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seems to be corruption is build into system

Which is why I, as well as most intelligent and informed people I know, will be voting against the European Constitution. Most citizens of Europe have never even read a copy of the constitution, and are trusting their local governments with their yes votes. But the constitution codifies into law this corrupt structure, whereby abstentions or absences become a YES vote, where the power structures of Europe can ignore the powerless elected body of the parliament.

There is a huge list of things wrong with the European Constitution, way too long to post here. Concerned /.ers in Europe are urged to download a copy of the Constitution in their local language from the treaty site or the europa site.

Note that the nacional votes, recently in Spain, soon in France, are merely guides for governments to approve the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, and that if this treaty is taken into effect, only then will the actual text of the constitution be written, by a committee of jurists and corporate lawyers. Citizens will be barred from any participation in creating the actual Constitution, and it will be adopted without debate if this treaty is agreed to.

The AC

Dear visitor,

Welcome to my website! As European Competition Commissioner, my job is to preserve and develop effective competition in the European market in order to ensure that consumers benefit from products and services of excellent quality at competitive prices. It is also my duty to guarantee that taxpayers' money is not used to distort competition when public authorities grant subsidies to businesses.

Requiring firms to compete with each other fosters innovation, increases economic efficiency and, consequently, enhances the competitiveness of the European economy. Over time, this contributes to the creation of jobs and to greater welfare in Europe.

The abolition of monopolies in the telecommunications and airline sectors and the control of abuses of market power in these areas, which have brought about cheaper phone calls and a boom in promotional airfares, are examples of the concrete benefits of freeing up the competitive forces in the market.

I hope you enjoy an informative visit.

I don't think so. Even the "separatist" UK recognizes that they cannot exist outside the EU. Maybe not the people - they are influenced by the yellow press - but the politicians, the economy, and research.

I will make very sure, by the democratic means of public initiative, aka privately initiated referendums, which we have in Switzerland, that Switzerland will never join that bastion of corruption.

Not joining the EU will life much harder for the Swiss, at least in the long term. For example, even now, the borders of member countries to Switzerland are already considered as "external border", similar to the borders to Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.

Also, Switzerland is already part of that "bastion of corruption" in many areas (like funding research, taxes, etc), albeit not formally a member of the EU (and thus with less rights). If Switzerland would not cooperate with the EU in large parts, it would even now have serious economical problems as much of the foreign trade of Switzerland is with the EU.

Regarding software patents, if the EU decides to have them (hopefully not), then Switzerland will be pretty fast to adopt this directive.

Personally, even although there are still so many deficits in the European Union, I am glad to live inside it and not outside it, I am glad to have the Euro, and I am glad that the 200 years period of war seems to be over in Europe. I am also glad that although being German and Swedish, I have no problems whatsoever to take a position and live in France (or elsewhere).

And I tell you something, I once in my life tried to pass through Switzerland (I was invited to a position in Milan and live in Southern Germany, and the route through Switzerland saved me some 50km), and I'll never do it again until Switzerland joins the EU. The border control in Switzerland was so close-minded (closed-mindedness appears to be a property of many Swiss) that they simply would not believe me that I actually came from Germany to apply for a position in Milan. It would escape their minds that someone in Europe could actually do something like that. Instead, they thought I was smuggling drugs into Switzerland. They essentially disassembled my car, it took more than 60 minutes. The 50km saved would have taken 30 minutes had I passed through Austria with no border controls instead.

P.S. the European Parliament (and thus the democratic process) will be strengthend significantly when the new EU constitution is finally ratified by the member countries. Let's only hope that the referendums held in many countries are not used as a vote "over the European Union" but instead as a vote "over more democracy".

Sebastian

There is the European Court of Justice http://europa.eu.int/institutions/court/index_en.h tm

The members of the commission.

Since telling it nicely doesn't work, and telling it with lots of money is out of the question, we should find other ways to uhm...convince them. The first step is to peel them out of this anonymus term "European Commission", so they can't hide in it.

While technically correct, it's misleading to say that the Council of Ministers have voted against it. It implies that they don't want the legislation pushed through, whereas in reality they do.

