European Council Approves Software Patents

A. S. Bradbury writes "ZDNet reports that the EU Council has voted to pass changes to European patent law that will allow the patentability of software. See the FFII for more coverage. Currently, the FFII states 'The Irish Presidency's proposal was passed, with support from Germany, France and most of the other countries whose ministers had publicly promised to oppose or at least abstain. The only no vote came from Spain (to be confirmed), Italy and a few others abstained.' As you may remember, Germany had previously promised to vote against software patents. The FFII news page seems to have been showing growing support in European countries for the FFII and other organisations fighting against software patents, but unfortunately that wasn't enough. So, what now? The European elections are approaching, which means MEPs might be more willing to listen to our views than normal. Slashdot has covered software patents in Europe before."

Comments

Re:Let me be first first American to say:

[vitojph]

Your words just show how idiot you can be. You shouldn't be so happy, it's a very sad day because we all are getting more stupid white men :-(

Multilingual ogg/vorbis available!

[Anonymous Coward]

The transcripts on AEL are messy, because they only contain the English translation, and translators were, erhmmm, occasionally less than adequate.

Fortunately, for those of you who speak some of the original languages (French, German, Polish, Italian,...), there is a dual-track version available here, were one channel is Original language, and the other is the English translation.

Better than Soviet Russia

[The I Shing]

Because in Soviet Russia, software patents YOU!