For the first time in many years, I agree that/. ain't what it used to be.
I'm afraid I have to agree. The misleading article summaries are bad enough, ranging from being irrelevant to actually implying the opposite of what the articles in question say, but I find it hard to believe the Slashdot editors would really believe the sort of claptrap written in this article. I think the sad reality is that they know it's drivel, but also that it will generate traffic, especially from the nutter contingent, and this, in my view, reflects poorly on their integrity.
The article was absolute rubbish, but it contained a link to an informative lecture by Prof. Eben Moglen, given last month in Edinburgh. Moglen's points relating to economics and economic history were surprisingly weak, and there were various other errors and questionable assumptions/logic. However, it provided a good insight into the ideology behind and ultimate aims of the Free Software Foundation, and why v3 of the GPL is arguably necessary to achieve those aims.
As an aside, I would think that a true micro-kernel based OS would work the best using multi-core. Putting every possible function in a different process would seem to be a better use of a multi-core architecture than to have larger kernels.
Why? On a system designed around threads, a process is essentially just a virtual address space and set of related resources, whereas a thread is the unit of execution. The NT kernel in Windows is heavily multithreaded, for example, and right now there are 110 threads assigned to the 'System' process (i.e. the kernel-mode components) on my PC, all executing in the same kernel address space.
It is the text that they are supposed to abide to, and it clearly excludes patents on software.
Your interpretation of the EPC has no legal standing, and neither has mine. The interpretations with legal standing are those of the national courts and the Boards of Appeal of the EPO.
BTW, it seems the UK has seen the light on this.
English case law has in some respects been contradictory, but the 'Aerotel/Macrossan' decision does suggest that an invention cannot be patented if it is implemented entirely in software. However, in upholding the Aerotel appeal, the English/Welsh Court of Appeal recognised that it would be possible to implement the invention using conventional computers, but held that the key reason the patent was valid was that it involved a new arrangement of hardware.
[The BGH] should be ashamed of themselves.
Why, because you disagree with them? They simply interpreted the law as they understood it. It is unfortunate that the EPC is not clear on matters such as these (if it were clear, there would not be varying interpretations), but attempts to clarify and/or harmonise have not been successful.
The opinions of the courts are not written in stone, because laws and policies change. Their opinions are not relevant for me as opinions on software patents being right or wrong; I could as well recognize the opinions of old stalinist courts on what is right or wrong.
If you're referring to the old courts of the DDR, they obviously carry no weight, because the regime under which they operated no longer exists. The claim that the decisions of the BGH carry no weight is, however, absurd. It is not a question of right or wrong, it is a question of what is legal. Software patents may be right or wrong, but according to current practice in the EU (with some divergence in the UK), and rulings by the BGH, etc., they are legal.
The issue I am arguing against is the claim that patents of computer implemented inventions are somehow illegal in Europe. It has nothing whatsoever to do with whether they are right or wrong. They clearly are not illegal in most of Europe, provided there is a technical effect, as supported by decisions of national courts and the EPO (with UK practice diverging somewhat, but not entirely, from this).
Your disdain of the opinions of private individuals sugests that you have never heard of things like democracy.
Quite the opposite. Democracy is based on the rule of law, as carried out by elected governments and the courts. A system in which private individuals are allowed to ignore or overrule the law, as interpreted by the courts, is certainly not democracy.
You seem to have this idea that a group of "experts" can decide what is right or wrong, and that this is then not open to discussion, not even by people who are afected by these decissions.
No, my idea is that it is the role of the courts, not private individuals, to interpret the law. You are obviously free to argue that the law should be changed, but when you claim that decisions by national courts are 'illegal' because they differ from your own interpretation of treaties/legislation, you simply appear egotistical and ignorant.
This is the unfortunate mindset of most, if not all, EU institutions. A mindset which will get it, and all of us, in bad and bloody trouble. The sooner that mindset changes, the better.
As I've pointed out before, the European Patent Organisation is not part of the EU.
They wanted to change the law to cover precisely this "current practice", which gives away the fact that they know full well that this practice is illegal, and that they know the distinction between software and hardware.
