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Richard Stallman on EU Software Patents 262

Posted by CmdrTaco from the doing-his-thing dept.
schreibmaschine writes "Richard Stallman writes in The Guardian that the defeat of the EU directive has bought time, but that the pro-patent forces will regroup and try again."
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Richard Stallman on EU Software Patents More

Richard Stallman on EU Software Patents

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  • Interesting article from RMS (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    An amazingly focussed article by RMS. He stayed on the patent topic without deviating into a free-software diatribe, and seems to have a handle on the EU situation at large.

    The only problem is... I don't. I RTFA, but I still lack the background on how this all works, between ministers, and parliaments, and councils, what a "directive" is, and who listens to who. Could one of our EU slashdotters enlighten?
    • seems to have a handle on the EU situation at large.

      Interestingly, the impression i got was exactly the opposite. Stallman seems to lack knowledge of how the EU works. This is best illustrated by his "proposal" for changes in the legislative process.

      • Stallman seems to lack knowledge of how the EU works. This is best illustrated by his "proposal" for changes in the legislative process.

        It's all very well to say that, but haven't said how you think his understand may be lacking or why you feel his proposal is unrealistic. You could be making a valuable point of penetrating insight. Alternatively, you're more likely to be a troll spoutng kneejerk disagreements on a subject of which you know nothing.

        In the absence of evidence, it's very difficult t

        • Well, i thought that his lack of understanding would be obvious to anyone who has read the article, but seeing that it wasn't, i might just as well take the time to give some examples.

          First of all, talking about the European Commission, Stallman says: The Hungarian representative voted for software patents even as his prime minister said Hungary was against them. The point he's missing is that the Hungarian representative in the commission does not have to (and is not supposed to) follow his government's o

    • The only problem is... I don't. I RTFA, but I still lack the background on how this all works, between ministers, and parliaments, and councils, what a "directive" is, and who listens to who. Could one of our EU slashdotters enlighten?

      Well, Ministers sit on the Councils, and the Councils take it in turns to decide who makes the tea. The tea leaves are then read by a team of experts (The EU Commission) who turn them into official Directives/prophecies.

      • I don't know why, but that reminded me a lot of..

        "You see, the corporations finance Team America. And then Team America goes out and the corporations sit there in their, uh in their corporation buildings and, and and see that's, they're all corporationy, and they make money. Mhm."

    • Re:Interesting article from RMS (Score:4, Informative)

      by Lifewish ( 724999 ) on Tuesday August 02, 2005 @10:57AM (#13222389) Homepage Journal
      The Ministers (nominated by their countries) form a Council. This Council produces directives which are then passed to the Parliament (made up of elected MEPs) for ratification (or whatever else they choose to do with them). A directive is, if I understand correctly, roughly equivalent to a US "Bill" - it's a chunk of suggested legislation, which all countries in the EU would then be required to implement in their legislation.

      In this particular case, the Council drafted a universally-loathed directive to legalise software patents. The Parliament made changes and sent it back. The Council stripped out the changes. A rapporteur (negotiator) was appointed; the Council ignored his suggestions completely. The Council refused to actually discuss it despite being legally required to (some of the members of the Council had been told off by their national parliaments and required to change it). Eventually the Parliament threw it out completely.
      • There is 2 rounds where it goes between the council and the parliament.
        The council didnt listen to the parliament, didnt negociate and even tried to bypass them. The parliament needed more than the absolute majority to reject the proposal at the last round. Since they had been so dispised by the council, they voted NO in force.

        Problem is that the european way of handling laws can bypass the democratical circuits. If your parliament is against a law, in most european country the law is dead.
        Not anymore with

        • Since they had been so dispised by the council, they voted NO in force.

          Unfortunately, this is wrong : just look at the figures : 684 votes against, only 14 votes for the directive. Anti-patent MEPs alone wouldn't have been enough to reach the 2/3 quota required for rejection. TFA clearly explains what happened :

          Lobbying and protests continued in Strasbourg until the last day, but on July 5 things took a strange turn. The pro-patent forces decided to kill their own directive and began forming a coalit

    • I'm not sure that RMS has it right - he seems to confuse the council (of ministers) with the committee (made up of commissioners) in contrasting their power, motivations and (most importantly) democratic status with the parliament.

