[France specific but in english to share with everyone]
Hi,
That's is likely to be the strangest report I ever sent ;-) In order not to be exploited by the media, the person I met today is not willing to be named. And for that matter, it is not of great consequence. What really counts in my eyes is the experience and outcome of talking to someone who has a significant political influence.
When preparing the meeting earlier today, I knew the central subject would be software patents and Free Software. The person was already aware of both subjects. We were connected thru a friend of mine, willing to help us fight against software patents and to promote Free Software. This friend researched during months to arrange the meeting, carefully chosing a favorable ground. A contact with a friendly political person but with no real power would be useless. Talking to someone with no understanding of technological matters would require too much time to be effective and the outcome would be hard to predict.
Shortly before the meeting I called Jaime Villate (PT) and Georg Greve (DE) over the phone in order to make sure I was not missing a last minute event regarding software patents. I failed to reach other people and that was my mistake. I should have done this the day before and I would have had a chance to get in touch with more people to cover all European countries. There should be a list of people in each country to call when a volunteer manage to get such an appointment.
Such a meeting is like an examination. I had little time (1 hour) and the following things had to be done:
A) Explain the subject (Free Software + software patents)
B) Find a common ground on which to continue the relationship
C) Expect the person to ask me to do something.
D) Arrange another appointement
A) Was the easiest part.
- Explain who I represent (in this case FSF Europe and APRIL specificaly and the Free Software movement at large). - Outline how many people, governements, companies are concerned by Free Software and software patents.
- Tell the history of Free Software, grounding it in ethical and moral motivations, starting in 1984 with technical and social results in education, science and industry. - Explain why software patents are bad, both for Free Software and for proprietary software. State that they should not become legal in Europe. Although there is a lot of pressure, the situation is not desperate: politicians can stand against it. The EPO coup may even help prevent a decision to legalize patents, if exploited correctly.
- Show the FFII horror galery.
- Advocates who are against software patents and serious studies demonstrate that software patents prevent inovation. Many people Europe wide (90 000) and companies (200) signed the Eurolinx petition. An average of 80% companies are against software patents.
- Pro-patents never argue that software patents help inovation, they claim that it helps small companies protect their inventions and that Europe must follow the US & Japan policy to prevent isolation. Explain that small companies will never win against the major patent holders (exchange of patents). Explain that if software patents become legal in Europe US & Japanese companies will invade it with the patents they already hold and takeover the European software industry. Since software patents prevent inovation, not allowing them in Europe is indeed an advantage over US and Japan. An advantage we would lose by legalizing them. Refusing software patents is not being protective, it means being stronger.
I also prepared documents to give to this person at the end of the meeting.
Software Patents in Europe http://www.fsfeurope.org/swpat/swpat.en.html
European Software Patents: Assorted Examples http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/pikta/mupli/index.en.html
Juridical Coup at the European Patent Office http://petition.eurolinux.org/pr/pr14.html
Leaflet about APRIL + FSF Europe + Free Software (Robert Chassel text)
Plus a business card in exchange of which the person gave me another business card.
B) We had many discussions with my friend to figure out why this person would be interested to be involved in the Free Software and software patent issues. As an individual, this person could be convinced of the values attached to Free Software and the threat software patents represent. However that was not enough: I was also talking to someone with a political job to do. How Free Software and software patents can fit in this person's agenda ? My friend suggested to compare the software patents issue to the genome patent issue.
- There is an urgent need. Software patents may become legal soon, we can prevent it by acting now. Acting later will be much harder.
- The public, although in a restricted field, is against software patents. A statement against software patents and for inovation would have a positive impact on the public.
- Software patents would harm inovation in the software field. France is not in a too good shape regarding inovation, specially in this field. We do not want to make the situation worse, we want to improve it by refusing software patents. A statement against software patents would have a positive impact on the managers of software companies.
