taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Patents: A great outcome! The proposed Directive has been dropped, in the face of massive opposition. Coverage: /., FFII, FT.com, VNUnet, FSFE.

Unfortunately, Rocard’s proposed amendments which would have turned this directive into a major win for us, didn’t pass — but it’s still a good win. Software patents are not explicitly legal throughout Europe; although some jurisdictions do permit them, they’re in a legal grey area, and prosecution is therefore hard (and very expensive for patent holders). This is a much better situation than if the directive as proposed by the Council had passed, since that would have explicitly legalised them throughout the EU.

On top of this win, what I find significant is that we’ve now brought the issue from where it was a few years ago, as a minor concern known only to a few uber-geeks, to a major political issue that made headlines around the globe. Even my local NPR affiliate reported on this decision! That’s a far cry from the mid-90’s, when I had a hard time explaining the point of theLeague for Programming Freedom to my hacker friends in the TCD Maths Department.

A great quote from the VNUnet article:

‘This represents a clear victory for open source,’ said Simon Phipps, chief open source officer at Sun Microsystems. ‘It expresses Parliament’s clear desire to provide a balanced competitive market for software.’

Yes, that’s Sun saying that less software patenting is a good thing. Believe me, that’s a great leap forward. Or check out Irish MEP Kathy Sinnott’s amazing comments. She hits the nail right on the head; I’m very impressed by that speech.

Tags: directive, face, issue, opposition, outcome, patents, software, source, sun, vnunet, win

Patents: yes, I keep rattling on about this — the vote is coming up on July 6th. I promise I’ll shut up after that ;)

UEAPME has issued a statement regarding the directive which is strongly critical of its current wording (UEAPME is the European small and medium-sized business trade association, comprising 11 million SMEs). Quote:

‘The failure to clearly remove software from the scope of the directive is a setback for small businesses throughout Europe. UEAPME is now calling on the European Parliament to reverse yesterday’s decision at plenary session next month and send a strong message that an EU software patent is not an option,’ Hans-Werner Müller, UEAPME Secretary General, stated.

‘There is growing agreement among all actors that software should not be patented, so providing an unequivocal definition in the directive that guarantees this is clearly in the general interest. We are calling on the Parliament to support the amendments that would ensure this,’ said Mr Müller.

‘The cacophony of misinformation and misleading spin from the large industry lobby in the run up to this vote has obscured the general consensus on preventing the patenting of pure software.’

That’s all well and good. So presumably the Irish members of UEAPME, ISME and the SFA, are agreeing, right? Sadly, neither of these have issued any press releases on the subject, as far as I can see, and approaches by members of IFSO have been totally fruitless.

Since both have made recent press noting that Irish small businesses face difficulties with the rising costs of doing business, this would seem to be a no-brainer — legalising software patents would immediately open Irish SMEs up to the costs associated with them: licensing fees, fighting spurious infringement litigation from ‘patent troll’ companies, the ‘chilling effects’ on investors noted by Laura Creighton, and of course the high price of retaining patent lawyers to file patents on your own innovations. One wonders why they aren’t concerned about these costs…

Tags: business, directive, july, parliament, patent, patents, press, smes, software, ueapme, vote

Patents: Ian Clarke copied the FSFE-IE mailing list with a good mail he sent to Mairead McGuinness MEP, detailing the current state of proposed fixes to the European software patenting directive. He discusses a comment from an Ericsson employee asking for software patentability:

It may be the case that this employee was concerned about Ericsson’s ability to compete against smaller competitors if Ericsson cannot use software patents against them. I would argue that it is not the responsibility of any EU institution to protect Ericsson against legitimate competition from other companies, indeed competition must be encouraged. Software patents will have a stifling effect on competition in Europe, and this is why some large companies like Ericsson are strong advocates for this directive.

And a brief overview of the amendments we want:

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, an organisation whose line we endorse, has prepared an analysis of the amendments, indicating which will help to ensure that software patents do not become patentable, and which will not. This document may be downloaded here.

In particular, we support the position and amendments of Piia Noora Kauppi MEP, who has taken a strong position against the introduction of software patents within the EPP group, and also the position of Michel Rocard MEP who is the rapporteur for this Directive.

The only other thing it misses, in my opinion, is a paragraph discussing the ‘as such’ loophole that has been heavily relied upon by most pro-swpat politicians recently — the trick of saying ‘this directive does not permit software patenting, as such‘.

