[Fsf-friends] death of democracy

Mon May 17 21:11:40 IST 2004

I  am forwarding  a message  to show  how the  European  Union's legal
policies are  being hijacked by a  few, in the teeth  of strong public
opposition.

Just see how strongarm lobbying is winning (at as of now) in the teeth
of opposition from an overwhelming majority.

Why is this relevant on this list? 

Simple - the  patent issue was re-opened in EU  by the Irish republic,
which  has a coalition  government. The  smaller parties,  which wield
power disproportionate to its strength  call the shots. One such party
has been `purchased' by a particular company, and they are effectively
dictating the terms here.

With cow-herds  who proudly trumpet their  ignorance about Information
Technology playing  power-brokers and king (err queen)  -makers at New
Delhi, we are  situated in identical situation as  the Irish republic.
And  we  have a  serious  additional  disadvantage  - lack  of  public
awareness.

I request  all of you  to devote at  least half an hour  to discussing
philosophical issues  and in particular,  dangers from patents  at the
next local user group meet.

----- Forwarded message from Mandrakesoft Team <return@mandrakesoft.com> -----

Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 17:10:30 +0200 (CEST)
From: Mandrakesoft Team <return@mandrakesoft.com>
Subject: Mandrakelinux NWL: Software patents - fresh news and call for action
To: 

Flash: Software patents - fresh news and call for action

As a follow-up to our  latest flash regarding the upcoming decision of
the  European Council  to legalize  software patentability  in Europe,
here are some fresh news and information on what you can do to help.

If nothing  changes, tomorrow, Tuesday  May 18, the  European Council,
that is, the European body which represents all the governments of the
European Union, will  vote in favor of a  directive that will legalize
software  patents in  Europe.  Last September,  faced  with a  similar
choice,  the  European  Parliament   voted  major  amendments  to  the
directive text drafted by  the European Commission, actually rejecting
software patentability.  However, the  Council, ignoring all  of these
amendments, is  going to vote  in favor of  a text that is  even worse
than the initial version of the Commission.

Why can  the Council take a decision  which will be so  harmful to the
European software  industry? Unlike the  Parliament, which is  a place
open to the public, where  Members of the European Parliament have had
time to  study the proposal  and hear many  positions on the  issue in
order to  take a well-thought decision,  the Council is  a closed body
where, due to the  alledged complexity of the subject, representatives
of the governments have handed out the file to committees of experts.

These experts,  who re-drafted the  text and wrote position  papers on
why to vote  it, are in fact mostly  representatives from the national
patent offices, backed  by the heads of the  legal departments of some
big industrial  companies, all  of whom have  a common  interest: more
patents mean more  power for them, irrespective of  the harm that will
be done to  the economy at large, and even to  their own companies. In
the name of  "the Industry" and of "innovation",  they manipulated the
political decision-makers to  make them believe that the  new text did
not  allow to  patent pure  software, that  it was  a  good compromise
between the Commission  and Parliament texts, and that  not all of the
parliamentary  amendments could  be  kept because  some  of them  were
illegal with respect  to international treaties such as  TRIPS. All of
this is plain lie.

In fact, if  voted, the text of the Council would  lead to a situation
where big  companies with  large patent portfolios  use these  to lock
their respective markets and prevent competition from innovative SMEs,
and  where "intellectual property"  companies that  do not  create any
software use their own patent  portfolios to collect license fee rents
from everybody.  This is the situation  which is happening  in the US,
putting at  risk its  successful software industry.  This is  what may
just happen in Europe in a few months.

However, it is not too late. Because of growing pressure from computer
professionals and from the public,  and because they get more and more
feed-back from the media, political decision-makers begin to get aware
of the  issues, and to have  doubts about the sincerity  of the patent
lobby.  In some  countries, they  have taken  the file  back  from the
patent offices
http://lwn.net/Articles/85379/
http://kwiki.ffii.org/?SwpatcninoEn
and some countries  of the Council have just decided  to switch from a
voting procedure without debate to  a voting procedure with debate, as
the  text  gets less  and  less consensus  among  the  members of  the
European Union.

You can convince  even more of them to  reject software patentability.
In order to do that, please take some time to read about the issues at
stake,  and spread the  information across  your friends  and business
contacts,  the  press,  your   members  of  the  parliament  and  your
government.  It is essential that  elected policy makers get back into
command of  the situation and do  not leave the  patent offices decide
alone.

Here are  some texts which can help  you to present the  issues to the
media and to  convince policy-makers of all countries  of the European
Union.

A very  readable analysis by Fran?ois Pellegrini  explaining the legal
and economic issues of software patentability: 
http://www.abul.org/article191.html

A thorough analysis by Jonas Maebe of the difference between the three
versions of the directive, and why software patents are indeed illegal
with respect to TRIPS:
http://www.elis.ugent.be/~jmaebe/swpat/councilanalysis/paper-en.pdf

Positions of the member countries of the European Union:
http://swpat.ffii.org/akteure/  (add "pt", "ie", "fr",
"de", "be", "gr", etc to have the positions of the
member countries)

The page of the FFII giving some directions for actions:
http://kwiki.ffii.org/?LtrSmePolit0405En

A recent paper published in the Washington Post describing the
current situation in the United States:
"Patenting Air or Protecting Property? Information Age Invents a New Problem"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54548-2003Dec10?language=printer

31 companies sued for using the JPEG image format (the plaintiff filed
for a  patent while recommending the adoption  in international bodies
of a standard including its patented technology):
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63200,00.html%3Ftw%3Dwn_bizhead_1

A US company sues companies of on-line content distribution:
http://www.e-data.com/
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5205529.html
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5144097.html

A well-documented file on the reference site Law.com:
http://www.law.com/jsp/statearchive.jsp?type=Article&oldid=ZZZV4RVSSPC

Thank you very much for your help.

	Mandrakesoft Online Team.

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----- End forwarded message -----

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