...attack from smaller patent-holding firms demanding large sums. Recent examples include NTP's lawsuit against RIM and Eolas' lawsuit against Microsoft over browser technology. A small Web development firm called Balthaser Online was recently granted a patent which covers most uses of rich media in Internet applications — including such widespread implementations as Java, Flash and AJAX.
Software patents began making headlines in Europe more recently when the European Commission proposed the Computer Implemented Inventions directive that would have effectively legitimised software patents across the EU. The issue became the focus of intense lobbying by large companies and software activists, and was finally scrapped by the European Parliament last year. Software patents have been granted in large numbers by the European Patent Office since the 1980s, but their enforcement is dubious since they're not accepted by some national patent offices.
DRM
Digital rights management is possibly an even more urgent matter, and is affecting users in a more obvious way. The Sony controversy attracted widespread attention, but even more insidious, according to Perens, is the fact that Apple's iTunes Music Store has now sold one billion songs — all of them initially wrapped in Apple's copy-restriction technology. "I think that the great many people walking around with iPods don't really understand the consequences yet. They don't own their record collections any more — they just sort of rent them," Perens says. "I doubt those files will be playable forever."
Open source software can't support DRM, because by definition, DRM can't be modified. This currently means that most DVDs can't be played on Linux-based systems. As more online content uses DRM, the problems will grow for open-source projects like Linux and Firefox. Further down the line, there are plans for hardware-based DRM — "trusted computing" — that will lock down entire operating systems. "For [that] vision to come true, the general-purpose personal computer must die," says OSI co-founder Eric Raymond. "As long as users can manipulate bits in ways of their own choosing, no DRM will last."
Open source's nature puts it at the front lines of the debates around DRM and software patents, both of which many see as reflecting wider social and political trends. "I think we as a society are about to find out what the freedom of information really means," says Volker Lendecke, a veteran contributor to the Samba networking project. "The four freedoms the free software movement refers to are more important than they have ever been."
Perens believes open source can help protect society by "correcting the balance" where it comes to patent, copyright and trademark law, but only if these issues are treated as matters of personal liberty, rather than mere business and legal technicalities.
"Computers are the tool by which we communicate and do so much else. Who will control that tool: ordinary people, or only big companies?" Perens says. "Open source is how we give that control to everyone. DRM is how it's taken away. Only when we treat DRM and the like as a freedom issue will we be able to deal with it effectively as a society."