Decisions made by the Council must be unanimous. The Software Patents directive has been placed on the agenda as an A-list item (one that is passed without discussion unless a council member vetos it). Previously it has been prevented from passing by Poland, twice, and Denmark, once (I think).

It is the Council that will pass the Software Patents directive on Monday, unless another Council member vetos it: stage 5 of the flowchart at http://europa.eu.int/comm/codecision/stepbystep/di agram_en.htm.

The flowchart says "approves all the EP's ammendments" but (I believe that) the Parliament didn't make any modifications to the directive at the time of the first reading, because it predates any of our lobbying to make them aware of how bad the directive will be for the European software industry.

Also, OpenOffice.org handles royalty-free, open, XML-based file formats like OpenDocument, unlike MS-Office which cannot/does not. That ought to have been in the article summary.

Thousands of out of work people that were previously high-paid, hence good tax earners.

Yeah, tens of thousands of software engineers will probably lose their jobs.

But who cares about sleazy people like them? They only research and innovate instead of doing something productive.

The good thing is that we will get a lot of new jobs because of this. Thousands of fine patent lawyers will get new jobs.

</SARCASM>

There is a reason that 47% of the swpat-positive replies to the hearing that the European Commission held were from patent lawyers and patent offices.

For a simple flow chart demonstrating the wonder of modern, simple, transparent government, attend http://europa.eu.int/comm/codecision/stepbystep/di agram_en.htm.

AFAIK, Poland has stopped the law getting as far as 5 twice, and Denmark(?) once. Then the Parliament's legal affairs comitte (JURI) decided almost unanimously that the legislation should be scrapped. But the commission doesn't actually have to listen to the democratic parts of the EU, so now we are at 9-10.

If we are very lucky, MEPs will be angered by the comission's undemocratic actions and reject the common position at 11. Unfortunatly this requires a 70% absolute majority, meaning that 70% of all MEPs (not just those who turn up) have to vote against the legislation. If this happens then we will be proceed to 15, and the European software industry will be saved.

Write to your MEP today! Even if they are neutral on the SWPat issues, they are likely to be angry at how the commission is trying to ignore the entire parliamentry institution.

Unlike MS Office, OOo supports several open file formats, including OASIS' OpenDocument which is already on it's way to being supported by dozens of applications -- but not MSO. Losing control of the file format means that MS would eventually lose that revenue stream. That's why it's lobbying so hard to force sw patents into the EU and to hinder further spread of open standards everywhere.

Open standards are what made the Internet and the WWW possible. There were many networks and even some internets back in the 60's and 70's but none took off because being proprietary prevented easy adoption. Enter TCP/IP and later HTTP and HTML.

... for more in-depth information, I'd suggesest you go and read the 4th lesson of the '12 lessons' over at europa.eu.int

...it proposes legislation, policies and programmes of action and it is responsible for implementing the decisions of Parliament and the Council.

Ok, I'm far from an expert, but this is what I know (largely culled from europa.eu.int).

The EU is not, yet, the government of europe. Each member state (UK, France, Poland etc) has their own internal government. Which powers the national governments have delegated in whole or in part to the EU is governed by a series of treaties. These treaties include managing the euro, human rights, environmental law, regional development and trade regulation, off the top of my head. Foreign policy and national taxation are not yet under the EU's purview.

There are five EU institutions, each playing a specific role:
European Parliament (elected by the peoples of the Member States);

Council of the European Union (representing the governments of the Member States);

European Commission (driving force and executive body);

Court of Justice (ensuring compliance with the law);

Court of Auditors (controlling sound and lawful management of the EU budget).

There are also a number of committees that make recommendations on various specifc areas.

--

Parliament has three main roles:

It shares with the Council the power to legislate.

It exercises democratic supervision over all EU institutions, and in particular the Commission. It has the power to approve or reject the nomination of Commissioners, and it has the right to censure the Commission as a whole.

It shares with the Council authority over the EU budget and can therefore influence EU spending. At the end of the procedure, it adopts or rejects the budget in its entirety.

