[Fsf-friends] Former French PM condemns software patents

[Raj Mathur]

[Cross-posted]

Michel Rocard opposes the patentability of software

"Everyone copies, and this is a good thing"
By Florent LATRIVE and Laurent MAURIAC

Liberation, Monday June 30, 2003

"A civilization should be preserved where the place of the world
outside the market and of the human intellect is respected."

One does not find a computer on the Parisian desk of Michel Rocard. He
admits it freely: he is not "one of the generation which has an easy
facility with the computer". However, as president of the Committee
for Culture in the European Parliament, he has had to plunge himself,
with an "evil madness", into software patentability, "words which even
a year ago were unknown to me". Today, if he speaks about it in such
an animated way, it is because hiding behind the technical aspects
there is a real issue about civilization. For the ex prime minister,
the introduction of patents on software in Europe would be "very
serious".  It would call into question the freedom of movement of
human knowledge.  Until now, software has been officially excluded
from patentable subject-matter in Europe, just like mathematical
equations or cooking recipes. But for several months, a very polemical
draft Directive has been before the institutions of the European Union
which aims to modify this regime. It will be put to the vote in the
European Parliament at the beginning of September.

Q.: Why do you reckon that Europe should not authorize patents on
software?

Since the cave of Lascaux, it is not clear that humanity has
progressed in its aesthetic capacities. As for its ethical capacities
and morals, one is even more doubtful. On the other hand, in the field
of technical knowledge and the control of nature, the progress is
astounding. The dizzying growth of knowledge is the key to this
history. Knowledge was spread by copying, everyone recopied everyone,
and that was good. With the patentability of software, one is
re-writing the statutes on human knowledge. All of the intellectual
exchange in the creations of the human spirit, the means of bringing
knowledge together, will be achieved more and more by software. If
patentability is introduced, i.e. a cost, a prohibition, one sets up a
new rule. It is worrying.

...

Full translation at:
http://www.aful.org/wws/arc/patents/2003-06/msg00221.html

Original (French) story at:
http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=121303

-- Raju
-- 
Raj Mathur                raju@kandalaya.org      http://kandalaya.org/
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