Indeed, it does not permit patenting of all software techniques, but instead permits the patenting of software techniques as long as it is of ‘a technical nature’ — without defining what that means. Given that it’s clearly arguable that all software is technical, and since patent offices earn money based on the patents they accept, rather than those they reject, this is a loophole the size of a bus. Many of the desired amendments concern cleaning up this obvious omission.

Anyway, here’s the full text of Ian’s mail from the list archive.

Tags: competition, directive, employee, ericsson, fsfe-ie, list, mailing, mep, patents, position, software

Patents: It seems the Irish Software Association has a new chairperson, namely Bernadette Cullinane. Whether this has anything to do with Cathal Friel’s ‘out of line’ statements, who knows…

John McCormac passed on some interesting quotes from an Irish Times interview, which were also syndicated here:

‘The incoming chairwoman of the Irish Software Association (ISA), Bernie Cullinane, has pledged to support the introduction of a proposed European Union directive on software patents.

She also warned members of the European parliament against blocking the controversial new directive or weakening it by proposing a host of amendments. …

Ms. Cullinane, a former chief operating officer of the Irish company Performix said European firms needed to protect their intellectual property in a similar manner to the way US firms can.

‘We don’t want any further dilution of the current situation on patents,’ she said in an interview with The Irish Times following her ratification as chairwoman of the ISA last night.’

My emphasis — given that the current situation is that they are unenforceable in Europe, that’s good, because we on the other side don’t want a dilution either!

‘We do need to look at how the US is developing its software industry and a removal of the patent (sic) could weaken venture capitalists’ appetites for investing in new innovative companies.’

The whole ‘venture capital requires patents’ line is easily debunked. I’m sure the VC companies are telling Ms. Cullinane that they want patents, of course; it’s just that they’re wrong. ;) Laura Creighton, a European investor, gave a fantastic speech in Brussels in 2003 about investment and patents:

Software Patents (in the US in the 1990s) encouraged venture capitalists to make foolish investments, because they believed the patents were worth something. Venture capitalists often do not mind if the companies where they have invested go bankrupt — as long as they hold title to the patents. They can start over again with a different team.

Sadly, when the bubble burst, the venture capitalists discovered that their patents were only good for a trip to court — or at least some legal wrangling with a bunch of lawyers. A software patent is not like a hardware patent, where typically one, or at most a few covers the whole invention. Dozens, sometimes hundreds of patents, are relevant to any piece of software. So an investor, who now owns the assets of a defunct company — cannot take its patents and hand them to a new development team and say ‘build this’. It is impossible to develop software today without infringing somebody’s American patent.

The venture capitalists, having lost fortunes backing companies which had no real product, are now uninterested in investing in any software companies whatsoever. Right now the American economy could benefit from more investment — but the capital is not going into software companies. Again, part of the problem is software patents. The venture capitalists have learned that all software is in violation of somebody’s patent. So they do not want to touch the stuff. Thus on the up side, and the down side, the existence of software patents have contributed to creating the stock bubble, and making the recovery slower and harder than it needed to be. So #4 is right out — the existence of software patents are inhibiting investment right now, and for very good reason.

In other words, the presence of software patents has ‘weakened venture capitalists’ appetites for investing in new innovative companies’, as Ms. Cullinane put it.

Anyway — to keep the VCs happy, small companies can still obtain software patents in the US, and spend the tens of thousands of dollars required to register and enforce them in court, if they so desire. They can bring the US software industry to a legal standstill if they like, as they seem to have done, as long as European software developers can quietly carry on developing software for use outside the US ;)

But at least things aren’t as bad as the situation with my neighbours — I live a few miles from the offices of Acacia Research, the notorious patent trolls, who’ve just initiated a new lawsuit against Intel and TI.

Reportedly however, they’re planning to open a European office this quarter…

Tags: association, chairwoman, dilution, directive, interview, irish, patents, situation, software, times, venture

Misc: So I was travelling last week — a very productive trip to the UK visiting the main work dev office, and getting a little socialising in too while I was at it. A pretty good trip overall, especially since I seem to have figured out how to use my frequent flyer miles effectively to get great seats! ;)

Here’s a good interview with SpamAssassin PMC chair, Daniel; well worth a read if you want to see what we in SpamAssassin think about the state of the onion in spam-filtering.

