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On Thursday 23 June 2005 6:37 pm, Paul Sutton wrote: > Just got an e-mail from eurolinux petition, regarding software patent > 2nd reading within the next 2 weeks, The battle against software patents in Europe is getting harder and harder. Even some of the supportive MEP's voted with the Council in the most recent JURI meeting - which caused confusion and angst across the community. We've seen and agreed with many, many rants over the years about unaccountable politicians, unrepresentative representatives and undemocratic democracies. It's all too easy to fall into despair - personally I've found it hard to retain any perspective or optimism since returning to my code from holiday. We're running around like blue-ended flies keeping our own code operative and updated, fixing problems and spending time on more and more elusive bugs. All the time, our so-called representatives are so panicky about the EU constitution and the lack of a budget that there is growing pressure to get *something* agreed - anything will do - just get something vaguely legislative out of the door before the whole system collapses from inertia. The lobbyists with the biggest budgets will win in this situation. EU laws really are available to order for the highest bidder - and there are few bigger than the backers of software patents. It's vital that we get the message through. The latest LXF has an interview with Alan Cox who describes the patent system well: <quote> "The patent system is essentially a gambling machine for people with no morals - if you file enough dodgy lawsuits, eventually you'll win so much money that it's worth playing the game. So that's a fundamental problem with the patents system, but it's not a problem with the idea of patents themselves, it's a problem with the implementation" (It's not on the web yet, so no URL.) Continues: "When you come to software, you've got all sorts of other problems, because software is a literary work. A long time ago there was an argument about whether software is a machine or literary work. You can't copyright a machine; you can patent ideas with it, but everybody else can build the machine so long as they've got the patent licences. They can look at your machine and say, "I can see how to do this without the patent or after your patent has expired." The decision at the time, which is written into things like the WIPO [the World Intellectual Property Organisation], was that software is a literary work. So patents don't apply to literary works, at least until the Americans got involved, and if you try to apply patents to literary work all sorts of things start to go very, very pear-shaped in the legal framework, because the author of a literary work also has various other protections under WIPO that appear to conflict with software being patentable." ... "You notice that everyone is saying IP version 6 is this, is that and there's all this research software up there. No one at Cisco is releasing big IPv6 routers. Not because there's no market demand, but because they want 20 years to have elapsed from the publication of the standard before the product comes out - because they know that there will be hundreds of people who've had guesses at where the standard would go and filed patents around it. And it's easier to let things lapse for 20 years than fight the system." </quote> Fancy waiting until 2025 to use tabbed palettes, electronic shopping carts, rerouting of incoming orders to a vendor, automated loan applications, seeing related results if you like the current ones or material reproduction of information stored at remote location? http://webshop.ffii.org/ Some may be willing to wait 20 years to inter-operate with Microsoft XML formats but the patent isn't confined to that, it could apply to other XML implementations and the ambiguity can only be properly resolved in court. Who can afford that? What about not being able to use a GUI print manager for 20 years? These are just the patents we know about - there are tens of thousands of others that may or may not have implications for vast areas of the software world and only a court can produce a reliable verdict on which may actually matter. Most patents will expire before any reliable decision can be made, leaving the door open for unscrupulous parasite companies to make open threats without fear of retribution. The only thing that *is* certain in this whole mess is that the lawyers who get to make these judgements are NOT going to do it for free or even on the side of freedom. Lawyers represent their clients and when the clients have huge pockets, the lawyers can pay their mortgage. What would you do if you were on the other side of the debate? What about pressure in the USA currently to extend that 20 years to 50 or 99 or longer? Once a limitation is imposed, the absolute value of that limitation can be changed without full debate and without opportunity for any opposition to be heard, let alone be heeded. Don't be fooled into thinking that this will pass you by - in the eyes of the pro-patent lobby we are already criminals, all of us. This is not even a hidden threat, companies behind the lobbyists have openly promised to sue to "protect" their "property". All that stands in their way is this Directive. Literally, we are one vote away from being sued. Things are urgent! > So lets keep up the pressure, on > this subject. Absolutely. Feel free to post content on the Wiki about how you've phrased your own appeals to our representatives. At the moment, it's all my content - I'd like to see other people adding their own pages in the section describing their own reasons for opposing software patents and include some of the content of letters they've written to the only people in Europe who can do anything about the Directive. It's all very good me sounding off on this list, if anyone wants to be using free software in 5 years time they had better join the fight NOW! Microsoft for one have openly promised to sue once software patents are legally enforceable. We've almost certainly seen off SCO but M$ are a much more serious threat (we can't expect them to run out of cash any time soon) - and don't think it will necessarily be BG himself, there are a host of other companies that can be vehicles of lawsuits that are based on patents held by other companies that are somewhere within the nebula that is the Microsoft Corporation. It's v.hard even identifying if a patent IS held by Microsoft - most patent applications don't cite the main parent company but some little offshoot holding company wholly owned or controlled from Redmond. Next time you're on a Windows box, open up a PDF in IE and just watch the patent numbers scroll by on the Adobe Acrobat splash screen. Every single one of those is a software patent that could be used against free software across the EU if this directive is passed. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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