[Commons-Law] Fwd: Software Patents in the latest amendment

[Anivar Aravind]

hey Lawrence,

I forw.arded u'r Briefing note to in-parl mailinglist of FFII. This is
the insighting reply from RMS .

and FFII India site is created at http://www.ffii.in/. Persons
intrested in editing the site
can obtain rights from buero at ffii.org

PILCH Hartmut's  Amendment proposals for Indian Software Patent Law
http://wiki.ffii.org/InAmend0503En

~solidarity
Anivar

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Richard Stallman <rms at gnu.org>
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 19:21:14 -0500
Subject: Re: Fwd: Software Patents in the latest amendment
To: Anivar Aravind <anivar.aravind at gmail.com>
Cc: in-parl at ffii.org


The arguments made are good, but don't include some of the most
powerful ones:

* The danger that users can be sued for what their computers are doing.

* That software patents directly restrict millions of people, everyone
who has a computer, and therefore cannot be treated as an economic
issue alone.

The text uses the term "protection" which is propaganda for the other
side.  It's hard to argue against a plan to "protect" someone that is
in danger.  We need to reject the claim that patents do this.

In particular, this paragraph is quite misleading:

    > Software has traditionally been protected under copyright law since
    > code fits quite easily into the description of a literary work.
    > Software Patenting has recently emerged (if only in the US, Japan and
    > Europe) as an alternative that software companies are increasingly
    > employing to, in order to protect their products.

This paints an act of threatened aggression as mere self-defense.
This is exactly how the pro-patent forces try to mislead the public.
We must not endorse their deception.

This also spreads their favorite misunderstanding about what
software patents do.  A software patent is not linked with
one specific program.  Your program need not be similar
to any existing program to infringe software patents.
Indeed, any large program will infringe many software patents
even if it is quite innovative.

Each software patent is a prohibition on implementing a certain method
or feature.  A program is a combination of methods and implements
features; therefore, it will infringe patents.

This paragraph is also misleading in its claim that software patents
have "emerged" in Europe.  It is uncertain that they are valid in
Europe, and FFII is fighting to make sure they are not.  The situations
in the US and Europe are very different.

When read that paragraph, so full of subtle support for our
adversaries, I had the feeling you were defending software patents.
Later on I could see that that is not so--the rest of the article
proceeds to argue against them.  But this paragraph undermines what
follows.  I think you need to delete it.