Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - April 17th, '04

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Australian Online Petition Against IP Provisions In FTA

Open source advocates in Australia have set up an online petition to campaign against adoption of provisions in Chapter 17 of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement.

They say these provisions will "harm the flourishing Australian Open Source community both directly by making legitimate and useful Open Source software illegal, and indirectly by preventing the Australian Parliament from considering changes to our intellectual property laws on their own merits."

Linux Australia recently voiced fears about the FTA, saying it would lead to the acceptance of American-style patent and intellectual property laws which, in turn, would cripple the local software industry.

The organisation has set up a page on its website devoted to information about the FTA and the ways in which, in its estimate, it can harm the local open source industry.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004...1326915388.html

there is a lot more than this.(and this is pretty bad)that we are going to have to worry about when this FTA goes through..