What really happened is that I forgot to suggest the parallel with the genome patent issue. But the person did find similarities anyway and acknowledged that it would fit on the agenda. My mistake was auto-corrected ;-)
C) This is the delicate moment. If, by the end of the meeting the person did not ask for anything, that would have meant that the subject was of no interest and that the meeting was not conclusive. Fortunately the person suggested me to:
- Contact other political persons and raise the issue in the same way. I can ask for help if getting an appointement turns out to be difficult or postponed for too long.
- Publicly ask to political people to state their position on this subject.
D) We arranged an appointement 15 days later, to talk about the work done.
I hope this report will help and inspire people to try a similar approach.
Cheers,
On Fri, Jan 18, 2002 at 07:28:44PM +0100, Loic Dachary wrote:
[France specific but in english to share with everyone]
Loïc, thanks for the report and the effort.
I have a small remark regarding political strategy in the software patent field:
My friend suggested to compare the software patents issue to the genome patent issue.
IMO this point has to be handled very carefully.
The serious information really shows that software patents do not help to reward the group investing and producing innovations.
As for patents in the area of pharmaceutical industrie the discussion and research is not completely done. Thus the fear of an unfair system with patents in the area is as justified, but experiences and research currently make it less well known as the software patent field.
If we make both points together there is a small danger that the danger of software patents will be underestimated.
On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
On Fri, Jan 18, 2002 at 07:28:44PM +0100, Loic Dachary wrote:
[France specific but in english to share with everyone]
Loïc, thanks for the report and the effort.
I have a small remark regarding political strategy in the software patent field:
My friend suggested to compare the software patents issue to the genome patent issue.
IMO this point has to be handled very carefully.
The serious information really shows that software patents do not help to reward the group investing and producing innovations.
As for patents in the area of pharmaceutical industrie the discussion and research is not completely done. Thus the fear of an unfair system with patents in the area is as justified, but experiences and research currently make it less well known as the software patent field.
If we make both points together there is a small danger that the danger of software patents will be underestimated.
There is (was) a discussion around software being speech or expression. Like the language is. (check out DeCSS case with the gallery of DeCSS implementation without compiler for example) Can we go like that with genome ?
If I remember correctly my courses of biology, all the genome uses a representation with some proteine. (like ABCDBCDACBD...)
So, is there a compiler for that (an interpreter in the cells?) ? Is it expression ? speech ? speech of nature ?
Can we collapse genome and software engineering into one big class ? like Software Expression ? or is it a crazy idea ? If we check the Universal Declaration of Human Rights :
"Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. "
Yes, there is some issue with article 27(2) about protection. Are we the author of the genome ? I don't think so.
This is a crazy idea but is there legal case around that ?
alx
On Sat, Jan 19, 2002 at 11:11:58PM +0100, Alexandre Dulaunoy wrote:
There is (was) a discussion around software being speech or expression. Like the language is. (check out DeCSS case with the gallery of DeCSS implementation without compiler for example) Can we go like that with genome ?
No. As I wrote already, the debate for patents in the area of the genom is quite different from the one around software. I am not going deeper into this branch of discussion in this mail.
Patents have complicated relation to speech in general. Actually you are not patenting any expression, just the idea behind it. There are several occasions where you can be forbitten to express certain things, if this is hurting another persons interests. Just calling for the freedom of speech will not be enough unless you can explain why not expressing something will hurt you as much as the other persons and what is morally right in the situation.
Bernhard
On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, Alexandre Dulaunoy wrote:
If I remember correctly my courses of biology, all the genome uses a representation with some proteine. (like ABCDBCDACBD...)
Yes well almost. Sort of. DNA is mixed source and executable code. It stores information in quadrinary, and in eukaryotes (all multicellular life is eukaryotic) it has double redundancy, both due to a mirror image copy and a second total copy of {code+mirror image of code}. (the latter is not *entirely* redundant, but let's keep it simple)
DNA is quadrinary. It has 4 "states" called bases: A T G C . 3 bases together form a codon.
