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European Parliament Blocks Copyright Reform With 113% Voter Turnout
New submitter mcmadman writes "In a bizarre turn of events, the legal affairs committee of the European Parliament, voted to weaken a reform of the copyright monopoly for allowing re-publication and access to orphan works. What is surprising is that the voter turnout happened to be 113%. That there were three votes too many, and that these three votes determined the outcome, was pointed out to the committee. Unfortunately, when this was done, along with formally requesting a re-vote, the re-vote was denied."
I guess someone accidentally bought too many votes this time.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
Putin's approval rating has plummeted to 112% in favor.
113 percent? Where did they count the votes? Chicago?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Hold on fellas, you've got it all wrong. Math is different in Europe (they've got their commas and periods all backward in many places), especially when it's attorneys doing the counting. Folks just have to understand this, and fortunately there's a great instructional video available for those in need of further tutelage.
Write failed: Broken pipe
Or at least, a visible proof of it. Perhaps it ended long ago, but now there is no possible denial.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
Europeans often point out to Americans the higher turn-outs in their elections. They aren't quite to up Chicago standards, but it is a respectable showing none the less.
Start the Day with Some Eurocrat Bashing
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Strange how our psychology makes us think, as a first thing, that it was the otherwise-victor that had bought the votes, because otherwise they had lost.
It might as well had been the people voting against the reform doing it, knowing it would be scrapped because they didn't expect to win if the vote had commenced in a proper way.
It's worth pointing out that it's only a preliminary committee. It being voted down in this committee won't necessarily prevent it from seeing the floor the full parliament, but it won't come along with the backing of the special committee.
There was a member of the Swedish Pirate Party in the committee and he's been the one agitating for a re-vote. The frightening thing about this is that there are only 24 members on this committee and one was absent, so with 23 possible votes, the final vote was 12-14.
BUT, if 12 people actually voted in favour of the bill, that would leave only 11 against.
Keep in mind, this isn't highly corrosive stuff.
The bill is talking about "orphaned works" which are those works that will never again see the light of day because no owner claims them. It is likely that when the copyright expires in 70 years, with nobody to preserve them, or assign their rights to a publisher who can, these works will be completely lost to humanity. This legislation would seek to prevent this and increase the overall value to humanity with NO money lost by putting them in public domain.
Nobody is arguing that this is a bad idea, but the recording industry lobbies see it as the "sharp end of the sword" when it comes to copyright reform, so they will fight against it vehemently.
If you live in Europe, write to your MEP. Vote fraud is no joke.
I guess that's the next step for the Conservatives in Canada... instead of suppressing the vote by misdirecting people away from polls, they'll just send 110% of the electorate to ensure victory.
Democracy is withering all over the world, as good people do... not quite enough.
Oh You POS
You americans with your puny 99%. This parliament goes to 113!
Meep.
This isn't some big election with millions of votes getting counted. This is 23 people in a room, 12 on one side, 11 on the other, and the eleven declaring themselves the victors while the twelve just shrug and accept it. Do the people on this committee care so little for democracy that they just blithely accept it when their opponents' imaginary friends cast ballots?
Just send them a few of the negative votes received by Al Gore in Florida, then the universe will be in equilibrium again.
lucm, indeed.
I don't know about you guys. But I'm writing a complaint and asking for an investigation into this later today. These sort of things are simply unacceptable and should be stopped, no matter what the subject of the vote is.
We don't have one. The Yanks don't have one, nor do the poms.
When was the last time THE PEOPLE had a REAL VOTE on how their country worked?
What we have is an obscene extension of the patent system extended into a politically domineering overlord system. We vote for a bunch of self interested morons to make stupendously bad decisions, rewarded richly for doing nothing or worse, followed by being given the chance to revote on our next oppressors when the previous ones fail (but only when they let us).
This isn't democracy. As article shows, it is corrupt.
This one billion line program has been hacked together for too many years. Too many exceptions. Time for a rewrite.
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
It looks like they've managed to export the Diebold voting machines!
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=COMPARL&reference=PE-483.867&format=PDF&language=EN&secondRef=01
"The Committee adopted the amended Commission proposal and the draft legislative resolution by 22 votes in favour and 1 abstention"
When taking other peoples money for themselves these people make Steve Jobs reality distortion field look like a model of clarity.
I know right
Sad times we're living in..
It's normal that after taking all that public money, they want to give 113% of their energies, in order not to let the community down.
As someone pointed out below, the actual legislation passed by a vote of 22-0-1.
There is perhaps some amendment that failed under unusual circumstances, but I can't find it anywhere in the documentation.
