Fwd: [ffii] Aug 27 Demonstrations against EU Software Patent Plans
Jean-D. Ackle
jdalinux at yahoo.com.br
Wed Aug 20 22:33:55 EDT 2003
--- PILCH Hartmut <phm at a2e.de> escreveu: > Para:
news at ffii.org
> De: PILCH Hartmut <phm at a2e.de>
> Assunto: [ffii] Aug 27 Demonstrations against EU
> Software Patent Plans
> Data: Wed, 20 Aug 2003 01:29:24 +0200 (CEST)
>
> FFII News -- For Immediate Release -- Please
> Redistribute
> +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++
> +++
>
> Aug 27 Demonstrations against EU Software
> Patent Plans
> Brussels 2003/08/19
> For immediate Release
>
> The Proposal for a software patent directive,
> which will be submitted
> to the European Parliament for plenary debate and
> subsequent decision
> on September 1st, giving rise to another wave of
> protests. Various
> groups in Belgium and elsewhere are mobilising
> for a rally in Brussels
> on August 27th and are calling on web
> administrators to temporarily
> block their web sites.
>
> Details
>
> The Proposal for a software patent directive,
> which will be submitted
> to the European Parliament for plenary debate and
> subsequent decision
> on September 1st, giving rise to another wave of
> protests. The
> Eurolinux Alliance is calling for participation
> in a rally in Brussels
> on August 27th, comprising a street performance
> at 12.00 on Luxemburg
> Square and conference at 14.00 in the European
> Parliament, and for
> accompanying online demonstrations.
>
> "The directive proposal as prepared by Arlene
> McCarthy MEP would
> impose US-style unlimited patentability of
> algorithms and business
> methods such as Amazon One Click Shopping" says
> Benjamin Henrion, who
> is heading a local organisational team with the
> backing of a coalition
> of organisations representing 2000 software
> companies and 160,000
> individuals, mostly software professionals.
>
> In an appeal, the organisers call on European
> citizens to stand up for
> the public interest to defend freedom of creation
> against logic
> patents, to defend copyright-based software
> property against
> patent-based software piracy, to defend software
> innovation against
> patent inflation, to defend software users
> against reduced choices and
> monopoly pricing.
>
> They call on the European Patent Office: Stop
> littering Europe's
> information highway! and on the European
> Parliament: Punish the
> polluters, don't legalise the pollution!
>
> The program in Brussels is approximately as
> follows, more details will
> be supplied soon:
>
> 12.00-14.00 | Place du Luxembourg | Performance,
> balloons, patent chain,
> speeches, ...
> 14.00-16.00 | EuroParl[13][1] | Conference
>
> "In May a [14]two-day software patent conference
> in and near the
> European Parliament attracted 200 participants.
> Leaders of the
> scientific commuities and software business world
> condemned the
> directive proposal in every respect. Yet in June
> the EP Legal Affairs
> Commission endorsed this proposal with further
> amendments that make it
> even worse", explains Henrion. "More and more
> people are now seeing
> this very clearly. We expect even more
> participatants this time."
>
> Yet the vast majority of our supporters will
> certainly not be on
> Luxemburg Square on August 27th. "Those who can
> not come to Brussels
> should demonstrate online, using their web
> servers or other internet
> services", says Hartmut Pilch, president of FFII.
> "We have
> [15]proposed a series of ways in which this can
> be done. There is
> certainly a way for everyone. Better make access
> to your webpage a bit
> more difficult now for one or two days than lose
> your freedom of
> publication for the next ten years. Note that if
> the McCarthy report
> is approved without drastic amendments,
> programmers and Internet
> Service Providers will be regularly sued for
> patent infringement, if
> they publish programs on the Internet. If the
> Parliament votes for the
> McCarthy proposal now, there will be no more
> chances for democratic
> control later."
>
> Annotated Links
>
> -> [16]AEL Big Demo 27 aug Wiki
> Hints on how to participate in the demo,
> needed equipment on
> site, who provides what, etc
>
> -> [17]FFII BXL 2003/08 Wiki
> Holger's editable auxiliary pages for the
> 2003/08/27 demo and
> related events. Includes hints on
> hotel/hostel rooms, t-shirts,
> banners etc
>
> -> [18]2003/08 Letter to Software Creators and
> Users
> The European Parliament will, in its
> plenary session on
> September 1st, decide on a directive
> proposal which ensures
> that algorithms and business methods like
> Amazon One Click
> Shopping become patentable inventions in
> Europe. This proposal
> has the backing of about half of the
> parliament. Please help us
> make sure that it will be rejected. Here
> are some things to do.