The most common procedure for adopting (i.e. passing) EU legislation is "co-decision" (which is what is being used in this software patents case). This places the European Parliament and the Council on an equal footing and the laws passed using this procedure are joint acts of the Council and Parliament. It applies to legislation in a wide range of fields.

On a range of other proposals Parliament must be consulted, and its approval is required for certain important political or institutional decisions.

Parliament also provides impetus for new legislation by examining the Commission's annual work programme, considering what new laws would be appropriate and asking the Commission to put forward proposals.

--

The full details of all forms of passing legislation is too large to cut-n-paste, so you might want to check here for the gory details.

--

regarding software patents, this is the FFII's take on the matter:

"While the EU Parliament has proposed a clear exclusion of software patents, the Commission and Council have ignored the Parliament's proposal and reinstated the most uncompromisingly pro-patent text in May 2004. However this text does not enjoy the support of a qualified majority of member states. Yet the Council has refused to renegotiate, and is still trying to push the text through. Meanwhile the European Parliament has asked for a restart of the procedure."

Basically, the parliament has already agreed the text of the first draft of this directive in september 2003, but with amendments that effectively blocked software patentability, despite the original draft by the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) that was heavily pro-patents.

In may 2004, the council were conned into narrowly passing a 'compromise' version of the bill by a pro-patents working party (made up of patent office administrators!) which stripped out the parliament's amendments, and added some meaningless 'protections' that will do nothing.

However, the council's decision is not technically final until it is an A item on their agenda, and is passed. As a B item, it can be amended. Given that several council members have changed their position since may 2004 (changes in government, pressure from national parliaments etc) the pro-patent lobby and commission have so far failed to get the item through a

I'll sumarize what I understand from a quick reading of the relevant articles on Wikipedia and this description of their decision making

There are 3 main bodies involved, the

European Commision which is the executive branch

and the bichameral "legislative branch"

Council of the European Union (alt. "Council of Ministers") which is the representative body for the states (think US Senate before direct election)

European Parliment which is the representative body for the people (US House)

The really messy part is in the "how a bill becomes a law" area. Different categories of laws require different procedures. The European Commission proposes new legislation, but it is the Council and Parliament that pass the laws (in certain areas, such as foreign policy and defence, or criminal law, the houses can request legislation from Commission on a particular topic).

The Commision choses one of three different procedures (depending, in theory, on the "legal basis" for the law)

You could look at the EU's own website for a start - http://europa.eu.int/abc/index3_en.htm

Does the EU even *have* a government?
No, At least not a democratic one.

It's like the thing was designed *by*, bureucrats *for* bureaucrats
That's essentially true.
Also, there's the parliament that is
a) a nursing home for politicians that some national party can't get rid off because of prior achievements or
b) has to move out of sight for a couple of years because of national affairs.
c) Also "parliament" sounds somewhat democratic; but don't give them real power because otherwise they might stop you from getting things done -
like introducing software patents against Europe's interests.


and point me at an online EU-civics 101 tutorial that outlines how the EU government is organized
This looks promising (from the "International UNESCO Education Server for Civic, Peace and Human Rights Education").
Also, there is a very short overview on the(?) EU site.

As an AC posted below here is the website that explains the process, and here is a flowchart from the site.

I don't think there is a simple explaination because the system is inherently complex. If you care to understand it, have fun reading.

As an AC posted below here is the website that explains the process, and here is a flowchart from the site.

I don't think there is a simple explaination because the system is inherently complex. If you care to understand it, have fun reading.

The EU explains itself:

http://europa.eu.int/institutions/index_en.htm
Take a look at the dropdown box in the upper right side of your browser window for different languages.

As an ignorant American, I found this description of the various EU institutions very helpful. Interesting to note that the Parliament can dismiss the Commission if it desires to do so, and it would be interesting to see this happen, or at least have the threat of it issued to enforce Parliament's request/demand.

Searching a bit gave me the following link:

The EUROPA site which I found this handy-dandy flowchart on! With that many steps, no wonder it's confusing!

Searching a bit gave me the following link:

The EUROPA site which I found this handy-dandy flowchart on! With that many steps, no wonder it's confusing!

