Ciarán's free software notes

"IPRED2", a proposed EU directive to criminalise copyright, patent, and trademark infringement, will be voted on next week in Strasbourg. The MEPs are talking about it in their meetings this week, so it is important to contact them as soon as possible to tell them what we think.

I will be sending an open letter from FSFE to the MEPs tonight, after translations are completed.

The proposed text, in all formats and languages, can be found on the proposal's eur-lex page. FSFE endorses amending that text with the compromise amendments hosted on FFII's site.

The status of the Directive can be followed on the proposal's Legislative Observatory page.

And more information can be found on the Copy Crime website, and on FSFE's IPRED2 page. In particular, it is worth signing the petition on the Copy Crime site.

-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan,
Support free software: Join FSFE's Fellowship

A transcript is now online of: RMS's April 1st GPLv3 talk. Audio and video recordings will be online later today. Topics covered in the talk include:

• What is Free Software?
• The GNU project
• Free Software licences
• Internationalisation
• Tivoisation
• Tivoisation - the limits in draft 3
• Deflating the EUCD and DMCA
• Novell, Microsoft, and patents
• Termination
• Formalising added permissions
• BitTorrent
• Patent retalisation and the Apache licence
• The bracketed, dated clause

Hopefully this transcript will raise discussion and help people understand the GPLv3 process so that they can participate. Please pass the link on to forums and lists where it might be useful.

After the talk, despite being very tired, Richard also gave time for an interview, which is online now which covers GPLv3 and more general topics.

-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan,
Support free software: Join FSFE's Fellowship