      As far as I understand it, it's like this:

      • the European Parliament is made up of MEPs for whom we all vote in our individual member states;
      • the Council of the European Union contains ministers from the governments of our member states (whom we also elect);
      • the European Commisio

    • Could one of our EU slashdotters enlighten?

      Speaking for most of us, no we can't :-(.

      • Could one of our EU slashdotters enlighten? Speaking for most of us, no we can't :-(.
        Mod parent up. The single most insightful comment on the state of EU government. Probably also the biggest reason the referendum on the constitution in France and the Netherlands was lost. Why vote for something when you don't understand it.
      • A bunch of guys eager to receive money from companies are ruling the country and can screw everything up.

        Or something like that.
      • Well, if you don't take that little time to research this matter (really, it's not that hard or complicated and it's not a closely guarded secret, either) then whose fault is it?
    • > the EU situation

      That's the EU/Linux situation.
    • A "directive" is a decision by the European council of ministers and the EU parliament about how the EU member states have to shape their national law. While a directive is not a law by itself, member states have to adopt it or they will be in violation of the EU treaty.

      A few words about the actors in this game:
      -The council of ministers consists of representatives of the member states' governments. Usually ministers ;-). As the example of the German representative shows, they sometimes vote against the expl
      • Because the European countries have evolved seperately over the last couple of thousand years they all have different legal systems, and that situation is unlikely to change anytime soon. As a result it is not possible to pass exactly the same law in every country and this is where directives come in.

        A directive is a specification of a new law. That specification must then be implemented in each member state's legal framework. It's a bit like a C coder, a LISP coder and a COBOL coder all implementing a spec
    • Let's see, directives are binding regulations passed that must be adopted by all member states within the period specified in the directive. The adoption of the directive often involves changes to national law to make sure that it is legally congruent with the EU directive.

      In terms of the institutional make-up of the EU, it is a complex topic (I wrote a couple of chapters for a recent book on this).

      Traditionally, it used to be that the commission proposes, the council decides, and the parliament advises.

      In
    • A directive is a standard to which national law is required to comply before a certain deadline, otherwise the country can be fined and its justice decisions overturned by appeals to EU courts.

      There is currently no directive standardizing patent law in Europe, and thus there is a lot of legal uncertainty as to the real enforcability of the many patents, including software patents issued by the European Patent Office from country to country.

      Big corporation wanted, on the occasion of a directive cleaning up t
    • Stallman seems to think that patents favor business interests as opposed to the public interest. What he doesn't realize is that patents are anti-business as well. All you have to do is look at how businesses can be threatened, cowed, and destroyed by patent litigation. The public isn't going to be sued out of existence by patent lawyers.

      The interests served by patents are not the public or business in general, but a handful of giant corporations who wish to use armadas of patents to cover for their ineffic

      • Well said. Patents (and copyrights) were originally inteded to provide protection to small businesses or artists. Now those very same laws have simply been extended and convoluted enough to favour large corperations (friends of the king, in feudal-speak) with mountains of lawyers.

        It breaks my heart when I hear somebody quote strong copyright or patent laws as a means of protecting Joe Average and his American Dream. The current state of these laws makes such a claim nearly indistinguishable from a romantic
  • Why cant we work on finding a good middle ground. The people who are for pattents wont care what Stallman says because he is just too Wacked out on the issue to be useful. As far the the Pro-Pattent People are conserned they are protecting their own rights and IP. What needs is some good descussion on the topic and see what both sides are willing to give up. Otherwise nothing will happen.
    • Finding a good middle ground is what the elected politicians are there for.

      Those of us on the anti-patent side of this should be grateful towards Stallman: His radical opinions make the FFII position look more like the reasonable middle-ground that they are looking for.

      If the anti-patent people advocate the "middle-ground" and the pro-patent people don't, then all we have is an actual middle-ground on the pro-patent side.
    • The people who are for pattents wont care what Stallman says because he is just too Wacked out on the issue to be useful.

      Stallman only seems wacko since he is sitting in a culture gone completely mad with Imperial moneylust. In an insane culture, Stallman's sanity is going to seem insane.

