Slashdot Mirror
Software Patents Circumvent European Parliament
Tom writes "Despite the european parliament's vote to exclude software patents, the patent lobby is pressing forward and patentability of software is on the agenda of a workgroup whose advise the european council will likely follow.
The european council is at odds with the parliament concerning their stance on software patents. The patent lobby is facing a narrow loss in the parliament, which has voted against software patents, but now circumvents democracy by convincing the council. If they succeed, software patents could be coming to Europe before christmas." <update> The links above seem to have stopped working for me - however, ffii is carrying the news as well.
The anti-patent lobby in the EU has achieved great things, but the pro-patent lobby is extremely determined even in the face of a clear democratic mandate against software patents in the European and many national Parliaments. They know the system, they seem to have the support of many unelected Eurocrats, and they can and will exploit every possible loophole to legalise the over 30,000 illegally granted patents in the EU. This is yet another example of this.
The important thing is to keep up the pressure. When this topic has come up on /. in the past, there are always a few nohopers, who think any opposition to software patents is futile and we may as-well give up. These defeatists are the greatest allies of the pro-patent lobby, and they are wrong, as what progress we have made has demonstrated.
In short, keep fighting, don't give up, we have won a number of battles, but the war is far from over.
And this is precisely why the EU is the least democratically accountable institution in Europe today. In every sitting national government on the European continent today, legislation is created and passed by a (presumably) democratically elected parliament, or that house of a bicamel parliament that is directly elected. In many cases, European governments are formed either directly out of the elected body of parliament itself (as in the British model) or out of some more complex relationship that certainly includes the directly elected house of parliament and a democratically elected executive (such as the French system).
By contrast, the European Concil is a body appointed by national governments, that has the authority to directly legislate. While the EU Parliament can approve or "rubber stamp" an act of the EU Council much like the "soviet" era parliament, if it chooses to reject a council law, the Council is given the power to override Parlaiment unless a super majority (66%) chooses to oppose it.
Indeed, the EU transational governance is not very different in functional arrangements and democratic principles to that that of the old Soviet Union. And they wish to further ratify this defective system through a constitution that retains this principle undemocratic form of governance as well as expanding the power of the EU into a true European Government.
As noted, the original council draft on European patents was rejected by the European parliament. In a democratically functional society and government this would in effect have been a veto. It is to the shame of Europe and to the very principles of democratic governmance that this alone was not enough to kill the council directive, and that the will of the elected parlaiment, and most importantly of all, the ONLY democratically "legitimate" and accountable institution in the entire EU, can so easily be rejected.
Personally I do not believe Europe is ready for transational Governance. There is no true transational political expression today, perhaps with the exception of the "Greens". By contrast, when American federalization occured, there was already well established and popular trans-state political movements and proto-parties, such as Federalists, etc. By contrast, when we look at the EU parliament, it is composed of people elected from strickly individual national political parties. There are no "European Socialists", for example, though there are members of the French socialists, Finland national party, German Social Democrats, etc. This lack of true transational European political expression I believe is why Federalising Europe is impractical at this time, and certainly helps to explain why some believe they could bully through an undemocratic and defective institution onto European nations like the EU system of today.