POTD was Re: [Fsfe-ie] For the record...

Niall Douglas s_fsfeurope2 at nedprod.com
Thu Sep 4 03:45:50 CEST 2003


On 2 Sep 2003 at 21:15, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:

> * Telling our MEPs that we support the Castro/Crowley amendment
>   I'd like to contact as many MEPs as possible.  Is posting
>   another letter overkill? should we dig out email and fax
>   details instead? A joint letter?

We must still always say each and every time that any patenting of 
the ideas behind software is a bad idea period. However if they 
really /must/ do this, then those amendments are good.

> * Analysing what we did wrong with the last letter?
>   general critissims.  (When I was asking people for ID details,
>   I should have also asked if it was okay to reuse their info
>   for subsequent letters of similar content on this one topic)

I'd personally want to read each and every before permission.

> * Where's the EU overkill copyright directive at the moment?
>   Isn't the committee vote coming up on Sept 11?
>   Should we be working on this yet/soon/after-patents?

Didn't that go through about two years ago? It removed the right to 
reverse engineer anything with a protection mechanism plus optionally 
made telling anyone about a weakness in a protection mechanism 
attract a three year prison stretch.

It also did several other really stupid things. That was another 
stupid law. Unfortunately we didn't have the numbers to stop that one 
despite it being worse than the DMCA in the US.

> * Has anyone kept track of which MEPs are on our side?

AFAICS none of the Irish ones are rabidly pro-swpat. In the UK, I've 
had letters back from at least ten who spewed such industry bullshit 
that I sometimes wonder if they have any independent intelligence at 
all. My opinion of politicians which had been raised by the general 
Irish response has been lowered again :(

Cheers,
Niall



More information about the FSFE-IE mailing list