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.
1-0 (Score:4, Interesting)
So why s this bill such a bad thing (Score:3, Interesting)
So why is this such a bad thing?
Re:The Europeans Get It Right, Again (Score:2, Interesting)
Cheers
Jeremy
Re:Oh, The Horror (Score:5, Interesting)
Pressure on EU to vote this Software Patent Law (Score:5, Interesting)
Rocard said : "We never could have talked a common language with the companies representatives we met - in particular those from Microsoft. Speaking about free ideas circulation, free access to knowledge, was like speaking chinese to them. In their way of thinking, everything that is not usable for immediate profit cease to be a growth vector. They don't seem to be able to understand that an invention which is a pure spirit creation can't be pattented. It's simply terrifying. Many of us, at the Parliament, agree to say that they never have know such a pressure and such a verbal violence during their parliamentary work. It is a huge case."
18 may 2004, Commission presents a new text even more liberal than the first one, and try to impose it during Agriculture Minister Concil, which primary objective was FISHING. Thanks to Poland interventions, the vote is avoided.
"Concerning France, no word from it. Jacques Chirac claimed himself against extensive software pattenting during his presidential campaing. But the current industry minister, Patrick Devedjian said nothing against the text."
A Question (Score:5, Interesting)
But if someone does come up with something truly unique that is expressed in software, how can this be legally protected so someone else doesn't steal your work after one or one-half year?
Perhaps there should be no software patents at all, just some sort of legal copyright protection for 5 years or so. But how is that uniqueness defined anyway? At what point does a subsection of code become unique enough to be protected?
As me ol' chums would say, this truly is a sticky wicket!
Corporate personhood the root of all evil (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Europeans Get It Right, Again (Score:3, Interesting)
This would also go far in eliminating political finance problems. If they don't have that "freedom of speech" ability to make contributions, the parties would have to rely expressly on federal campaign funds and those from individual voters.
Re:big deal (Score:4, Interesting)
Programmers are affected (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So why s this bill such a bad thing (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't patent code, you patent the _method_ for doing something.
This is a HUGE difference.
If the patent were just on the code, you could change just a few variable names, and sell it as your own.
By patenting the method, then you control the very idea.
Theoretically, it could lead to openness (not Open like OSI) because you have to disclose the method in the patent application. But unfortunately, software method patents take 40 months to get processed, so by the time your method is actually granted a patent, the state of the art has far surpassed your idea.
European Freedom (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The Europeans Get It Right, Again (Score:3, Interesting)
Wasn't this the driving idea behind The Truman show [imdb.com]. Scary... let's not give them any ideas ok?
Software is information (Score:2, Interesting)
Because a software implementation of the RSA public key encryption algorithm amounts to mere information that can be published in a printed book, perhaps with a CD-ROM included. A hardware encryption device cannot; it has to be sold to end-users unit by unit.
This may not sound like such a big deal, but consider the implications for the publishing business. When someone gets a patent on that hardware device, sale of any infringing products will have to cease (or royalties be paid). When the algorithm described and implemented in your book is patented by somebody other than you, are you going to withdraw it from publication? Will people still be able to borrow copies sold to libraries, or are those to be withdrawn from the shelves too?
Note you did nothing illegal, akin to copyright infringement, by publishing unpatended code in the first place. Therefore those copies already in circulation aren't pirate copies. You just have to stop "using" the invention for commercial purposes (such as selling copies of the code) once someone is granted a patent and tells you to stop. This can never happen with copyright, which is always granted to the author without the need to apply for it, and without the comparably broad scope that patents enjoy.
What good is freedom of speech, if somebody else can buy an exclusive right from the government to say something vaguely similar to what I said, and thereby stop me from saying it? If you think political statements can't be made in a programming language, think again.
