[Sussex] MS "alledged" threats to Denmark

Geoffrey Teale gteale at cmedltd.com
Thu Feb 17 09:37:46 UTC 2005


On Wed, 2005-02-16 at 23:43 +0000, John D. wrote:
> Having now read as many of the articles that I can about these alledged 
> threats to the Danish software industry, in connection with software 
> patents (excluding the ones written in Danish of course), I find it 
> difficult to believe that "he" would have been foolish enough to make 
> such threats.

It's not uncommon for business leaders to lobby politicians with
statement along the line of:

"If you enact <insert policy for the common good here> it will have
<insert ludicrously overstated negative effect on "business" here> and
as a result will lead to massive loss of jobs amongst your
constituents."

... you'll see this kind of statement coming from the likes of the CBI
and various FTSE 100 companies every time someone has the gall to
suggest some "ludicrous" policy.  Here the term "ludicrous" means, of
course, the kinds of policies that make the many better off at the
expense of making the super-rich slightly less super-rich.  

Software patents fall squarely into this category.  While it's not true
that the _only_ people to benefit from them would be massive global
corporation (many small software companies, including the one I work for
have software that could be shielded from competition by software
patents) it is already apparent in the US that those large companies
would use patents as a weapon against all forms of competition and
simply buy up smaller firms who hold patented technology they are
interested in.  

The likes of IBM, Oracle, Sun and Microsoft already follow this strategy
of buying up innovative companies without the added push of patents.
The reason they do this is that, with massive amounts of available cash,
this strategy shows up better in SWOT analysis than developing competing
software (which is rightly seen as an expensive and risky option with
massive loss of opportunity derived from letting the originating company
continue building a market whilst you develop competing software).

> Equally, I know some "journo's" like to use a bit of poetic licence 
> (copyright 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, etc etc :-) ) but I 
> can't see them mis-quoting him in such a way.

It's a fine line.  If such a thing came out in this country then a large
amount of coverage would treat the story as "not supporting software
patents means we're all going to lose our jobs - economic collapse to
follow" - the Daily Mail would probably go on to tell us that house
prices would crash, immigrants would flood in and rape our children and
we'd all be forced to be "PC" at gun point.   The Guardian and the
Independent would run a story closer to the one that's been all over the
web since yesterday.  All the people who read both sets of papers would
have their existing views reinforced, we'd be having this same
conversation.  

The point is , I imagine this whole things is actually rather more run
of the mill than the attitude of the average slashdot reader would
suggest.  

> Otherwise the news of libel writs would surely have hit the streets by 
> now. Gates is, afterall, an intellegent man, who, I'd suggest, wouldn't 
> let such an "own goal" get the better of the M$ legal dept??

Well, if they sued someone for printing an opinion or interpretation of
a real event (it is very likely that Microsoft is actively lobbying all
EU governments in the manner described above) they wouldn't get very far
at all.

Moreover it may equally be favourable to their cause to seed the idea
that software patents = job security in the public conscience.


-- 
Geoffrey Teale <gteale at cmedltd.com>
Cmed Technology





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