Someone on the campaignforcreativity list sent me this announcement e-mail. Looks like things are hotting up again.
http://campaignforcreativity.org/camp4creativity/
Malcohol.
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Yes, when I spoke to one of Avril Doyle's assistants about a month ago she mentioned a leaflet on her desk that sounded like that one. She also expressed confusion that half the time she doesn't know who is saying what.
It looks like these guys are going to bombard MEPs prior to the second reading, and this group specifically seems to want to sow the seeds of confusion by claiming to represent the interests of SMEs. Of course the reality is that they are professional lobbyists, previously successfully lobbying for gene patents by bussing a bunch of disabled people to the European Parliament to manufacture a fake grassroots protest in favour of gene patents.
Ian.
On 11 Apr 2005, at 10:46, Malcolm Tyrrell wrote:
Someone on the campaignforcreativity list sent me this announcement e-mail. Looks like things are hotting up again.
http://campaignforcreativity.org/camp4creativity/
Malcohol.
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On 11/04/05 10:46, Malcolm Tyrrell wrote:
Someone on the campaignforcreativity list sent me this announcement e-mail. Looks like things are hotting up again.
(I thought there used to be a wiki page refuting some of their arguments, but I can't find it now, so I've had my rant here... if someone wants to start a wiki page for this stuff I'll gladly add to it)
: The objective of our campaign is to ensure that the legal protections : we enjoy, such as copyright, trademarks, patents and design rights are : not diluted. These protections are a right, they are not a privilege. : We must not allow them to be trampled on. We must fight back."
Whee! This pseudo-rebellious bullshit really annoys me... Fight the power, man!
: Is the Campaign opposed to open source software? : : No, not at all. In fact we are supportive. The directive will have no : effect on the development of open source software.
Except to massively increase the risks of doing so and the costs if patent searches, cross-licensing and litigation become necessary
: Patents have to be applied for.
Not sure if this is intented to mean "There is an imperative to apply for patents" or "Patents are not granted automatically".
: If open source developers want to create and publish : their own work they will continue to be free to do so.
How magnanimous! Except now they will face greater artificially-created costs and risks, for the benefit of a few megacorporations and parasitic patent farms.
: Once an invention has been made public it cannot be patented by : another, so it would be impossible for a company to 'steal' open : source material.
I think this is intended to mean that it is "impossible" for a company to patent an idea that has been published as open source software. Except I can think of at least one case where this has happened: Network Associates' broad anti-spam patent which was applied for in December 2002 and comes way after SpamAssassin and also after Paul Graham's article on Bayesian Spam filtering from August 2002 (http://paulgraham.com/spam.html).
: On the other hand, without patents commercial companies, or indeed : anyone who creates software or any other invention, would find it : impossible to make a return on their work.
Nonsense! "Impossible" is a pretty strong word. There are plenty of commercial software companies making a return on their work without patents. MySQL AB is probably a good example, but there must be many small companies who make a profit on the software they develop without patents.
: So whilst we support giving inventors a choice, those who oppose : patents would create a world in which only non-commercial software : would exist."
Further nonsense! Personally, I'd like more software to be Free Software, but this is orthoganal to the patents issue, and indeed to the commercial/non-commercial issue.
Kind regards,
David
(I thought there used to be a wiki page refuting some of their arguments, but I can't find it now, so I've had my rant here... if someone wants to start a wiki page for this stuff I'll gladly add to it)
There's a page about Simon Gentry and his wonderful "campaign" on the FFII Wiki.
http://wiki.ffii.org/?SimonGentryEn
adam
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David O'Callaghan writes:
: Once an invention has been made public it cannot be patented by : another, so it would be impossible for a company to 'steal' open : source material.
I think this is intended to mean that it is "impossible" for a company to patent an idea that has been published as open source software. Except I can think of at least one case where this has happened: Network Associates' broad anti-spam patent which was applied for in December 2002 and comes way after SpamAssassin and also after Paul Graham's article on Bayesian Spam filtering from August 2002 (http://paulgraham.com/spam.html).
Actually, that patent isn't such a good example -- it's not as broad as it was presumed to be by many. (I can't go into too much detail here though, for various reasons.)
A more recent case is TitanKey's patent on per-user whitelisting and blacklisting of email messages performed during the SMTP transaction, which had prior art in the open-source Obtuse SMTPD, among others. See recent ASRG mailing list traffic if you're curious. That one is extremely broad, and with clear prior art, I've heard.
I cannot talk too much about patents in the anti-spam field, as I generally avoid reading them due to the idiocies of software patents in the US.
- --j.