+-----------------------------------------------------------------+ | ______ ______ _ _ _ | | /\ / _____) ___ \| | | | | /\ | | / \ | / ___| | | | | | | | / \ | | / /\ \| | (___) | | | | | | | / /\ \ | | | |__| | \____/| | | | |___| | |_____| |__| | | | |______|\_____/|_| |_|\______|_______)______| | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ [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(a)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/