Europeans, Tweak Your Representatives On Patents

zoobab writes "The FFII is launching a call for action to push European candidates to answer questions on Software Patents. Alan Cox has also written a open letter in which he points out that those European elections are an opportunity for each citizen to have the choice and to make the politicians listen. Get the questionnaire and send it to the candidates of your country!"

Comments

UK MEP voting records.

[Moderation abuser]

Just a reminder to people that you can't believe a word that a politician says.

Actions speak louder than words and you can find out here how they voted:

http://www.ffii.org.uk/uk_meps.html

It would be nice to see something similar for the other countries.

Re:UK MEP voting records.

[16K Ram Pack]

In summary...

Greens

UKIP seem to be best

Lib Dems Next

Tories Next

Labour Last

It's worth examining the "green" votes for what was being voted on, and not just adding them up. 71 1E is a nothing. Something about "monitoring impact". Big fucking deal.

The biggies are 34/115 and 74 IMO.

Re:UK MEP voting records.

[Raphael]

It would be nice to see something similar for the other countries.

There is a link to a list of other countries on the page that you linked to. It doesn't have a detailled commentary and analysis, but this is good enough to have an overview of who voted against patents.

If you are living in Europe, take a look at the chart for your country and see who you should vote for. Personally, I am glad that the MEPs that I voted for in the previous election have clearly voted in favor of the FFII and against patents (i.e., they got a high score in the chart). I will vote for them again in a few days.

Re:UK MEP voting records.

[Raphael]

In addition to the link in my previous comment, here is a convenient list of links to the very nice MEP analysis site created by Christian Beauprez. I hope that he will forgive me for any slashdotting:

• AT - Austria
• BE - Belgium
• DE - Germany
• DK - Denmark
• ES - Spain
• FI - Finland
• FR - France
• GR - Greece
• IE - Ireland
• IT - Italy
• LU - Luxemburg
• NL - Netherlands
• PT - Portugal
• SE - Sweden
• UK - United Kingdom

Check how your elected representatives have supported patents so far, and decide how to vote in a few days.

Slashdot readers from countries such as UK, Germany or Spain have a lot of work to do! Talk to your friends, family, coworkers and MEPs and try to change the tide...

Re:UK MEP voting records.

[hopethishelps]

the Justice For Kashmir party ...who's core policies...are based around separating Kashmir from India and giving it to Pakistan

Actually the Justice for Kashmir party stands for self-determination for the people of Kashmir. That means, a UN-monitored referendum in Kashmir, where the people vote to decide which country they want Kashmir to be part of.

I have no first-hand knowledge about the rest of your assertions, but one blatant falsehood has set your credibility to zero.

Re:UK MEP voting records.

[pubjames]

UKIP seem to be best

Please do not vote for the UKIP because of this issue. They are racists.

Re:UK MEP voting records.

[stephenbooth]

JFK are the majority party in my area (two out of three councillors, used to be 3 of 3 until one of them lost his seat int he last election), I see a lot of their campaign literature. The policy of campaigning for the handing over of Kashmir to Pakistan is featured in that literature. If you look at the activities of the councillors over their terms of office a lot of their activities are based around campaigning for Kashmir to be handed over to Pakistan. I do have first hand knowledge of your assertions. That blatant lie has set your credibility to less than zero.

Stephen

Re:UK MEP voting records.

[dabadab]

Absolutely true.
Hungary - as a newcomer to the EU - had no MEPs at the time of the vote, but we had the chance to vote in the European Council.
The official stand was that "we don't need no stinkin' SW patents" (as it was expressly stated by an undersecretary in our Parliament) and it seemed very likely that we would vote against the Irish proposal.
Yet we have voted "yes" and - to confuse things even more - the Minister of Informatics and Telecommunications made a press release about the victory over SW patents.
So now I really can not decide if they are corrupt to the bone or simply too stupid - although both alternatives are very disturbing.

Re:UK MEP voting records.

[nickos]

So why not vote Green? Remember that in the European elections (but not the local ones) they use PR, so you can vote for whoever you like without worrying about your vote not counting.

Re:UK MEP voting records.

[isorox]

Theres more chance of your vote getting an small party candidate in, rather then changing the numbers of the big 3.

For the Dutch people

[PhuckH34D]

BOF (Bits Of Freedom) has an document online [dutch] where they examined what our politicians voted on several "computer/internet related" laws, including software patents. (English version of BOF is here, but I couldn't find an english version of this document)

Info for Sweden

[tero]

Here's what some of the Swedish candidates had to say about software patents http://mnemo.nu/publicerat/2004/may/candidates.php . FFII Sweden also put together information brochure, which is perfect to print out and leave in strategic places around the office (coffee tables, lunch room etc.)

