Hello,
perhaps someone from Italia is interested in this issue and/or could forward
it to italian LUGs.
http://softwarechoice.org/ (The MS-funded group)
Christian Leber
-- press release --
-- for immediate release--
Essen/Wien, Wednesday March 24th, 2004
FSFE welcomes three new members from Austria
(Essen/Wien) Three Free Software activists from Austria join Free
Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).
After years of successful cooperation through their membership in the
"Verein zur Förderung Freier Software" (FFS), Austria's associate
organization of the FSF Europe, Georg Jakob, Karin Kosina and Reinhard
Müller have now officially joined the ranks of the FSFE.
"Joining the FSF Europe was a logical and important step, something
the FFS has been aiming to build capacity for from its first days,"
says Georg Jakob, current president of the FFS. "Being part of the
European Union, Austria is not only strongly influenced by European
politics, we also feel this is the right step as we've always seen
ourselves as Europeans as well as Austrians."
"The most important threats we are currently facing, such as software
patents, cannot be dealt with on a national scale alone. European
cooperation is necessary. We are confident that this cooperation,
which has proved its effectiveness many times already, will increase
even more through the integration of Austrian representatives into
the FSF Europe core team," Karin Kosina continues.
"Working together across language, cultural and political barriers is
sometimes a very challenging task, but also one that is very
rewarding," says Georg Greve, president of the FSF Europe. "Seeing
the network grow is both exciting and promising. We hope that others
will also feel the desire to build cooperation across all borders and
get active within the FSF Europe."
Having seen a constantly growing group of permanent and occasional
volunteers, this brings the amount of fully represented countries in
the FSF Europe up to five, with more to be expected.
About the Free Software Foundation Europe
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSF Europe) is a charitable
non-governmental organization dedicated to all aspects of Free
Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate
in a digital society. Therefore the freedoms to use, copy, modify and
redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition -
allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness
for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and
giving people freedom by supporting development of Free Software are
central issues of the FSF Europe, which was founded in 2001 as the
European sister organization of the Free Software Foundation in the
United States.
http://fsfeurope.org
Contact
Europe:
Georg C. F. Greve <greve(a)fsfeurope.org>
phone: +49-40-23809080
fax: +49-40-23809081
Austria:
Georg Jakob <jakob(a)fsfeurope.org>
Karin Kosina <kosina(a)fsfeurope.org>
Reinhard Müller <mueller(a)fsfeurope.org>
Further contact information available at
http://fsfeurope.org/contact/
About the Verein zur Förderung Freier Software (FFS)
The "Verein zur Förderung Freier Software" (FFS) was founded in
2001 as a non-profit organization to complement the existing
international organizations in attending to users and developers of
Free Software in Austria. Apart from the participation in various
projects for the support of Free Software in the private, business,
and public sectors, the growing number of members also care for the
protection and improvement of the legal foundations of the
development and use of Free Software.
http://ffs.or.at
New Yorkers for Fair Use Call to General Assembly
-------------------------------------------------
Internet Commons Congress 2004
March 24-25, 2004, Outside Washington, DC
Scheduled Sessions/Participants:
http://www.internationalunity.org/schedule.htmlhttp://www.internationalunity.orghttp://www.nyfairuse.org/icc
Please forward this call to any other concerned parties you might know.
Please visit the above links to register to attend and join in the fight to
preserve the Internet commons.
Today our commons is under attack.
The attack is wide and pervasive. Even our right to own and use computers
inside our homes and offices, is under attack.
The time has come to assemble and declare our rights. We call upon
advocates and organizers, authors and cow-orkers, readers and singers,
politicians and students, grandmothers and children of all ages, and all who
support the right of free human beings to the free dissemination and use of
information rendered to the commons for the benefit of the public, to join
us at the Internet Commons Congress outside Washington DC on March 24 and
25, 2004.
We live in a time of vibrant prospects and shameful travesties, brought on
as we confront the implications of a new and broader and greater empowerment
in furtherance of our common wealth and in engagement in our common
governance.
Today we possess:
- The Internet: the means to disseminate and make use of published
information flexibly and powerfully, on a worldwide scale
- Computers: tools to process, select, combine, analyze and synthesize
information at the digital and logical level, and
- Logical Freedom: the power to devise means of applying these tools
through the free use and expression of logic in code
But today we also confront:
- attempts to create irrational and wildly artificial legal and regulatory
trammels on new conventions, such as VoIP, in order to keep control of the
world's communication channels in the hands of old oligopolies, monopolies,
and tyrannical governments
- an intransigent U.S. Federal Communications Commission, arrogating to
itself an unprecedented authority to declare exclusive rights policy and to
regulate the design of digital devices on that basis
- consolidated mass media and entrenched communications monopolies that
subvert principles of the public interest with the willing concurrence of
complaisant regulators and legislators
- elected representatives who have made plain their intention to enact a
new exclusive right to factual information in databases
- forceful attempts in Europe to subvert the law banning patents on
software, by patent establishment professionals and the large companies they
serve
- specious arguments by public servants and privileged contractors for the
supposed reliability of "new voting technology"
- attempts by the Bio-Medical Cartel and others to seize the fruits of
logical, biological, medical, and pharmaceutical researches carried out at
publically financed institutions of science and learning
- an already well advanced and well funded plan to impose a redesign of
home computer hardware so that running software that you choose would be
made impractical, and analyzing and processing information in the manner you
choose would be made impossible; the new design, backed by laws such as the
DMCA, would result in the emplacement of wiretap and remote control hardware
and supporting software in every new low cost home computer sold in 2006
- massive ongoing and systematic violations of contract law and antitrust
law and consumer protection law by Microsoft and its partners, by means of
which most home users are left with no choice but to run Microsoft operating
systems: most people are not offered any choice of operating system at point
of sale of the hardware, and are therefore induced to employ systems that
are difficult to use and easily parasitized, systems that are indeed so bad
because Microsoft need not compete
- a hundred million dollar campaign of barratry and red-baiting conducted
by SCO, acting as agent for the convicted monopolist Microsoft, to induce
businesses and individuals to steer away from exercising free control of
their logic devices, away in particular from GNU/Linux operating systems;
the assault led by SCO is only one of many of similar scale
All these issues and more are part of a broad struggle by all the people, we
who treasure our freedom and who wish to remain free to use our Net and our
computers in all the ways that are both fit and just.