If they're doing things that look wrong, it's just because you don't understand how things work. Our elite do know. And they're working tirelessly for your benefit, little citizen, and anyone who claims otherwise is a Daily Mail reading BNP skinhead.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A lot of members must've brought their kids to work that day.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
Can be found here: http://pippi.euwiki.org/doc/CELEX:52011PC0289:EN
Interesting stuff, hopefully it'll eventually pass. In short, if you do a "diligent search" and are unable to locate a rightsholder, the work will be considered orphan. This is basically an area "between" copyright and public domain; you're allowed to reproduce the work "for the purposes of digitization, making available, indexing, cataloguing, preservation or restoration."
It would be funny if the story was actually true. However, the official press release of the EU parliament states:
"MEPs (Members of the european parliament) unanimously approved a mandate for Lidia Geringer de Oedenberg (S&D, PL), to start talks with the Council to agree reach an agreement on the legislation.
Ms Geringer de Oedenberg said "This regulation would finally make it possible to get some hidden treasures out of the closet and make them available to the general public. Now it is time to start negotiating with national governments and stand up for our points"."
So to sum it up, one wannabe journalist/blogger picks up something from an unreliable source, quotes an MEP who didn't even post anything about this "scandal" on his own blog, and suddenly this is big news?
Personally, I feel that the European parliament is far more likely to do the right thing than the British one, simply because (a) it is far more diverse and (b) it has members from countries who know that war is a really bad thing.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
It's a case of who watches the watchers. When you corrupt an organization it is best done in-depth and it is most successfully done from the top.
We "Americans" (e.g. the United States of part, but we are working diligently on spreading our scheme to the rest of America) have a system of Checks and Balances. That is it doesn't have to Balance if you can make sure nobody Checks. We use this system for nearly every purpose. It's nice to see Europe following our lead. Or perhaps they deeded it to us as some point, which doesn't matter, we will take the credit.
As to this being the end of democracy, well you are using the wrong definition: Democracy is the means by which we ensure we are governed -no- -better- that we deserve.
Seems to be working out pretty much "as expected" here.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
The word "basically" is improper in your last sentence. It should be removed, or replaced with the word "provably".
See..grammar natzi-ism -can- be used to advance the dialog... 8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Politics is cruel, It's possible that we can describe. Political justify any means to an end. Included are sound forge, or make money politics.
Who would not want to acquire an important position even became the number 1. It was common whenever there is election of representatives and presidential or parliamentary elections marred by fraud is always cheating. Fraud committed from the subtle to the gross fraud.
But the ethic that all forms of electoral fraud have marred the value of democracy. And one thing that should be cherished is that winning should not be arrogant and the loser should accept defeat gracefully. This seems easy but difficult to implement. The winning or the losing mutual accusations and blame each other and only one is correct on my part. His name is selfish.
delivered by www.htysite.com so that everyone can become more aware that they are representative of the Lord in the world.
Commentator: 23 voters; 26 votes. A slight anomaly...?
Bought politician: Not really -- you see, this law may look like a monkey who's been put in a suit and then strategically shaved, but it is a brilliant opportunity for a corrupt politician. The number of votes I cast is simply a reflection of how firmly I believe in getting brown envelopes.
And politicians wonder why people don't believe them anymore. You could hold a politician at gun point and tell him he and his children will die unless he says that these things make people loose fate in democracy and he just wouldn't be able to say it to save his life and those he values (The dollar bills in his pockets, not his kids). It isn't corruption, it is let them eat cake and genuinely being unable to realize that people who do not have bread, do not have cake either. If Anders Behring Breivik had done his rampage among politicians, he would be the greatest hero ever.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
With the lobby voting used in the UK Parliament, it is possible to vote both for and against a bill. MP's sometimes do so to correct an incorrectly cast vote, or as another method of abstaining, while keeping their own whips happy.
In Soviet Russia, the turnout goes to 140%.
Video of the voting is available on the EP website. The agenda item starts at 10:27, and the voting runs from 10:31 to 10:51. The amendment in question appears to be "Compromise 20", voted on at 10:39, which is indeed rejected by 12 votes to 14. This was an all-party amendment that the centre-right EPP party then withdrew support from, because they were not entirely happy with the wording, according to one of their MEPs at the start of the meeting. (10:29). As the video shows, the EP tends to machine-gun through amendment votes, which are held in one swoop after months of discussion. You really need the papers for the meeting and your preferred faction's voting guide to turn them into an acceptable spectator sport. One of the extra votes could perhaps have been the chairman's casting vote; but it's not clear how there could have been two.