      The pro-patent crowd is riding a wave of Imperial insanity as far as it will get them. They know that if they "lose" this year, that they an just keep pushing their agenda next year and will likely win ... since t
      • You need to take a vacation.

        Stallman seems like a wacko because he's a wacko. And reading that creed of yours there just made you seem like a wacko, also. I mean, seriously, who can write something like your last paragraph and not be entirely insane?
    • The people who are for pattents wont care what Stallman says because he is just too Wacked out on the issue to be useful.

      Have you actually read the FA? I suspect not. Mr. Stallman argues very convincibly in a major UK newspaper for our case. That in itself can be put down as a major success for the free software movement.

      I don't know if Mr. Stallman is an unwashed, fanatic, commie, terrorist, GNU/Linux hippie as a lot of people imply, but what I do know - from reading some of his essays and articles - th

      • Not just algorithms, also ideas. With an algorithm there is at least a possibility to work around with another algorithm that does the same thing. When ideas get patented you are stuck for sure.

  • Away from tech (Score:3, Informative)

    by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 02, 2005 @10:50AM (#13222319) Homepage Journal
    Our years-long fight has shown how undemocratic the EU is. It is a system in which bureaucrats can make decisions that, practically speaking, the public can never reverse.
    Software patents aside, this is a really crucial point. Every anti-EU politician in Europe should be hammering on this point (using Software Patents as an example), and on the fact that corruption is so widespread that the EU's own auditors have refused to sign off on the accounts for year after year.
  • "Some governments ceded to threats from mega-corporations. Danish newspapers reported in 2004 that Microsoft had threatened to move a recently acquired company out of Denmark if the government did not put its hand up for patents. Earlier this year, after we had thanked the Polish government for rejecting patents, it bowed to four European mega-corps that threatened to move a laboratory out of the country where they spent perhaps $15m (£8.5m) a year."

    So lets go after the lobby money. Nobody in Europe w

    • No, I'm not really going to use the overhyped T word for something as petty as business, but you get the point. Denmark and Poland represent a potential market of millions of people. If some megacorp wants to storm off and sulk about the business regs there, I'm betting there'll be plenty of home-grown, small, innovative companies willing to support the market in their place, meeting their requirements under business regs and probably doing a lot more for the local economy as well.

      The correct response fro

  • The unelected European commission and the national governments that cannot stand up to business pressure should have no role in forming EU directives. Instead, every directive should start in the European parliament. If approved there, it should go for ratification by an "upper house" representing the people of Europe by means of referendums. These might be arranged in many ways; one would be for each directive to require the approval of a majority of the electorate in countries whose combined populations a

  • The Golden Rule still applies (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MarkEst1973 ( 769601 ) on Tuesday August 02, 2005 @10:56AM (#13222384)
    Those who have the gold make the rules.

    Stallman -- as he usually does -- wrote a well-opinioned piece, but it's money that influences politicians. Stallman doesn't have any, and the FSF not nearly enough to stop M$ or others.

    The patent system will change when enough big companies get tired of it, like IBM's recent call for patent reform [zdnet.com.au]. IBM has the money to push these kinds of issues. Stallman does not.

    • The Golden Rule still applies

      This despicable, toxic, and inaccurate meme needs to die the death it so richly deserves, before it becomes a self-fulfilling expectation that takes all of society down into the toilet from which it was spawned.

      Those who have the gold make the rules. ...until the rabble (that's us, folks) get fed up with it and decide to topple the entire system, society and all. Which typically happens shortly after such notions as yours become commonly accepted.

      Historical examples include th
      • Holy cow, man. What kind of crap do they feed you over there?
        • Holy cow, man. What kind of crap do they feed you over there?

          Well, since "over there" would be the United States, what's your point? Open your eyes, try getting your news from a source other than Fox, and gain a little perspective. The current administration is systematically wrecking every democratic institution we have, placing us squarely on a path that can only lead to rather dire consiqences. But go ahead, launch ad hominem attacks against the messenger and live in denial.

          And don't come crying to me,
          • You're the second person here to blame FOX news for the state of patents in Europe. Was that a typo or are you really that fucking stupid?

