Slashdot Mirror
Dutch Parliament Reverses Software Patent Vote
Sanity writes "On May 18th, by a thin majority, the European Council of Ministers voted in favor of throwing out the European Parliament's efforts to keep software patents out of Europe. According to an FFII press release, the Dutch Parliament yesterday voted to change its Minister's vote, which was in favor, to an abstension. This is an unprecidented move and a great coup for those fighting against software patents, never before has a country reversed a vote in this manner. While this is not sufficient to reverse the decision of the Council of Ministers, it does pave the way for other countries, many of which were pressured into an affirmative vote, to do the same. Now is the time for citizens of the EU to put pressure on their national governments to follow the Dutch lead."
This is a filthy, dirty vote play. Really, it is.
HOWEVER, it is totally justified.
If your competitor plays dirty and wins, consistently, the only way you can compete is to be just as dirty, if not more-so.
The upcoming USA election should be interesting.
I guess that's just politics. But according to the text, it was an informal vote. The actual voting will take place after the text has been translated in 20 languages.
:D
Yeah, I'm kinda proud to be Dutch
"Want some rye? 'Course you do!" - Return to Zork
The only reason that the vote was passed in the first place was because the then European presidency in Ireland was being sponsered by Microsoft.
And people are attempting to change these rules, for just the reasons that this debaukle has highlighted, regarding both the reversal of the parliments decisions by the council and the reversal of the dutch vote.
May the Maths Be with you!
This vote shows that the Dutch rep to the EU Parliament defied the government, therefore the people, he "represents". While politicians are sent to lead the people, even when leadership is controversial or unpopular, Dutch minister Brinkhorst blamed his "maverick" vote on a typo. The Dutch, with their traditional prudence and deft style, have reversed the result, without even reversing their vote, by appropriately abstaining when their own vote was dysfunctional. Now the question is: who got to this weasel? Who paid him off? Could it be M$, adding his bribe to the big, yet acceptable, bill they're liable to pay the EU for running a foreign monopoly against their people? How much does it cost a corporation to rig property laws in their favor for decades in Europe? And for the politically ambitious European, does Brinkhorst get to keep his bribe, even though he botched the delivery?
--
make install -not war
This law they are trying to pass will allow companies to patent the software (intellectual property) that they have written?
Just like any other company that does R&D (the most costly aspect of producing a product) what is the problem with it being patented?
Let them recoup their costs. If I write some software, I be damned if someone is going to tell me how to market/sell/utilize it (short of national security breach).
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
It may be a great news, but I wonder what a vote means then. I will not feel secure in the future if the same can happen when some GOOD decisions have been made. Does it mean that at any moment some heavy lobbying can change any vote ?
I have to admit I understand nothing to the EU system...
--
Go Debian!!!
The post is very confusing: he voted against the people that are against voting against being contrary to software patents, something like that...
What the heck, can someone simplify it?
how long until
Ehm, the majority of the spanish people were against Spain sending troops to Iraq in the first place. (I believe they stated they would let the troops stay if the United Nations took political and military control).
The PSOE stated they would bring the troops home if they were elected. Maybe the bombing contributed to their victory, but AFAIR they were close in the polls even before the bombing. So it's not like the victory came out of thni air like you are implying.
Sounds like how democracy is supposed to work to me. The party that went against the majorities opinion got slapped on the wrist.
Then there's Spain. I find the phrase "undermine political credibility in Europe" to be a laughable concept when an entire country changes its majority party in a radical direction because of a single terrorist bombing.
I live in Spain, and I lived through those days of the bombing and elections shortly afterwards. I can tell you something with certainty -- the election went the way it did not because of the bombing, but because of the governing party's response to it. They tried to very crudely manipulate public opinion in the aftermath of the bombing so that the elections would go in their favour. The public was responding to the governments blatent attempt to manipulate them, not the bombing per se.
It's a real shame that it was presented in a lot of the American press differently, because Bush could learn a lot from the Spanish public's response to the governing party's attempted manipulation -- lie to the electorate, and they'll punish you for it.
Is this a troll? Well whatever, if you look at the economic figures you'll see that software patents don't add to inventiveness, but are actually an extra tax to pay to other people (a currently ever more popular tactic, companies that only earn money by claiming an idea without ever making anything, are becoming more common) as there is no need to have an actual working product or anything, this thus slows down overall innovation. None of the current big corps got big with software patents either, in generally they just use them to fence out competition, which is ofcourse what capitalism is about.
Thus software patents are bad, because they harm the economy, the generation of new ideas and harm the general working of the capitalistic system. This doesn't mean patents are bad in all cases, but the way software patents have been introduced begat what is now an anti capitalistic system.
Quickshot
We still need more no-votes to break the qualified majority, but thanks to this victory, getting those votes now is actually realistic.
Donate free food here
So they were for being against opposing patents. This is your brain on drugs
Agreed. If it weren't for the context my initial reading was to think that corporations had gotten the better of politics. Perhaps it should read: "the European Council of Ministers, to keep software patents out of Europe, voted in favor of throwing out the European Parliament's efforts".
The issue is the prepositional phrase "to keep software patents out of Europe". Is it serving as an adjective or an adverb? Does it modify "efforts", meaning the European Parliament had been striving to keep software patents out of Europe, or does it modify "voted", meaning the action of voting served to keep software patents out of Europe? The meaning of the prepositional phrase, in its published position, does not become apparent without the context around it.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
These privileges are taken away by software patents. Actually, some people go that far as to say software patents are illegal, because they breach international treaties:
Article 10 WIPO, "Contracting Parties may, in their national legislation, provide for limitations of or exceptions to the rights granted to authors of literary and artistic works under this Treaty in certain special cases that do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author.
Software patents *do* "conflict with a normal exploitation" of your work as an author of a program, so Beauprez certainly has a point.
The problem is that Poland's vote (8 votes) was wrongly recorded at the meeting in May. However, in the mean time the Polish have gone from stating that they were still against but that there vote was not recorded, to stating that they were in favour of the "compromise". I don't know why or how, but the practical upshot is that we now need 5 more votes to break the qualified majority.
Donate free food here