If you're still referring to the CII directive, the EPO didn't want to change the law because there is no EU law covering patents. Patents are dealt with via the EPC (a treaty unrelated to the EU), including the European Patent Organisation established by that treaty, and by national law, as interpreted by national courts, in the individual states that are parties to the EPC.
The EPO has granted patents on all sorts of things, including things like embedding car license plate numbers into domain names, and have hold such patents up in their appeals court.
I assume you are referring to Michael Hermann's patent. It was invalidated by the German Federal Patent Court (Bundespatentgericht) not because it involved software, but because, amongst other things, it was not actually inventive, which is a requirement for any patent. Indeed, the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) has upheld patents on computer implemented inventions where there is a technical contribution.
Their opinion on this matter does not have any merit.
On the contrary, one of the reasons the European Patent Organisation was established by the EPC was to deal with this sort of thing. Moreover, the rulings of the Boards of Appeal of the EPO are in line with the rulings of national courts in a number of member states, which have upheld patents of computer implemented inventions where a technical contribution is present.
The suggestion that national courts and the EPO are somehow irrelevant, and that (mis)interpretation of the EPC by private individuals is somehow binding is simply ridiculous. Anti-software-patent activists can complain about the rulings of the national courts all they like, but at the end of the day, the opinions of those activists carry no weight, and it is the opinions of the courts that matter.
The fact of the matter is that computer implemented inventions that make a technical contribution are currently patentable according to both the EPO and national courts within various EU member states (this contrasts with the United States, where no technical contribution is necessary). If you wish to see such patents abolished, it is this that will require a change in the law. However, without harmonisation (which is what the CII directive was in fact about), any such change must be enacted individually, in each EU member state.
As an aside, I am not convinced that the current legal situation is necessarily optimal. 20 years is a very long time in any high technology field, including software, so what was reasonable in the past, and in other fields, may not be reasonable for inventions in high technology fields. However, I would not necessarily draw a distinction between hardware and software: PC hardware from 1987 is arguably just as obsolete today as PC software from 1987.
Are there any operating systems out there that use random numbering of PIDs? Windows and Linux both number them sequentially and I would not expect it to happen otherwise.
I don't know about older versions of Windows, but in Vista, the PIDs are not sequential. I've no idea if PID generation is random, but child processes sometimes have a higher PID than parent processes and sometimes a lower one, without any obvious pattern in the distance from the parent PID.
[H]igh fructose corn syrup is either 42% or 55% fructose, the rest is glucose. Well sucrose [table sugar] is 50% fructose the rest is glucose. In fact high fructose corn syrup and sucrose are equally problematic.
All of the soft drinks I know of (in northern Europe) use sugar, and not high fructose corn syrup, but it doesn't sound like that really matters. That's excluding the 'diet' ones, of course. I don't really drink them anyway, so I'm not too bothered by whether they're awful or just bad.
I'm afraid you're mistaken in suggesting that other systems do not use similar methods. Mac OS X, for example, includes Spotlight, which has similar implications to Windows Search, and the upcoming 10.5 version will include a feature called Time Machine, with similar implications to Shadow Copy in Windows. The use of ZFS might too introduce issues similar to those inherent in Transactional NTFS.
The reality is that most users like the ability to index and search their data, and to recover previous versions of a file, as well as the better reliability offered by transactional file operations. In the general case of a non-criminal user, these features provide far greater benefits than the potential harm of having their activities more effectively analysed by law enforcement officials, in the highly improbable case of a legal order to hand over their data.
I don't think so. Vista still has EFS, so you can encrypt the drive with BitLocker and then encrypt individual files with EFS. However, I haven't heard of any way to create hidden drives. I'm sure it would have been advertised as a feature if it existed, so for that I suppose TrueCrypt would be a better choice than BitLocker (I don't know if both can be used, or if there would be any reason to do this).
I haven't enabled BitLocker yet, since I'm a bit wary of possibly losing the ability to recover data in the event of a system failure. However, I tend to keep backups up to date, so I'll probably enable it at some point. My reason for using encryption would be to prevent access by a thief or other unauthorised user, however, so I don't think I'd need anything like a hidden volume.
I can't imagine using an obsolete OS like Windows 2000 on a daily basis, but if Microsoft start integrating mandatory, targeted advertising into Windows, it will convince a lot of users to change platforms. Most of the commercial software I need to use on Windows is available for Mac OS, so I'd certainly switch.
