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Re: [LUG] Your patent MEP's

 

So what do we do?, write to them and ask them to support the fsf against software patents?

Paul

Neil Williams wrote:
The UK has two full members in JURI, and two substitutes. The full members are Theresa Villiers of the Conservatives, and Diana Wallis of the Liberal Democrats. The two substitutes, Arlene McCarthy (Labour) and Malcolm Harbour (Tories), already formed a pro-patent duo in the EP's first reading on the directive.

http://www.theresavilliers.com/
http://www.dianawallismep.org.uk/

According to NoSoftwarePatents.com's Florian Müller, "we'll be lucky if even one British MEP supports the restart in JURI. It would be the best for almost every UK company that produces or uses software, but an MEP like Malcolm Harbour is much closer to some non-British large corporations than to his own electorate."

http://www.ffii.org.uk/players/people/meps/conservative/harbour.html

When reading Malcolm Harbour's letter you might be interested to know that Malcolm Harbour has used every opportunity in ITRE and JURI to promote program claims, i.e. claims on:-- a program [ on disk ], charaterised that upon loading into memory [ something eminently technical ] happens
whose effect is that publication and distribution of one's own software can become a direct infringement and programmers as well as ISPs can be sued.


[my comment:] Note well: ISP's have a general history of caving in to lawsuits and injunctions that penalise small numbers of their customers, ostensibly to protect the majority. This one claim could kill all FTP software sites in Europe - including all distribution download sites, it could also mean an end to software on DVD's with magazines. It may be aimed against P2P sites, but it will not be restricted to those. It is impossible to search through a Debian or RedHat FTP site and check every line of code against the patent database - patents are not written as source code but as legal overviews, generalised and unspecific. The meaning of a patent is always in doubt outside the patent office. Just checking 100 lines of code for patent violations can cost £500 - a basic KDE install may rely on hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of lines. Patents have already been filed on software, the only issue is whether these will be enforceable in Europe. The patents that already exist are vague, general, multi-platform, multi-architecture and cover a wide range of programming tools. It's not just C, or Java, or C#, EXISTING patents cover issues coded in HTML, PHP, ASP, Javascript, graphics, client->server communication, tabbed pages, media formats, convenience routines like ordering a gift on behalf of someone else, building databases behind websites, visual metaphors like an image of a TV . . . . http://webshop.ffii.org/

http://www.icdp.net/malcolm.htm
Malcolm Harbour is a well known figure in the European motor industry, with a wide range of contacts at industry and government level.


He [Florian Müller] recommended to UK voters to primarily contact London's MEP Theresa Villiers because "her voting record shows that she took a moderate position in the 1st reading compared to most other Tories". In NoSoftwarePatent.com's lobbying guide, voters are cautioned that Graham Watson, leader of the Liberal Democrats in the EP, is rumored to have been persuaded by Microsoft to oppose a restart of the process. http://www.grahamwatsonmep.org/



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