Talking Software Patents with a Politician? 75
agent dero asks: "I'm currently trying to land an hour or two of my local representative to the House of Representatives so I can talk about software patents, amongst other things. I'm looking for the best way to describe the pitfalls of Software Patents to somebody who hasn't the slightest clue what Open Source is, let alone how software patents will hurt it. How can a computer geek relate the evil in patenting algorithms to a non-computer geek to where it will have an effective impact?"
Re:Money (Score:1, Interesting)
Actually, no, even the worst of them also pay attention to staying in office; you can't collect the gravy if you're not on the gravy train. And personally, I think some of them still have some principles and try to actually serve their consituents and/or the national interest, when they're not raising money for the next election.
Which means that one approach is to convince your local Congress critter that there are votes on your side of the issue. One person alone isn't going to make that happen, but one person can start the ball rolling by beginning a dialogue on an issue. From there, if you're a member of a LUG or some other tech group with Open Source ties, find a way to get the Congressman to a meeting; most of them are always looking for new effective ways to connect to voters.
Another approach is to get involved a campaign, on a volunteer basis. More and more campaigns can use "high tech" resources - a web site, mailing list, monitors on the content of the oppositions web site, etc. etc. once involved, you can explain how much of the tools are based on Open Source or otherewise non-encumbered technology...
Simple question (Score:3, Interesting)
?
Re:The basics... (Score:4, Interesting)
I've seen some of the FFII [ffii.org] supporters talking to Parliamentarians, and frankly it was embarrassing watching a few of them. They had the nugget of an idea, but couldn't present it clearly and concisely. They would start a beautifully thought out thread, then before getting to a conclusion lose the train of thought and end up talking about something completely different, often repeating ideas already presented. Very annoying for all those very familiar with the issue, and certainly annoying and confusing for the intended audience.
The guy is a busy man
Not that you will have time to hone your presenting skills, but the best lobbyists present each idea in one to three minutes, then engage the politico with questions where they have to actually think about the issue. The guys who make the biggest money are schooled in the tradition of rhetoric, where every thought is presented as a series of conflicting questions (with spin) and as if...then statements. This requires the politician to make a concious decision on the spot on which way to think about a subject, and this forced thinking will most likely be the way they will vote later.
There is a whole debate on the best way to word the if...then statements, first, second or third person, singular or plural. Compare and contrast "if you support long term growth in rapidly changing fields, then are you prepared to oppose entrenched laws?" with "if our objectives are to protect ideas of individuals from the oppressive threat of corporate lawsuits, can we obtain a balance...". (N.B. there is no right way) Forcing immediate responses from an audience is orders of magnitude more effective in creating lasting impressions. Even more effective is to word the if...then statements so the politician comes to conclusions on his own, thus becoming his ideas.
Impassioned emotional pleas are no good here, construct a good well founded argument
Precisely. The issue of patents, copyright, and ideas having value goes back thousands of years, and is a very complicated area. Narrow down your arguments to a very limited discussion of a single domain, and be prepared to place it within the larger and global (historical) scope of the battle. The emotion should be evident by the fact you have taken the time to become politically active to protect what you believe in.
Do your homework throughly before going in
This is the most important idea in the post, buried right in the middle. Not only do your homework, but practice the presentation as well. Out loud, on real humans, several times. If you have a lawyer friend, ask them to hear your presentation and offer criticism (then listen to them and correct yourself). Lawyers who practice in front of courts have to be skilled at presenting clear and linear ideas. Even if you don't know any lawyers, just try out your presentation on a few people and ask for feedback. By the third or fourth time you will notice a huge improvement in which ideas get presented, and which ones you drop because they are not needed. Try videotaping your presentation and then review it later with friends, watch where you say "ummm..." or where you repeat yourself.
For material to study, browse the websites of the EFF [eff.org] and the FFII, and read this speech [federalreserve.gov] by Alan Greenspan. If you have an entire hour, you can effectively present four to six points with a limited background and context. Limit yourself to only these, avoid digression and monologing.
the AC
Re:Earning money off of IDEAS (Score:3, Interesting)
That isn't accurate. If I decide, "Hey, it would be great if you could cook hot dogs using electricity," I can't get a patent on that. I can build an electric hot dog cooker consisting of an arrangement of motors, heating elements, heat-conductive rollers, glass panels and a blinking light, and get a patent on that. Then for 17 years noone can take my design and produce it. But they're free to build their own electric hot dog cooker.
The key difference is there's more than one way to cook a hot dog.
The computer field is new enough that we're still discovering many of the basics. Often there's only one way to do something efficiently and the patent office is granting patents on those concepts, or worse, blatantly obvious ideas.
Take two windows. Say they're Mozilla windows. These windows contain tabs. Raise your hand if it seems REALLY CLEVER to move a tab from one window to another. Anyone? No, that's pretty obvious. But Adobe has a patent on moving tabs between windows so you can't have that feature in Mozilla.
Now, if Adobe wanted to submit the code to move tabs between two windows in its application framework, OK, maybe grant them a patent on THAT IMPLEMENTATION of the concept. But they can't (shouldn't be able to) patent the idea, any more than they should be able to patent the idea of cooking hot dogs.
Granted, part of this is a bad patent process, and a patent examiner should have thrown out that patent application. But the patent process doesn't apply experts in the field to the patents in question, which is part of the problem.
Just to be safe, someone should raise lots of money and start filing for open source friendly patents. Put it in the Bylaws of the NPO. File for moving every GUI widget between windows. Buttons, checkboxes, Menus, text, text boxes, scrollbars, tabs (whoops), icons, just to be sure. Oh, does that sound silly? Exactly.
The only silver lining here is that after a tumultuous century or so most of the basic ideas in computing should be free from patent protection and some innovation can occur. But we'd rather not wait another 50 years to get going.