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EU Ministers Went Off-Brief In Patent Vote
MartinB writes "Several EU ministers reportedly went against the wishes of their nations in voting for the proposed EU Software Patent legislation in May. Among those misleading the council of ministers were representatives from Holland, Poland and Germany. The Dutch parliament is going as far as asking to change its vote, which was originally in favour of making software patentable."
The text of the submission was somewhat misleading, for a second I thought it read the Dutch wished to support patents - but they really wish to vote no. I just thought someone should make that perfectly clear.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...gave a flaming speech (german, sorry) for software patents and the protection of intellectual property as the new resources of the 21st century in Munich, 2 days ago. Note the european parliament voted AGAINST the draft, now the senate is clandestinely pushing for it's implementation. We're talking, demonstrating, doing everything in our possibilities here as german software developers, but the "social democratic" guys in power do not care, and do not have a fucking clue what they're talking about. Destroying innovation to appease the big companies :(
If you're in europe, come on join at the FFII and help in the fight, please. It might be our last chance.
I'd say they didn't. Among other things the government couldn't do was keep the states from threatening to invade each other. Fortunately, we got the Constitution-based government before any wars started.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
The electoral college has really only played a minor role in filtering the will of the people into a result for who ends up being US President. ("Minor" meaning situations where popular and electoral votes don't exactly reflect each other, while "Major" means mass chaos in the electoral system of the sort that would be akin to what the EU ministers did.)
However, electors *have* cast votes for a different candidate than the one they were expected to vote for. Tennessee in 1948 is one example.
See here or here for more details.
Here in the Netherlands, the fact that that asshole minister of us voted FOR software patents has been a nice little riot in the dutch techie world. People were encouraged to write said minister, write to his party, write to the head of the party, parliament, etc. I think that all of this caused sufficient public backlash that forced our goverment to make that bastard swallow his words and do The Right Thing(tm).
Hate me!
This is more or less the same thing reported last friday.
You do realise that the problem in this situation was the coucil, that is the gouvernements of the member countries? Not "Eurocrats in Brussels".
Actually, there have been many occasions where electors didn't vote for who they were expected to. A quick googling turned up this link.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
If the Founding Fathers were around today, they'd say "That's not a bug, that's a feature."
They didn't trust anybody...not even the general public. (The line "Your people, Sir, is a great beast" is commonly attributed to Alexander Hamilton.) The electoral college, and the original way that senators were elected, were yet another check and balance... and some argue that the amendment that switched us to direct election of senators is a mistake.
Another system is in France. Quoted from this article, describing the 2002 French presidential election:
"According to French polling rules, the presidential elections, a direct vote for the candidate, takes place in a two-step election process. The top two finalists meet a second time in run-off elections, which is how Le Pen has managed to face off with current President Jacques Chirac for the top job. The process allows for alliances to take shape in the two-week period between polling, just as it guarantees a majority vote."
Then there are also countries where you are obligated to vote by law, such as Australia and Belgium. Many may say this doesn't sound 'fair', but at it least it gets the people who wouldn't bother voting, either out of disinterest or laziness, to act, even if it is just turning up and not filling the check-boxes.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Which "we" is that? The US had an income tax in the 19th Century, until corrupt Gilded Age politicians repleaed it for their wealthy friends.
Quibble. I would argue that a patent covers a concept or idea; whereas copyright covers a specific implementation of a concept or idea.
For example, a patent on MP3 encoding would cover any implementation of an MP3 encoder; whereas a copyright could only be on a particular implementation of an MP3 encoder, and anyone would be free to write their own implementation.
And it looks like I was wrong. If the parliament rejects it a second time it's dead
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Quibble. I would argue that a patent covers a concept or idea; whereas copyright covers a specific implementation of a concept or idea.
Except that's not how patents on physical inventions work. Patents on almost everything except software cover implementations of ideas, and ideas for physical objects are not patentable at all. Only in software and other non-physical areas (e.g., "business methods" patents, which are even more absurd than software patents) are ideas given such protection. That's one of the major reasons that even people like me, who support IP law in general, think software patents are a horrible idea.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Yes, Americans do vote for electors rather than for the presidential candidate directly, and these electors form the Electoral College that ultimately votes for the president.
However, you are wrong in saying that the electors are contractually or legally bound to vote in a given way.
The two major parties hand-pick electors from the ranks of long-time party activists and workers. For them not to vote what the party recommended would not be illegal, but it would be unthinkable.
One case where something unusual could happen was actually described in a book (novel) a few years ago called "The People's Choice" -- a damn entertaining read.
In the book, there is a very popular presidential candidate with a very unpopular running mate. After winning the election (but before the vote of the electoral college), the president-elect falls off of a horse and dies.
This book illustrates the very interesting situation that the electors are then placed in -- the party wants them to vote for the running mate (the vice-presidential candidate) but the electors are under no obligation to do so, and many are unwilling to vote for someone they find so distateful.
Being a novel, it all ends well for everyone (except the dead president-elect), but I don't remember how it all worked out. In any event I recommend the book; and I recommend (for all you US citizens) that you vote this November.
Peel didn't become PM until the 1840s. The Napoleonic wars had been over by a quarter of a century. Peel reintroduced income tax which had previously been introduced by Pitt. Peel's tax taxed only the rich and was accompanied by a reduction of the number of goods subject to duty.
The power is shared among the bodies of the EU. To break it down in a simplistic way:
Commission: The only institution which has the right to initiate Community law (which also includes the right to take back the proposal if it is changed too much against their wishes). This composes of EU civil servants who in theory at least should only consider what is good for Europe as a whole and not just for the country where they are from.
Council: Member State government ministers. Documents are prepared for them by their own permanent bureaucracy (COREPER), which consists of bureaucrats from various Member State ministries. The Council is the most powerful body, it has final say in all EU legislation.
Parliament: Has an increasing role, but still might be overrun by the Council (this is becoming more and more difficult and time-consuming). It is directly elected and is divided into different Europe-wide political party groups.
These institutions rarely work independently. There are semi-official consultations involving all three bodies conducted all the time.
P.S. The Estonian Minister of Economic Affairs seemed to think that the proposal he was voting on had excluded possibilities for patenting software so he voted for it.
I've talked to many members of the european parliament about software patents. As FFII correctly reports, the representatives are really divided about this issue. A majority is just plain ignorant of the problem, and will vote according to the wishes of the party that sent them in the parliament (probably pro swpat).
Others are genuinely interested in avoiding the blunders of the US patent system, but they don't know exactly how to do it. The most favored solution would be to patent computer based innovations that are having a "technical" impact. The idea being to protect software controlling industrial robots and some such. Unfortunately, the definition of "technical impact" is being disputed and very blurry, to say the least.
Then there's the fraction of representatives who have fallen prey to the IP lawyer lobby group. They really believe that they are helping innovation by unifying the already present patent laws in all EU countries.
All in all, it looks like we've lost this battle to the giant IP/patent holders. Perhaps we didn't protest loud enough and have been widely ignored by the mass media. That's very sad indeed.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.