In not-so-good news, it seems Charlie McCreevy has managed to push the software patent directive through, despite massive EU Parliament unhappiness. Third time around at the Fisheries meeting, naturally; and there’s some serious questions about the legitimacy of the procedural rules invoked by the Commission in refusing to take the directive off the A-item menu. Now that’s what I call democracy…

It can still be defeated, but it’s an uphill battle now — for it to be thrown out in the second reading at the European Parliament, it’ll need a two-thirds majority of all MEPs (not just the MEPs present), reportedly.

In the meantime, thanks to the FF and PDs’ bullying tactics, Ireland’s small but growing pool of homegrown software developers are being ignored, and the Irish software industry looks more like a lame import operation for the likes of Microsoft. Our reputation is dragged through the mud for a few multinationals, and the rest of Europe resents us for it. Wonderful.

BTW, even if it does pass, there are ways to fix it — directives must be implemented into national law in each country. This means that Ireland could still write their implementation of the directive to exclude software inventions (even the ones where it’s supposedly a patent on hardware like ‘a CPU connected to a hard disk, with such-and-such software running on the CPU’). However, given McCreevy’s obvious bias in favour of getting this specific text into place, how likely is that going to be?

Tags: cpu, directive, meps, misc, parliament, patent, software, spamassassin, trip, week, work

Patents: So the Conference of Presidents has ratified the JURI decision to throw out the flawed software patents directive text. Phew! That’s a lot more pressure on the European Commission. Charlie McCreevy could still carry on his attempt to steamroller European democracy on this one, but it looks likely that he wouldn’t get away with it now — possibly facing sanctions as a result.

Found in a Slashdot comment — an amazing quote from Michel Rocard (former French Prime Minister, now European Deputy), recounting a meeting with Microsoft representatives on the software-patent issue:

“We never could (speak) a common language with the companies representatives we met - in particular those from Microsoft. Speaking about (the free circulation of ideas), free access to knowledge, was like speaking chinese to them. In their way of thinking, everything that is not usable for immediate profit ceases to be an engine of growth. They don’t seem to be able to understand that an invention which is a pure spirit creation (sic) can’t be patented. It’s simply terrifying. Many of us, at the Parliament, agree to say that they never have know such a pressure and such a verbal violence during their parliamentary work. It is a huge case.”

In addition, he takes aim at the Irish Presidency’s tactics:

“To adopt it formally, there is an expeditious procedure — the (A-item) at the Council of Ministers, where the it is adopted without discussion. The Irish and Dutch presidencies attempted this tactic three times, twice at meetings of the (Fisheries Council)! This is simply scandalous.”

Blimey, he’s really pissed off. Great! Go Rocard! ;)

See here for the original interview (in French), and here for a bad Babelfish translation.

In happier news — take a look at some pictures from the presentation of 30,000 verified signatures (and flowers!) from people around the world, thanking the Polish Government for their repeated stands against the flawed directive in December.

Tags: conference, council, decision, directive, european, microsoft, patents, phew, pressure, software, text

Patents: Børsen: Bill Gates threatened to kill 800 Danish jobs if Denmark opposed software patent directive:

Danish financial newspaper Børsen reports that Microsoft founder Bill Gates threatened the Danish government in connection with software patents. According to the article, Gates told Rasmussen and two Danish ministers in November that he would kill all 800 jobs in Navision, a Danish company acquired by Microsoft in 2002, unless the EU were to quickly decide to legalize software patents through a directive. Denmark is a country with only 5 million inhabitants and a relatively small high-tech sector to which the loss of 800 jobs would have significant implications.

Lovely — a blunt blackmail attempt. The article goes on:

It would not be the first threat of its kind. A group of large corporations including Philips is reported to have previously threatened European governments to outsource all of their European software development jobs to low-wage countries unless the EU were to allow patents on software through the directive that is currently being worked on.

In January, leading Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza reported on a letter addressed by the Polish subsidiaries of Siemens, Nokia, Philips, Ericsson and Alcatel to Poland’s prime minister Marek Belka … it is said to have indicated that the respective companies would reconsider making investments in Poland if the Polish government upheld its resistance to the legalization of software patents in the EU.

Again, note the FUD-busting on this point. I notice that Florian Mueller of NoSoftwarePatents.comhas a a good one-liner response along the same lines — ‘The country in which you develop a technology has nothing to do with where you can take out patents.’ He goes on:

If they move jobs to Asia, they won’t get a single additional patent, neither in Asia nor in Europe. If you warn politicians of consequences that are directly related to a legislative issue, that’s acceptable. If you threaten with causing damage that has no factual connection whatsoever, then it’s blackmail. Plain and simple.

