The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure has a call for donations against the Unitary Software Patent Trolls after Thursday's disastrous Bundestag vote. On Thursday in Germany, the Bundestag voted on ratification of a proposal for a Unified Patent Court, largely seen as purely a vehicle for introducing software patents into Europe. As software patents in the US were on the way out, introducing them into Europe would bring them back into the US after further "harmonization". Thursday's vote is the result of the software patent lobby changing its strategy in Europe by creating a central patent court outside of the control of the individual member states under which it would make its own rules and avoid democratically elected legislators.
FFII is now calling on its supporting companies and on the open source community to donate to crowdfund a Constitutional Complaint in Karlsruhe. Stopping the UPC in Germany will be enough to kill the UPC for the whole Europe. Politicians willfully ignored the problem that the UPC violates the “Rule of Law” principle, as the EPO still cannot be sued for maladministration, where there are 4 pending complaints in Karlsruhe, which should be issued in early 2021.
Next steps are a vote in the Bundesrat, according to Stjerna’s blogpost
Legal Committee of the Federal Council is currently scheduled for 02/12/2020
Federal Council can therefore be expected to make its final deliberation on the draft legislation in its 998th session on 18/12/2020
–Dr Stjerna blog, Status of the UPCA ratification proceedings in Germany (12/12/2016, latest update on 26/11/2020) https://www.stjerna.de/restart/?lang=en
German government believe that they can ratify before the end of the year, as they consider the UK still a member of the EU till 31st December. The agenda of next votes have been designed on purpose to ratify the UPC before the end of the year.
This plot twist is time-dependent and hangs upon a loophole in Brexit. Thus the time between now and New Year are crucial for preserving the ability to use or develop software in Europe. Again, this is about the uses to which software may be applied, not distribution. Usage is covered by patent law, distribution by copyright law.
The FFII is a pan-European alliance of software companies and independent software developers. It is currently working to neutralize the Unitary Patent project, which is a third attempt to introduce software patents into Europe. The previous two attempts failed, but only because of the joint efforts of thousands of companies to defend against software patents in Europe.
Previously:
(2020) UK Formally Abandons Europe's Unified Patent Court
(2020) Deadly Blow to the Pox of Software Patents in the EU
(2018) Software Patents are Harmful
(2018) A Case for the Total Abolition of Software Patents
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 28 2020, @05:21PM (8 children)
Continued existence of small and medium businesses in scared new masked world is not in any politician's plans anyway, and megacorps can easily extort from captive users many times the money they spend on lawyers and judges.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Saturday November 28 2020, @06:11PM (7 children)
What are you talking about? There isn't some kind of conspiracy to kill small businesses. Doing so would be devastating to the economy in any nation. Big businesses are important economically, sure, but they don't comprise the bulk of any nation's economy, and you can't run an economy with just a handful of huge businesses. Just look at restaurants: corporate chain restaurants have their place, but there's countless smaller restaurants out there because you can't get a unique dining experience in a chain, plus you can get much better food at independent eateries. What happens when you shut down all the independent places? Lots of people simply stop eating out, killing a big sector of the economy. People who eat at fancy michelin-star restaurants (or other nice restaurants not quite at that level) aren't going to suddenly switch to eating at McDonald's or Friday's; they're just going to stay at home. It's just like "art-house" theaters: close those down, and the patrons aren't going to just switch to watching the latest comic-book movie at the local AMC; they're going to stay at home and watch stuff on their 75" 4k TV.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 28 2020, @06:47PM
Your impassioned speech would have sounded totally convincing in April '20. But now at the end of November?
Cancer isn't some kind of conspiracy to kill your body. Doing so would be devastating to metabolic activity in any organism. And still, a simple stem cell with a simple mutation that lets it ignore the checks on expansion, will make you suffer and die. It, and its progeny, will even all die themselves in that event, but it does not stop cancer from being the #1 cause of death.
You do not need a perfect coordinated conspiracy of evil geniuses to destroy everything. Free agents acting in what they perceive as their self-interest, do manage it perfectly well on their own. Enough of ideology, or greed, or stupidity, to ignore the signs and sail past the point of no return, is all that is required.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Saturday November 28 2020, @11:48PM (5 children)
This means money, real education (not the shitty job retraining schemes that mostly benefit the scams that spring up in the wake of such schemes and leave people a year later without any real qualifications, just a shitty certificate).
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2020, @10:13AM (2 children)
You should learn some reality before spewing bullshit. People need to survive until that time without your dead littering the streets. That means precisely the opposite of what you advocate for. Stopgap measures are not because economic tailspin because invisible hand or something, it's because of external factors. Do you understand "external factors"?
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20201117-why-reskilling-wont-always-guarantee-you-a-new-job [bbc.com]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday November 29 2020, @05:58PM (1 child)
People need to survive until that time without your dead littering the streets
Right, and that's why they gave out money to people who earned less than $75k (or whatever it was), to keep people from starving. You don't need to keep businesses open, doing zero business, for this: just give money directly to the low-wage workers so they can buy food. The business owners should have saved more money if they wanted to keep the business open; otherwise, they can simply declare bankruptcy and get the same stimulus check their low-pay employees get (assuming they don't make that much; if they made a lot of money (>$100k), then they should have plenty of savings to last through the crisis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2020, @11:51PM
Which is ending in ...?
Thought so.
I'm sure it's not when this super nice process is going on and on:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/07/covid-19-crisis-boosts-the-fortunes-of-worlds-billionaires [theguardian.com]
https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2020/10/22/these-michigan-billionaires-got-453-billion-richer-during-the-pandemic [metrotimes.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Sunday November 29 2020, @05:55PM (1 child)
I do agree with this one. If businesses are going to be shuttered, it's better to support the displaced workers directly rather than giving handouts to business owners and hoping they'll "trickle it down" to the workers. After things return to normal, people will start new businesses. After all, that's why we have bankruptcy laws: failed businesses can go belly-up without their owners being wrecked financially, and creditors (usually big banks and landlords) will just have to eat the loss, since that's the risk you take when you give a loan to someone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2020, @11:44PM
Took you less than 24 hours to flip 180 degrees on your previous statement.
Now the PR dept's line is "Yes we fully intend to bankrupt you all, but you should hope the govt will "support" you till we decide to let "things return to normal"!" Got it.