European Parliament Rejects Software Patents 357
heretic9 writes "The European Parliament unanimously rejected the software patent bill recently put before it. Hugo Lueders of CompTIA, a pro-patent lobby group, said that the benefits of the bill had been obscured by special interest groups, which muddied debate about the rights and wrongs of software patents." Meaning, essentially, that the Conference of Presidents got its way.
The Europeans Get It Right, Again (Score:4, Insightful)
It is not over yet... (Score:3, Insightful)
Double standard (Score:5, Insightful)
How come when I do it, it's called "muddying debate"?
Sheesh...
Re:1-0 (Score:5, Insightful)
And I just don't get why Europe would EVER legalize software patents. Right now they are legal in Australia, India, the US, and Japan. So basically, right not, Europe is the only place in the industrialized world which can do something simple like include a help icon in its software.
Without software patents, Europe will become a Mecca of software development!
Oh, The Horror (Score:5, Insightful)
How dare they discuss the bad points about software patents. Isn't the pro-patent lobby group a special interest group? What makes them think they have a right to present their views, while groups which are against software patents do not?
Re:Constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So why s this bill such a bad thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Why was the RSA public key encryption patent such a terrible thing, whereas a patent for a hardware encrytion device is a good thing?
Re:1-0 (Score:2, Insightful)
good move (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe, but not in Europe. Your laws end where your borders end. Outside the US, your constitution has about as much value as a sheet of toilet paper.
Re:I Love How Many US Folk Still Don't Get The EU. (Score:1, Insightful)
"Yes, but us American's have, truth, justice, and the American way on our side"
Erm...
"truth" - there are WMD in Iraq, and that's the reason to go to war?
No Truth, sorry.
"justice" - Guantanamo Bay? (sp?)
No Justice, sorry.
"American Way" - well, fair enough, but since you are the only ones who WANT it; Meh!
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Constitution (Score:4, Insightful)
A new patent bill is needed (Score:5, Insightful)
The discussion is not whether new and uniform patent legislation accross EU is needed. It is about the content.
The pros want EU to align with USA, in many other areas, aligning laws with important trade partners is beneficial for all parties. But with the development in USA in this case, the benefits of such alignment can be disputed.
Unfortunately the continual rejections and attempts to force through a particular piece of paper has now become a dispute about democracy and who has the power - attention seems to be shifted away from the original content.
I am looking forward for the process to restart so the discussion can get back on track.
Re:The Europeans Get It Right, Again (Score:2, Insightful)
If you mean sensible because they because they rejected software patents....sure.
But dear lord, look at how much trouble it is to kill this one stupid bill in the EU. How many times does a bill have to be rejected before it really dies over there?
Re:The Europeans Get It Right, Again (Score:1, Insightful)
People!
People with jobs, families, communities, little league teams, the works.
This business of trying to make out corporations as some kind of faceless inhuman creature is just silly.
Government officials works hard to assist corporations because they know that if those corporations go under, people lose jobs, and then so does the Government official!
And do you really think it is any different in the EU? Do you think that government subsidies to a Corporation like Airbus is somehow 'better' because it was done on the other side of the pond?
Get a grip! Corporations are a way to pool resources to get tasks completed in an efficient manner. The structure rewards the risk takers (investors) and creators with greater remuneration (cash, stocks) and allows them to pick who will direct the efficient use of the corporate resources. At the end of the day, all of this is done by people.
I don't think even one faceless robot is involved! Fancy that...
Re:I Love How Many US Folk Still Don't Get The EU. (Score:5, Insightful)
First, GP is correct imo. There are signs, which would be too numerous to detail here, indicating that the USA is behaving as an empire, not as a nation. In a democratic way the USA wouldn't ignore international laws and customs just because noone is in the place to punish them for doing so. If you would examine your economics textbooks a bit more in-depth, you would realise that Japan beat the US economy on a lot of points, pushed the usa out of a lot of markets in the 80ies. It needs a bit longer explanation. After WW2 USA administration assumed that the soviets are 20 years behind technologically at the time. They were proven wrong by the A-bomb two years after, the hydrogen-bomb and sputnik and Gagarin. The administration had a panic reaction and realised that they need to improve the education in the states drastically, which happened in the 60ies (i'm thinking about bleeding edge science here, so universities and laboratories mainly). They pushed a TON of money into the education system and into so called "base or basic research". They came up with a lot of progress and inventions, and the electronical industry LIVES from those inventiones UP UNTIL TODAY. The USA, however stopped these researches because of the economic changes, think of oil crisis, etc. This gave place for Japan in the 80ies to grab markets, because although japan didnt run any base research, they improved the technology they bought from the USA, so that's why it had a big impact on US economy. I have to note that most of these info is from a course i'm attending now and the reasoning i presented is from my teacher specialized in this subject [hps.elte.hu]
I'm not saying that something similar is going on with the EU atm, just that there are consequences if someone ruins the education system and that the USA seems to make bad decisions when messing with the economy.