A string of codons can code for a protein, they can also code for other things...
DNA together with its execution mechanism can probably be proved to be able to form a turing machine. I am not aware of such a proof existing at this time, but from where I'm sitting it seems pretty safe to at least speculate that the system is turing complete.
[1st: All proteines are made according to DNA transcripts, Enzyms are usually proteins. Enzyms have been shown to be able to perform AND, OR and NOT operations, and from there you can form a turing machine, right?]
[2nd: It's a tape, we have a tape reader, the reader can read forward and backward, the reader has a state. The reader can alter the tape (at "switch points" where proteines can bind). The state of the reader can be altered when it reads the tape.]
If anyone knows a good and complete proof, I'd love to hear it. :-)
So, is there a compiler for that (an interpreter in the cells?) ? Is it expression ? speech ? speech of nature ?
You could certainly recode anything currently written in binary to dna. Try DCB (DNA coded Binary ;-)) or DCD (DNA coded Decimal ;-)), that would always work. You might say you could express the content of a dna string "naturally" as a sequence of base 64 (4^3) numbers.
In biological systems several values are mapped to the same meaning (as far as proteine definition goes anyway), this makes for some extra redundancy.
In case you hadn't noticed: In biology redundancy is a Good Thing(tm).
With or without redundancy you could store the GNU archive in DNA without too much trouble if you like. It's a very compact and efficient data storage medium. :-) (The only trouble is that people seem to have trouble synthesizing really really long strands of it. But that's a different story.)
I'm pretty much against people patenting genes. It makes it technically illegal to do things like grow certain plants or to have sex. ^^;;;;;
Another reason it's a bad idea to patent genes is because well, it's source code!
Maybe the biology world needs something like the FSF too. ^^;;
in the hope that this is useful, read you soon, K. Bruning
On Saturday 19 January 2002 23:43, you wrote:
DNA together with its execution mechanism can probably be proved to be able to form a turing machine. I am not aware of such a proof existing at this time, but from where I'm sitting it seems pretty safe to at least speculate that the system is turing complete.
Hmm, If we are made from turing languages, then we ourselves can't do anything computers can't do. In particular, the halting problem applies to us, so we can't tell any property about another person (and never be wrong)
heh
On Sun, 2002-01-20 at 00:43, kim2@bruning.demon.nl wrote:
On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, Alexandre Dulaunoy wrote:
[snip]
I'm pretty much against people patenting genes. It makes it technically illegal to do things like grow certain plants or to have sex. ^^;;;;;
Another reason it's a bad idea to patent genes is because well, it's source code!
Maybe the biology world needs something like the FSF too. ^^;;
Many fields would need that ...
The only thing that make me question why at all patenting on biology is beeing discussed at all is:
people discover things in biology do no create or invent anything (yet).
I do not patent stars or comets or asteroids when I discover one with a telescope why should someone be permitted to patent a biological organism part when he discover it through a microsope???
Any one planning to patent the moon?
... aside I think the joing the 2 arguments is a nono, they are too different and motivations against patentability in biology are largely different from that in software.
Let's keep things separate and speak only on things we really know about.
kim2@bruning.demon.nl wrote:
Maybe the biology world needs something like the FSF too. ^^;;
It has it :-)
http://www.genewatch.org/Press%20Releases/pr18.htm
and its own sourceforge ;-) http://www.hdra.org.uk/hsl/index.htm
- Richard
--
Richard Smedley Production Editor, Linux Format
Telephone +44 (0) 1225 442244 ext 5038
On Mon, 21 Jan 2002, Richard Smedley wrote:
kim2@bruning.demon.nl wrote:
Maybe the biology world needs something like the FSF too. ^^;;
It has it :-)
http://www.genewatch.org/Press%20Releases/pr18.htm
and its own sourceforge ;-) http://www.hdra.org.uk/hsl/index.htm
Hurray! That's good.
