chiark

Important news for anyone who's interested in open source, or just common sense being applied to EU-wide law

see the article in the register, but in short the EU draft patent law limits software patents being granted to "true inventions".

As an example, the Amazon one-click process, which is hardly rocket science, would not be allowed a patent over here.

Other good news is that software in mobile phones, video recorders and set top boxes cannot be patented, meaning that innovation will not be closed.

Of course some parts of the industry are unhappy, but it is absolutely fantastic to see the majority (ie people) get their voices heard louder than industry lobbyists! There were comments from MEPs that they could not cope with the volume of correspondence from the regular man/woman in the street.

So, that's one of the potentially crippling EU directives dealt with, progress is still needed on the EU-DCMA.

Cheers,
Nick.

GaryK

you mean common sense has prevailed for once in EU??? mind boggling It needs to stop that crap like BT trying to claim they invented the hyperlink or some time ago an accounts software company trying to patent the term 'drill-down', utter bollox!

Gary

chiark

Yes, it's a belter of a resolution because someone applied the "what does this mean" test and found that the original had lots and lots of problems.

It's bloomin' marvellous! Hoorah and hazzah for people power!

As it stands, the EU-DCMA will make it illegal to rip the music you buy from a "copy protected" CD (such as cactus and the other technology that plainly can never work properly) in order that you can listen to it on your MP3 player, or make a compilation CD, or...

This use is called "fair use", but the concept will go out of the window if the EUDCMA is passed because legally you will have circumvented a security mechanism. Which is illegal.

Reverse engineering will always be under the spotlight as you can argue that anything to do with reverse engineering is circumventing someone's security. So that's an end to interoperability and a vast swathe of software.

The implications for open source are myriad.

This success with patents does IMHO bode well for the DCMA, but on the other hand people with vast pockets are lobbying to get the DMCA passed in its current crippling form so that they may protect their outdated and near extinct business model.

As an aside: if piracy in crippling the music business, why were records for CD single sales broken last year? Could it be that people are fed up of hype just to find the album that they've bought is crap? Could it be that, despite the technology getting vastly cheaper, CDs have not dropped in price from the early days?

Enough, soapbox away!

Cheers,
nick.

stevencotton

Don't stop, carry on