EU Parliament to Vote on New Patent Rules 252
peter_sd writes "The Register has an article discussing the implications to the open source community and small software businesses of the new software patent law to be voted on tomorrow by the EU parliament. According to the article, it is very likely the new patent law will be accepted despite its grave consequences."
What we need... (Score:5, Interesting)
Say What? (Score:1, Interesting)
A shift? As if "large multi-national corporations" haven't always had the upper hand anyway?
Re:Where are we free to develop? (Score:5, Interesting)
In particular, the Debian non-us site might have to moved to a country that is not in the European Union (so they can continue to distribute multimedia apps that infringe software patents).
The Register Proves again: apathy sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
It is politicians who make the law, and it is politicians who need to be persuaded if the law is to move in the direction that you desire it to. But while they are a peculiar and varied breed, there are three things you can be fairly certain will not hold much sway with them:
1. Ideological argument. Politicians are nothing if not pragmatic. Their very survival is based on seeing which way the wind is blowing and adjusting accordingly
2. Little-man defence. Politicians will not risk upsetting rich and powerful people and companies unless there is a principle at stake: that principle being that the government ultimately decides. Therefore arguing a point on the basis that it will restrict or impair a powerful body is counterproductive
3. Criticism. Politicians do not respond well to criticism. In fact, the more they get, the more stubborn they become. Flattery is the surest route to their heart, and this means making them feel important. Wining and dining, listening, applauding their insight and then putting your point across
1) That means profits over politics. The Open Source movement should have found some weapon to blackmail politicians into not allowing these new patent law changes to pass. For instance: "If you pass these laws these particular (thousands of) businesses will flee Europe and go elsewhere and take hundreds of thousands of jobs with them."
2) Tyranny of the few is still as true now as it has ever been. Hello, feudalism! Er, welcome back. Er, feudalism never really left!
3) Long live sycophantry!
We need less 'irony'ism and apathy, and more hard core fanaticism in this society.
Re:What we need... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Spreading FUD (Score:3, Interesting)
The Linux kernel mailing list had long flamewars over patents for realtime Linux due to this. And, IIRC, in one of the MS memos posted by ESR they stated that possible trouble with patents was the most successful message to deter managers from steering towards FS/OSS.
living under a rock (Score:3, Interesting)
For most of its history, the US software industry developed in the virtual absence of patents. Widespread use of software patents is largely a phenomenon of the late 1990s.
I'm not aware of any case where Microsoft or any other big company is trying to shutdown an Open Source project using patent laws.
People usually don't even start open source software projects that might infringe software patents. If they do, they usually do so in nations where the patents don't apply, and as a consequence will have a hard time reaching critical mass in the US.
Software patents also have had a chilling effect on commercial development. And they are a drag on research, costing enormous amounts of money to obtain and having little commercial benefit.
As for Microsoft, they didn't use to have a patent portfolio. But, in the spirit of mutually-assured destruction, they have been catching up fast. Expect direct or indirect Microsoft claims against open source projects soon.
But we need something more than just a plea. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is more a reply to the Register than to Travoltus' post, but did it occur to Kieren McCarthy that blackmailing politicians into action is not the kind of government most people want and that we are trying to exhibit the kind of considered action we want to see more of in our government? I would not consider doing one's homework and presenting a complete case "blackmailing", so perhaps that wasn't the best language for the author to pick.
I have some experience working on political campaigns (two local: one Congressional, one for local city council) and I'm active in my community on a number of other issues, so I'm aware of McCarthy's argument and how to wage it. And it would be valuable to do the research to be able to make that argument. But I think this is one of the weaknesses of the free software and open source movements--we don't mobilize our varied talents well.
Does anyone reading this have the skill needed to address the jobs concern? Or know of anyone who can help? We need help now.
I'm quite familiar with Stallman's excellent speech on the matter of software patents and how it adversely affects free software development. Part of that speech encourages us to consider that patents for one area of endeavor doesn't mean all areas of endeavor should have patents. Has this point been made clear to legislators? Has it been supported with examples of areas where patents would be a big problem (two hypothetical examples off the top of my head: legal argument strategies and surgical techniques--either of which could both lead to people losing their lives due to waiting for the patent holder to choose to represent or operate on them)?