I'd like to see some examples.... (Score:2, Interesting)
That's one of the things wrong with corporations right off the bat, you have to identify all the people involved, just not some of the people. Leave out any humans in the mix, and you are working with skewed data. Money all by itself does nothing, "capital" does not work for you, it just sits there, it takes actual humans doing actual work to make anything of any so called "investment". These corporations get chartered inside a nation, yet no loyalty to that nation or it's people working for them, their original workers, is required to keep their charter in that nation. Foreign chartered corporations are allowed to come in and decide how to use or abuse citizens inside that nation. Uhh, why is that? That's just pure nuts really.
You could then get right into the political process and the whole mess of purchasing government,who can cut the largest check all at once to bribe their way in to get laws skewed to their favor. Or the phenomena that industrial cartels or "trade groups" are lawful everywhere, but "right to work" states with their "fire at will" laws make unionization efforts a moot point when it comes to practicality from the workers POV. They can move the jobs, but it's very hard for most workers to be able to adapt to that as fast or as easily by being able to move themselves and their familes of little leaguers someplace where their cost of living can drop to the level where the sudden "no check at all" can pay for normal things like housing, food, transportation, med care, etc. Show me anyplace in the US where even a single person can live on 5$ a day total pay without living in a cardboard box in an alley someplace, yet that's what the corporations can do in actual fact, force you to compete for your job at that level.
There's something to be said on both sides of the issue, I will grant that readily, but all in all the political and legal system is obviously heavily skewed towards the 1% of the population who own the most "stuff" now, buried inside a bewildering array of daisy chained and interconnected corporations, each layer designed to protect against accountability, identification of ownership, and to shield from any rational responsibility and totally ignored as to any "of benefit to society" as a whole. The other 99% of the population are left to pound sand. That isn't just empty rhetoric, it's modern reality. Here, I can give an easy to see exact example. EVERY study, poll, survey, etc taken in the last several years (that I have seen anyway) indicates quite clearly, with zero ambiguity, the huge overwhelming majority of the US people want to end illegal immigration, to close the borders down better and stop the invasion, because they can see it is more harmful than not. Yet, it still continues with useless babble at the government level. Wonder why that is? Could it be the top corporate 1% and their local wannabes in the corporate world profit from that,they pay off and control government to let the real laws slide in favor of picking and choosing what they want "enforced", as opposed to everyone else, who suffer in many numerous ways? Could it be just the bribed off and controlled aspect of corporations running the government that have allowed that to occur? That should be obvious to see anyway.
Anyhow, here's the challenge, like to see some examples where all the workers inside this corporation with kids in little league "voted" or "approved" to eliminate their jobs and send their jobs someplace else and put themselves into unemployment.
Re:Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
Communist Chinese = capitalist innovators
Communist Europeans = regressive throwbacks
Re:1-0 (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps a long fight, but not a constant one.
Firstly.. the EU almost certainly going to have a directive on the patentability of software. Whether that directive allows or bans software patents isn't determined. But both sides want a directive, and that's what's going to happen.
Once a directive is passed into law, the issue will be buried for several years. It's the rules of the game. Once an issue has been settled, the politicians won't bring it up again for a while, no matter how strong the lobby. It's how politics works. They don't have time to sit around pushing the same issues back and forward. There are other things to do.
And I'm not sure it will go on forever anyway. I think that in the long run, the folly of software patents will prove itself.
Re:The Europeans Get It Right, Again (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't see anyone calling for people to lose the right to vote because they work for Wal-Mart. I don't see people calling for the end to individual donations to campaigns.
Get a grip! Corporations are a way to pool resources to get tasks completed in an efficient manner
Yes to "get tasks completed". Not to bribe public officials. No, government subsidies to companies/people that provide the president/congressman/whatever-voting-official a hefty kickback are bad on any continent.
This business of trying to make out corporations as some kind of faceless inhuman creature is just silly.
Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com] has a good tutorial on this. These CxOs and what have you get behind the corporate veil and go hog wild. When they get caught behind the wheel after a drunken joy ride they go "I'm a an incompetent manager who had no idea what the people in my charge were doing. I guess I'll take my $20 million bonus for being a loser and go home now." [cnn.com] And hey, thats ok, because even though they're paid to be the "face" of the corporation, they're just as blameless as everyone else in it.