Tags: article, brsen, country, directive, government, microsoft, newspaper, patent, patents, philips, software

Patents: This is really absurd — according to this ZDNet UK article, it now looks like the EU Council is considering railroading the EU software patent directive through, by hiding it as an ‘A-item’ in a Fisheries Council Meeting the week before xmas:

Laura Creighton, the vice-president of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), is concerned that the EU Council could be contemplating passing the directive without discussion in an unrelated meeting.

‘Before today it was possible for generous people to look charitably at this text (the proposed patent directive) as an example of a tragic mistake, not malice,’ said Creighton in a statement on the FFII Web site. ‘But not with this last-minute manoeuvring.’

‘Only the most committed opponent to the democratic process would believe that the proper response to the widespread consensus that there is something profoundly wrong with the Council’s text is to race it through with an A-item approval the week before Christmas in a Fisheries Council Meeting. The bad smell coming from Brussels has nothing to do with the fish.’

Reportedly, A-items are dealt with by asking the assembled councillors if they have any objections to any of the outstanding items. They’re not listed in detail at the meeting, so this way the directive can be passed in what is effectively a submarine (boom boom!) manner.

Related: Alan Cox has not been invited to the UK Patents office’s public meeting on software patents tomorrow.

In a Talkback to ZDNet UK’s earlier story highlighting the issue, Cox wrote: ‘I too was mysteriously overlooked despite having written to my MP and received an answer.’ …. Cox, who has previously been invited to speak on software patents at the EU, said the Patent Office apparently fears ‘every word I have to say about their plans’. He went on to add: ‘Unfortunately with all the underhand game playing both in the EU council of ministers and in UK government and patent circles it isn’t the slightest surprise.’

Also related: Jason Schultz (EFF) on the Commerce One web-services patent auction last week:

Here, the patents at issue were less valuable to companies that actually produce Web services products than they were to firms that produce nothing but lawsuits and licensing threats. In other words, patents like these have become worth more as weapons than as protections for companies competing in the marketplace.

Many have compared these new patent licensing firms to terrorists, and in some ways, the analogy is apt. When the Soviet Union collapsed, one of the biggest worries was that rogue military personnel might sell off one or more of the USSR’s nuclear missiles to a terrorist group. Securing those weapons became a top priority. The reason was fear – fear that the terrorists, who had little to nothing at stake in terms of world peace and national stability, would use the missiles to extort or manipulate the world political climate. Unlike the United States or China, which could be retaliated against and which had a stake in stability, terrorists were essentially immune from attack, and thrived on instability.

With the patents of bankrupt dot-coms, the dynamics are similar. Rogue licensing firms buy up these patents and then threaten legitimate innovators and producers. They have no products on which a countersuit can be based and no interest in stable marketplaces, competition or consumer benefit. Their only interest is in the bottom line.

While profit itself is often a worthy objective, it is not always synonymous with innovation. Every dollar a tech company pays to patent lawyers or licensing firms is one less dollar available for R&D or new hires. Thus, many companies that offer new products end up paying a ‘tax’ on innovation instead of receiving a reward. When this happens, it’s a signal that the patent system is broken. Forcing companies to pay lawyers instead of creating jobs and new products is the wrong direction for our economy to be headed and not the result our patent system should be promoting.

Tags: council, cox, directive, ffii, item, meeting, patent, patents, software, text, week

Patents: The Irish EU Presidency keeps on rolling.

FFII notes that ‘this Wednesday, the Irish Presidency managed to secure a qualified majority for a counter-proposal to the software patents directive, with only a few countries - including Belgium and Germany - showing resistance. (This ‘compromise’ is the most pro-patent text yet,) discarding all the amendments from the European which would limit patentability. Instead the lax language of the original Commission proposal is to be reinstated in its entirety, with direct patentability of program text fragments added as icing on the cake.’

‘The proposal is now scheduled to be confirmed without discussion at a meeting of ministers on 17-18 May, unless one of the Member States changes its vote. In a remarkable sign of unity in times of imminent elections, members of the European Parliament from all groups across the political spectrum are condemning this blatant disrespect for democracy in Europe.’