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Interesting)
1. All computers are Turing-complete. They may be mapped to the natural numbers.
2. From Godel's Theorem, all true theorems in a mathematical system are derivable via an obvious procedure from the axioms of the system.
3. Turing machines are equivalent to the mathematical system describing natural numbers.
4. All computers are therefore mappable to the set of natural numbers, and all processes performable by a particular computer are therefore mapped to a pair of natural numbers.
From the above, all computers, and all programs that terminate, can be mapped to the natural numbers.
A simple enumeration (though it may take some time) would therefore cover all software.
All software is obvious. QED.
Re:Spreading FUD (Score:4, Interesting)
SySVR4 is about to expire but has not yet. This explains their frantic lawsuit phase. Yes the lawsuit with IBM is about an internal agreement between SCO and IBM and not patent or copyright issues but it does give SCO power.
The whole reason why they are suing is because IBM had no choice but to license SySV from USL because they had a patent on it.
Linus himself maybe sued if this case is won or lost because Linux uses SySV. Linus also stated he does not believe in patents which makes a damming case agaisnt him since SCO lawyers can use it as proof of a corporate espianage conspiracy. Unlike the current SCO case which is mostly hogwash a patent lawsuit and injunction to end Linux is certainly favorable.
Anway my point is if software patents did not exist we would not have this mess. They are a threat and yes bussinesses like Unisys do sue for damages when they are abused. SCO is no execption.
I also remember a very old slashdot article which showed 5 patent violations just at slashdot's website. I think the big one is using fonts to display information.
Re:What we need... (Score:2, Interesting)
IP holders can use their patents to countersue when a claim is made against them. This immediately puts open developers at a disadvantage... even if there's prior art to defend against previously-developed ideas[1], there is no way to defend against obvious ideas that have been patented.
[1] Even though "ideas" were ostensibly once non-patentable, that's obviously not the case anymore.
Welcome to the new (and growing) world order (Score:2, Interesting)
I have coined a phrase for this, the high-tech dark age.
Re:I hope they don't pass the rules (Score:4, Interesting)
You mena the way closing napster shut down all that file trading and development of new file trading apps?
SCO and Microsoft could claim an open source OS like SuSE stole something from their OSes
Whoopdeefucking doo. How is that going to stop open source development? How is that going to prevent organizations from using software they can get anywhere on the internet?
If anything, this absurdly extreme scenario you've constructed would be good for worldwide competition, since it's dead certain countries like China and Ukraine would become even MORE wary of signing onto the (extremist) WTO model of "IP enforcement." The only possible responses to this would then be either to adopt more sensical rules or abdandon all hopes of exploiting license agreements across increasingly large chunks of the globe. Ideally it would even cause a complete collapse of the Berne convention, although that's probably far too grand a dream.
Re:Spreading FUD (Score:2, Interesting)
Although I agree with your point, that patent expired on June 20, 2003. When it was active, it encouraged more innovation in the form of .PNG files. So perhaps there is a silver lining in the cloudiness of this issue--and that is that Open Source is tough enough to survive this should the worst happen.
Re:the problem of the civilized world (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds scary, huh? But consider this: if the government - that means all those politicians hungry for tax dollars - had to weigh on the one hand lengthening copyright terms and, on the other, lengthening the time until they could exploit this new tax revenue base, which way do you think they will vote?
Ironically, the solution may very well begin with encouraging Mexico to adopt this model. At that point you can bet the Hollywood lobbyists will then be calling for a century of protection in the US "so we can keep up" - but if we (the people) then advance and lobby for the other side of this enforcement - that is, making sure the government has an economic incentive in preserving "the public domain" - then we could well begin to take back some of the territory lost to Disney and its ilk.
New patent system (Score:2, Interesting)
Ok my the new patent system works like this, you have to apply for the patent before you actually invent it, if the invention exists at all at the time you first place you patent you are denied (this would include if you already have a product on the market and you are just now patenting it). Second your patent is put in holding where anyone else can see it and if someone else produces a working model within the time frame the patent is void.
If the point of patents is to encourage research as opposed to monopolistic tactics then this will do it.