Re:I Love How Many US Folk Still Don't Get The EU. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. Those have gone to South China.
India.
I'll see you in Brussels, then, because that'd be the EU.
We're pretty much running along on the momentum of our past accomplishments here, although that momentum is considerable and should carry us for a decade or so before the decline becomes undeniable and the inevitable bickering about whose fault it is kicks in. The very idea of globalization is that countries do what they are undeniably best at. What is the US these days better at than any other country?
That'd be spending money.
So become an invetment banker, young man, and specialize in investing the accumulated wealth of two hundred years of domestic economic accomplishment overseas. Or if that career path is not open to you, there is always retail.
There is no will to chart out a brighter course for the people who make their living by creating things or performing services. If you doubt this, look at education reform. Oh, I have no objection to "No Child Left Behind", other than its utter lack of boldness. I was born on the tail edge of the baby boom, so I know what serious, shitting-your-pants-because-of-sputnik education reform looks like, and that ain't it.
Software patents are just another example of something that is good for capital but bad for people who create (although ostensibly it is for their benefit!). As innovation grinds to a halt because of legal uncertainty, companies can continue to exploit their past innovations without creating any new ones. For Joe Engineer, his job security is only good as his next innovation. His part ones are signed over to the company.
Re:The Europeans Get It Right, Again (Score:5, Insightful)
But those same people aren't held responsible when the corporation harms someone or breaks the law. Limited liability gives investors all of the freedom and none of the responsibility that would normally go with a free market.
Re:The Europeans Get It Right, Again (Score:2, Insightful)
You are aware, I assume, that individual voters run corporations and that it would be a trivial book keeping matter to redirect the campaign funds business gives through the respective business owners who could, then, legally give them to the people running for office?
Don't worry, it will come back. (Score:3, Insightful)
But, come to think of it, let the damn thing pass, individual countries who do not want it can very well refuse to honour and protect software patent law.
There are precedents: even though abortion was illegal in Canada (until the law that forbade abortion was declared unconstitutional), Québec refused not only to uphold that law, but even funded abortions.
So if a particular country wants to have a thriving software industry, it can simply tell patent holders to shove their patents where their constipatedness shines...
Re:The Europeans Get It Right, Again (Score:3, Insightful)
Business is what free people do. Business is an act, not something tangible.
Businesses are NOT people anymore than the shopping spree you did last week-end is human.
Corporations are NOT human, so they cannot enjoy any kind of human right whatsoever.
Re:Constitution (Score:1, Insightful)
Currently "patents" (by lack of a better word : "goverment endorced extortion papers" would be a better description for quite a few of them) should have a *limited* scope, and only so you can *retrieve monetary investments*.
Many of the current "patents" have been given to "discoveries" that have *no development-cost* to them (they where just a bright idea, with no follow-up). But still they are used to back the demand for licence-fees.
It strangles innovation, instead of helping it grow.
At the rate of change of software (IT in general), no patent should last for more than about 3 years. If you could not get your *investment* back by than, you won't ever
Re:So why s this bill such a bad thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Europeans Get It Right, Again (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, no, whether or not a not-real legally-defined entity like a corporation pays taxes is pretty much irrelevant to whether the government considers corporations people. The problem is the Supreme Court decisions giving corporations "personhood". See this link [yeoldecons...shoppe.com] for an interesting little essay on how the Supreme Court managed to "create" corporate personhood.
They (the SC) may have successfully tied the concept of corporate personhood to enough precedents to make it "Constitutional", which means that the legislatures would have to pass a Constitutional Amendment to explicitly "undefine" corporate personhood. Of course, given corporate lobbying power, what do you think the chances of THAT happening is?
Actually, a Constitutional Amendment to restrict personhood to real-life individuals makes a _lot_ more sense to me than a stupid amendment to define marriage as "between one man and one woman". Hey, if corporations have personhood, can you marry a corporation?
Re:Corporate personhood the root of all evil (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing that people/organizations in power do, is try to get even some more power, which helps in getting even more power later on, which at the end destablizes the social system in one way or another.
In fact, concentration of power into too few hands is the single most important reason why manysocial systems collaped in the past. Examples are everywhere. From the roman empire to the middle aged church-state, form the indian 4000 old castes-based system, (in which not surprisingly the priests become the dominant caste), to even the soviet so called "social" system
We as humans need to learn from hour history and enforce very strict rules that limit power accumulation, in all its incarnations.
