Re: Lightboys and girls have seen the light

[Jama Poulsen <jama@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jul 02, 2003 at 02:02:22PM +0200, Ronald van Engelen wrote:
> The people at Philips you talked to in February in Eindhoven were
> probably paying attention: see their press release:
> http://www.philips.com/InformationCenter/Global/FNewPressRelease.asp?lArticleId=2909&lNodeId=13
 
The sad thing is that many of the companies in that forum have 
extreme copyright and patent law views, and are willing to persuade
and sponsor governments around the world to create new legislation
without proper democratic consultation.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_harmonising_the_term_of_copyright_protection
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/legislation/dmca.pdf
http://europa.eu.int/cgi-bin/eur-lex/udl.pl?REQUEST=Seek-Deliver&COLLECTION=oj&SERVICE=all&LANGUAGE=en&DOCID=2001l167p0010

And to top it all of a plethora of software patents in the US, Asia and
soon perhaps (legalised) in Europe.

Now what has Philips or Sony done for the free software community?
Answer: all of the above

Jama Poulsen

"(11) A rigorous, effective system for the protection of copyright and
 related rights is one of the main ways of ensuring that European cultural
 creativity and production receive the necessary resources and of
 safeguarding the independence and dignity of artistic creators and
 performers." - EU Copyright Directive, 2001