If the point of patents is to encourage research as opposed to monopolistic tactics then this will do it.
or not seeing the obvious solutions.. (Score:2, Interesting)
It's all tied together, these and so many other apparently illogical actions on the part of many current governments...
There's a solution, but it involves a more... umm... pro active response on the part of millions of people, all acting in concert with each other, across the EU..and the US....
We will have a few superpowers in name, all run by a handful of multinational corporations.
Hey look! A derivative work, probably violates some law! And I don't care!
ya code sixteen hours
and waddaya get
another day older and deeper in debt...
St. Linus doncha call me
cause I can't g-o-o-o-o-o...
I owe my soul to de company sto...
Crapflood and The Incredible Machine (Score:4, Interesting)
Speaking of patents, one of the most ridiculous software patents I've seen in the US is the interface to the game The Incredible Machine. Nobody can make a game with gizmos used from a gizmo-bar to make things happen.
Re:Vote postponed, time to get organised (Score:3, Interesting)
Motivating the geeks is important, nay essential. But motivating the geeks isn't enough. One must sway the MEPs, and RMS's petulant, vitriolic attacks on IP are not the way to go about it.
Re:Help from the other side of the pond? (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be very helpful if you could send emails or faxes to MEPs. Your non-EU citizenship can be used as a positive, i.e.:
"As an American, I see first hand how software patents hurt innovation and competition in a software industry. Start ups find it hard to enter the market when they can be threatened with costly patent lawsuits and investors are nervous about giving funding to a company when they know that a deeper bank account will likely draw the attention of Intellectual Propertly law firms"
There is a listing of all EU MEPs at:
http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/ep5/owa/p_meps2.repa
Good arguments for talking to non-techs can be found at:
(RMS and Nick Hill, longish)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4683640,00
(and a short one from me:)
http://www.electronicsweekly.com/issue/inview.asp
If you only speak english, stick with the UK and Ireland. Many EU citizens are already talking with their MEPs, your emails or faxes would be a great reinforcement.
Ciaran O'Riordan
Great Article by RMS (Score:3, Interesting)
Richard Stallman
[Transcript of a talk presented 2002-03-25 at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, organized by the Foundation for Information Policy Research. This transcript and audio recording by Nicholas Hill, HTML editing and links by Markus Kuhn.]
You might have been familiar with my work on free software. This speech is not about that. This speech is about a way of misusing laws to make software development a dangerous activity. This is about what happens when patent law gets applied to the field of software.
It is not about patenting software. That is a very bad way, a misleading way to describe it, because it is not a matter of patenting individual programs. If it were, it would make no difference, it would be basically harmless. Instead, it is about patenting ideas. Every patent covers some idea. Software patents are patents that cover software ideas, ideas which you would use in developing software. That is what makes them a dangerous obstacle to all software development.
You may have heard people using a misleading term "Intellectual Property". This term, as you can see, is biased. It makes an assumption that whatever it is you are talking about, the way to treat it is as a kind of property, which is one among many alternatives. This term "Intellectual Property" pre-judges the most basic question in whatever area you are dealing with. This is not conducive to clear and open minded thinking.
There is an additional problem which has nothing to do with promoting any one opinion. It gets in the way of understanding even the facts. The term "intellectual property" is a catch-all. It lumps together completely disparate areas of law such as copyrights and patents, which are completely different. Every detail is different. It also lumps together trademarks which are even more different, and various other things more or less commonly encountered. None of them has anything in common with any of the others. Their origins historically are completely separate. The laws were designed independently. They covered different areas of life and activities. The public policy issues they raise are completely unrelated. So, if you try to think about them by lumping them together, you are guaranteed to come to foolish conclusions. There is literally no sensible intelligent opinion you can have about "Intellectual Property" . If you want to think clearly, don't lump them together. Think about copyrights and then think about patents. Learn about copyright law and separately learn about patent law.
To give you some of the biggest differences between copyrights and patents: Copyrights cover the details of expression of a work. Copyrights don't cover any ideas. Patents only cover ideas and the use of ideas. Copyrights happen automatically. Patents are issued by a patent office in response to an application.