Actually, the two 'official' languages in Europe are English and ... French (/proud ^^). French is the "diplomatic language"

There are 20 official languages of the European Union.

I don't believe that there is an official "diplomatic" language of the EU, but if you could provide cites to back that up then I would be interested in reading them.

I don't know about maintenance costs, but the Dutch city of Haarlem switched 2000 desktops from Office 97 and came up with some pretty hard numbers on migrations costs: Here's the link.

And here's the relevant quote:

The city found its costs for training, development and migration to OpenOffice to be 50 000 euro, roughly 90% lower than its licence costs for an upgrade to Microsoft Office 2000.

Switching to OO.org clearly costs money, but so does upgrading to new versions of MS Office, and that's basically an ongoing cost.

Good question. I wrote an article about just that (yeah, shameless plug) on www.luni.net. It's in Norwegian, but here's the relevant bit: In short, it's about adapting to the EUCD (EU Copyright Directive), which is a result of intense pressure from the US to impose DMCA-like laws. Which in turn was created to protect the US music, movie and other "content" industries, as we all know.

But wait, there's more. Norway is not a member of the EU, only of the European Economic Area (EEA). Through the EEA-agreement Norway is bound to implement all EU directives, but has no influence over how they are drafted (yeah, stupid, tell me about it). In theory there is a way out however, Norway can veto any new EU directives which run counter to the nation's best interests. Does the current Norwegian government have the guts to use the right of veto in this case? Not a chance.

This means we're left with a piece of legislation drafted in Hollywood, legislation no one in Norway really wants, not even the government. They're just too weak to resist.

> They gonna jail everyone?

If they catch 'em in the act, sure. That's not very likely to happen though, the police were the first to go public and protest against this new law, they claim it's impossible to uphold and will make every teenager a) a criminal, b) lose any respect they may have had for the law and c) even less likely to vote and take part in the political process as they will see politicians as creatures from another dimension.

You know, as in, "hey, could you take a reading on the background radiation in your Universe?"

I guess this just goes to show that the only thing worse than incompetent or corrupt politicians is gutless politicians. Or wait, the only thing worse... is all three.

And if you wonder what the InfoSoc directive is: It is basically EUs copy of the DMCA, only a bit worse.

The preample to the directive talks about support for legalizing software patents: "Thus although the responses in this category were numerically much fewer that those supporting the open source approach, there seems little doubt that the balance of economic weight taking into account total jobs and investment involved is in favour of harmonisation along the lines suggested in the paper."

So the proposed directive text admits that it is hard to find a normal majority and instead tries to invent an "economic majority".

This really tells what the drafters of this directive think about democracy: Fuck the voters and let big business have it like they want.

But then, it turns out that the directive was really drafted by BSA.

In related news, simultaneously Earthlink (in an anti-spam coalition with Microsoft) also announced filing numerous lawsuits to hopefully litigate some major spam operations into oblivion.
Winning these cases (and most importantly, many more) against the spammers would be much easier, of course, if the U.S. finally adopted an opt-in requirement as well, stating that there is no way you CAN SPAM, like in the EU where under a new agreement on anti-spam enforcement, one single complaint will now even suffice to send the authorities round to eradicate any remaining spammers' hideouts in 13 Member States at once.

And I would go for the final version,
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/lex/LexUriServ/site/e n/oj/2004/c_310/c_31020041216en00030010.pdf
instead of the draft.

I found this line "HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF THE BELGIANS" in a word document through google

I rather go for the version hosted by EU, instead of one found at Kent University.

Also it is a way for party's to get rid of there failures (Like peter mandelson) and embarrassments.

Just take a look at the statistics:

Europe has only had strict laws against junk communications for two years (Article 13 of Directive 2002/58/EC), they have only been in full force since November 2003 (and the provisions for criminal penalties are not even in place in each and every corner of the European Union yet) - but they mean pure and simple opt-in, and look how this continent's "spam output" already has become almost completely insignificant.

