Re: You have rights.. Software Patents areIllegal

On Thursday 13 May 2004 14:24, Andrew A. Adams wrote:
> >  I think that in the case of software patenting it may be the voices of
> > India and China who sway this debate. If they have a flourishing software
> > publishing market they are unlikely to agree to the US/Japanese companies
> > monopolising the concepts within software.
>
> Yes and no. It all depends on the balance of power and the relative
> interests. We can see as much by the recent US-Australia Free Trade
> Agreement, which included provisions requiring Australia (which has already
> implemented the WIPO CT in national law) to implement much stronger
> anti-circumvention measures than it has already (specifically similar to
> the DMCA ones) in return for access to American markets in general.
>
> All this is of course very hypocritical of the US which was the worst
> industrialised violator of other countries' IP until the late twnetieth
> century when it finally became a net exporter of IP (primarily movies,
> music and books) when it suddenly had an epiphany and started pressurising
> everyone else to stronger and stronger IP protection.

Not to mention the strongarm tactics the US and EU regularly use in trade 
negotiations, pushing for open markets abroad whilst keeping their own nicely 
subsidised and closed by tariffs.

I think that if we see China and India doing anything (which they might... 
India has seemed responsive to the FSF, and China is developing its own 
GNU/Linux distribution), then they won't have much weight for a few years to 
come at least. We'll have to wait until the G21, potentially lead by India on 
this issue, have enough weight to overcome the economic hegemony of the US 
and EU, spurred on no doubt by the whole medicin patents debate.

This is one reason why it's extremely important that the EU doesn't accept 
software patents now - if they reject software patents, it will give the G21 
a big helping hand in breaking down the unfair WTO and TRIPS treaties.

Regards,
Tom