>
> -> [19]2003/08/25-9 BXL: Software Patent
> Directive Amendments
> Members of the European Parliament are
> coming back to work on
> monday August 25th. It is the last week
> before the vote on the
> Software Patent Directive Proposal. We are
> organising a
> conference and street rally wednesday the
> 27th. Some of our
> friends will moreover be staying in the
> parliament for several
> days. Time to work decide on submission of
> amendments to the
> software patent directive proposal is
> running out. FFII has
> proposed one set of amendments that stick
> as closely as
> possible to the original proposal while
> debugging and somewhat
> simplifying it. An alternative small set
> of amendments would
> "cut the crap" and rewrite the directive
> from scratch. We
> present and explain the possible
> approaches.
>
> -> [20]Online Demonstration Against Software
> Patents
> We can show our concern by physical
> presence as well as by more
> or less gently blocking access to webpages
> in a concerted
> manner at certain times.
>
> -> [21]European Parliament Rejects Attempt to
> Rush Vote on Software
> Patent Directive
> The European Parliament has postponed the
> vote on the software
> patent directive back to the original date
> of 1st of September,
> thereby rejecting initially successful
> efforts of its
> rapporteur Arlene McCarthy (UK Labour MEP
> of Manchester) and
> her supporters to rush to vote on June
> 30th, a mere twelve days
> after publication of the highly
> controversial report and ten
> days after the unexpected change of
> schedule.
>
> -> [22]JURI votes for Fake Limits on
> Patentability
> The European Parliament's Committee for
> Legal Affairs and the
> Internal Market (JURI) voted on tuesday
> morning about a list of
> proposed amendments to the planned
> software patent directive.
> It was the third and last in a series of
> committee votes, whose
> results will be presented to the plenary
> in early september.
> The other two commissions (CULT, ITRE) had
> opted to more or
> less clearly exclude software patents. The
> JURI rapporteur
> Arlene McCarthy MEP (UK socialist) also
> claimed to be aiming
> for a "restrictive harmonisation of the
> status quo" and
> "exclusion of software as such, algorithms
> and business methods
> from patentability". Yet McCarthy
> presented a voting list to
> fellow MEPs which, upon closer look, turns
> ideas like "Amazon
> One-Click Shopping" into patentable
> inventions. McCarthy and
> her followers rejected all amendment
> proposals that try to
> define central terms such as "technical"
> or "invention", while
> supporting some proposals which reinforce
> the patentability of
> software, e.g. by making publication of
> software a direct
> patent infringment, by stating that
> "computer-implemented
> inventions by their very nature belong to
> a field of
> technology", or by inserting new economic
> rationales
> ("self-evident" need for Europeans to rely
> on "patent
> protection" in view of "the present trend
> for traditional
> manufacturing industry to shift their
> operations to low-cost
> economies outside the European Union")
> into the recitals. Most
> of McCarthy's proposals found a
> conservative-socialist 2/3
> majority (20 of 30 MEPs), whereas most of
> the proposals from
> the other committees (CULT = Culture, ITRE
> = Industry) were
> rejected. Study reports commissioned by
> the Parliament and
> other EU institutions were disregarded or
> misquoted, as some of
> their authors point out (see below). A few
> socialists and
> conservatives voted together with Greens
> and Left in favor of
> real limits on patentability (such as the
> CULT opinion, based
> on traditional definitions, that "data
> processing is not a
> field of technology" and that technical
> invention is about "use
> of controllable forces of nature"), but
> they were overruled by
> the two largest blocks. Most MEPs simply
> followed the voting
> lists of their "patent experts", such as
> Arlene McCarthy (UK)
> for the Socialists (PSE) and shadow
> rapporteur Dr. Joachim
> Wuermeling (DE) for the Conservatives
> (EPP). Both McCarthy and
> Wuermeling have closely followed the
> advice of the directive
> proponents from the European Patent Office
> (EPO) and the
> European Commission's Industrial Property
> Unit (CEC-Indprop,
> represented by former UK Patent Office
> employee Anthony Howard)
> and declined all offers of dialog with
> software professionals
> and academia ever since they were
> nominated rapporteurs in May
> 2002.