The U.S., I'm afraid to say, have put next to nothing in the way of these sociopaths: only a now-you-CAN-SPAM-more-than-ever Act that lives up to its name in the worst of ways, by legalizing most of the spam, enacting an unworkable opt-out onus on the users, and putting anti-spam warriors at the legal risk of interfering with (and being taken to court by the operators of) what is considered a legitimate "business model" except for some of the worst abuses - and for however little it is, all of this even an entire decade too late.

Reliance on technical solutions and minimal government intervention is just fine for many things - but it's failed in the fight against spam.

Here is how to do it:

Where the rights of the users and subscribers are not respected, national legislation should provide for judicial remedies. Penalties should be imposed on any person, whether governed by private or public law, who fails to comply with the national measures taken under this Directive.
(...)
"electronic mail" means any text, voice, sound or image message sent over a public communications network which can be stored in the network or in the recipient's terminal equipment until it is collected by the recipient.
(...)
The use of automated calling systems without human intervention (automatic calling machines), facsimile machines (fax) or electronic mail for the purposes of direct marketing may only be allowed in respect of subscribers who have given their prior consent.
(...)
In any event, the practice of sending electronic mail for purposes of direct marketing disguising or concealing the identity of the sender on whose behalf the communication is made, or without a valid address to which the recipient may send a request that such communications cease, shall be prohibited.

• a directive is a (binding) template for lawmakers in all of the European Union's member states
• necessarily, the legal techniques as well as the "Legalese" itself vary between jurisdictions
• this is a great one-ban-fits-all provision that outlaws each and every flavor of spam at once

There is nothing wrong with following an example that works so well, even if it is from Europe...

Call your congresscritter now to outlaw unsolicited commercial communications, place a hefty fine and jail time on the offenders, and put an end to these abuses before they put an end to eMail itself.

You do realize that everything you've said is just crap perpetuated by British tabloids? It's gotten so bad that the EU has had to put a website for debunking these myths. Guess what, almost all of them are from the UK:

See this site.

Why? Only he can say for sure, but possible reasons could be:

• distract the public from trying Linux or other Free or Open Source Software, or at least delay them.
• distract the public from real open document standards
• distract policy makers from the fact that WordML is still closed
• distract home users and businesses from OpenOffice.org
• distract everybody from FireFox, Mozilla and Opera.
• distract the public from ongoing Windows security failures
• distract investors from the fact that MS has halved research and development
• distract pundits from Longhorn's list of features getting shorter and release getting later
• distract home users from the Mac mini
• distract investors from the EU anti-trust case
• distract businesses and lawmakers from the VC-1 codec
• distract European businesses from the software patent threat
• ... etc.

... in all EU countries, effective 7/7/99. IANAL, but I guess this directive had to be ratified by member countries, so the actual date may have varied. Italian government took three years to do so, YMMV. Not sure if directive applies if not ratified by your country.

The law is only valid for individual customers, not merchants. Apple, like many other manufacturers, only mentions the first year. Apparently (but again, IANAL), that's because the law actually addresses the party which sold you the item -- which may not be Apple. Apple offers to pay for the first year, the second is up to the actual vendor.

If you bought from a EU AppleStore, though, you should be able to get your assistance from Apple during the second year, too.

See here, esp. art. 5.

Otherwise, this is just a scam to

1. force MA citizens to buy MSO 2003 in order to access public data. MSO 2004, in turn, requires MS Windows and DRM...
2. distract from the advantages and rising success of OpenOffice.org

Massachusetts should insist on *open* formats, not PR gimmicks. If that one company can take the keys to unlocking public data to its grave, where will that leave MA after all that investment? Not to mention, what are the privacy ramifactions of a format that phones home for every read, write, open, close, save, copy, print, and mail?

Your link is just about as shady as it gets. Look, it doesn't matter what patents IBM files.

It does matter that IBM is actively trying to expand the borders of patentable subject matter, and actively lobbying (both at patent offices and with politicians) to get the broken US system introduced in Europe.

Has IBM (in recent times) used it's patent portfolio to squash competition or to do generally evil things? No.