Patents cost a lot of money. They cost even more paying the lawyers to write the application than they cost to actually apply. It takes typically some years for the application to get considered, even though patent offices do an extremely sloppy job of considering.
4:05Copyrights last tremendously long. In some cases they can last as long as 150 years, where patents last 20 years, which is long enough that you can outlive them but still quite long by a timescale of a field such as software.
Think back about 20 years ago when a PC was a new thing. Imagine being constrained to develop software using only the ideas that were known in 1982.
Copyrights cover copying. If you write a novel that turns out to be word-for-word the same with Gone with the Wind and you can prove you never saw Gone with the Wind, that would be a defense to any accusation of copyright infringement.
A patent is an absolute monopoly on using an idea. Even if you could prove you had the idea on your own, it would be entirely irrelevant if the idea is patented by somebody else.
I hope you will forget about
I think this message is fairly clear; (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know about you guys, but protests aren't working, letters aren't working, e-mails aren't working. Voting is not working, propaganda isn't working. There's only 1 alternative after peacful protest; violent protest and our leaders are too dumb to realize that if they piss enough people off, they are dead meat literally.
So label me a terrorist for conveying the message bitch, I'm getting to the end of my rope and patience.
Re:Good for them (Score:4, Interesting)
Computers at the very internal level only know if something is on or off. A layer outward shows these patterns can represent numbers. Everything is a number.
People, when they see gui's see text and virtual paperpads ( word processor ), virtual accounting books ( spreadsheets ), text, and cute little graphics. Internally they are just numbers. Most are not even aware of ASCII. Obviously ascii is just a number chart since computers only know numbers and need a way to output and input text. And graphics are just an array of numbers where numerical numbers represent color, darkness, and pixel position for each of the values. All the image formats just compress this to a file but uncompressed the formats are pretty much the same.
The problem is most people writing the laws do not know this and all they hear are lost R&D and jobs due to piracy from industry lobbiests. They consider programing == manufactoring since alot of hard work goes into comming up with idea's and somebody can take them. Also campaign money is a good thing so they can make compromises.
The sad thing is that the EU parliment is not a democracy! They are appointed by memember states. These memember states are elected and influenced by lobbiest. The senators in EU parliment know they can not be unelected so they do not give a shit. I think the EU could be vulnerable to corruption without checks or ballences. Hitler came to power because Germany had a lose set before ww2. He only won 26% of the vote and was appointed by conservative leaders to overthrow the left. Turns out he took over the whole government then country as a result.
Money talks (Score:2, Interesting)
Software is typically not locked into a jurisdiction. It's production is not confined to a factory. There is no bricks and mortar as long as the software is not used to run a business with a bricks and mortar element.
If the Internet is fast enough, software can be running on a server far away where no patent restriction exists.
The new patent law will cause a spike in inflation. Initially software developers will pay a lot to get as many patents as possible on many little routines. No one wants to leave any crumbs around. If many patents come into existence, there may be a large number of lawsuits going around with people trying to grab as much money as possible. This will cause all kinds of businesses thinking of new software to raise prices.
The inflationary surge should start soon, even before the vote. Programmers that anticipate a patent deadlock, the situation where patent holders sue each other for every little software tidbit, have to raise capital now to patent as much as possible. Research has to be done to prepare for patent applications. No one wants to miss the boat.
What has to be prepared? I'm not an expert in patent law, but the software developer has to show that the software does something not done before in existing patents, at the very least. This will mean searching the patents as well as explaining what the software does so nicely. Time consuming and expensive but the loser pays the winner so it's worth it.
One can bet that all the large companies that get in the race will try to patent everything and the kitchen sink so a lot of software may be unpatentable due to competing claims received at the same time for the same thing.
All the same, no one wants to find out that quicksort has been patented by IJKIJK Inc. all because no one else competed for it.
A ton of money was spent on Y2K. Now a frenzy of spending will occur for patents.
Let's compile lists of software, patented and yet-to-be-patented.
open source governments (Score:2, Interesting)
You mean "Thank you, US" (Score:2, Interesting)
One reason this has come up as an issue, is because the US (via the WTO) have been applying pressure to countries around the world to "reform" their IP systems -- to match the US' own system -- for quite a while.
The TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) treaty, and GATT, are the main methods used to do this. The FFII page on the treaty [ffii.org] notes 'Article 27 has often been construed by patent lawyers to imply that patent claims must be allowed to extend to computer programs' (my emphasis).
FFII go on to make the case that this can be circumvented BTW; here's hoping, since all of Europe has signed up to TRIPS AFAIK.
Re:Where are we free to develop? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What we need... (Score:1, Interesting)
Instead of paying fees for registering patents, people awarded anti-patents should be given appropriate monetary reward (by government) for contributing to mankind.
This, I believe, should at least provide some incentive for small inventors(that might be searching for bounty), or academic researchers in universities to race and secure ideas for everybody else.
Anyways, its kind of ridiculous we praise so high about "innovation" when most of it is done only under incentive for private benefit, while selfless contributions to the public are mostly gone unrewarded, maybe even unknown.
Maybe this idea has been proposed before, I don't know.....
Easy solution (Score:5, Interesting)
This would simply use a software licensing term to send a clear message. Want to patent your software? Fine, but you won't get to use it with any open source software.
Everyone is trying to put their damn finger in the dike regarding this stuff. I say we pull our fingers out of the holes and let the place flood. Then we will see how companies like it when they want to use everyone else's work to their financial benefit while not sharing.
You think Amazon and it's "one-click" crap doesn't use open source software to actually implement the idea?
Re:What we need... (Score:2, Interesting)
However, check the country you want to start your lawsuit. UK is 300.000 Pounds, rest of Europe is cheaper, in some countries even 80% cheaper.
Start there, win, continue up to more expensive countries
How to collect the money for patent attorneys and lawsuits to get your patent and enforce it? Set up a foundation/ association and collect money from other idealistic software developpers. And I'm sure there are also patent attorneys around who will work for less for this case (sorry, not me, my contract allows me to only work for my own employer)
When you do this seriously, I am sure you can scare the sh?t out of a lot of companies.
Re:I think this message is fairly clear; (Score:5, Interesting)
I do have contacted my (Flemish) MEPs and it turns out all Flemish parties but one are against software patents (only the liberals haven't chosen a side yet). Arlene McCarthy is starting to get strong opposition from within her own (socialist) faction... Although I by no means want to suggest the fight is over or won, the article at the Register is spreading a lot of uninformed FUD imho.
It does make some good points, but it's by no means accurate about how a lot of politicians think about this issue, unless only the Belgian factions are against and the representatives from all other European countries are pro, but I doubt that... Most of the times, these factions try to take a common stand.
PS: I'm not politically active (except by writing an email [ugent.be] - in Dutch - to the Flemish MEPs on this issue) or tied to one or other party in any way.
Constant battle (Score:2, Interesting)
A pondering/suggestion:
I think it is time to put our money where our mouths are, since it seems that at the present hour, this is the only way to be heard. The saying "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," seems to be apropos right now. I mean, there have got to be a least a million users of Linux that are aware of the issues at hand, earn their living in large part due to OSS and GPL'd software, either through coding or adminstering it, and/or both combined. I'd wager that at least a million or so of us could donate 100 U.S. dollars each to some general fund to promote the interests of OSS and GPL. I think it's time we all realized that our asses are on the line and if we don't put up a good fight now it's game over. How much is your freedom worth to you? How much is your time worth to you, and then consider the countless hours you will waste using proprietary once you no longer have a choice - not to mention the things you will never be able to do should you be forced to use only proprietary software. You can accuse me of being an alarmist, but it seems to me that this is the intention of the BSA et. al. These are ruthless, amoral people that aren't happy until they have total control, people who consider sharing a trait of "suckers".
Everyone on this site seems to want to bash RMS, but excuse me, where is Linus while this EU putsch is going down? I mean, if for no other reason, he should be a little concerned about his own rearend, because if things keep going the way they are, he'll be next in line for a lawsuit. You may not agree with everything RMS says, but at least he's out there doing battle. It's 5 til' midnight, doesn't Linus have anything to say about this. WTF! If not Linus, somebody in a leadership position needs to standup and ring the donation bell real loud and clear and lead the charge because We are losing the battle.