The article just says it's easier to gather evidence from a PC with Vista than from a PC with an older version of Windows, like XP. It's also easier to gather evidence from a PC than from a box of papers, and easier to gather evidence when there is a box of papers than when there isn't. If you wish to be secure in your illegal activities, you'd probably be wise to avoid keeping any records at all.
As for privacy, to the extent that this sort of thing requires a legal order to hand over the information, I can't really see that it's an issue of privacy. If it is accepted that preserving the rule of law sometimes requires surrendering information that would otherwise be considered private, then that is the end of the matter: the information in such instances has ceased to be private.
If a PC is stolen, that is another matter, but in such cases, encryption can be used to prevent private data falling into the hands of thieves. This arguably makes a PC with appropriate encryption enabled safer than paper records.
Vista actually has a full-drive encryption mechanism, called 'BitLocker'. If it's enabled, I suppose any attempt at forensic examination would require either (a) the permission of the owner, or (b) breaking the encryption.
It isn't necessarily a black and white situation. If Microsoft are seen to be more friendly to the media firms than Apple, the media firms might be willing to offer lower prices to Microsoft, or preferential access to new releases, etc.
Most media firms probably wouldn't be stupid enough to stop supporting iTunes all at once, but less favourable licensing arrangements could put Apple at a disadvantage over time. If this were to happen (and I am not in any way suggesting that I think it will), the media firms could simply wait for the iPod's market share to fall below the critical tipping point, and then start ratcheting up the pressure on Apple.
Seriously, in the grand scheme of things, with people downloading tracks from p2p networks and ripping their own CDs, is this going to make an impact whatsoever?
I don't know about the United States, but in a lot of countries here in Europe, we pay taxes on blank media, which aim to compensate copyright holders for piracy of their works. In other words, there's already a fee something like this involved when ripping CDs, DVDs, etc., but it's managed by the state, through taxation, rather than by private industry.
Yes, we are talking about Europe. The current practice of the European Patent Office holds that an invention that provides a technical contribution is patentable, whether it is implemented in hardware or software. As pointed out in the example on the EPO website, a new and inventive method of improving signal strength for mobile phones is a technical solution to a problem, and would thus be granted a patent, with the particular use of hardware or software to implement it being immaterial.
Moving on, your understanding of what is patentable appears to be erroneous, as can be seen in the decision of the EPO board of appeals on case T 0208/84. As the decision states, a mathematical method is not patentable, but a technical process that makes use of a mathematical method is, provided of course that it is new, an inventive step and is susceptible of industrial application. Moreover, the particular means of implementation, e.g. hardware versus software (or pulleys and levers if you wish), does not impact the patentability or otherwise of that technical process.
On the whole, you have not provided any meaningful argument as to why an invention ought to be patentable if it is implemented with hardware (or pulleys and levers), but not if it is implemented with software. Fortunately, the European Patent Office is run by more thoughtful individuals, who are concerned with the logical consistency of the patent process, and hence disagree with your view.
If your argument is that the mechanisms used to prevent the corruption of politics by money achieve imperfect results, then this should be obvious to anyone, but you have only set up a straw man and then knocked it over for your own amusement.
The suggestion that a political system is not corrupted by money does not imply perfection, only that the power of money is relatively weak enough in comparison to the power of the public will that is is not an important factor in the development of public policy. This is arguably the case in a number of countries in Europe, and the public remain vigilant, keeping a watchful eye on politics to ensure that such corruption by money does not develop.
Integrated circuit (IC) masks are also covered by copyright. Why does this not, in your view, invalidate the patenting of inventions implemented with ICs?
Copyright and patents are both useful but extremely dangerous privileges that are afforded to creators to encourage the creation/invention etc of new things for the express purpose of benefiting society.
That is one perspective. An alternative perspective, expressed most notably in revolutionary France, holds that the right to ownership of the creations of one's mind is a fundamental property right. This view was the basis for the Paris and Berne conventions of 1883 and 1886, which deal respectively with protection of industrial and artistic/literary proprety. It is also expressed in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2000), which defines property rights, including intellectual property rights, as fundamental.