How many small European software companies do you think can play the patent game? Do you think IBM does not know this? IBM knows that no-one else can compete with them in the patent race, and even if someone else has a patent, they can get access to a cheap/free license because of the tons of patents they have.

See the remark at the top of page 4 of this testimony to the European Commission. That reference dates back to 1990, but there is no reason to assume that they stopped leveraging this competitive advantage while at the same time obtaining more and more patents, and starting to enforce their patents more actively from 1993 onwards (see slide 13, the curve does not flatten because R&D spending declines, but because patent license income goes up).

IBM has invented a good chunk of the technology out there today. The article mentions pursuing patent claims against Oracle, well, IBM invented the relational database!

Yes, and IBM tried to claim it invented case conversion using a lookup table (click on the patent number to get the pdf). Fortunately, there was prior art.

You also seem to assume that because someone did something first, they have a natural right to a monopoly on doing that. They don't. Patent law is a purely economical law which introduces artificial monopolies in the market. You only do that if you find out the market is running completely haywire due to the absence of such monopolies. IBM's early software work was not patented either, simply because there were no software patents. Did IBM suffer because of that? Of course not, they benefited a lot from he fact that the creators of VisiCalc hadn't patented "the database", even though they "invented" it.

Software patents are not necessary to keep the software market at large innovating or functioning correctly. Even enquiries by pro-swpat institutes like Max Planck and Fraunhofer show that competition is the main driving force to keep innovating. If you don't innovate, your competitor will and you lose.

Time to market and copyright give you a small lead time advantage, and the fact that the resulting monopolies are either fairly narrow but long (copyright) or broad but short (trade secret) means that the industry can keep moving at a high pace and does not require the high transaction costs associated with patents (and without requiring huge cross licensing deals between large companies).

A lot of companies exist and make lots of money based on technologies that IBM invented but did not pursue.

And IBM makes a lot of money on innovations from other people. Additionally, you don't hear about the individual cases where companies like IBM press other companies into paying for licenses, unless they go to court (which is only a very small fraction, who can fight IBM in court?). Companies also do not publicise that kind of things, since the fact that they have to pay 1% to 5% of their revenue on a product to IBM (or anyone else) is not good publicity.

Exactly because such cases are not publicised by anyone, there are

Software is not patentable. So why are they persisting to do wrong?

Here's a thought as to why they don't yet get it (nobody wants to tell them why its really not patentable.)

In regards to dealing with increased complexity in software MS has their longhorn and their software factories effort, free software has its edos project, neither of which are in promotion of honesty regarding programming, or what is the application of abstraction physics.

Its really quite simple. To support the non-patentability of software the foundation upon which software is created must be supported the same. Free Software development community doesn't want to do this anymore than proprietary software campanies.

For its always about money based upon some mode of elitism. With Free Software its the service oriented products/applications and complexity out of teh reach of most customers, with proprietary software its exclusive use.

But if the arguement that software is not patentable due to its abstract ideas status, that anyone is capable of abstract logical thought and ideas, then that status has to be supported by making software obviously easy enough that the "free software" label will be because software is easy enough to create that its free in the sense that anyone can create it or cause the machine to, regardless of their knowledge resource. (you don't need to know how a calculator works to use it to calculate an equasion you input or hit the key that does some equasion for you - ie pi)

How do I know this? In a email to various participants of Edos, (Of which experience tells me not to expect any support for honesty about abstraction physics. Or any indication they got the email, as avoidance seems to be thought to be proof against something the thing being avoided), I wrote:

RE: press release "Major European research institutions and Open Source software companies today announced the launch of EDOS, a project dealing with complexity management in the field of Open Source software. The participants will collaborate in the development of theoretical and technical solutions to the management of large-scale, modular software projects..."

Abstraction Physics is the foundation of the practical application solutions. Deal with that, establish the mechanics and create the software mechanism and the rest will come easy (or boringly repetitive), where there is plenty to apply "navigational mapping" to and productively exaust the funds on and I believe to accomplish a lot more then thought possible regarding the EDOS goals.

from: - ffii.org - Software Patents
to: Advances in software are advances in abstraction
Then to: Abstraction Physics

Microsofts direction with longhorn.

