Subject: [linux-audio-announce] The AGNULA project protests against software patents
From: The AGNULA team (info_AT_agnula.org)
Date: Wed May 12 2004 - 20:45:08 EEST
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[Sorry for cross-posting. Feel free to forward around]
Florence, 12 May 2004
+++ THE AGNULA PROJECT PROTESTS AGAINST SOFTWARE PATENTS
In September 2003, the European Parliament had voted to maintain and
reinforce the exclusion of software and business methods from
patentability. The AGNULA project will "black-out" the home pages of
its sites (`www.agnula.org', `devel.agnula.org', `muzik.agnula.org')
to strongly protests against this act of disrespect towards the
European Parliament - which is directly elected by european citizens -
and against patents on software, data formats and abstract ideas.
+++
In September 2003, the European Parliament had voted to maintain and
reinforce the exclusion of software and business methods from
patentability. On May 5 2004, the Irish Presidency managed to secure
a qualified majority for a counter-proposal to the software patents
directive, with only a few countries - including Belgium and Germany -
showing resistance. This proposal discards all limiting amendments
from the European Parliament, reinstates the laxist provisions from
the Commission, adding direct patentability of data structures and
process descriptions as icing on the cake.
The AGNULA project strongly protests against this act of disrespect
towards the European Parliament - which is directly elected by
european citizens - and against patents on software, data formats and
abstract ideas.
The AGNULA project fully supports the Foundation for a Free
Information Infrastructure (FFII [0]) and all other groups that,
throughout Europe and the rest of the world, are fighting against
patentability software and abstract ideas.
You can find further information on why patents on software and
abstract ideas are a very bad thing (not only for Libre Software but
for all software creators) here:
http://swpat.ffii.org/
http://fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/letter-20040510.en.html
Please support our protest by obscuring your pages and/or helping FFII
in their struggle. You can find ways to do it here:
http://www.ffii.org/ffii-cgi/aktiv?f=euparl&l=en
+++
About AGNULA: Agnula (acronym for A GNU/Linux Audio distribution,
pronounced with a strong g) is the name of a project funded until
April 2004 by the European Commission (number of contract:
IST-2001-34879; key action IV.3.3, Free Software: towards the critical
mass). After the end of the funded period, AGNULA is continuing as a
volunteer based project, aiming to spread Libre Software in the
professional audio/video arena.
Best regards,
-- The AGNULA Team info_AT_agnula.org Our mailing lists: http://lists.agnula.org/ Our web site: http://www.agnula.org/ "There's no free expression without control on the tools you use" [0] http://www.ffii.org/ _______________________________________________ linux-audio-announce mailing list linux-audio-announce_AT_music.columbia.edu http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-announce
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