            Sure, go ahead and pretend that if only Kerry had been elected we would now be living in a truly enlightened utopian socity. Whatever rocks your boat. But don't go blaming conservatives for software patents in Europe. Bush and Cheny may vivisect kittens before breakfast each morning, but they have precious little influence over Brussels.
      • If you think patents are evil enough that you're willing to violently reorganize society to get rid of them, then you need to talk to your psychiatrist about adjusting your medication.

        If you haven't noticed by now, Europe is currently a democracy. But the time you get together enough people with guns and benzine filled bottles to start a revolution, you'll ALSO have enough people to kick the bums out of office. So why not just kick them out of office, instead of murdering your neighbors and burning down the
        • You have only one vote in a representative democracy, and usually it comes down to voting for one of two parties, so it is a yes or no.

          This means your vote will often be decided by just one issue - all the other "minor" issues can be resolved by the politicians at their whim. Software patents failed the first round in Europe because it came to the attention of lawmakers ^^ that some people did not think it was a minor issue. It also helped that it turned out that the eurocracy was unable to formulate rules
    • Interesting, why then those who has gold insist on continuing this big lie about democracy and 'possibilities for everyone'? Does it makes them proud or something?

      Just curious...

  • FFII web site taken down (Score:5, Informative)

    by alanxyzzy ( 666696 ) on Tuesday August 02, 2005 @10:58AM (#13222406)
    IN related news, this ZDNet article [zdnet.co.uk] reports that the German software company Nutzwerk has obtained a court order taking the FFII's web site [ffii.org] offline.

    In the meantime, please use nosoftwarepatents.com [nosoftwarepatents.com] instead, where you will find [nosoftwarepatents.com] more information on the issue.

  • interesting (Score:3, Insightful)

    by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Tuesday August 02, 2005 @11:03AM (#13222447) Homepage Journal
    Europeans are fortunate that French and Dutch voters conclusively rejected the proposed EU constitution. The document explicitly prioritised the interests of business over the public. It slightly increased the power of the parliament while greatly increasing the power of the council of ministers: in other words, it would have made the union less democratic. The rejection provides an opportunity to consider something better. I have a proposal. - RMS is bringing up an interesting point here. Had the EU constitution passed, the resulting government body would have been able to impose regulations on formerly sovereign contries and the process would have been far less democratic than it is now. The United Europe government would probably be even worse than the US government in such issues. Viva la France?

    • Nonsense. European law is already binding on "formerly sovereign" member states (and has been since 1963 [wikipedia.org]). The EU constitution actually would have shifted more power towards the European Parliament, which would have made a fiasco like the patent thing less likely.

      I think that the defeat of the constitution was a huge mistake. It kind of dooms Europe to less relevance on the world stage and years of stagnation.

      • Re:EU constitution would have been an improvement (Score:4, Insightful)

        by o'reor ( 581921 ) on Tuesday August 02, 2005 @04:38PM (#13225818) Journal
        Indeed, the EU law is already binding on member states, but I have to disagree with you and share the views of RMS on that point : the new constitutional project would have made the EU less democratic and (even) more corporate-driven than it currently is.

        With this text, although the EU parliament would have had the power to oppose decisions taken by the EU Council of ministers, the decisions would have been as messy to take or to oppose as with the current EU software, since this directive project was already being discussed in co-decision -- the way nearly every directive would have been, had the text been approved. As we have all seen with the software patents directive, there was still plenty of room for sneaky things to be done by the Council and the Commission to push the agenda of the European Patents Office against the will of the Parliament, and as RMS says, even though the Parliament rubbed their noses this time, they will surely be back with a revenge.

        However, if the constitutional treaty had been voted in, the Commission and the Council would have had even more powers; the Commission could have taken "european decisions" (the equivalent of directives, that have force of law) on its own, without any possible democratic check and balance over these : not even the EU Council would have a say on that.

        Finally, let us not forget that the inherent flaw of the current EU institutions is that the Council of Ministers has the legislative power at the european scale, and the same ministers apply these european laws using their executive power at the national scale. This is already in contradiction with the principles of separation of powers.

        So sure, it will be a while until the EU gathers again around a constitution project. But I think that voting against this one was the right thing to do -- and I for one did it.