Some quotes from MEPs about this behaviour:

• Daniel Cohn-Bendit, chairman of the Greens/EFA Group: ‘The national patent officials in the Council do not want “harmonisation” or “clarification”. They merely want to secure the interests of the patent establishment. If they don’t get what they want, they simply bury the directive project and try to find other ways to get around the existing law.’
• Anne Van Lancker, a Belgian MEP of the Socialist group: ‘the current Council proposal was written behind closed doors by patent office administrators.’
• Piia-Noora Kauppi, Finnish MEP of the European People’s Party: ‘the Council is not taking the will of Europe’s elected legislators into account.’
• Pernille Frahm, Danish member and Vice-Chairwoman of the GUE/NGL group: ‘The patent administrators in the Commission and Council are abusing the legislative process of the EU.’
• Bent Hindrup Andersen (MEP, DK, EDD): ‘The approach of the Commission and Council in this directive is shocking. They are making full use of all the possibilities of evading democracy that the current Community Law provides.’
• Johanna Boogerd-Quaak (MEP, NL, ELDR): ‘the Irish Presidency has buckled under the interests of American Companies. A handful of big American Companies may actually profit from software patents, but it is a very bad deal for innovation in European SMEs. Additionally, the Council is showing contempt for parliamentary democracy. We must make sure that after the elections there will again be a majority in the European Parliament that is willing to show its teeth.’

Amazingly, the Council proposal documents aren’t even being released to the public, ‘due to the sensitive nature of the negotiations and the absence of an overriding public interest’; the FFII got hold of them via a leak.

There’s still a chance that this can be reversed; this still needs to be confirmed at the Competitiveness Council of Ministers on 17-18 May. This isn’t a dead cert just yet. As a result, FFII are proposing more demonstrations and another ‘net strike’.

It’s unclear whether writing to anyone will make a difference, at least for people in Ireland, however; everything I’ve read seems to indicate that our representatives on the EU Competitivity Council are not on our side.

Specifically, the only names I can find regarding this Council are Mary Harney, pro-business, anti-regulation right-wing leader of the Progressive Democrats and ‘President-in-Office’ of this committee; and the staff of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment’s Intellectual Property Unit.

(Of course, Harney at least can always be voted out at the next elections, and I’d strongly suggest anyone working in the field bear that in mind if this gets passed!)

Tags: commission, council, directive, group, irish, mep, patent, patentability, patents, presidency, proposal

Europe: Given the Irish EU Presidency’s recent passing of the IP Enforcement Directive and the second attempt to get the Software Patents directive through using the EU Council of Ministers, is it really appropriate for Microsoft to “contribute” to the Irish EU Presidency?

MS reportedly see software patents as a very important part of their strategy to deal with open source, as they noted way back in 1998 in the leaked Halloween I document.

MS is reportedly applying for 10 new patents a day (or is it per week? eWeek can’t decide. anyway.)

It’s pretty clear that MS want to ‘de-commoditize’ open standards, using software patents; they said so in the Halloween doc. Their XML Word-processing patent, which claims to patent the use of two open standards (XML and XSD) in a word-processing file format, is a great example of locking up an open standard as a patented, proprietary format.

As a result, they’d have a vested interest in helping the EU Presidency to decide that software patents should be legalised in the EU. A more conspiracy-minded type than myself might read something into their ‘contributions’ accordingly ;)

Now, it could be all touchy-feely niceness from MS. This eWeek article quotes David Kaefer, Microsoft’s director of business development for intellectual property:

According to … Kaefer, “We’ll make our IP available to all comers, open-source or not.” Kaefer added that Microsoft isn’t focused on what garage-shop developers are doing …

Sounds lovely, except it didn’t happen in this case, where MS threatened an open-source developer with patent litigation:

Today I received a polite phone call from a fellow at Microsoft who works in the Windows Media group. He informed me that Microsoft has intellectual property rights on the ASF format and told me that, although I had reverse engineered it, the implementation was still illegal since it infringed on Microsoft patents. … At his request, and much to my own sadness, I have removed support for ASF in VirtualDub 1.3d, since I cannot risk a legal confrontation.

Tags: directive, europe, format, halloween, irish, microsoft, patent, presidency, software, word-processing, xml

Politics: FFII reports that the ‘IPR Enforcement Directive’, the law proposed to deal with ‘IPR infringement’ by the wife of the CEO of Vivendi Universal, has just been approved by the EU Council.

Another glorious moment of digital cluelessness by the Irish presidency. But then, it had already been passed by the parliament. Reminder: that page lists the Irish MEPs and how they voted on a key amendment, which would have inserted safeguards so that ’surprise raids … in the middle of the night by private security firms, on the flimsiest evidence’ would not be possible.

It’s now done in Europe. Next step is to deal with it when the member state governments implement it (which has to happen by June 2006).

