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European Software Patents Vote Now June 30th
brenno writes "On June 30th the European Parliament will vote about the much feared software patents. Initially this vote was expected in September, but after a committee hearing British Labor Member of European Parliament Arlene McCarthy scheduled this topic to be dealt with next week. This leaves us with virtually no time to explain to parliament members about the dangers (read all about this at the FFII website). The only thing that you can do is to write to your member of parliament telling what you think and how it endangers free software and how odd it is that on one hand Europe was embracing open source and on the other hand they are putting it in danger. Please step in and undertake some action. Read all about it and write your representative."
...or simpy wake up to the fact that democracy (as it is enacted in Europe and the USA) just doesn't work, the politicians have all been captured by special interests and no longer serve the people, and the only thing that will work is direct action, starting with massive civil disobedience.
Ireland has 2.5% of the votes on this issue. Not all MEPs turn up for votes like this, so if all the Irish MEPs turn up, their votes may make up a larger portion.
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It's very important to convince the other countries to contact their MEPs. The all-country page for MEP listings is:
http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/ep5/owa/p_meps2.repa
Ciaran O'Riordan
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I emailed my MEPs, and got three personal replies within a day.
The first of those replies was within half an hour, and the MEP in question did actually know something about the issue.
Your cynicism is misplaced, as far as the people I contacted were concerned. Those emails weren't wasted, as long as the representitives in question realise there is a HUGE number of people against software patents in Europe. But this won't happen if everyone just sits on their arses and does nothing, or goes and throws a brick through the nearest McDonalds window instead.
There is one thing that matters more to politicians than money - votes.
They really don't like doing unpopular things, or at least getting caught doing unpopular things - it loses them their jobs.