Demonstration Against Software Patents in Europe

bram.be writes "On April 14, FFII is organising a walking demonstration in Brussels against the legalisation of software patents in Europe, as well as a legislation benchmarking conference. Like in August last year, these events will be accompanied by an online demonstration whereby webmasters are asked to close their websites in protest. The reason for the renewed protest is that after the European Parliament voted for a great directive, it is now the Council of Minister's turn, whose working party proposes as 'compromise' to simply discard all good amendments and on top of that to even make program publication an infringement. Already more then 1300 sites participate in the online demonstration. Among them are some big sites like KDE, the GNU Project and the Gimp. Also, on April 15 the European Greens/EFA group is organising a Euro-LUG party inside the European Parliament, 'with a view to enhance the networking among the free software community in Europe [...], to inform the EP about what free software is, how it works and which ideas lie behind.' Speakers will include Gwen Hinze (EFF), Jon Lech Johansen (DeCSS), Georg Greve (FSF Europe and Alan Cox. Prior registration is mandatory for this event."