Tags: ceo, directive, enforcement, ffii, infringement, ipr, law, politics, the, vivendi, wife

Patents: The pro-software-patent lobby has frequently stated that TRIPS — the Treaty on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), signed on 1993-12-15 as a constituting document of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) — requires that software be patentable. For example, here’s one from the International Chamber of Commerce:

ICC believes that the directive should follow current practice in the EPO and a number of EU member states and make it clear that computer program products can be claimed. To disallow such claims in the directive would create great legal uncertainty for holders of such patents already granted. Prohibiting product claims would also render enforcement of patents difficult and raise questions with respect to TRIPS compliance. TRIPS requires patents not only to be available, but also to be ‘enjoyable’ in all areas of technology.

Well, it actually appears that the treaty may state exactly the opposite! Christian Beauprez, a UK-based consultant, has taken a closer look at the details, and come up with this:

TRIPS Article 10.1, ‘Computer programs, whether in source or object code, shall be protected as literary works under the Berne Convention (1971).’

WIPO Copyright Treaty Article 4, ‘Computer programs are protected as literary works within the meaning of Article 2 of the Berne Convention. Such protection applies to computer programs, whatever may be the mode or form of their expression’.

This includes the execution or processing of a program, as demonstrated in the EEC software copyright Directive 1991, ‘the permanent or temporary reproduction of a computer program by any means and in any form, in part or in whole. Insofar as loading, displaying, running, transmission or storage’

They also stipulate that exceptions to exclusive rights of authors are to be limited to ’special cases’ which do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and cannot be prejudicial to the author’s rights. (e.g. the rights to sell,rent,broadcast,give away,translate, and generally enjoy.).

… Authors cannot own underlying ideas, but inventors can as part of their ‘invention’. When the field of software (aka data processing) is opened up to ‘inventors’, they can block authors from exploiting their works on the grounds that they own the ‘underlying ideas’. Therefore this is prejudicial to the rights of authors and illegal under all these Treaties.

There’s lots more at Christian’s site. FFII, one of the main anti-software-patenting players in Europe, have agreed that this is a key point in their TRIPS analysis:

In summary it can be said that the European patent establishment is 1. refusing to clarify and concretise the meaning of the TRIPs treaty; 2. wrongly equating the TRIPs treaty with ‘US practise’, using threats of alleged TRIPs-incompatibility for purposes of fostering Fear, Uncertainty and Distrust (FUD); 3. trying to impose a sui generis software patent regime on Europe which is incompatible with the TRIPs treaty.

Tags: article, berne, computer, copyright, directive, patents, program, software, trade, treaty, trips

Ireland: Now that the IP Enforcement directive has passed, Irish readers might be interested to find out how their MEPs voted on it.

First off, the good ones:

• PATRICIA MCKENNA - GREEN PARTY MEP (DUBLIN) since 1994
• NUALA AHERN - GREEN PARTY MEP (LEINSTER) since 1994

Both of the Green MEPs voted along party lines on a key amendment, amendment 54, which would have limited enforcement to commercial-scale counterfeiting rather than individual infringement.

But on the other side, we have these, who voted for applicability of the directive to all ‘IPR’, according to FFII. The hall of shame:

• JOE McCARTIN - FINE GAEL MEP (CONNACHT/ULSTER) since 1979
• JOHN CUSHNAHAN - FINE GAEL MEP (MUNSTER) since 1989
• DANA ROSEMARY SCALLON - INDEPENDENT MEP (CONNACHT/ULSTER) since 1999
• NIALL ANDREWS - FIANNA FAIL MEP (DUBLIN) since 1984
• GERARD COLLINS - FIANNA FAIL MEP (MUNSTER) since 1994
• JIM FITZSIMONS - FIANNA FAIL MEP (LEINSTER) since 1984
• LIAM HYLAND - FIANNA FAIL MEP (LEINSTER) since 1994

Unsurprising to see the conservative FFers (and Dana!) in there — but what do FG think they’re doing?

Considering that FFII read this as permitting ’surprise raids on teenagers in the middle of the night by private security firms on the flimsiest of evidence’, as passed, this is a ‘hall of shame’ issue.

The moral: vote Green!

Tags: amendment, directive, enforcement, fail, ffii, green, hall, ireland, mep, meps, party

Free Software: Ciaran O’Riordan has just announced the launch of IFSO, the Irish Free Software Organisation:

With Ireland holding the presidency of the EU for the next six months, political lobbying in Ireland will be of increased importance. The fate of the software patentability directive is still undecided, and we now also have the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive to deal with. In the coming months, members of IFSO also plan to work on spreading education and adoption of Free Software in Ireland. Once we have a proven track record, we hope to become an associate organisation of FSF Europe.

