[Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Software Patents: Help Us Win in the Europarl!]

Thu Aug 21 01:03:44 UTC 2003

Here's an excerpt of an e-mail I got from the FFII. I think all 
Wikipedias with languages spoken in Europe should take part in the 
online demo. This isn't NPOV, but software patents could have serious 
consequences for our project in the future, so I think we should take a 
firm stand here.

Kurt

-------- Original Message --------

Dear FFII/Eurolinux supporter[1],

The European Parliament is voting on September 1st on a proposal
which, while pretending to aim at restricting patentability, in
reality ensures that algorithms and business methods like Amazon One
Click Shopping indisputably become patentable inventions (and
indisputably pass the bogus requirement of "technical contribution in
the inventive step").

As past experience shows, it is possible for powerful lobbies to push
incredibly bad directives through the European Parliament. But it is
also possible to have them rejected. Everything depends on how well we
use last week of August.

[...]

Needed: Your Website Blocked Next Wednesday August 27th

If the JURI proposal passes, important websites will be forced off the
Net in the near future. It would seem preferable to take them off the
Net now, as a demonstration, for a few days. Or, in a more gentle
manner, to hide the content behind a "Page Closed" screen of the
following kind:

see

    Online Demonstration Against Software Patents
    http://swpat.ffii.org/group/demo/index.en.html

The www.ffii.org title page is already hidden in this way and will
continue to stay hidden until after the vote.

You might consider hiding some or all pages at least on August 27th
and persuading your friends, especially those who administer
much-visited software download pages, to do likewise.