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Re: [Fsfe-uk] Research questions
From: |
P.L.Hayes |
Subject: |
Re: [Fsfe-uk] Research questions |
Date: |
Tue, 27 Jul 2004 02:38:58 +0100 |
User-agent: |
KMail/1.6.1 |
On Monday 26 July 2004 23:25, keith richards wrote:
> Hi
>
> I'm researching a proposal for a broadcast news story
> on software patents and i'm looking for help on the
> following:
>
> 1/ Suggestions for how the story might be told in a
> way that engages the publics attention - specifically
> an individual example that would be able to illustrate
> and communicate the importance of the issue from a UK
> or european perspective.
>
> It would have to be something that could be filmed
> quickly and without much difficulty!
>
> 2/ Bromcom is one angle - are there any people who
> could be contacted for an interview - both within, and
> outside of, the free software movement?
>
> 3/ I understand that Bromcom allegedly charged high
> fees for licenses to their patented software is any
> information available on that?
>
> 3/ How would you summarise the story in 75 -150 words
> (approx) in a way that both conveyed the importance of
> swpatents, and gained the attention of a skeptical and
> possibly disinterested audience? Who would watch and
> why?
Is the Bromcom example a little too easy to dismiss as just a technical or
industrial and governmental matter? Everyone already knows that the
government wastes as much money as possible and that businesses are
aggressive about 'intellectual property'. How about something more dramatic
like a shot of a kid learning to play the violin (Illegal? - of course not!)
followed by a similar shot of a student learning programming/comp. sci./maths
(Illegal? - maybe!). You could have the student typing in the few lines of
shell* or code that is all that's necessary to breach some of the trivial and
simple patents there are. Or maybe you could show a small businessman trying
to set up a website and falling foul of the plethora of crazy but true
patents like those at the example website the FFII has? Is that too
hypothetical? There's some interesting concrete examples at the FFII site
too:
http://swpat.ffii.org/brevets/effets/index.en.html#kazoj
It would be easy to show the public how confoundingly irrational software
patents are and how they can and do impede basic work,progress and education
in computing. I'd rather see something that shows how software patents can
deny ordinary people the right to ordinary use of the _supposedly_ general
purpose electronic computer they own. Maybe you could show someone at
work,leisure or study using their computer in some of the ways it was meant
to be used - not the way most people use computers nowadays; as nothing more
than a socket into which they plug their restricted use, shrinkwrapped
software.
To me, the Bromcom technology seems a little too technical and what's 'worse';
it looks like the good guys have actually prevailed this time. Tabbed
palettes and progress bars however are graphical, easy to understand and
highly visible 'technologies' - already covered by European patents and just
waiting for legal 'validation'. They pose an imminent and insidious but very
real threat and I think it would be quite wrong to give the public the
impression that the threat is only to profit making software businesses: All
software patents are outrageous infringements of *individual* freedom of
expression but you'll never convince the public of that unless you can show
them that there are people out there who actually use their computers like
musicians use their instruments and their music-ruled manuscript.
*e.g. Progress bar:
echo -n $'__________\r'
for ((i=0;i<10;i++))
do echo -n "#"
sleep 1
done
echo
(saw this at http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/EnglishSWPatentExamples (progress
bar link) and you can implement the old RSA encryption algorithm in a short
shell pipeline but that patent's expired now. The DHT algorithm (not sure if
it's expired) can be done in awk and both RSA and DHT appear in maths
textbooks I have. It was the appearance of these latter two patented
algorithms in elementary maths text books that first alerted me to the
software patent madness - it was as if I'd bought my copy of "A Tune a
Day" (French horn) and found that it would be illegal to play some of the
tunes therein).
Sorry if that's not what you're looking for - it's not very specific I know -
but I do wish someone would make a documentary, exposing this dreadful
situation: If it _was_ happening to music,art or literature it would be all
over the newspapers, radio and T.V.
Paul.
Re: [Fsfe-uk] Research questions, MJ Ray, 2004/07/27