He also notes: ‘by no coincidence, today is also the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the GNU project.’

Go IFSO!

Funny: Lobster Barbie outfit turns out to be a lifesaver: ‘Practical jokers Jim Bright and Chris Costello never imagined that their idea of dressing a female lobster in a Barbie outfit - accessorized with pink high heels - would save her from the steam pot. But it did - at least 10 times.’

Software: some interesting bits on how piracy affects the small software developer from PeerFear (the developer of NewsMonster), Nick Bradbury (Feed Demon), and Ambrosia Software — all small-scale commercial software developers.

Nick notes that when he uploaded a fake ‘cracked’ version to a warez site, he found out that more people used the warez in a few weeks than had ever paid for it. Amazing.

For a while now, I’ve been keen on shareware. I’ve paid for the shareware software I use (like iSilo), purely because I like the shareware model — and the software, of course. ;)

I prefer free software, but I understand some people need to make money from what they’re writing directly in this way, and aren’t writing the software as a kind of hobby or with a ‘public good’ motivation (which is pretty much what drives me to write free software). I even experimented with publishing as shareware myself at one stage.

I found, however, that open source suits me better; I like the way it builds a community of trust around the code, seems to gain better mindshare, reduces the bottleneck on the software developer himself, and generally is more how I’d like to do it. Plus, nobody’s going to pirate code they download for free anyway so I never have to worry about adding DRM-like stuff and accidentally annoying legit users with painful registration codes and so on ;)

With any commercial software, commercial support is required; thoughts about how to pay for it is required; and the developer has to make a commitment to the users in many ways. It’s hard work, and a full-time job. For the software I write in my free time, I can’t provide this support, so free software is the appropriate way to release it.

Tags: developer, directive, free, ifso, lobster, organisation, outfit, shareware, software, warez

Great news from the European Parliament — the good amendments have been passed and it looks a lot better. James Heald of FFII is quoted as saying ‘the directive text as amended by the European Parliament clearly excludes software patents. It hangs together incredibly cohesively.’

Congratulations to our MEPs who grasped the highly technical nuances of the issue, and voted the right way, and to the groups who advised them so well. No congrats to me who went on holidays just before this vote. ;)

Now, all that remains is to ensure that the Council of Ministers also do the right thing; unfortunately FFII note that ‘in the past, the Council of Ministers has left patent policy decisions to its patent policy working party, which consists of patent law experts who are also sitting on the administrative council of the European Patent Office (EPO). This group has been one of the most determined promoters of unlimited patentability, including program claims, in Europe.’ Not encouraging.

Meta: still catching up and getting through the jetlag…

Tags: council, directive, european, ffii, lot, ministers, news, parliament, patent, policy

Heads up for all the businesses out there sending mail to European customers — the EU E-Privacy Directive is now coming into force. Italy is the latest country to implement it; so businesses mailing Italian customers or prospects may wish to make sure that they abide by these rules:

• Companies may send direct marketing email only to customers and subscribers who have given their prior consent to receiving such, either by subscribing explicitly or by providing their details during a prior transaction, such as a purchase.

• Forged headers and other means of disguising or concealing the sender’s identity is illegal.

• All messages must bear opt-out details as well.

• Apparently, in the Italian rendition, senders may also ‘collect’ addresses but must immediately give the user a clear opportunity to opt-out at that point — but as far as I know this isn’t in the core EU directive.

Similar laws will be coming in all over Europe, so USian senders should really pay attention: opt-in — it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law (in Europe at least ;).

Malware: It sounds like SoBig.F is about to call home for new code (scroll down to ‘Downloading Functionality’). This is not good. :( Block port 8998/udp.

SoBig.F, the assorted bounce messages from forged SoBig.F mails, the assorted replies from autoresponders and list admin software from forged SoBig.F mails, and (of all things) user complaints about the forged mails (argh! surely they know they’re forgeries by now!) are really driving me up the wall. As I check my mail, there’s at least 400 of these messages this morning alone.

IP: Lessig lays into USPTO director: ‘If Lois Boland said this, then she should be asked to resign.’ … ‘That someone who doesn’t understand them is at a high level of this government just shows how extreme IP policy in America has become.’