    • When they put on a show, and it's a hit
      No one tries to censor it
      Fifty million Frenchmen can't be wrong.
      And when a book is selling at it's best
      It isn't stopped; it's not suppressed.
      Fifty million Frenchmen can't be wrong.

      Whenever they're dry
      For brandy or rye,
      To get it, they don't have to give up their right eye.
      And when we brag about our liberty
      And they laugh at you and you and you and me
      Fifty million Frenchmen can't be wrong.

  • Keep it up RMS! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LibrePensador ( 668335 ) on Tuesday August 02, 2005 @11:04AM (#13222455) Journal
    Stallman exemplifies that old adage that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance or something to that effect.

    For all the BS he often gets from the newly-lobotomized Microsoft "ain't that bad" and "Apple's so cool that we must lick its DRM" crowd, he has much respect for consistently fighting the good fight, which is something that is rare to find in these funny times when people gloat about not believing or standing up for anything.
    • I'm sorry I don't have any mod points.
      I agree with you completely.

      I know there are people that get allergy when they heard the word "freedom" especially when it comes to software. I've come to realize that that's the most important feature. For exaple I know that people use Linux for: security, cost reasons. However those are features that can be replicated by others: Mac is pretty secure, Window XP SP2 is much more secure than the crap before and although few people here would belive it I'm sure Microsoft
  • Great Rovian (as in Karl Rove) strategy. Propose something so out of whack with common sense that by claiming to be willing to go for the common ground, you end up getting what you really wanted anyway because the ground has shifted so much towards your position that the middle point really only reflects your interests.

    No sir,software patents stifle innovation and serve no useful social purpose and thus must be defeated.
    • My comment was in response to this one [slashdot.org].

      Unfortunately, I was careless and it got posted in the general discussion.


    • Great Rovian (as in Karl Rove) strategy. Propose something so out of whack with common sense that by claiming to be willing to go for the common ground, you end up getting what you really wanted anyway because the ground has shifted so much towards your position that the middle point really only reflects your interests.

      No sir,software patents stifle innovation and serve no useful social purpose and thus must be defeated.

      Raymond Smullyan tells a story something like this;
      Two children are walking down the s

  • Every time the patent issue comes up on slashdot, people rant about how little sense it all makes. Perhaps instead of trying to make sense of the patents, we should simply acknowledge the fact that people generally act primarily out of self interest. Companies are the same, amplified tenfold because they have no "conscience" as an individual does.

    Politicians have always been influenced by business. Business has the money, and politicians are human. Therefore until we have some kind of semi-godlike being who
  • I disagree with RMS in saying that the way to prevent software patent for being enforced in Europe is to have individual sovereignty of countries over their patent laws. The votes in the Council have proved that individual countries easily cave in to corporate interest. The best hope to durably keep software patents from Europe is to have them explicitely banned by EU directive.
    A small but prosperous country like Denmark caved in to corporate pressure. A country with not much vested interest in existing
    • There's a big difference between a country caving, and an EU representative caving. The problem is that EU reps are much more easily bought than are individual countries' laws. The EU offers a bonanza for corporate corruption.
      • The Commission is one thing, the Council another. The obvious problem with the commission is that it is non-elected and non-accountable, however to a certain extent. We must remember that a commission was cornered into resignation by a parliementary enquiry a while ago, and this Italian homophobic dude who was kept out also based on parliementary pressure. The Commission is supposedly strictly technocratic and apolitical, and in reality very strongly ideologically molded into a free-market worshipping so
  • For another Tech area, Telecommunications, in 1984 it was wisely judged that Competition Law was insufficient to encourage diversity and competition. Competition Law works mostly in terms of Monopolies, defined at near 40%. It was feared that the major telcos would just form oligopoloies and keep out competition.

    So in 1984 the UK developed Oftel, and Oftel came up with the notion of Significant Market Power (SMP). This comes into effect at 25% of the market. This has now been adopted into EU law.
    Being an

    • One of the major objections to software patents is that there is not a court in any land that is capable of understanding the issues involved in the fast moving field of software, and hence the only possible outcome is that the party with most money wins. In the general case, no equitable resolution is possible, and hence no patent law is feasible at present.

      The other major objection is that software by definition implements algorithms, which are, in essence, indistinguishable from mathematical formulae. M

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