[DMCA-Activists] Re: [Patents] The politics of software over-protection -- moving forward..

[Russell McOrmond]

On Fri, 25 Apr 2003, Hartmut Pilch wrote:

> >   The Intellectual Property Policy Directorate (IPPD) of Industry Canada
> > doesn't appear to be listening to us yet, so discussing statutory
> > exceptions to software is not yet in the cards.
> 
> I'd assume that they will not listen to you/us any time very soon, no
> matter what subject you/we want to raise with them.

  I'll let the patent list know when I first have a meeting with IPPD, 
which I'm assuming will happen within the next 6 months.  I don't expect 
them to agree with what I have to say right away, but I do expect to be 
given the opportunity to present the ideas.

  There was someone from IPPD at a meeting last year that was set up by 
ICT branch that was joint between a number of Industry Canada branches to 
discuss ICT issues.  I was a guest speaker and presented some of the 
(early in comparison to today) ideas I had on copyright reform.

  In the summer of 2001 when our little canada-DMCA-opponents forum
started it was assumed (and I was told) that Industry Canada and Heritage
Canada would never listen to us.  I've since had many meetings with ICT
branch of Industry Canada (including being hired to do a software patent
paper and future presentations), and many meetings with Heritage Canada
(Copyright Policy Branch) including an invitation to the Heritage
Ministers forum on copyright with 30 other creators (largely musicians) 
for a televised event <http://weblog.flora.ca/article.php3?story_id=395>.

Note: I'm not name-dropping to make myself look important or something as
I clearly am not important.  I'm just a politically motivated citizen
trying to express some ideas I feel are important.  I am just mentioning
what the strategy I have chosen has managed to achieve so far.


  Getting involved in and connected with other constituencies in the
debate is critical.  You can't ignore musicians, makers of movies or book
authors to discuss copyright policy, and you can't ignore those who are
pro-patent either.  I participated in a debate with someone representing a
group that was pro-TPM (Legal protection for TPM - the DMCA stuff) and by
the end of the debate she was convinced that my position had merit
<http://www.rabble.ca/rumble/>.

  Spend time to learn why people think the way they do, and look for
compromises that will make everyone happy in the short term.  I have now
been invited to future meetings of the Canadian Creators Rights Alliance,
and expect to be able to talk about software interface copyright and the
threat to creators rights that this represents.  Had I just ignored anyone
that spoke in favor of DMCA-like laws, this would never have happened.

  As an additional example, I think people in the patents forum have
dismissed Greg too quickly.  You can strongly disagree with his
conclusions (as I clearly do), and possibly even his style of presenting
things, but his analysis is very important to be knowledgeable on.  We
need to understand why people (other than those with obvious
monopoly/protectionist interests) support software patents.  Gret appears
to see this as a legal/enforcement of rights issue, and you need to talk
of of a required balance against other (in my opinion, more important)
public policy in that context.

  If we leave it as a legal/enforcement discussion of exceptions without
discussing why the exceptions were there in the first place, the "we need
more protection than copyright"  folks will likely win.

  If you only know one side of the story, and don't have answers to the
issues raised by the other side, you become much easier to ignore in
politics.  Don't confuse goals with strategy to achieve goals, and don't 
be seen as not having considered the complexities of a given policy.

> This is probably, also in Canada, the likely outcome of focussing your
> efforts on patent offices.

  You seem to assume that your petition had the effect you saw, as opposed
to the possibility that they ignored your petition because they had
already made up their minds well in advance.  Correlations are not the
same things as causalities (and I'll avoid the BSA reference here as a
bunch of scam artists that try to confuse the two ;-).

  The first aspect of winning is believing that you can, and then
designing a plan to get there.  Don't confuse the goals with the temporary
methods.  We may have the long-term goal of eradicating software patent,
and have good reasons for having those goals, but am interested in
proposing compromises as a method to actually get there.

---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
 Any 'hardware assist' for communications, whether it be eye-glasses, 
 VCR's, or personal computers, must be under the control of the citizen 
 and not a third party.   -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/