For all the Finns

[Weird O'Puns]

Electronic Frontier Finland ry has already send a questionnaire about software patents, spam, copyright etc. to the Finnish candidates. They have set up a page where you can compare your oppinions with those of the ones who answered.

Re:For all the Finns

[Talvi]

There's also another, independently conducted survey published on Linux-Aktivaattori about the Finnish candidates' general IT skills/knowledge, opinions on software patents, OSS, etc.

Currently, the rate of response is a measly 15.4% but the page is being updated until the election day as the answers come in.

No, they don't

[Moderation abuser]

Don't talk bollocks. Not all of the parties have the same policies. You can quite clearly see from the following table which parties vote which way...

http://www.ffii.org.uk/votes/swpat/country/UK.ht ml

So not only do you vote for one of their opposition, you tell your current MEPs how you are going to vote and why...

The thing about the european parliament is that it is a proportional representation system which means that your vote *DOES* count. If you vote for a Green, it increases the numbers of Greens in the parliament.

Don't vote UKIP!

[dizzyduck]

Robert Kilroy-Silk is one of their candidates. I think that says it all.

Vote Green!

Sweden

[Daniel Vallstrom]

Here is a link with some info on how the parties and some candidates stand on the issue.

Roughly, the two largest parties, the social democrats (socialdemokraterna) and the right wing party (moderaterna), are in favor of software patents while the rest, the liberals (folkpartiet), the leftmost party (vaensterpartiet), the greens (miljoepartiet),... are against.

(I'm voting for Olle Schmidt of the liberal party but I'm not affiliated with anything above.)

Re:UK MEP voting records - email addresses

[AYeomans]

I looked up current UK MEP email addresses in UpYourStreet. (That also confirms your electoral region, useful if you are near a boundary.)

Compare with the candidate listcandidate list and you have the people with a strong interest in re-election.

I sent all in my region an email asking their opinions, cc: to party email addresses from the paper handouts. So far three replies, all broadly supportive of not allowing software patents.

Re:MEPs of NL

[JaredOfEuropa]

So you can guess where my vote is going.

Yup, I have changed my mind and will vote for a D66 candidate rather than a VVD one (the right wing). I wrote the VVD MEP who is on the relevant committee earlier, and got a response much to the effect of "We know what we are doing; you can rest easy and go back to sleep".

The Dutch will recognise the famous quote of one of our former prime ministers ("U kunt rustig weer gaan slapen"), which exemplifies the problem I have with these politicians: the last thing they want is informed citizens butting into their affairs. They know what's best, after all.

UK list of candidates

[tplayford]

The BBC produce a nice list of all candidates by area:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3708131.stm

Re:Scary web design

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Well I would be glad to help them out of their spot, free gratis (own a successful web design company), if they would respond to any of the efforts I have made to contact them!

I noticed that there was no Irish branch of the FFII on the last slashdot story about this issue (maybe thats changed since, I don't know), so I also tried to reach them regarding setting up a local branch over here.

No response whatsoever. I couldn't even get through on the phone lines! I don't know what sort of an operation they are running, but so far I have to say I am less than impressed. If they think they can divert the beaurocratic juggernaut that is the EU with anything less than cohesive organisation and directed efforts, they are sadly mistaken.

Beh, like most things, I'll just have to go ahead and do it myself...

Lib Dems?

[BenjyD]

In the UK at least, the Liberal Democrats seem to have some idea at least about copyright and patents as they relate to software. This paper mentions software patents as a bad thing, states that allowing only copyright protection on code rather than patents encourage competition in the software market place, along with a bunch of other generally sensible ideas.

Re:You are worse than the patent lobbiests

[Halo1]

"Pessimist" is a term that optimists use to describe realists.

And "realists" is a term that weasels often use to hide the fact they are so scared of losing they don't even dare to try anything. So what?

I agree with the grandparent post, there is no point lobbying on this issue because it isn't goint to change the outcome. No amount of lobbying or votes will outweigh the corporate interest.

You are misguided in thinking that this is "the people" vs "the corporations". At large, this is "the people + several corporations + scientists + economists + software developers" against "patent administrators + patent lawyers + patent departments of some large corporations". Did you know FFII's position is supported by e.g. Dassault Aviation and France Telecom R&D?

But hey, knock yourself out and lobby anyway, safe in the illusion that a ballot makes you a part of the political process.

Be realistic and don't post like that, you know you can't change anything anyway <g>

alternative line + irc

[Holger Blasum]

+49-174-7313590 (gsm,myself)
Irc.
(apologies for the previous accidental ac dupe)