The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure are getting agitated about developments in Europe on software patents. The Eurolinux Alliance have an online petition "to warn European Authorities against the dangers of software patents." Meanwhile, the proponents of software patents like Labour MEP, Arlene McCarthy, are merrily winning the PR battle by painting the opposition as extremists. As Doc Searls said, Hollywood won the Eldred case
"because they have successfully repositioned copyright as a property issue.
In other words, they successfully urged the world to understand copyright in terms of property. Copyright = property may
not be accurate in a strict legal sense, but it still makes common sense, even to the Supreme Court. Here's how Richard
Bennett puts it:

The issue here isn't enumeration, or the ability of Congress to pass laws of national scope regarding
copyright; the copyright power is clearly enumerated in the Constitution. The issue, at least for the
conservative justices who sided with the majority is more likely the protection of property rights. In order
to argue against that, Lessig would have had to argue for a communal property right that was put at odds
with the individual property right of the copyright holder, and even that would be thin skating at best. So
the Supremes did the only possible thing with respect to property rights and the clearly enumerated power
the Constitution gives Congress to protect copyright.
Watch the language. While the one side talks about licenses with verbs like copy, distribute, play, share and perform, the
other side talks about rights with verbs like own, protect, safeguard, protect, secure, authorize, buy, sell, infringe, pirate,
infringe, and steal.

This isn't just a battle of words. It's a battle of understandings. And understandings are framed by conceptual metaphors. We
use them all the time without being the least bit aware of it. We talk about time in terms of money (save, waste, spend, gain,
lose) and life in terms of travel (arrive, depart, speed up, slow down, get stuck), without realizing that we're speaking about
one thing in terms of something quite different. As the cognitive linguists will tell you, this is not a bad thing. In fact, it's very
much the way our minds work.

But if we want to change minds, we need to pay attention to exactly these kinds of details."

Doc also points to George Lakoff's wonderful essay Metaphor, Morality, and Politics Or, Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals In the Dust, on a similar theme.