>
> -> [23]Why Amazon One Click Shopping is
> Patentable under the Proposed
> EU Directive
> According to the European Commission
> (CEC)'s Directive Proposal
> COM(2002)92 for "Patentability of
> Computer-Implemented
> Inventions" and the revised version
> approved by the European
> Parliament's Committee for Legal Affairs
> and the Internal
> Market (JURI), algorithms and business
> methods such as Amazon
> One Click Shopping are without doubt
> patentable subject matter.
> This is because
>
> 1. Any "computer-implemented" innovation is
> in principle
> considered to be a patentable
> "invention".
> 2. The additional requirement of "technical
> contribution in the
> inventive step" does not mean what most
> people think it
> means.
> 3. The directive proposal explicitly aims
> to codify the practise
> of the European Patent Office (EPO). The
> EPO has already
> granted thousands of patents on
> algorithms and business
> methods similar to Amazon One Click
> Shopping.
> 4. CEC and JURI have built in further
> loopholes so that, even if
> some provisions are amended by the
> European Parliament,
> unlimited patentability remains assured.
>
> -> [24]FFII: Software Patents in Europe
> For the last few years the European Patent
> Office (EPO) has,
> contrary to the letter and spirit of the
> existing law, granted
> more than 30000 patents on
> computer-implemented rules of
> organisation and calculation (programs for
> computers). Now
> Europe's patent movement is pressing to
> consolidate this
> practise by writing a new law. Europe's
> programmers and
> citizens are facing considerable risks.
> Here you find the basic
> documentation, starting from a short
> overview and the latest
> news.
>
> Contact
>
> mail:
> media at ffii org
>
> phone:
> Hartmut Pilch +49-89-18979927
>
> [25]Benjamin Henrion +32-10-454761
>
> More Contacts to be supplied upon request
>
> About the Eurolinux Alliance -- www.eurolinux.org
>
> The EuroLinux Alliance for a Free Information
> Infrastructure is an
> open coalition of commercial companies and
> non-profit associations
> united to promote and protect a vigourous
> European Software Culture
> based on copyright, open standards, open
> competition and open source
> software such as Linux. Corporate members or
> sponsors of EuroLinux
> develop or sell software under free, semi-free
> and non-free licenses
> for operating systems such as GNU/Linux, MacOS or
> MS Windows.
>
> About the FFII -- www.ffii.org
>
> The Foundation for a Free Information
> Infrastructure (FFII) is a
> non-profit association registered in Munich,
> which is dedicated to the
> spread of data processing literacy. FFII supports
> the development of
> public information goods based on copyright, free
> competition, open
> standards. More than 250 members, 300 companies
> and 15,000 supporters
> have entrusted the FFII to act as their voice in
> public policy
> questions in the area of exclusivity rights
> (intellectual property) in
> the field of software.
>
> Permanent URL of this Press Release
>
>
> http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/demo0819/index.en.html
>
>
_________________________________________________________________
>
> Notes
>
> [1] Room number to be announced tomorrow.
> External visitors,
> including journalists, need to register in
> advance. Please contact
> bxl030827 at ffii org for this purpose.
>
> References
>
> 14.
>
http://swpat.ffii.org/events/2003/europarl/05/index.en.html
> 15. http://swpat.ffii.org/group/demo/index.en.html
> 16. http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/BigDemo27aug
> 17. http://offen.ffii.org/bxl/
> 18.
> http://swpat.ffii.org/letters/parl038/index.en.html
> 19.
>
http://swpat.ffii.org/events/2003/europarl/08/index.en.html
> 20. http://swpat.ffii.org/group/demo/index.en.html
> 21.
> http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/plen0626/index.en.html
> 22.
> http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/juri0617/index.en.html
> 23.
>
http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/tech/index.en.html
> 24. http://swpat.ffii.org/index.en.html
> 25. http://bh.udev.org/
>
>
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=====
Jean-Dominique Ackle
Braga, Portugal
Mandrake Linux 9.1
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