Granting both types of rights for the same thing adds zero benefit and can potentially cause great damage (as can either alone, but we as a society have decided that it's worth the risk *for a limited time*.
Which one do you favour withdrawing in the case of ICs? Should they be only copyrightable or only patentable?
Mind you, I'm open to the suggestion that software and ICs are more accurately described as industrial property, rather than artistic/literary property, and thus ought to be protected by something other than copyright, e.g. something along the lines of patent laws, which expire after 20 years. This is not a view I hold per se, but I can see merit in it.
The European Patent Convention (EPC) is not EU law, it is an international treaty agreed by 37 countries, a number of which are not even in the EU (e.g. Norway and Turkey). Under the terms of the EPC, decisions are taken by the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation, which oversees the European Patent Office.
The current practice of the European Patent Office, supported by the Administrative Council, is to interpret the EPC to mean that software in itself is not patentable, but a patentable technical solutions that happens to be implemented in software does not cease to be patentable simply because it is implemented in software. Your (mis)reading of the EPC is not particularly relevant, I'm afraid. After all, if any individual could interpret the law in his own way, it wouldn't be worth much, would it?
Discounting the general ideological issues for a moment, I think most sensible people are (and should be) at the very offended by the fact that corporations can clearly purchase laws at will to artificially protect particular business models.
The roots of the Berne Convention of 1886 (with several revisions), which is the basis for copyright law in most of the world, lie not in corporate power but rather in 19th century efforts by authors to harmonise international treatment of literary and artistic works, at a time when works published in one country were often left unprotected in others.
The primary influence behind the Berne Convention was the doctrine of authors' rights, particularly as expressed in France. The efforts of the ALAI (l'Association littéraire et artistique internationale), founded in 1878 by Victor Hugo, were particularly important in achieving this. Even so, French law still provides more extensive protection of authors' rights than those agreed in the convention.
One of the most important differences between the Berne Convention and French law is that the moral rights recognised under the former are allowed to expire as early as the death of the author, whereas under French law they are perpetual, and passed on to the author's heirs. The Berne Convention does not include all of the moral rights of authors recognised under French law either.
Ironically, longer copyright protection is arguably more valuable to the Free Software movement than it is to commercial software developers who publish their works in binary form. With a 14-year copyright length, for example, Windows NT 3.1 would soon enter the public domain, but since only binaries were published, free access to it would be of little value. In contrast, all of the GNU software from the same period was published in source form, and with the expiry of its copyright, would become free for commercial developers to use in closed source software.
Without disagreeing with the point that there is no requirement to release an unpublished work into the public domain, I'd like to point out that under Article 3 of the Berne Convention, protection applies to all literary/artistic works produced by citizens of countries of the Union (i.e. countries that are parties to the convention), irrespective of whether or not such works have been published.
That's a rather strange example. Something more realistic, suggested on the website of the European Patent Office, is a method for improving the signal strength of a mobile phone. Such a solution could be implemented in either hardware or software, and in either case would be granted a patent by the EPO, as there is no rational basis for excluding one implementation and not the other.
Remember that in order to be patentable, an invention implemented in software must still meet the same requirements as any other invention. Most of the complaints I've heard about the granting of software patents in the United States actually relate not to the fact of being implemented in software, but rather to triviality: patents are being granted for software 'inventions' that do not really qualify for patent protection, because they are not actually new, do not involve inventive steps, etc.
It's not really very difficult to understand if you're able to think beyond wooden word processors and software water turbines. Off the top of my head, modern fuel injection systems are often controlled by software, whereas the first implementations were entirely mechanical, followed by electronic systems with hardware control. If a fuel injection system is improved by a novel and inventive technical contribution, why should it matter whether it's implemented by wheels, valves, transistors, microchips or software?
What is the logical basis for the boundary between patentable and non-patentable inventions being hardware versus software? Why not mechanical versus electronic, or valves versus transistors versus microchips? The increasing use of software rather than hardware to implement solutions to technical problems is a natural progression, like the move from valves to transistors to microchips. What is it that you believe makes software unique?
The CII of course. The apparent purpose of the CII was / is to introduce the ability to patent software, algorithms, formula, business methods, and so on.