We call all ready advocates and concerned constituencies to assemble at the
Internet Commons Congress this March 24 and 25, 2004. Here we will forge a
bond in our common cause of information freedom, detail our missions and
callings and summon each other to join in common cause.
Please click here for details regarding venue, schedule, logistics:
http://www.nyfairuse.org/icc/
Registration for attendance is free: http://www.nyfairuse.org/icc/reg.xhtml
Those in attendance will issue calls for action, as shall we. We call all
free citizens to join the struggle against englobulation of our Commons and
our computers by the loose association and alliance of cartels, oligopolies,
monopolies, and parts of governments, that seek to keep or take control of
all the communications systems of the world.
At the moment New Yorkers for Fair Use knows of a few efforts which we will
forward at the Congress:
- Continued Actions for Refunds: We hope to prepare materials to move the
FTC, Congress of the USA folk, the Federal antitrust team, and the judge in
the Microsoft case to consider effective action on the basis of gross
violations of both the 1994/1995 consent decree, and the recent conviction
of Microsoft. This effort needs several score affidavits dealing with
anti-competitive practices at point of sale of low cost computer hardware.
- Education of Regulators and Legislators and Attorneys about Home
Computer Hardware: We will explain and demonstrate the boot process today on
untrammeled hardware and what the boot process would be like on Palladiated
hardware, that is, hardware with hard DRM.
- Procurement Policy Education and Action: We seek to collect and analyze
the grossly inequitable policies and procedures by which vendors of source
secret softwares keep their special privileged position in the machine rooms
and desktops of government agencies.
- Education of Regulators and Legislators and Judges about the Net: We
will explain the fundamental principles which, for more than thirty years,
have supported the psychic and moral and legal and engineering foundations
of our Net. A popularly reported on issue directly connected with these
principles is the "issue of Voice Over Internet Protocol".
These four actions have been mentioned because organizations, tribes, and
individuals from New York City have recently been working on these four
efforts. We know that other efforts will also be carried forward at the
Internet Commons Congress. Come and help!
--
New Yorkers for Fair Use
http://www.nyfairuse.org
[CC] Counter-copyright: http://realmeasures.dyndns.org/cc
I reserve no rights restricting copying, modification or distribution of
this incidentally recorded communication. Original authorship should be
attributed reasonably, but only so far as such an expectation might hold for
usual practice in ordinary social discourse to which one holds no claim of
exclusive rights.
I have improved a code that is public domain (it has
no copyright). Is it possible to make my improved
version GPL. Is it useful.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard - Read only the mail you want.
http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools
Hello,
after I have been charged from the owners of the trademark Obelix for
my project MobiliX, I became aware of more and more trademark
cases in the Linux world. There have been FOSS and commercial
projects been charged. I have made a survey of the cases
I know (but due to legal reasons I can't mention all of them) here:
http://tuxmobil.org/html_legal/sequel.html
Could you please check that survey and tell me if I have missed
some cases.
I will turn the results into a presentation about
Trademark Threats Against FOSS Projects
http://tuxmobil.org/html_legal/
at the Libre Software Meeting in Bordeaux this summer.
Thank you
Werner
--
|=| Werner Heuser = Berliner Str. 122 = D-13187 Berlin = Germany
|=| <wehe at tuxmobil.org> T. 0049 - (0)30 - 349 53 86
|=| http://TuxMobil.org UniX on Mobile Systems: HOWTOs,Software
|*| This is no time for phony rhetoric -- Lou Reed
Hi,
did you notice that the man-pages package recently became non-free?
The Open Group and IEEE "contributed" POSIX manpages which were added
as of version 1.65 of man-pages. Distribution is permitted but no
modification, hence incompatible with the ideas of Free Software.
Here's the official announcement <http://linuxpr.com/releases/6599.html>
Regards,
Joey
--
Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it! -- Mark Twain
Please always Cc to me when replying to me on the lists.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [IP-Enforce] Consumer rally on directive
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 22:23:07 -0800
From: Robin Gross <robin(a)ipjustice.org>
Reply-To: robin(a)ipjustice.org
Organization: IP Justice
To: ip-enforce(a)ipjustice.org
Hi folks,
I think we should consider organizing a public rally and press
conference outside the EU on the date of the debate.
If we got some artists to come out and speak at the event, we could
focus a lot of press attention on the P2P issue.
Does anyone know about permits for such rallys outside the EU in Brussels?
I'm eager to hear what others think about this idea.
Thanks,
Robin
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