Maybe if the people in charge didn't hide behind the corporate veil when they screw up (or better yet, not screw up in the first place), people would quit calling them "faceless inhuman creatures".
Re:So why s this bill such a bad thing (Score:3, Interesting)
"The Gray Album" is a copyrighted work, but the _method_ of producing music was not prevented by that copyright.
So while the copyright might protect your code from just changing the variables, it wouldn't protect it from being analyzed for how it does what it does, and them being copied in every aspect of functionality.
Trade secrets can be used to do that, but then sharing the code gets to be problematic. You have to show to the court that you are vigorously protecting that secret.
Patents _could_ offer an alternative whereby the method is made public, and you only retain the right to collect rents from people using your idea for a limited time. but it makes sharing with a broad audience very easy.
This is part of why MOST standards bodies deal with patents and why standards participating companies love patents as well. they can sign the right to the patent over in such a way that it protects them and still allows them to collect money from competitors, but get the idea into the broadest circulation.
Re:European Freedom (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:So why s this bill such a bad thing (Score:2, Interesting)
I thought so too, but from what I understand, the EPO is outside the law. (There is even a story going around how the CEO of the EPO physically assaulted on of his co-workers, and nothing could be done against it [ilo.org]--that's how much the EPO is outside the law.)
So how could the EPO be made to follow the law?
This article is all wrong! (Score:2, Interesting)
This is false!
Read http://wiki.ffii.org/Restart050217En: [ffii.org] for correct info: "The new Commission is not obliged to follow the Parliament's request and they might still try to "keep all options open" and ask the Council to adopt the zombie agreement of last May as an A-item without a new vote." and so on.
We are very, very far away from victory.
Statistical Mechanics, Emergence, and Corporations (Score:2, Interesting)
IMO the same thing holds true for corporations. They are made up of thousands of people, most of them entirely decent people. However, in the agglomerate there is usually only one thing that holds them together, one thing they have in common: the desire to have the corporation survive. None of them would rank survival of the company as the most important part of their lives, but all of the first-rank desires of these people are different, and so wash out under averaging.
This is even more clearly the case when we consider the stockholders of public companies. Most often people who invest in companies are not interested in the behavior of those companies; they think of their investment as being no different than a CD or a savings bond, and so are only concerned with the rate of return. There are some mutual funds out there which only invest in "socially responsible" companies, but they're not too widespread and are generally painted with a broad brush (no tobacco and alcohol companies, for instance). Companies are not generally rewarded by their stockholders for anything other than surviving and being profitable. In addition, if I recall correctly, federal law requires that corporations make being profitable their primary objection, to protect investors. (I'm not sure about the details of this last point.)
Another scientific field of study known as complex systems says that complex behavior can arise from simple components, and that the interaction of components can cause behavior that is entirely different than one would predict from the components separately. (Consider that you are made up of cells, and yet do not behave like a cell.) In the case of corporations, we have a large group of people, mostly rational, caring people, with a common goal of corporate survival and profit. I believe that the interactions of these people create something much different than the people themselves: organizations whose sole drive is survival. If I may be metaphorical, they are like predators always hungry, always looking for their next meal, and their sustenance is capital. They are amoral creatures, but very intelligent.
This behavior is not necessarily caused by the extreme greed of any one person or group of people in the company. I suspect that it is a natural condition that will occur in any large-enough corporation, and it can be prevented only with the intervention of strong-willed leaders who force the company to follow other moral precepts.
This is my theory, anyway.
Re:The Europeans Get It Right, Again (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Programmers are affected (Score:0, Interesting)
We know that Linux infringes on at least Microsoft's FAT patent (and Microsoft would probably have eventually done something about it except that the embedded device cartel had enough money to drag Microsoft back to the patent office with evidence that the patent is bogus)
Re:The Europeans Get It Right, Again (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words, the corporation that breaks the law to the degree where jail seems necessary, should effectively be nationalized for a period. That should be a sufficient scare tactic to convince them to obey the law; after all, that's the philosophy of individual legal punishments, right?
So