Not every committee is structured to be one member one vote. An example is the municipality that I used to live in, where the mayor did not have a right to vote unless there was a tie. It can work the other way too, so that a committee member receives more than one vote. Let's say that this committee is structured such that some member votes are weighted as two votes. In that case: the results of the vote may be legit, the refusal for a re-vote may be legit, and the complainants may be taking advantage of public naivety to create controversy out of a result that they disagree with.
Now I don't know that this is the case because insufficient information has been provided. But I recognize that it may be the case because committees aren't democratic bodies in the popular sense. Committees have members that represent organizations (governments, businesses, departments, student body, etc.), and votes are used to make decisions rather than to represent the opinions of the population as a whole.
only 24 votes for the 754 members of the EU parliament.
Or TFS & headline are misleading.
(for those too lazy: it was a committee, not the EU parliament. Nice editing work there.).
mods, please see this:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2728627&cid=39375277
then mod this down.
While actually everone jumps on the train and covers this story it still seems to be almost completely unverified. The linked article links to a single blog post that does not contain a single link to anything. No protocol. Not even any source that would mention that said vote has happened at all.
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
The freezing point is that of Brine (IIRC) at saturation. Since small impurities in *pure* water make a huge difference in the freezing point, but bugger all difference in brine, brine water is a lot easier to see freezing reliably to calibrate your lowest temperature. And a saturated brine solution is easy: keep adding salt until it starts precipitating out, then decant off the top.
Simple. You don't need a pristine chemistry lab to set that.
And as for "boiling point of water", well, what pressure?
If nobody whines, then it's orphaned.
Or as another poster pointed out (and I've used myself), if you can't buy it *any more*, then you lose the copyrights. If you want to make money off copyrights, you have to maintain the responsibility for those rights: you have the SOLE RIGHT to make copies, you have to continue to make them.
The only PROPER way to do so is to reduce copyright to a length were humans can keep records for. Since businesses have to keep records for at least 5 years, then copyright should last 5 years too. And if you lose your documentation showing your "right" to the works, then you don't HAVE those rights.
So why, if the committee only has 24 members, does http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/JURI/members.html list approx 50?
This just seem to be a bunch of blogs linked to each other. Where can we verify that 113% percent voted? I have no idea what that means.
The automatic assumption is that there was voter fraud but it's possible there is some procedural thing going on here. I have no way to verify anything because these links always use themselves or a sister site for authentication. That doesn't work.
Anyone have a legitimate link?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Crazy Metric system, we Americans will never understand it... Wait, they vote in Metric, right?
We have to register for lots of things...
- If we own land we are registered as owners of that land, or atleast the initial owner is in some countries.. Usually you have to pay tax for it too..
- If we own a house we are the registred owner of that house, and have to pay tax on it too..
So why not just create a per country or create some non-profit organization with their soul purpose is to register copyright...
50Euro registration-fee plus 20Euro per Gb of needed storage per year.... They must register all material that they want to keep copyright for, but only one copy of the highest available resolution they will distribute... Ie a if they chose not to include a cut scene they will lose copyright for that scene.. A 90 minute movie in 4k resolution would be up to ~150-200Gb depending on the lossless compression algorithm and the content of the movie.
This would then be for anything that can be copied.. Like programs, movies, tv-shows, music, notes for music etc..
So for a low-end movie-production that uses plain digital cameras at 1080p we would get a price of: 50 + (50*20) = 1050Euro per year. And they will probably only sell 720p movies with lossy compression so say 50+(3*20) = 110Euro initially and then 60Euro per year.
For a highend movie-production that uses film and digitization of it it would be 50 + ( 200 * 20 ) = 4050Euro initially and then 4000Euro per year
For an application or OS it would be 2Gb ie 50+(2*20) = 90Euro initially and then 40 euro per year.. One copy of each delivered version would just be appended to the same registration.
For a music CD it would be less than 70 Euro initially and then 20 euro per year..
For a GPL software like the linux-kernel it would be 70Euro initially and then 20 euro per year..
And there could probably be reductions in rates for works that are available for free.
If you would like to get a copy of anything that has fallen into public domain you would pay a simple transfer-of-content price like 5Euro per Gb downloaded or 20 euro per Gb transferred to DVD/Blueray and shipped to you, minimum payable 100Euro. Ie this is for archiving, or maybe even backups for the content-producers, not random consumption..
Or you or goverments could sponsor old works to be stored in the database..
This should manage to keep the non-profit registrar afloat...
Store a copy digitally, maybe source some technology from www.tineye.com and make it possible to search all movies/pictures for any conflicts... Some software for matching audio-tracks etc...
If you have not registered it within 1 year from first public performance of the work it falls into public domain...
This would give us 4 good things...
