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.

Comments

glad to see

[Anonymous Coward]

that not only the USA is corrupt and is controlled by big businesses.

hey Europe... Hope you like corperations telling you what you can and can't do, because unless you guys get VERY vocal right now, they will own your arses in a matter of weeks.

Re:glad to see

[jenesuispasgoth]

I'm sorry, I can't let you say this, as a French person. We don't go on strike just to "make a point". We go on strike without telling anyone, just so everyone else knows that we CAN (thank you French Railroads for making me get up at 5h30 am because you went on strike this weekend without telling anyone ... not even your own people in the company.)

Sigh.

[nativespeaker]

I really don't know what to think anymore. What has happened to democracy? Corporations seem to hold sway over the political arena with utter exclusivity these days. How could free speech have been replaced so easily with corporate lobbying? I say that if Microsoft wants their damn patents so badly, they drag a soap carton out to the public park.

It pains me to see Europe slipping down the same slope. Learn from our folly, yeah?

Re:Sigh.

[mikers]

Sigh, Sigh, sigh... "Any idiot can face a crisis - it's the day-to-day living that wears you out." - Checkov.

In case you didn't notice, most "modern" democracies are just feudalism in disguise. Does the fact that politicians wear... Business Suites maybe clue you in? Or how about that in the US all leaders are the ridiculously rich? Or that money == power in these countries? The new feudalism is business owners == the land owing aristocrats, peasants == employees!! Ever noticed you can't get rich being an employee? Unless you run a big ass company, or wait... Own a business.

And government is just there to cater to business, not the "people". Once in 4 years the peasants have a chance to elect someone from a tiny little rich group. We have no recourse if we elect a lier or looser. The government is open every day for lobbyists and the rich and powerful, but only once every four years for everyone else.

This is modern democracy for you, this is what the US wants everywhere in the world, including the EU. Because they are the richest, they will rule it. Via the wealthy, via the big corporations.

See Noam Chomsky for some more enlightenment.

Re:Lobbys

[bhima]

amazing isn't it! I love this quote from TFA: Laura Creighton, software entrepreneur, venture capitalist and vice-president of FFII, comments:

"Before today it was possible for generous people to look charitably at this text as an example of a tragic mistake, not malice. But not with this last-minute maneuvering. Only the most committed opponent to the democratic process would believe that the proper response to the widespread consensus that there is something profoundly wrong with the Council's text, is to race it through with an A-item approval the week before Christmas in a Fisheries Council Meeting. The bad smell coming from Brussels has nothing to do with the fish."

EU Failure

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

I'll probably get modded down for this, but oh well.

I find that this is just another example of how the EU is circumventing democracy. Instead of an enlightened body which supposedly has the needs of the body of European nations it encompasses in mind, the EU is quickly turning out to be nothing more than another bureaucracy set out to protect only its own best interests.

Even beyond that, however, there is another issue at stake. If a law is passed which standardizes software patents, all of the individual countries which make up the EU will be forced to accept it. So, say that, for example, the government of Germany would rather not accept software patents. Too bad, they'll have to anyway, despite the fact that the majority of the people there may not want it. So much for the will of the people.

So, for all of you globalists out there who saw the consolidation of Europe into a single entity as a good thing, it looks like you're reaping what you've sown. The EU is quickly becoming just another big, centralized, corporatist, United-States-esque government.

This gets me so totally angry

[Scarblac]

I've never been so angry at these crooks in government before now. Dutch parliament rejects software patents, European parliament rejects software patents, they'll hurt the Dutch software industry very badly (I believe the total number of software patents held by Dutch IT companies is 3) and now the fuckers want to avoid all of that by adding it on to some fisheries decision.

Help me, fellow Dutchmen, how can we make this as public as possible as quickly as possible? I've never done anything active in politics before, but this must go into the spotlight! Give me some hints...

1950: What if we had Software Patents back then?

[denis-The-menace]

This is the argument that we should be pushing. Back then you probably could have patented Bits and Bytes. How about it it happened in 1980: Makers of Wordstar and Visi-calc whould have locked the wordprocessing and Spreadsheet markets, respectively. Makers of CP/M would lockup PC OS' so MS would have never existed! What this will do is make all new and exciting stuff happen where SW patents do NOT exist.

Re:Whoever posted this doesn't understand the EU..

[Khazunga]

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.

Although I agree with the gist of your post, this paragraph is simply untrue. Major parties are organized into international parties (example), from where an european-level party could easily emerge, if required.

However, European elections are nowadays largely a nationwide affair, so there's no need for a public view of an European level party. The infrastructure for european-wide parties is there, but not the need.

I can't imagine federalism wouldn't provide the parliament with more power so, even for that effect alone, it would be a Good Thing(tm). Europe is more prepared for federalism than for the current undemocratic, bureaucratic model of government.