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Making salt

Patents on ideas infringe on freedom of expression

Governments worldwide now grant monopolies on ideas: these often take the form of patents on algorithms or computer software. Unlike copyright, which covers only a work and its derivatives, a software patent affects works written entirely independently. In this way, software patents deprive programmers of their freedom of expression.

History contains many examples of independent invention. For example, although the Fast Fourier Transform algorithm is attributed to Cooley and Tukey (1965), Gauss had described the crucial factorisation step in 1805. As another example, calculus was invented in the seventeenth century independently both by Newton and by Leibniz.

It is clear that ideas are not unique and ofter recur. We must protect the right to express ideas, even if they are not new. As more ideas become embodied in a digital representation, all thinkers who express their ideas in a formal language (such as computer programs) risk being deprived of their work by patents granted to others.

Let us make salt

In 1930, Britain maintained a royal monopoly on the manufacture of salt in India, in effect imposing a heavy tax on the population. Mohandas Gandhi led a march to the sea, where he made salt in defiance of British authority. Despite the high personal price, this nonviolent civil disobedience was a significant event eventually leading to freedom for India.

I believe that we must follow Gandhi's example.

To begin the long process of restoring our lost freedom, I propose that the thinkers, scientists, and programmers of the world adopt the following statement:

In protest against the abrogation of our freedom of expression, as an act of nonviolent civil disobedience, we undertake to disregard all patents on ideas, algorithms, and software.

Let us make salt.

http://wintersun.org/freedom/making-salt.html
Last modified by Ben Caradoc-Davies on 27 January 2002.