Google search "web" for: "Timothy Rue" patents a few links from that search are here
and here (-see comment #4 - I'm/VIC USPTO published protected!)

I can wonder why the USPTO edited my comment and removed the near transparent markup but here is the version I sent them (with contact information limited). Also this google finding.

The Virtual Interaction Configurationion project is GPL'd (forkable and all the other things allowed) and would amount to maybe a drop in the bucket, in comparison to the funding and manpower the EDOS project has available, it could be completed and I believe used to surpass the goals of EDOS.

Current state is that of needing some correction and completion in the current python code, integration of the existing IQ and ID commands and the c

This is most certainly correct. You can't assume that nobody listens into your phone conversations too. However, you can assume that your mail is not opened on a systematic basis. At least for civilized, democratic and (relatively) open societies I think this is a reasonable assumption. Taking that forward the USPS is the carrier in case of mail.

But the business of them being able to snoop on their customers is just standard law. If you own a server, you have to right to monitor files on that server.

There seems to be a huge attitude difference in those matters between the US and Europe. This is most clearly illustrated by EUs privacy directive, which is implemented as law in all EU states. It is most certainly illegal for any carrier to tap into your communications. It is even illegal for your employer to listen in to your communications as an employee under normal circumstances. Doesn't matter if phone, or email. Exceptions might be banks, brokers and other entitities that may have to prove the contents of phone calls in a court case. And even then it must be clearly announced that the call is monitored and taped prior to call completion.

The freedom to listen into private communications at whim, regardless of who owns the carrying gear is a totally foreign concept for most Europeans.

To emphasise: I'm not that naive to believe that it doesn't happen and I certainly wouldn't trust that all folks are pure hearted, upstanding, law abiding citizens of flawless character. But at least such actions are considered a criminal offense.

Like HTML, which surprised people in the 1990's, the OASIS OpenOffice.org file format is indeed vendor independent, though, it is now called Open Document. Anyone can use it or develop tools for it without restriction. Even Microsoft is part of the team at OASIS, at least on paper. And, even if MS doesn't get out of the way, interesting things will happen with Open Doument.

So far OASIS Open Document being used by at least the following:

• StarOffice
• OpenOffice.org
• AbiWord
• kWord

... the adoption of an OASIS Open Office Standard should be welcomed, and industry actors not currently involved with the OASIS Open Document Format should consider participating in the standardisation process in order to encourage a wider consensus around the format.

--EU Telematics between Administrations Committee, May 24, 2004

Currently, there are many governments moving up to StarOffice or OpenOffice.org for the sake of these formats. Singapore comes to mind first, but there are many, many others that don't necessarily make the mainstream press like Sarpsborg. Likewise, there are many small, medium and large businesses moving along. Some with an axe to grind (with good reason ) speak up. However, most are silent until the move is being implemented to keep the goon squad from Redmond from getting in the way.

The current choice:

• OASIS Open Document --
  1. be able to access your own data indefinitely as XML
  2. and change productivity tools, operating systems and hardware only if and when it suites you
• MS-WordML --
  1. pay that Redmond tithe indefinitely
  2. and buy new productivity tools, operating systems and hardware when Chairman Bill tells you to

This like all Malware is a very clearly against the law in the UK and most of Europe. The UK Computer Misuse Act makes it a criminal offense for a person to

"causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer"
Computer Misuse Act 1990

Depending on what the Company does with the data obtained they are likely also be in breach of the Data Protection Act 1998 which allows a £5,000 fine for each person offended against.

Similar legislation exists throughout Europe as part of the Information Society Policy Framework agreement.

This like all Malware is a very clearly against the law in the UK and most of Europe. The UK Computer Misuse Act makes it a criminal offense for a person to

"causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer"
Computer Misuse Act 1990

Depending on what the Company does with the data obtained they are likely also be in breach of the Data Protection Act 1998 which allows a £5,000 fine for each person offended against.

Similar legislation exists throughout Europe as part of the Information Society Policy Framework agreement.