No, the purpose of the CII was to codify existing practice of the EPO.
Existing practice and, indeed existing EU law, prohibits such idiocy.
No, existing practice of the EPO allows inventions implemented in software to be patented, as long as there is a technical contribution. As for existing EU law, which EU legislation are you claiming forbids the current practice of the EPO?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm afraid I have to agree. The misleading article summaries are bad enough, ranging from being irrelevant to actually implying the opposite of what the articles in question say, but I find it hard to believe the Slashdot editors would really believe the sort of claptrap written in this article. I think the sad reality is that they know it's drivel, but also that it will generate traffic, especially from the nutter contingent, and this, in my view, reflects poorly on their integrity.
The article was absolute rubbish, but it contained a link to an informative lecture by Prof. Eben Moglen, given last month in Edinburgh. Moglen's points relating to economics and economic history were surprisingly weak, and there were various other errors and questionable assumptions/logic. However, it provided a good insight into the ideology behind and ultimate aims of the Free Software Foundation, and why v3 of the GPL is arguably necessary to achieve those aims.
The issue I am arguing against is the claim that patents of computer implemented inventions are somehow illegal in Europe. It has nothing whatsoever to do with whether they are right or wrong. They clearly are not illegal in most of Europe, provided there is a technical effect, as supported by decisions of national courts and the EPO (with UK practice diverging somewhat, but not entirely, from this).
Quite the opposite. Democracy is based on the rule of law, as carried out by elected governments and the courts. A system in which private individuals are allowed to ignore or overrule the law, as interpreted by the courts, is certainly not democracy. No, my idea is that it is the role of the courts, not private individuals, to interpret the law. You are obviously free to argue that the law should be changed, but when you claim that decisions by national courts are 'illegal' because they differ from your own interpretation of treaties/legislation, you simply appear egotistical and ignorant. As I've pointed out before, the European Patent Organisation is not part of the EU.The suggestion that national courts and the EPO are somehow irrelevant, and that (mis)interpretation of the EPC by private individuals is somehow binding is simply ridiculous. Anti-software-patent activists can complain about the rulings of the national courts all they like, but at the end of the day, the opinions of those activists carry no weight, and it is the opinions of the courts that matter.
The fact of the matter is that computer implemented inventions that make a technical contribution are currently patentable according to both the EPO and national courts within various EU member states (this contrasts with the United States, where no technical contribution is necessary). If you wish to see such patents abolished, it is this that will require a change in the law. However, without harmonisation (which is what the CII directive was in fact about), any such change must be enacted individually, in each EU member state.
As an aside, I am not convinced that the current legal situation is necessarily optimal. 20 years is a very long time in any high technology field, including software, so what was reasonable in the past, and in other fields, may not be reasonable for inventions in high technology fields. However, I would not necessarily draw a distinction between hardware and software: PC hardware from 1987 is arguably just as obsolete today as PC software from 1987.
The reality is that most users like the ability to index and search their data, and to recover previous versions of a file, as well as the better reliability offered by transactional file operations. In the general case of a non-criminal user, these features provide far greater benefits than the potential harm of having their activities more effectively analysed by law enforcement officials, in the highly improbable case of a legal order to hand over their data.
I haven't enabled BitLocker yet, since I'm a bit wary of possibly losing the ability to recover data in the event of a system failure. However, I tend to keep backups up to date, so I'll probably enable it at some point. My reason for using encryption would be to prevent access by a thief or other unauthorised user, however, so I don't think I'd need anything like a hidden volume.
I can't imagine using an obsolete OS like Windows 2000 on a daily basis, but if Microsoft start integrating mandatory, targeted advertising into Windows, it will convince a lot of users to change platforms. Most of the commercial software I need to use on Windows is available for Mac OS, so I'd certainly switch.
As for privacy, to the extent that this sort of thing requires a legal order to hand over the information, I can't really see that it's an issue of privacy. If it is accepted that preserving the rule of law sometimes requires surrendering information that would otherwise be considered private, then that is the end of the matter: the information in such instances has ceased to be private.
If a PC is stolen, that is another matter, but in such cases, encryption can be used to prevent private data falling into the hands of thieves. This arguably makes a PC with appropriate encryption enabled safer than paper records.
