NO Software Patents in Europe
Suso 13 Apr 2004 19:20 GMT
No Software PatentsThousands of sites are joining the FFII online-demo against the new attempts to legalize software patents in Europe. Worldwide sites like the GNU Project are closed with a protest frontpage the same way as a lot of European Indymedia nodes (Portugal, Galiza, Canarias, Madiaq, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Germany, Belgium, UK...) calling to the april 14 Brussels demonstration.
The purpose is to mobilize the entire society decrypting and broadcasting the techno&legal trap which the patent lawyers are trying to use to legalize the EPO's granted abusive patents. Even beeing covered by copyright laws, the Council of Europe is now pushing for unlimited software patentability ignoring the European Parliament's democratic decision that avoids software patents: that decision was taken with the support of hundreds of thousands of citizens (sign now!), thousands of SMEs and scientists and hundreds of economists.
The software describes methods like "adding two numbers" which are abstractions so generics as the expresion "joining two pieces". Software patentability prevents and limits software innovation because any new piece of code could be affected by any of those abusive patents like "progress bar" or "user interface" only usable with permission of their patent "owner". The needing of checking the 'patent state' of any new idea against EPO turns software development into a patent minefield, and this affects all software developers from GPL to proprietary ones, regardless of being gratis or not.
Diversity, undeveloped countries and minorized cultures are particularly disadvantaged by insolidarious and disruptive systems such as that of software patents. No corporation is interested in giving us software in our languages, or ways to adding our fundamental esences to construct those transnational flows of alternative communication which demonstrated their effectivenes in surpassing the mediatic silence and the official lies when events like the Prestige Oil Spill comes to our lives. Those flows are basically constructed with different tastes of non-patented software, and this is the reason because software patents give a few multinational corporations enormous additional power and promote unproductive concentration in the industry, thereby removing development opportunities from individuals, small entities and democratic states.
So join us saying NO TO SOFTWARE PATENTS IN EUROPE next April 14 at Brusells!
UPDATE: April 14 Demo Report (in Nederlands): [1, 2]
Photos [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Links to Several Photos of the Demo]
hmmm evil companies???
andre 15.Apr.2004 20:50
Hi,
i think the swpat article is a little bit misleading but better than the German one. Please note that the problem is the inefficiency of the patent system - and the lawyers interest group that try to widen the scope of patentability wether it makes sense or not (from an economic view).
There is also a US FTC conference these days and and an intresting FTC report from oct.
"because software patents give a few multinational corporations enormous additional power and promote unproductive concentration in the industry, thereby removing development opportunities from individuals, small entities and democratic states."
This is somehow wrong: giants can deal with the system but there is little evidence that it was bveneficial for them. It's more a competitive advantage cmp. to SME. Those pushing hard are lawyers (including those sections in corporations).
It's more a democratic control problem, a horse rider problem (Ride or ridden?), there are strong forces in the apparatus.
the lawyers were able to reverse the burden of proof and we told them why we don't need patents for software. However there was no proper evidence given that the application of this legal instrument was justified from an economist's view.
more pictures
a 19.Apr.2004 13:58
of the demo in Brussels:
http://hubproject.org/news/2004/04/709.php
http://hubproject.org/news/2004/04/720.php
http://hubproject.org/news/2004/04/731.php
[foto 1] No to software patents!
[foto 2] No to software patents!
[foto 3] No to software patents!
Great idea
Bob 20.Apr.2004 17:13
Good idea. Just think about all those evil little programers who will have their code taken by a large company. There will be no recourse for the little guy. Good going.