Open source protestors take to the streets

Two groups, angry at a proposed change to European law on software patents, are taking their complaints onto the streets in order to voice their concerns.

Eurolinux and FFII (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure) are calling for a protest on 27 August in front of the European Parliament in Brussels and are also inviting supporters to back them online.

Their objective is to protest against software patents, before a vote on the patents directive on 1 September.

Benjamin Henrion, one of the organisers of the demonstration, said in a statement: "The directive, such as it was proposed by Arlene McCarthy [the British MEP who originated the text], would impose an American-style unlimited patentability on algorithms and commercial methods, for example, Amazon's One Click patent."

In May, a first wave of protest, in the form of a two-day conference in the European parliament itself, attracted around 200 participants. The organisers hope to do even better this Wednesday.

The organisers said: "The proposed directive protects the interests of the patent-holders and patent lawyers, people that the European Commission call 'an economic majority' - ignoring the unanimous rejection of software patents expressed by the public…94 per cent are against them."

They're also asking for all those who can't get to Brussels to participate in an online demonstration: webmasters are invited to temporarily close their homepage as a protest.

Harmut Pilch, president of the FFII said: "It's better to make accessing web pages a little more difficult for a few days to come rather than to lose freedom of publication for the 10 years to come. 27 August is the last chance to make our voice heard."

Estelle Dumout writes for ZDNet France. Translated by Jo Best.