Re:The Europeans Get It Right, Again (Score:5, Insightful)
(Disclaimer: IANAL.)
That's not entirely true. Corporations have the right to enter into contracts as people. They like to pretend to have other rights, such as freedom of speech. As I understand it, the NRA tried to get a radio station last year to bypass restrictions on their speech-- that is, the tried to join the constitutionally protected press.
Despite the corporate personhood implied by Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886), corporations have not been allowed to vote or excercize similar rights.
If you honestly believe that corporations have all the rights of a person, try to get married to a corporate entity. If Starbucks spurns you, try a non-profit entity such as the ACLU.
Re:I'd like to see some examples.... (Score:3, Insightful)
You are dead right in that corporations rarely exist as part of the nation-state idea anymore, but they still provide jobs for someone, somewhere. When a corporation who provides jobs moves factories to another country, it creates jobs in that other country. Those people are now the families of the corporation.
As to culpability and liability, that again raises interesting questions. If you polled the workers at GM if they thought a large monitary judgement against GM was 'unfair' - dollars to dounuts they would say "yes!" Do you think the people employed by Enron or Worldcom went to work every day saying "gee, I hope someone brings my economic life to a screeching halt by closing down that sham of a company I work for"?
People are looking to protect their own economic self interest, so pointing to unhappy workers at one plant means you need to look at the happy workers somewhere else.
What I personally have a problem with is companies slavish devotion to quarterly profit statments. But there again, I can show a clear reason why they do. Companies are owned by shareholders, and that's what shareholders want- quarterly returns. I think corporate boards often make shortsighted decisions to satisfy that need at the cost of long term sustainability.
And in the end, that hurts the 'people' who work for them, no matter what country they are in.
Re:The Europeans Get It Right, Again (Score:1, Insightful)
The united states (and most countries) denies that right to people to. Try getting married to some one of the same sex.
Re:The Europeans Get It Right, Again (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as what you say goes, this is true. However, let's say that you and 3 other people all give Harry $200 each, and say that you expect $250 each back after a specified time, as long as he handles the money the way you want him to. You then tell Harry that you've all decided together (with you personally being a bit unsure about this, but the other two overruled you) that you'll pull your money out unless he gets your interest money very soon, and if you don't see that he has a gun and a mask in his posession within 3 hours, you'll pull out your money immediately.
You see, although a lot of people look on the stock exchange purely as a way to grow their money, investing in a company involves becoming part of the group that decides how that company is run. The Board is responsable to the shareholders, and the employees are responsable to the Board. The Corporation is made up of the shareholders and the Board, and they hire employees. It is ultimately the shareholders as a body who are responsable for what happens in a company. If the Board does something against the wishes of the shareholders, the Board bears full responsability for those actions. If the employees do something against the wishes of the Board, those employees bear responsability for those actions. Thus, just as parents (the corporation) are responsable for the actions of their children, investors are responsable for the actions of the corporation -- and the individuals are also responsable for their individual actions.
Re:The Europeans Get It Right, Again (Score:1, Insightful)
This analogy is begging the question. For it to work, it assumes that a corporation is a separate person with a mind of its own. If Bob's $500 loan somehow gave him partial ownership of your free will, then the situations would be comparable. A CEO is obligated (by law, not just by contract) to maximize the return on that $500, you are not.
Corporate crime tends to be more ongoing than your example. Suppose a corporation has been increasing its pollution over several years, up to 99% of the legal limit. Here the CEO is just carrying out the will of the shareholders. Then the company pollutes just a little bit more. Now suddenly, the CEO is a lone wolf criminal and the shareholders are completely off the hook? I don't buy it.
Should he be completely off the hook either? How about something in between? If your father happened to sell his stock at the high before the scandal was discovered, why should he get to keep his ill-gotten gains? He should lose any profits he made trading Wal-Mart's stock during the period in which illegal activity was occuring. Shareholders do bear some of the blame in their silence. Your puppy/pimp conspiracy could never succeed without the shareholders willfully looking the other way as long as their portfolios increase. They can hire these shady CEOs and turn a blind eye because they know that there are no real consequences for them personally. Occasionally the shareholders do get burned (as with Enron), but overall the expected value of investing in a criminal enterprise is positive.
Re:The Europeans Get It Right, Again (Score:3, Insightful)
While corps are a way to pool resources, they also grant legal rights combined with (usually) vast cash resources. Combine those two and you have an entity that pretty much does what it wants (see Microsoft:MSFT).
