[Sussex] A letter to our MEPs and MPs

[Steve Dobson]

All

It is time to stand up and be counted.  The power of any state is in
the hands of its people.  The Poll Tax was replaced because Middle England
rose up in protest against it.  Likewise the demonstrations of the truckers
against the high price of fuel caused a Government u-turn because the general
public supported them.  Together we can make a difference.

If we are to defeat Software Patents then we must band together and protest.
Below is the first draft of an open letter that I think we should send to all
the MEPs, MPs that cover Sussex and the leaders of the political parties to
demonstrate our objections to S/W Patents.

If you have corrections please submit them.  If you think we shouldn't send
the letter, then voice that too.  SLUG is run by its members for its members,
so we must have a consensus if we (SLUG) are to take this action.  It is
not my intent to hijack this club for my own political goals.

I am not going to take all the names on the mail-list and added them.  If 
you want to be associated with this letter then please send me the name and
e-mail you would like attached when (if) this letter is sent.

Also should this be by e-mail or my post?

Steve D


Dear .......

1.  We, the undersigned, as members of the Sussex Linux User Group, would
    like to draw your attention to the effect US Patent Law is having
    today [1].

2.  Over ten years ago now Sun Microsystems, an American company, developed
    Java, a technology to write computer programs that run on any computer.
    Sun Microsystems give their intellectual property away for free, anyone
    can download it from their web site.  In ten short years a large and
    active community has grown up around Java.  Sun Microsystems reasoned
    that by having a large community using Java it would enable them sell
    their own computer hardware, the operating system, and support in a
    one-stop-stop deal where you could get everything you need from just
    one company.  Giving away their Java product for free has proved to be
    a very profitable business move for Sun Microsystems. Others have
    befitted too, by November 2000 Java skills were the most sought after
    skills in the UK [1], according to Computer Weekly, a UK IT trade
    newspaper.

3.  It is software that turns a computer into a useful tool.  Without
    software a computer will just sit on your desk, humming to itself, as
    it consumes electricity.  With the right software on your computer can
    now read e-mail, surf the Net, write a letter (having your spelling
    and grammar checked as you write).  In fact anything that someone can
    invent for a computer  to do.

4.  Kodak, a company struggling to adapt to a new digital photography
    age [2], sued Sun Microsystems for some of the technology in Java
    which was covered by a Software Patent Kodak hold.  The two companies
    have now settled out of court to the tune of US$92 million [3].  If
    Sun Microsystems had fought the case and lost what effect would that
    have had on the Java community?  Would Sun Microsystems have continued
    to develop Java?  Without Sun Microsystems driving Java what effect
    would this have and on the thousands of Java programmers here in the
    UK and Europe?

5.  In classical manufacturing the engineering prototype is just the
    first of many prototypes that are refined and refined in order to
    produce a product suitable for manufacture.  Then there are the costs
    of building and tooling up a factory for commercial production.  It
    can take years to recoup these development costs, especially as there
    are the ongoing production costs of raw materials, factory works' wages,
    etc. to also content with.  A twenty-five year patent is justified
    when viewed against all these costs and the risks involved.

6.  By comparison software engineering is relatively cheep.  You need
    office space and furniture, computers, staff to develop the program,
    and that is about it.  Your first production prototype is your
    commercial product.  Production costs for software are just about
    zero; press a button a get the computer to make a copy.  Change the
    copy program and press the button again and get ten thousand copies.
    CD copies, when produced in quality, are less than a penny per unit,
    and even that cost can be avoided by uploading the software onto the
    Internet and letting your customers come and copy it for themselves.

7.  Today companies do not need ten years to recoup their investment in
    software development.  As an example take Microsoft's Windows95
    operating system: it was first released in 1995 and on 1st January,
    2003 Microsoft stopped providing any support, patches and fixes, or
    downloads for Windows95.  Did Microsoft abandon a profitable Windows95
    market?  Of course they did not.  Microsoft is far to shrewd at
    business for that.  Rather the world had moved on to use Microsoft's
    own replacement operating systems: Windows98, Windows2000, WindowsNT
    and WindowsXP.

8.  We do not need a software patent law to protect software property,
    copyright law is more than adequate.  Copyright law protects companies
    who have their software property stolen by pirates.  A company wishing
    to enter a software market must first take the time and trouble to write
    and test their own software.    An innovating company has this time to
    add new and better features and so stay ahead of its competition.
    This all creates choice and competition in the marketplace, which can
    only be good for the consumer.

9.  The pace of computer development is unmatched by any other industrial
    sector.  Thirty-five years ago NASA was sending people to the moon.
    The computer on board the moon lander is not as powerful as one of
    those credit card calculators that are given away as free gifts.
    If you took all the computers that NASA used to put a man on the moon
    they would not be as capable as a single modern laptop.  It is
    software innovation and its need for ever more bigger, better and
    faster computers that has driven this computer hardware development.
    The pace of computer hardware and software development is so rapid
    that to grant an exclusive license for twenty-five years, or even
    twenty years, is to grant an effective monopoly.
 
10. In a speech to the University College London, Lawrence Lessig, a
    Professor of Law at Stanford Law School said:
       "[The English] were the first free culture lawyers when [they]
       destroyed the power of the conger by passing limits on copyright
       terms in 1710, which were finally recognized by the House of
       Lords in 1774. In 1774, for the first time, Shakespeare entered
       the public domain. [They] did that because [they] saw the conger
       of publishers in London was a choke on the ability for [English]
       culture to spread broadly... [They] set the ideal which the
       Americans copied."
 
11. It is often said that those who do not learn from the mistakes in
    history are doomed to repeat them.  Lillian Hellman (1905--1984)
    said of her countrymen:
       "We are a people who do not want to keep much of the past in our
       heads.  It is considered unhealthy in America to remember
       mistakes, neurotic to think about them, psychotic to dwell upon
       them."
    Are we now to follow the Americans and return to the days when the
    law protected monopolies from competition?  For where is the drive
    for a company to innovate and add new features to its own products
    (that the market may not want) when it is less risky to spend that
    money in the patent courts stopping any competition from gaining a
    foothold?

12. Finally here is Bill Gate's perspective on patents [4]:
       "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most
       of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the
       [software] industry would be at a complete standstill today. 
       The solution [] is patent exchanges [] and patenting as much as
       we can... A future startup with no patents of its own will be
       forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose.  That
       price might be high: established companies have an interest in
       excluding future competitors." 

[1] http://www.computerweekly.com/Article24034.htm

[2] http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aO5PmYfsPlgs

[3] http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041007/sfth071_1.html

[4] http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=P5141_0_4_0_C