Re: [Patents] JURI amendments for 22/4 now up (in Italian)

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

> DMCA is evil, but there were such 'anti-pirate' acts in the past and
> they've been abolished sooner or later, when it came to the
> legislators what they've done. And, the boycott strategies are the
> best way to beat down the pro-DMCA companies, who like to ask
> 'authorities' (autocrats would be a better word) to enforce them. It
> doesn't mean, of course, that they shouldn't be combatted, but I
> don't even put a damn to DMCA; the sw pats are far more evil,
> because in the case of DMCA it's enough when you leave alone the
> products of those companies that are EVIL and anti-freedom; in the
> case of the sw pats, THEY trample on your rights to make your
> own software. That's exactly the censorship.
>
> Btw, is EUCD any way enforceable? Hartmut said, that it's very
> unclear, so it leaves much uncertainties at any case of criminal
> trial; and, in every 'civilized' country, each of those uncertainties
> must count as the argument for the defendant, not for the
> prosecutor. So, maybe the real enforcement of this "law" is
> impossible?? Even though it's written in the legal codes of EU
> countries ?? What do you think of it ??

I think you are quite right.

While DMCA and the like can make life very difficult for people who write
interoperating software and do not know what might be seen as a
"circumvention", swpat do the same in a more large-scale and systematic
manner, and with a system of specialist judges whose system of values
is often quite out of sync with the civilisation around them.

We are placed at the frontline of a kind of clash of civilisations, having
to bear the whole burden of mobilisation, and ill-prepared to do it.

Some of the MEPs' behavior may be called despicable, but in a way it is
ordinary human cowardliness in front of the patent civilisation, at whose
front line they should be standing to defend our freedom.  MEPs need our
backing.

All of you can help by coming and bringing people to our demo in Brussels

        http://swpat.ffii.org/events/2003/europarl/05

and signing up on the brussels event preparation mailing list

        http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/bxl/

We need some more banners, busses, artistic contributions etc.  A cabaret
and a men's choir are already organised.  Note that on the previous day
Lawrence Lessig, Brian Kahin and Richard Stallman are coming around the
world to give us a boost.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
140,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/