I should have said: "Quantum mechanical effects become significant in the realm of the extremely super small." Likewise: "Einstein's relativity becomes significant in the realm of extremely large values of velocity."

Close but no cigar, BECs (Bose Einstein Condensates), Nonlinear optical systems, and the Stern-Gerlach experiment (which gave evidence for electrons having spin) all occur on scales as large or larger than cell biology. Special relativity depends on velocity but General relativity does not, in fact velocity is a difficult idea to describe in General Relativity and not useful anyway. In full scale General Relativity all you have is spacetime and curvature.

What about: "Look around, and everyone will see that quantum mechanics is not tangible."

I guess the 8 foot tall, 2 ton NMR spectrometer I work on isn't tangible. How about this NMR magnet is it tangible? Of course I guess NMR isn't a quantum phenomenon.

I have not heard about the quantum economic model yet, or social Q.E.D.

Probably because quantum theory refers to a very specific set of axioms which cannot be applied willy nilly. While Darwin's Theory of Evolution likewise refers to a very specific logical framework, the general ideas of competition and selection can be simulated in a variety of other systems hence the proliferation of "Darwinian X" ideas floating around. On the the other hand, quantum statistical phenomena apply only in very specific cases and other than those systems studied by quantum physicists don't appear in economic systems or social interaction networks or other areas in which analogies to Darwinian Evolution can be made. On the other hand, there is a lot of useful work that can be done in applying quantum mechanical ideas to computation.

I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned.

The European Union offers a 148 page migration guide for going from Windows to GNU/Linux. The IDA-project produced this high-quality must-read.

You go now.

http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do? reference=MEMO/04/305&format=HTML&aged=0&language= EN&guiLanguage=en/

Apparently not even the person posting this story RTFA. Baker and the other plaintiffs entered a settlement agreement with Microsoft, Symantec, et al. Sure, this means that we'll all start seeing a little better behavior from these companies, but it's not nearly as good as a precedential court ruling that would bind future companies operating in California (i.e., all of them).

This is nice, but does little to truly level the playing field for the regular guy. For that, we'd need to be owners of the copies of the software we buy not merely licensees. I'd even take a ruling that said that onerous EULA terms were unenforceable, or better: any EULA term not specifically negotiated by the parties is unenforceable. Now that would be a court victory to celebrate. (And, in cases where the term is imbalanced, is the norm in much of Europe. See the European Directive on Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts, particularly Article 3, Sec. 1.)

How come when the U.S. has to "harmonize" its IP laws with Europe and elsewhere we only harmonize to the most regular-guy-restricting standards and never harmonize to the regular-guy-protection standards? (ehhrmm...Rhetorical question...)

At least here in the most countries of Europe there's nothing wrong with distributing copies of music, video and software.

If you are in a country with membership of the EU, you might be interested* in reading Directive 2001/29 EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society. This has most definitely had an impact on the copyright regime in the UK, although, even before this, unauthorised distribution of copyrighted files was not permitted.

And, on the topic of wondering whether there is "nothing wrong" with distibuting, perhaps some thoughts about the moral rights of authors? Not protected as much in mainland Europe as in the UK (mainland seems to prefer protection of economic rights), but important nonetheless.

*Disclaimer. You might not be interested in reading this at all, but it is of sufficient length to help prevent you posting misleading statements on /. for a while.

Considering that the bill will be decided by politicians, how come they don't organise an email campaign, where you can find your relevant politician, and send him an email?

I disagree, at least from an European point of view.

BTW, I was a few days ago at the IST2004 European conference (The Hague Nederlands) and I heard the exact opposite view. Only high-value opensource tools would help Europe in not losing all its (unsufficient) IT industry.

Probably the US is in a different position: dominant corporations (including corporations behaving against laws and ethics, see recent anti-trust cases) - like MicroSoft- are american.

In all cases (and in all continents), the IT job market will evolve.

1. RoHS - Restriction on Hazardous Substances - also known as "lead free" directive but in fact includes a whole list of other stuff
   
2. WEEE - Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment - forces producers to buy-back and recycle electronic equipment properly (no more shipping it to SE Asia)