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

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

> |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!!!

Good comparison.  Actually the Chinese freedom of speech currently is more
liberal than what the patent system allows to programmers.  But the
structure is similar:  you have freedom as long as you don't publicly
challenge the existing powers.
 
> |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.

We have several strong forces working against us:
(1) globalism: the wish for a uniform world market where one set of rules
    must be asserted and the American one is the most likely candidate,
(2) capitalism: the wish of bankers to make everything easily calculable
    by some scheme of property assets
(3) patent-expansionism: corporate egoism of the patent complex

> 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. 

Probably because even a big corporation still has less power of coercion
than a government.

Talking about the patent system is of course an excellent way to
confuse and split the libertarian camp.  

Libertarians have, as most capitalist ideologues, usually not yet thought
about the difference between physical and informational goods.  The latter
are not really goods at all.  What you sell is an exclusion right.  But
why should Adam Smith's "invisible hand" work to everybody's benefit in a
situation where not goods but exclusion rights are bargained?   What is so
liberal about exclusion?
 
> |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.

Just as capitalists tend to destroy the market and erect monopolies,
lawyers tend to destroy the division of powers and usurp legislative
power.  In both cases, it is up to us as citiziens to fight for
reestablishing the balance.

-phm