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EU Software Patent Directive Adopted
sebFlyte writes "FTA: "An EU Council spokeswoman said on Monday morning that the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive had been adopted." Apparently it's due to 'institutional reasons' that they're ignoring the outcry from developers and several nation states ..."
Before the doom sayers start with the end of the world predictions, note the last bit of the artical:
"The directive will now be passed to European Parliament, which can reject or amend the proposal, for a second reading."
Note that this means it goes back to parliament for a second reading (where an _absolute_ majority of 376 votes in the Parliament or something like that is needed to do *anything* about it (i.e. abstentions, absences, etc. count as votes _for_ the directive) - seems to be corruption is build into system, but there you go).
Time for a straightforward declaration of our own, I think:
"We, the undersigned, will not honour or respect european patent law any more. There are millions of us. You'll have to kill us all before you ever get your patent monopolies, you corrupt corporatist fuckers. Good day."
RTFA. The European Parliament still has to vote on it, and have rejected it before.
Best information source for the EU patent-problem.
Here's the press release
You better start explaining to your MEP why this is so important.
The second reading will be much more difficult than the first reading because this time they need a majority of all MEP's (not just MEP's present) to change the directive.
And as someone else already said: the Council has adopted its "common position" (although it was far from common in this case). It still has to get into the European Parliament, through its second reading (where it can be amended or even rejected, after which the whole game is immediately over).
Anyway, as far as I am concerned, the big news is not what they adopted (a directive text which codifies the European Patent Office's US practice), but how they adopted it. Three countries with the support of several others asked to reopen discussions, and the Luxembourg presidency simply denied that even though they have to let the Council as a whole decide about that according to their own rules of procedure (point 3.8).
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The second reading will require a 2/3 majority. I.e. all hands on deck for a topic that is not likely to attract votes from ordinary EU citizens. The Dutch minister for instance seemed to be quite confident that this will not happen. The Christian Democrats' votes will be crucial.
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Not true in EU. Here the patent is granted based on the application date, not the "discovery" date, which applies in the US. Makes it much clearer.
> The second reading will require a 2/3 majority.
I don't think so. I believe it requires an absolute majority: that is, abstentions or absentees are counted as votes in favor.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
No one is defending stealing. The problem is (or this is the belief of many here) that it is not possible to write software without violating patents unvoluntarily: if you write a large enough software package, you just end up implementing patented algorithms without realising it. This leads to a situation where only big corporations can develop software (since they have a stack patents that they can bargain with when someone claims they're violating a patent). A "GNU license" is not going to help you there.
Stopping the new Constitution will not get rid of the EU, or make it more democratic. Voting "no" will keep it the way it is now.
So you would be doing the "people who have a complete disinterest in democracy" a big favour by voting "No".
The new European Constitution greatly enhances the powers of the European Parliament, and so tricks like what the Council did today would become a lot harder.
There are 2 ways out of this undemocratic EU. One is to get rid of it. This is clearly not an option -- almost all economic growth in Europe in the last 20 years is due to the single market. Removing it would be an economic disaster.
Option 2 is to overhaul the EU to make it a lot more democratic. While I agree that it doesn't go far enough, the new Constitution is a huge step in the right direction.
So, please vote "Yes" on the new Constitution. It's our only way out!
The European Parliament and individual EU member states can lodge a complaint at the European Court of Justice, yes. Additionally, if the directive ever comes through, individual citizens can also lodge a complain at the European Court of Justice if they feel it tramples on their liberties.
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There was no vote. On 2004/05/18, the countries then constituting the coucil had to pass their voting intentions, but an A-item means these voting intentions get counted as votes. Even if the composition of the council (10 new member states), the voting weights required for a majority, and the positions of the countries involved have changed so there is no more majority. This was why the EU parliament, backed by ES, NL, PL, DK, DE parliaments formally asked a restart of the process.
In today's council meeting, at least DK, PL and PT formally asked for rediscussing the directive as a B-item. There were critical comments from several other countries.
B-item means reopening discussion, and a formal vote.
Now for the audio:
http://mm.ffii.org/ConsAudio050307En
Note that the audio breaks off when Dutch minister Brinkhorst starts speaking. At that point, the link from the council to the press room was suddenly broken. Noone has his speech, not even the council administration, it seems.
And about audio quality: please keep in mind we had to get feed the audio signal through a GSM cell phone. This is the best streaming (!) solution we could get without an internet connection.
1. Follow the Latest News at http://ffii.org (it tends to be the first place news comes out and is comprehensive).
2. Sign the various petitons (e.g., Thank Poland).
3. Lobby your own MP and MEP (spamming all MPs / MEPs is likely to get you ignored).
4. Write to the media with your concerns (e.g., the UK is thinking about a Computer Tax to replace TV licensing - front page Times last week. Can the Software Patents "Software Tax" make the front page too?)
No, I meant MEP.
>Your MEP sits in the Parliment, and that has made it perfectly clear it
>doesn't like this stuff.
>Your MEP sits in the Parliment, and that has made it perfectly clear it
>doesn't like this stuff.
Yes, but they now all have to hate this stuff enough to show up and vote.
>Get you MP to join with other MP's to put pressure on your government
>to change it's position in the Commission
You mean the counsel.
That was the plan until last friday. It even kind of succeded here in Denmark (The MP's joined and put pressure on the government, but it is not clear how much the government actually changed its position inb the councel).
But unless this last decision gets annulled, it is too late to put pressure on your government.
Both the Parliament and the Council are strengthened. And the strengthening of the EP only makes them as strong as they in this particular directive process (codecision) in several other cases. Which means: still easily ignored by both the Commission and Council, with as only weapon to kill a directive process (but still very disadvantaged when it comes to changing the text of a directive).
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