, there will be an influence in the US, too.
As in "killing Free Software". Which I guess is why Lawrence Lessig and Richard Stallman travel around the globe twice in 24 hours to come to this conference...
And hey, even if this were actually just about the EU, it might be worth reading!
Slashdot Mirror
* the analog broadcast channel was for one political party
Of course, this is the point of discussion. The facts stipulated in the verdict:
* the radio broadcast channel was announced at a press conference by the party in the Flemish parliament
* it was announced there as an "own political radio station" of the party
* it is presented by a member of parliament of the party
* the party's points of view (and the MEP's own) are given broad exposure in the radio program
* from the beginning, the party's home page carried publicity for the radio station
P.S. The reasons it is forbidden to operate a single party radio station in Belgium are historical. We've had some rather nasty problems around World War II...
P.P.S. Until very recently, political parties had their own air time on public radio and television channels.
The judgement only quotes existing law when it mentions podcasting:
Officially, every "radio service" operator who has Flanders as his primary audience should inform the appropriate government institution of this. Podcasting is also considered a "radio service". The accused didn't do that, but Vlaams Commissariaat voor de Media makes no problem of that. In fact, the verdict sounds to me a bit like begging to do away with that requirement.
The actual conviction has nothing to do with podcasting:
* the program was also an analog radio broadcast channel
* the analog broadcast channel was for one political party
* it is illegal to operate an analog radio broadcast channel for a single political party in Flanders
* it is illegal to operate an analog radio broadcast channel with Flanders as its primary market without a Flemish government permit. They didn't have one.
B.T.W. Jurgen Verstrepen is a member of parliament for Vlaams Belang, successors to Vlaams Blok, both generally considered extreme right wing parties. Even if on most issues including part of immigration policy, they are probably to the left of the Republicans in the US or Howard in Australia...
Parasitically? Symbiotically! User profiling for Google, traffic and sales for publishers. I'm happy to have Google index my publications!
Have a look at my publications of classical guitar sheet music. Yes, small scale and non-profit publishing are also publishing!
The divide is widening between consumer friendly content and consumer hostile content. Commons oriented versus fenced-off content. Without the big content guys molding copyright rules to their will, the result would be obvious. Count in rule bending, and we're in for an exciting match!
Most humiliating would be a developing world country, think Venezuela or Cuba, offering free biology courses with a big label "SCIENTIFIC" or "OBJECTIVE" to Kansas students...
If I look at this addicted friend of mine, I always wonder how to drag him out of this mess...
Would you consider implementing any of the following in WoW:
* server-side limits on game play time:
Use case: A player wants to limit his play time. He voluntarily opts in to playing a maximum of X hours per day/week/month/whatever for the next day/week/month/whatever.
* public user statistics:
Use case: A player wants his (real life!) friends to support him in getting rid of his addiction. He voluntarily opts in to publishing his usage statistics via web/email/blog/whatever for the next x time.
* Slashdotters, be creative and put more anti addiction hints in reply!
Nutzwerk had obtained a court order to remove eight phrases from the ffii.org website. They used this to scare FFII's dns provider.
The domain is in now being transferred to a dns provider who is less willing to give in to this kind of demands.
"A top European Commission official..." Wait a minute... This is the same commission that hands the IT multinationals the patent guns to kill innovativion in SMEs and free software, right? "IT giants exploiting open source" is a good thing. It helps grow the free software ecosystem. No slavery involved, just people doing what pleases them. Nothing "uneuropean, controlled by US multinationals" here.
for wanting to impose software patents on us in the EU!
There was no vote. On 2004/05/18, the countries then constituting the coucil had to pass their voting intentions, but an A-item means these voting intentions get counted as votes. Even if the composition of the council (10 new member states), the voting weights required for a majority, and the positions of the countries involved have changed so there is no more majority. This was why the EU parliament, backed by ES, NL, PL, DK, DE parliaments formally asked a restart of the process.
In today's council meeting, at least DK, PL and PT formally asked for rediscussing the directive as a B-item. There were critical comments from several other countries.
B-item means reopening discussion, and a formal vote.
Now for the audio:
http://mm.ffii.org/ConsAudio050307En
Note that the audio breaks off when Dutch minister Brinkhorst starts speaking. At that point, the link from the council to the press room was suddenly broken. Noone has his speech, not even the council administration, it seems.
And about audio quality: please keep in mind we had to get feed the audio signal through a GSM cell phone. This is the best streaming (!) solution we could get without an internet connection.
Even if in this struggle I would only be a mosquito that makes the elephant feel itchy, so be it. I'll keep on making him feel itchy for as long as I can.
I like well-mannered elephants, and I'm trying to make the others behave.
You think of RMS as a hippie. One could disagree, about that, but one shouldn't forget hippies are people too. Friendly, freedom loving people with no intent to hurt anyone.
I really don't see any reason for you to spit dirt at RMS.
Of course the earthquake problem should be given priority, but I don't agree at all with your conclusion that because of that urgent problem, one shouldn't care about software patents.