I would say that falls under permission. If there is a court order, you can refuse it, but you will face the legal consequences.
Vista actually has a full-drive encryption mechanism, called 'BitLocker'. If it's enabled, I suppose any attempt at forensic examination would require either (a) the permission of the owner, or (b) breaking the encryption.
Most media firms probably wouldn't be stupid enough to stop supporting iTunes all at once, but less favourable licensing arrangements could put Apple at a disadvantage over time. If this were to happen (and I am not in any way suggesting that I think it will), the media firms could simply wait for the iPod's market share to fall below the critical tipping point, and then start ratcheting up the pressure on Apple.
Moving on, your understanding of what is patentable appears to be erroneous, as can be seen in the decision of the EPO board of appeals on case T 0208/84. As the decision states, a mathematical method is not patentable, but a technical process that makes use of a mathematical method is, provided of course that it is new, an inventive step and is susceptible of industrial application. Moreover, the particular means of implementation, e.g. hardware versus software (or pulleys and levers if you wish), does not impact the patentability or otherwise of that technical process.
On the whole, you have not provided any meaningful argument as to why an invention ought to be patentable if it is implemented with hardware (or pulleys and levers), but not if it is implemented with software. Fortunately, the European Patent Office is run by more thoughtful individuals, who are concerned with the logical consistency of the patent process, and hence disagree with your view.
The suggestion that a political system is not corrupted by money does not imply perfection, only that the power of money is relatively weak enough in comparison to the power of the public will that is is not an important factor in the development of public policy. This is arguably the case in a number of countries in Europe, and the public remain vigilant, keeping a watchful eye on politics to ensure that such corruption by money does not develop.
Mind you, I'm open to the suggestion that software and ICs are more accurately described as industrial property, rather than artistic/literary property, and thus ought to be protected by something other than copyright, e.g. something along the lines of patent laws, which expire after 20 years. This is not a view I hold per se, but I can see merit in it.
The current practice of the European Patent Office, supported by the Administrative Council, is to interpret the EPC to mean that software in itself is not patentable, but a patentable technical solutions that happens to be implemented in software does not cease to be patentable simply because it is implemented in software. Your (mis)reading of the EPC is not particularly relevant, I'm afraid. After all, if any individual could interpret the law in his own way, it wouldn't be worth much, would it?
The primary influence behind the Berne Convention was the doctrine of authors' rights, particularly as expressed in France. The efforts of the ALAI (l'Association littéraire et artistique internationale), founded in 1878 by Victor Hugo, were particularly important in achieving this. Even so, French law still provides more extensive protection of authors' rights than those agreed in the convention.
One of the most important differences between the Berne Convention and French law is that the moral rights recognised under the former are allowed to expire as early as the death of the author, whereas under French law they are perpetual, and passed on to the author's heirs. The Berne Convention does not include all of the moral rights of authors recognised under French law either.
Ironically, longer copyright protection is arguably more valuable to the Free Software movement than it is to commercial software developers who publish their works in binary form. With a 14-year copyright length, for example, Windows NT 3.1 would soon enter the public domain, but since only binaries were published, free access to it would be of little value. In contrast, all of the GNU software from the same period was published in source form, and with the expiry of its copyright, would become free for commercial developers to use in closed source software.
Without disagreeing with the point that there is no requirement to release an unpublished work into the public domain, I'd like to point out that under Article 3 of the Berne Convention, protection applies to all literary/artistic works produced by citizens of countries of the Union (i.e. countries that are parties to the convention), irrespective of whether or not such works have been published.
Remember that in order to be patentable, an invention implemented in software must still meet the same requirements as any other invention. Most of the complaints I've heard about the granting of software patents in the United States actually relate not to the fact of being implemented in software, but rather to triviality: patents are being granted for software 'inventions' that do not really qualify for patent protection, because they are not actually new, do not involve inventive steps, etc.
What is the logical basis for the boundary between patentable and non-patentable inventions being hardware versus software? Why not mechanical versus electronic, or valves versus transistors versus microchips? The increasing use of software rather than hardware to implement solutions to technical problems is a natural progression, like the move from valves to transistors to microchips. What is it that you believe makes software unique?