[Nottingham] Software Patents (East Midlands LUGS)

[Michael Simms]

TOPIC: Software Patents
TO: All East Midlands LUG's

Greetings LUGs one and all. Nottingham LUG will know me, Id hope that
some people in other LUGS will at least have heard of me {:-)

This message is going out to all of the East Midlands LUGs that I can
find that are affected by this:

I have just talked to our EU MP, Bill Newton Dunn, and he is in favour
of software patenting.

I have created a mailing list so the East Midlands LUG's can form a plan
of action for this situation. List details at the end of the message, as
a) Im not sure it would be appropriate to spam most list members that
dont care about, and b) we dont have a mailing list for all of the lugs
combined and it would be a pain to get a collective set of results from
9 mailing lists

When I talked to Mr. Dunn, he caught me off guard when he returned my
call - I was in the middle of a dozen things as usual - so I didn't do
the worlds best job of convincing him, and also he used a lot of very
slimy sneaky tactics of speech to get round ANY argument I made, so I
STRONGLY encourage you to all call him NOW - we have about 8 days left
to change his mind on the vote. I am including below information on HOW
he gets round questions so you can prepare - PREPARE for this, I did
prepare a little, it wasn't enough because I had no idea how he would
try and sneak round the issue. I expected to be talking to a normal
person not an avoidance machine.

His details are:

Bill Newton Dunn MEP
01522 810 812

DON'T email him, he can just ignore that. His voicemail on that number
also mentions his mobile number, if he doesn't call you back in about
2-3 days, call his mobile! However he DID call me back about 2 days
after I left him a message. (NOTE: This number is publicly available on
his website, I'm not giving out private numbers here)

Now, from his conversation, these are the things to avoid.

When you say 'xxx will happen because of software patenting' he will
reply that 'the law hasn't been passed yet, so we don't know what will
happen, you can't say it will happen'. He likes this cop-out and will
use it every chance he gets.

The same with 'The upcoming patent law...'

Use phrases like 'the proposed law as it stands will cause...'. At which
point he will try and accuse you of listening to media hype, make SURE
you have ACTUAL EU DIRECTIVE STATEMENTS you can quote to him to back up
what you are saying.

Don't try and do a comparison with US patent law unless you have a
statement from a patent expert who says they will be the same, because
he will just say 'this isnt the US, this is the EU and it is different'.
Even with a statement from a patent expert, Im not sure it would work.

DON'T try and use an analogy. RMS recently advised people to use a book
analogy, it doesn't work with this guy. He says 'this isnt books, it is
different, we don't patent books' and will NOT listen to why there are
similarities, he doesn't seem to understand what an analogy is. Keep it
on the software patents point.

He is VERY confrontational, he challenges pretty much everything you say
and wants evidence (then say your evidence isn't valid because the law
isn't passed yet).

His view is that software patenting is the same as any other patenting.
He feels that the inventor deserves the money for all that time, he
doesn't care that it can be used to stifle free software.

He doesn't care about free software at all. I gave him Linux as an
example. He hadn't even heard of it, but fair enough, many haven't. I
told him of the thousands of people world wide who give their time
freely to make the product, he liked that. I told him that it was under
threat by software patents, he said that the people behind it could just
license the software that is being patented and when I said 'they give
it away for free, who pays for it' he just replied 'well thats their
choice isnt it'. They will just have to find out how to pay for it.

He says he IS willing to be convinced, which is the ONLY concession I
got out of him all conversation. He is VERY arrogant and refusing to
budge, tho I guess that is what a politician is all about.

Now, I have created a mailing list, it is at

http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/mailman
The list is the only one there, emlug-patents

Go subscribe. I am only keeping the list open while the vote is
upcoming, I'll be closing it right after. 

There are things we should be discussing:

He is unwilling to do hisown research, he is asking me to send him an
email with evidence of why software patenting is bad.
I would like to suggest that we as the collective EM-LUGs put together
an email with the strongest evidence we can find that he wont be able to
just shrug off. I dont have TIME to do this all by myself, I am running
2 companies and doing a whole lot of other work, so please, people, lets
start working on an email as a group.

I STRONGLY suggest we do NOT spam up all the group mailing lists, with
replies about this, its not really fair on other members who couldn't
give a damn about patents.

Thanks
-- 
Michael Simms - CEO, Tux Games
http://www.tuxgames.com