04.20.08
Worse Than a Licence to Kill: Licence to Practise Mathematics
‘Soft’[ware] IP = “You didn’t steal my code, but logically our programs
achieve something similar, so you owe me some money.”
Mathematics-related patents in Europe seem to be silently percolating into the EPO’s mind if the following curious page is something to judge by. [via Digital Majority]
Chiariglione’s video codecs evaluate the amount of data that needs to be actually digitised and the amount that can be “predicted” mathematically. Samples of the current frame are compared line-by-line with those of the preceding frame, and only the samples considered “sufficiently different” are being stored. Today, all commercial applications of digital video encoding are based on such predictive coding systems to save storage space.
Manipulation of matrices that involves no physical product or byproduct must never be patentable, or else we might see a comeback of modern-age middle ages (the feudal system) where only those sufficiently wealthy are allowed to practise and to share things such as algorithms, i.e. recipes of logic, thoughts. Why need any system devolve like this by choice? Clues are appended as individual links at the bottom.
Pieter seems to have just launched an aptly-named new site called IPocracy and Digital Majority links to a another new article about the confusing situation in the United Kingdom.
Confusion reigns on software patents
A row is brewing over the lack of consistency surrounding the protection of software rights, and it needs to be resolved if the UK is to stay in step with European law, say experts.
There is a fair deal of corruption here in the UK. We wrote about it previously, even yesterday. Be sure to read it if you haven’t, if only just to realise how corrupt the whole system has become. Groklaw’s comment on the same news from London is: “You may remember Newham, because when they announced they’d go with Microsoft instead of Open Source, they said it was because Microsoft’s software was cheaper and more secure, this at a press conference in 2004, and the room full of journalists spontaneously burst out laughing. I wonder how they feel now about the CapGemini study that told them that was so, which they said persuaded them to choose Microsoft?” █
Related readings (external):
- [Microsoft Lobbying Arm] CompTIA Adds New Intellectual Property Rights Depth to Its Advocacy Team
- Slovenia, France build pressure for Community Patent [with Microsoft shill Jonathan Zuck's endoresement]
- The confusing case of software patents in the UK gets more confusing
- A Patent Lie
- Playing Microsoft Patent Poker
- Open Source Foes In Bed With Abramoff
- Report Says Nonprofits Sold Influence to Abramoff
- Study: open source needs official support; Lobbyist disagrees with “flawed” conclusions
- Leaked letter warns of open source ‘threat to eco-system’
- Years of deadlock on EU patent bring some new thinking
- Big businesses boast of patent benefits, for small businesses
- Tech Group Expands State Lobby Efforts
- MEPs debate tightening up lobbying rules
- Ending software patents: Has the time come?
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Logan said,
April 20, 2008 at 2:33 am
That shows how how completely detach from the people in charge of making really are. They pass laws not because there is a need to make things just and fair but to satisfy the desires the friends, those with power and special interests.
The rise to power of Berlusconi and Sarkozy and the next four years or so will make the EU worse than the US. More favoring of special interests, more political corruption through lobbying and more anachronistic laws. More “invisible taxes”. Like petrol or gasoline, tobacco, alchol, the prices of those products (associated with the entertainment industry) will be comprised in most part by taxes.
Extension of copyright, restrictive consumer laws, higher penalty for so called “entertainment pirates”, internet filtering and censorship, adoption, officially, of software patents. These will put into law in the next years by people associated with Sarkozy and Berlusconi, with the help of several key politicians in EU from smaller countries, that had less than satisfactory commitment to Democracy.
Again, remember my words, for they shall come true.
Logan said,
April 20, 2008 at 2:36 am
The first sentence of the first paragraph doesn’t make any sense.
This is how it should read: This shows how completely detach from reality these people in charge of making laws are.
That’s better.
Roy Schestowitz said,
April 20, 2008 at 2:52 am
Here in the UK we have Brown. Add him to your list of leaders who are not only friends with George Bush, but are also proud members of G8 and the Bilderberg Group. Again, it may all seem like pure politics, but those political tendencies have a hidden effect on a variety of policies that directly affect science and technology.
Brown is also held somewhat accountable by some for the nation locking itself in using SharePoint in addition to unnecessary DRM prisons that you find even in the BBC, which is funded by all Brits. The BBC’s media division is now run by a former Microsoft executive (Erik Huggers) who participated in Microsoft’s antitrust trials in Europe, culminating in conviction and penalty for monopoly abuse. It’s a small world we live in.