[Patents] Software patents advocacy in "Le Monde Informatique" :-(

[Nicolas MONNET nico@monnet.to]

On Wed, 24 May 2000, PILCH Hartmut wrote:

|We have similar articles in Law journals in Germany, including one by
|Betten & Esslinger in ComputerRecht with a page of FUD about the
|"opensource movement" and its reasons to oppose patents.  This article
|says that the opensource crowd is misinformed and really doesn't have much
|of a reason, because one can still continue to write programs in spite of
|a patent, as long as one doesn't make them publicly available on the Net.

Laughing Out Loud. So I guess this person could claim that Chinese have
freedom of speech, since they can say whatever they want as long as nobody
can hear them!!!

|Of course Betten & E fail to mention any publications of the "opensource
|movement".  This gives the whole legal profession's journal the character
|of a propaganda publication.  A shame, really.

Propaganda, indeed, the more I think about it, the more I see parallels
between what I would call a "corporatist" kind of political agenda, which
aims at maximising profit and power for big corporation, at the expense of
citizen, consumers, and individuals in general.

As a sidenote, and getting more political -- but this is politics we're
talking about here, aren't we ? -- I've never managed to understand how
the US "libertarians" (anarchy glorified IMO) can put more trusts in big
corporations than in "big" governments. 

|It should be in the interest of the Law Journals to get some qualified
|counter-viewpoints published.  This is one of the things we should be
|organising.

An interesting trends I'm noticing from Law experts -- be they lawyers, or
judges or any kind of law professionals, is to deny "us" the right to have
an opinion on law. Those people tend to think that "the law" exists in and
for itself. This is wrong: we, as citizens, are supposed to make the law,
albeit indirectly.