Won't make further contributions to this online debate now [LWN.net]

Won't make further contributions to this online debate now

Posted Aug 25, 2005 8:36 UTC (Thu) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
Parent article: On the defense of piracy enablers

Sorry, but things have to come to an end, and it doesn't look to me like the navigation on an HTML page like this benefits from ever more contributions. We've already had a couple of cases in which something was stated by someone to "correct" my statements while I had previously said the same, more or less.

Now that I've explained my thinking at great length, I'd rather devote the same time to the book that I'm writing on how we prevented the ratification of the European software patent directive. That book will also contain a variety of programmatic statements on software patents (and on IPRs in general).

To me, the important thing is the starting point of all of this: Negating author's rights that politicians (and judges) consider to be beyond reasonable doubt can position the entire open-source movement (even if only a vocal minority of radicals is responsible) outside of the consensus area of a vast political majority, and the price for that is really high.

By issuing a press release that commented on the bnetd case in a very short format, I may have inadvertently provoked the kind of reaction that came from Jon.

I'd be happy to talk about this interesting set of issues some more, but this is neither the time nor the place for more of that. Maybe there will be an opportunity at some FOSS or IP or digital consumer rights conference. If I happen to participate in such an event, any of you can contact me there, or if you organize such an event, I might be available to participate as a speaker (for logistical reasons, that's far more likely to work out for a conference in Munich or Brussels than in San Fran or Tokyo).

Think about what I said because it's essential to the future success and proliferation of open source. So long.

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Won't make further contributions to this online debate now

Posted Aug 25, 2005 9:36 UTC (Thu) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link]

This almost makes me feel like a New Year's resolutioner who resumes smoking on January 2nd ;-) but it's a different topic now, swpats, so just one more reply.

The fact is that we have swpats in Europe. The European Patent Office and national patent offices have granted tens of thousands of them.

Right now, however, their legal basis is rather weak since article 52 of the European Patent Convention expressly excludes "programs for computers [as such]" from the scope of patentable subject matter. VP Cheney's former employer Halliburton just lost a case in the High Court of England and Wales, which declared a software patent invalid, and the judge explained in his ruling that the EU directive would have softened up the criteria (in other words, it would have legalized many swpats that the courts can overturn right now).

It's true that the pro-swpat forces won't quit, nor will we. Right now we have the statutory law that we want and they have the case law at the level of the EPO (not in national jurisdictions) that they want. Sooner or later, a point will have to be reached at which either the EPO changes its practice and fully complies with the law (that's what we want) or national jurisdictions accept the EPO approach (that's what the pro-swpat forces want).

The fact of the matter is that the other camp has now had two failed attempts at changing the statutory law in their favor. They held a diplomatic conference in the year 2000, and the FFII (and others, but primarily the FFII) mobilized some resistance. The EU directive was just a fallback plan of the other camp because of that earlier failure, and now that Plan B has failed as well, so there'll be a "Plan B2" (a new attempt at pushing that kind of directive through, which is what they did when they didn't get gene patents the first time) or a "Plan C" (a different approach, such as through the community patent directive).

The European Parliament will return from its summer break on Monday, and that's when the debate will basically be continued in one way or another.

However, a legislative process which for the first time in the history of the European Union resulted in the outright rejection of a proposal of the EU Council (i.e., EU member state governments) by the European Parliament, and which produced a variety of interesting and funny anecdotes, deserves to be chronicled regardless of if and when the issue itself will make it back on the political agenda.

Won't make further contributions to this online debate now

Posted Aug 27, 2005 3:32 UTC (Sat) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link]

"Negating author's rights that politicians (and judges) consider to be beyond reasonable doubt" is begging the argument. The author has no rights in the US once he's signed away his copyright. Moreover, the Blizzard case is far from something that politicians and judges consider to be beyond reasonable doubt; it was unprecedented and debatable, and I suspect many judges and politicians would agree with bnetd's side.