Tags: country, directive, email, force, heads, mail, marketing, rivacy, sobig, user

FFII have issued a press release: ‘2000 IT bosses say NO to EU software patents, call for rejection of McCarthy software patent directive proposal’:

A ‘Petition for a Free Europe without Software Patents’ has gained more than 150000 signatures. Among the supporters are more than 2000 company owners and chief executives and 25000 developpers and engineers from all sectors of the European information and telecommunication industries, as well as more than 2000 scientists and 180 lawyers. Companies like Siemens, IBM, Alcatel and Nokia lead the list of those whose researchers and developpers want to protect programming freedom and copyright property against what they see as a ‘patent landgrab’.

Reminder: there’s only 7 days left before the plenary on June 30th, so if you’re European, write to your MEP backing FFII’s position. Full text here.

Tags: call, directive, ffii, mccarthy, patent, press, proposal, rejection, release, software

Despite heavy opposition from a coalition of European SMEs and the Greens/EFA faction of the European Parliament, and despite 2 committees suggesting large amendments, Arlene McCarthy’s pushed the patent ‘reform’ through the JURI committee of the European Parliament. It is now going to be debated in an EP plenary in 10 days time. It seems likely there’ll be a vote on adopting it then, too. We’re being railroaded here. :(

If you are a European and bothered by software patents, now is the time to write to (or even email) MEPs asking them to oppose this directive; it’s the ‘proposed software patentability directive as amended by JURI’ (COM(2002)92 2002/0047).

The letter should support the Eurolinux and/or Green position.

I’ve already received one reply, from Nuala Ahern, a Green MEP for Leinster, who’s happy to take the Greens/EFA line (and responded very quickly, all credit to her!). But the question is, who else among the Irish MEPs is likely to vote on this issue – and how do we effectively lobby in such a short time?

Some background links:

• The list of Irish MEPs
• Why software patents are bad for software developers
• The results of the UK Patent Office’s consultation on software patents
• Examples of bad software patents already issued in the US
• Examples of bad software patents already issued in the EU (somehow)
• Details of the proposed directive amendment

Anyway, if it passes it’s not the end of the world, according to Karl Lenz; I’m not sure I agree with his conclusions though ;)

Tags: directive, efa, european, green, greens, meps, parliament, patent, software, time

Arlene McCarthy’s letter hits /. and garners some interesting comments.

• An eyewitness report from the parliamentary hearing in Brussels in early May, pointing out that none of the bill’s supporters bothered responding to the wide range of SMEs opposing the directive. In fact, most of them didn’t even turn up.

• Alan Cox on AMcC’s call for ‘harmonisation’, the traditional excuse for new Euro-laws ;)

Tags: bill, directive, eyewitness, hearing, letter, may, none, range, report, smes

Karlin notes this about ‘the extraordinary letter the Department of Justice sent out this week to various parties’.

According to the letter, the Department will hold a preliminary forum to ‘initiate’ a consultation process on its proposed three-year data retention bill … The forum begins at 3pm — clearly making sure no long and unruly discussions will develop! — and starts with a 20-minute address by the Minister, followed by a 20-minute address by the Dept of Communications on the 1997 EU Data Privacy Directive (which, BTW, Ireland STILL has not implemented despite being under legal threat by the EU — and note that there’s no mention of the far more crucial 2002 amended Directive, voted in last May by a spineless and ill-informed EU Parliament, which allows for up to SEVEN YEARS data retention.

Then — and this is the amazing bit — attendees get a 20 minute pep talk by An Garda Siochana (the Irish police force) ‘on the contribution of data retention in the fight against crime.’

When you pick yourself up off the floor, remind yourself that this is the Irish government’s formal initiation of a purported public discussion on data retention — brought to you by the Irish police. Amazing. You’d have thought they’d at least *pretend* to be balanced and disinterested, and perhaps ask Joe Meade, the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, to contribute as well. …

The Department of Justice itself should have nothing whatsoever to do with ANY consultation process on this proposed bill. Instead, as in the UK, an independent Dail group should hold hearings and get public input into this.

Tags: address, data, department, directive, forum, justice, letter, minute, police, retention

According to the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Mr. D. Ahern, Ireland will “transpose into Irish law the requirements of European Parliament and Council Directive 2002/58/EC concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector” before the end of 2003.

It will be nice to be able to point to the law, eventually — for what that’s worth. Since most spammers are USian, relaying via other countries, actually acting on the law will not be quite so simple. But it will be an improvement.

Tags: communications, council, directive, european, law, marine, minister, natural, parliament, transpose