I've been to the EU many times and can definitely feel the 'work to live and not live to work' vibe. In fact, I'm ok with some of the US capitalist ideals and values. I definitely believe in hard work and have no prob putting as much as I can into projects I see worthy.
However, the way the US capitalist system is now, is unbalanced and not sustainable. While EU does have corporations, you don't see any CEO's of energy companies here talking about green energy like the CEO of BP does. After two world wars, the EU and its people finally understands that they are here for the long haul.
Their rejection of patents isn't a us vs. them thing, it's more like, they understand the importance of software in the coming future and instead of allowing the priviledged, wealthy few (corporations), to control it all, they'd rather let everyone compete on a more equal level.
Granted, Europe is not the holy grail of life. And they have bad guys there too. But at some point you have to go in another direction. You can't keep going in a straight line and hope u don't run into a wall. The capitalist system has served the US pretty well (some would argue not) up to this point. But Bush's ownership society and collapsing of social programs will hurt only the poor and elderly even more. And what good is a society that doesn't help the poor and elderly? It's in the best interest of everyone that we are all taken care of to some point. Of course how much is always the debate.
While I don't see the law governing corps being substantially changed by government - ever - it will be up to those not just on the inside (cuz, hey, why should they change when they got it good?) but by those outside as well. They'll demand more responsibility, integrity, and ethical behavior from the corps. And it'll happen because not only is it happening elsewhere - like the EU - but because it's just plain not sustainable.
So, sure, give credit to the fact that people do make up a corporation. But hold them accountable for what they're involved with. And bring down some of the barriers that protect them so easily and thusly encourage them to step over the line.
How much does that VP soccer mom, whose 'group of people' (did) own all the water rights to Bolivia's water, feel for those other children? No much because she has no one to answer to. She is shielded behind laws designed to protect that behavior and the bottom line.
Re:I Love How Many US Folk Still Don't Get The EU. (Score:3, Insightful)
Empire is the key here. And like every empire, ours will pull back. As I've mentioned before, the current path of the US empire is not sustainable. We generate the majority of the world's green house gasses, consume the majority of it's oil, wage war with the most powerful military, and try to dictate one set of values while engaging with another. At some point, we're just gonna get tired of it. And honsetly, I think we're getting close to that.
Hey, I love the US. But I'm also a globalist because it's unstoppable and frankly, I'm not afraid of the world economy or infusion of cultures. You can even look back, from an anthropological point of view, and see societies and groups around the world, that either isolated themselves directly or indirectly, pretty much always died off if they couldn't assimilate.
The EU is on the right path, but only because of their proximity to each other and thousands of years of war. In the end, they've finally figured it out - they're sick of killing each other and realize that working together is a better way. Our empire at some point will realize this too. And not just from an economical standpoint, but a social one as well.
It's an unstoppable law of nature that those that can't adapt get plowed under. We'll see what happens to our rigid robber barons of the present...
Re:Constitution (Score:3, Insightful)
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"
First of all you have absolutely no right to patent something that is not an invention. Writing down a mathematical function or a series of mental steps is not an invention. No one involved has any objection to patenting inventions. The objection is to the attempt to extened patents to non-inventions. It is an objection to software patents.
Secondly you have no "right" to patent anything. It would help if you quoted the constitition correctly. What you quoted was a HALF SENTENCE. It has absolutely no subject. Read in isolation it is absolutely incoherent. The way that portion of the constitution is written can be a little tricky if you aren't familiar with it. Notice that the only period is way down at the end of clause eighteen, eleven clauses later. The first half of that sentence is waaaaay back at the begining of clause 1. Everything is broken up with semicolons, and it seems nobody today has any idea how to use semicolons correctly. To be honest I doubt I could use a semicolon properly. Anyway... the proper way to find a sentence in there is:
The Congress shall have Power [...] to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries []
Power number 1 through power number 7 are snipped out in that first '[...]', power number 8 is the listed Progress Clause, and powers 9 through 18 are snipped out in that second '[...]'. Congress has the power to do each of those things if it chooses to do so. You have no inherent right to a copyright or a patent. Congress has the power to create copyrights and patents if they want. Just as they have the power to collect taxes. However congress was perfectly free not to create copyright and patents, just as they were free not to impose taxes. Congress is perfectly free to pass a new law declining to grant copyrights anymore and perfectly free to pass a new law declining to grant patents anymore, just as congress is perfectly free to pass new laws eliminating various taxes. I seem to recall such laws being referred to as "tax releif", so I guess that would make the other laws "copyright relief" and "patent releif". Grin.
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