One might wonder if several anti-patent organisations might not work together for some initiatives. (Though admittedly this might not yet be (seen) as relevant at the moment).
<future developments> I think that in the near to medium-range future more and more industries are going to run into patent problems, due to advanced computerisation and miniturisation.
Things are getting smaller and cheaper. Originally you would need an entire building to house some production facility, and millions of dollars to build and operate it. Due to emerging technologies such as nanotech and biotech and evolutionary advances in CAM systems, these production systems are getting smaller and smaller. People are already speculating that in the not-even-so-distant future, you will have manufacturing facilities that can easily sit on your desk.
Imagine downloading your office-chair off the internet and "printing" it out. Now there's a whole can of worms, just waiting to be opened. :-)
</future developments>
Currently production systems for digital media, paper documents, small mecahnical components and other small things can fit on your desk. Semi automated systems for making chemical compounds also probably fit on your desk, though they might be a bit messy.
In approx 10 years time electronic circuits could be produced automaticaly on the desktop. Larger and larger mechanical components should also be produceable in time.
I think you can see where this is going to go. I once read on a company website something like "We're going to napsterise the entire world."
Who knows, maybe they'll succeed ;-)
Hmmmm, right now, the FSF is on the front line. It might be a good idea to try and fit the FSF activities into a larger scale stratagy.
Something like stimulating biological firms to use GNU Gene-sequencing software might be a good idea for instance. Or getting a micro-factory company to use GNU CAD/CAM :-)
That way we stick to the basic way of working the FSF has, and still help out "our friends".
Comments?
read you soon, Kim Bruning
Hi,
wrt lobbying, I am busy arranging to write Free Software columns for several magazines. I will raise the issue of patents in these.
Should we set up a Free Software contact group to lobby international organziations (ie UN downwards). Such a group should have input from all the major Free Software organizations around the world, and a sort of firewall to prevent any political counter attacks from hurting the FSF family.
wrt the genome the appropriate argument against patents is non-invention. Naturally occuring codon sequences that make the various alleles (alternative versions) of genes (objects/library functions?) of the genome (O/S) are not invented in any laboratory, they already exist. Merley describing something does not earn ownership of it.
Software is different though, it is applied mathematics. I would prefer to say maths is the first science, and therefore its works are also descriptions of nature. This may fail in the case of software since is seen as "created" rather than "found" by most people.
I am based in Africa, so I focus on the nature of patents, how they are used and their effects where they are enforced:
Patents are government granted monopolies. Companies use patents to block/tax competitors and increase the prices they charge, by creating artificial scarcity. This prevents competitors from under cutting the patent holder's price or improving the design. It transfers profit from competitors to the patent holders. It prevents any attempt to freely share technology.
Patents are given at the disgression of government officers for the supposed benefit to the country that grants them. Nothing in this process takes into account the interests of any other country. There is no objective way of measuring how inventive a new design is. No patent office official or patent lawyer has any interest in curtailing the patent system, only to expand it.
Thus it is highly profitable for a country to award many patents to its own companies and enforce them on other countries. This brings a steady revenue from taxing the ecconomic activity of other countries citizens.
Poorer countries have less capacity to produce new patented inventions. Weaker countries have less ability to enforce their patents.
The effect of patents between countries is the same as patents between copmanies: the established leaders entrench their position at the expense of new copmetitors, who must pay a tax to the establishment for the priveledge of using the existing technology.
This transfers their profit margin to the establishment, who need only inovate fast enough to "keep the peasants down".
I encourage politicians to reject foreign patents. Any monopolies to be granted by government should be decided test of the benefit to the country of granting such a monopoly in its territory. Since no two patents are of equal merrit or consequence this test must be conducted for each patent applied for.
Seen in this light I doubt many patents would be issued at all. The key point is patents aren't commercial they are political. Patents are a way of taxing other people, and staying in control.
In South Africa we have a phrase for that "baas kapt", the central philosophy of Apartheid.
Nick Hockings