The sane thing to do for the Indian government in an emergency situation like this would be to pause non-critical legislative activity for a few weeks, so that proposed laws can get the attention they deserve.
http://english.sovmusic.ru has some songs from the communist era (also from outside the Soviet Union).
Here in Belgium, as in most EU countries, dentist already have to pay. I don't know if that's a bad thing or not.
But the real scandal:
Even if my dentist ONLY plays CREATIVE COMMONS licensed music, he STILL must PAY. And Creative Commons artists have no way to get their fair share of these retributions from the monopoly (http://auvibel.be) that collects them.
What would you say if you saw the WordPerfect and MS Office teams get together to think about how to implement a feature in their programs? Fosdem is really much closer to that kind of activity than to a trade show. This is a "Free and Open Source Developer Meeting". That means it's targeted at _developers_. Maybe similar events don't exist in the proprietary software world? Or are they just less visible and accessible?
Their network. Their protocol. Their hardware. Their cost ... MY contacts!
If I can only get in touch online with my contacts on terms that comapny X sets unilaterally, there is a problem.
Some kind of regulation is desperately needed here.
A more healthy situation for the IM world would be like:
Companies X, Y and Z provide instant messaging services.
* X, Y and Z must fully disclose all their messaging specs.
* The user must be able to export all of his/her user information (contacts!) from the company X, Y or Z network painlessly.
* X, Y and Z can't offer any messaging clients themselves (no messing with specs, guaranteed).
? X, Y and Z aren't allowed to check what messaging client is being used. Just to make sure they don't discriminate.
* X, Y and Z can charge every user a uniform, transparent access fee, flat or usage based. No fee discrimination based upon client paltform.
These conditions look fair to everyone:
The offering companies can make money from competing for the user's IM traffic.
The users aren't locked in to any IM network.
Why do you think they invented the word "computer-implemented invention"? This new piece of legalese should already make you suspicious.
Read Xavier Drudis Ferran's document (link below), and you will see the newspeak more clearly. This LOOKS reasonable, but it isn't.
http://patents.caliu.info/juri.en.html
I consider "stealing" "intellectual property" a bad thing. As in: with this trivial software patent, company X stole an idea that could have been everyone's. You opposing this could be a small or medium sized company, a non-profit, an individual that demands respect of "IP", anyone... This is not something that can be placed solely on the right or the left of the political spectrum. Agreeing to patenting these trivialities can only come from two things: ignorance and opportunism. The difference between these two is that at a certain decision-making level (think member of European parliament), ignorance becomes opportunism. Because it's the decision maker's to carefully examine the decision (s)he makes.
Software patents are IP theft.
... nothing.
E P0 394160&CY=ep&LG=en&DB=EPD
Software patents have been granted on such things as the progress bar.(1) If any developer uses as much as a progress bar in his software, he'll potentially be at risk.
Software patents kill our intellectual property. They grant a company a monopoly on a common idea. Doesn't matter if it's a patent litigation firm or IBM, we can't use the idea anymore. The monopoly renders OUR copyright on OUR code worthless. They're stealing our intellectual property, and we should do something about it.
Software patents are not there (yet?) in Europe. A plenary vote on a very negative proposal is scheduled for the beginning of september.
FIGHT for digital freedom, or tell your grandchildren how you did
(*)http://l2.espacenet.com/espacenet/viewer?PN=
As the Register article points out, one of the reasons we're going to lose is that we didn't even try to convince them. We shouted, we hurled abuse, we held huge meetings and didn't invite the other side, but we didn't actually contact them with an explanation of why the proposed change was bad.
Why do you think the vote was moved to september? Because we DID invite the other side, we DID contact them.
Personally, I DID go. I went to Brussels physically. And I know of many others that did.
As I see it the problem with software patents is that it will mainly affect open source projects which are easy targets for patents (obviously you can search through the source code) and in most cases don't generate profit.
Free software projects DO generate profit. For the USER.
Maybe, just maybe, some very specific software patents that required exceptionally much research could be justified for a short term of let's say five years.
Only problem: megacorps and small patent litigation sharks would be pushing the gates open wider and wider by lobbying the legislative powers.
Under their pressure,
* "some very specific software patents" would very soon become "anything that even remotely looks like a software idea".
* "required exceptionally much research" would become "woke up this morning, saw this idea on a tech hobbyist site"
* "for a short term" would become "for a short term + 20 years, +50 years, +100 years...".
Which is why I'm opposed to software patents.
Software patents in the UK, France, Germany are prohibited by EU treaties, so not enforceable. But those things are likely to change in the near future, mind you...
Great job, Munich. I know OpenOffice has it's share of problems (it really isn't all that compatible with Word documents)
It's MS Word that isn't an Open Standard, not OpenOffice that isn't compatible with MS Office.
You know... if software patents get approved of in Europe, there will be an influence in the US, too.
As in "killing Free Software". Which I guess is why Lawrence Lessig and Richard Stallman travel around the globe twice in 24 hours to come to this conference...
And hey, even if this were actually just about the EU, it might be worth reading!