1. Actually have a legacy for future generations that will continue to work..
2. A way to let unused material fall into public domain..
3. The non-profit organisation would take care of migrating data from system to system in a secure way.. Ie no need for "Where can i find a player for this circular plastic disc" in 100 years..
4. A way to trace to see who actually owns the copyright.. And a way for companies to actually keep track of what they own and what other companies tries to 'steal'.
5. A way to let the companies actually decide how long they would like to keep the copyright - valid until you stop paying.. Ie property tax on copyright is fair since they all refer to it as property in one way or another...
High voter turn out is a sign of a healthy democracy.
-- QED
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20120315/NEWS03/120314023/The-incredible-changing-vote-totals-St-Albans-alderman-s-race?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|s
Wow, here I was, all set to point out that the (European) system of feet & inches is actually more far useful for human purposes, which is why we Americans purposely chose it over the (French) metric system long ago.
More whole divisors is functionally far better, if you are an actual working man with dirt on your hands and not some uncalloused, useless ivory tower knowitall.
But then I saw the pyramids at the bottom of your infographic. D'OH! Yeah, you win, you're right, we're complete idiots. The American system of date ordering (which is officially & legally not the American system, by the way, but in practice is what actual Americans insist on using no matter how many times our government tells us not to) is moronic and counterproductive nonsense. There's no good reason to put dates in anything other than dd-mm-yyyy format, it's completely indefensible. We're just stupid.
I just proved that I'm stupid, by writing dd-mm-yyyy when I meant yyyy-mm-dd, which is the most logical order and trivially sorts clean.
NoMSG
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Lets call the EU, the pEUw. LoL
I was in Berlin last month; at the centeral train station I had to pay 100 pEUws to piss. What a rip off!
Glad to be back in the US where I can pee for free.
See? Europe works! NOT!
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
We're just watching the rise of the Russian school of statistics.
must be that Hollywood Math
As long as the public values and demands a work, the original creator of the work should be able to continue benefiting from it. The original creator, not the publisher or other middle-men, or the kids or grand-kids of the creator.
So yes, author's lifetime + 70 years is ridiculous. Date of publication + 70 is more reasonable. The number of years after creation is up for discussion, but the clock should never start after the death of the author. I don't understand what the logic was of counting the time that way.
There is definitely room and a need for copyright reform, but not how some people want it, which is basically akin to forcing people to give their creations away for free after a few years, and is an extreme at the other end of the spectrum of what the media conglomerates want but an extreme just the same.
The comparison that some people make, "I'm not getting paid for work I did 10 years ago, so artists shouldn't either" doesn't make sense for a couple of reasons: a) the work you did was most likely paid for in the form of a salary, which is usually not the case for artists and other creators; b) the work you did 10 years ago most likely has little to no value today, and could probably not be sold even if you wanted it to, unlike popular works of art.
Is this just the case where members can sometimes cast a vote both for and against something, effectively cancelling their vote?
This happens all the time in the UK Parliament - the MP just walks through the Aye lobby and then the Nay lobby (or the other way round), then the two votes cancel each other. It's a long-winded way of abstaining. Given how fast MEPs have to vote, maybe they do it when they've made a voting mistake. In which case, you could certainly question the value of such rapid voting, but it wouldn't be an example of fraud.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
"vote early, vote often"*** I hope all those advocates of internet voting are paying attention to this...
*** a quote attributed to John Van Buren, son of the Dutch speaking 8th president of the USA from New Amsterdam, a Lawyer, and a radical castout of the Democratic Party. Long live the Van Buren Boys
Don't worry, Hollywood will make snappy green screen remakes with busty actors trying to talk like in the fairy tales, and Cristopher Reeves, looking sternly at people, places AND objects.
Gonna be great!
Make a million dollars!
???
Profit!
Defining Statistics and Social Research
I took part in the vote as a Member of the JURI Committee in the European Parliament, and I can correct you on a few points. The amendments to a report can change its meaning completely, and the amendment that we lost was a rather important one. Therefore it is wrong to say that it was and "obscure" amendment, and imply that it was not important. The report is a legislative report that will turn into a binding directive and then national law once it is adopted, so it is not the question of a non-binding (or "own initiative") report this time.
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
We (The United States of America) "went metric" in the seventies. We just have an infinite grace period for compliance and no penalties for non-compliance. It's super simple now.... chek it out...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States /doh!
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
About nine iPods are lost a year, or nine-too-few are lost a year, I'm not sure which...
If we made our teenagers more/less dilligent with their stuff the Content Industry would be all square now right?
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
I thought it was "He who writes the Checks tips the Balance". I guess that's why they're having trouble adopting it in Europe, since they'd have to spell it "Cheques" instead.
I've just heard the results of the 2014 elections in Zimbabwe! And it's really surprising: Mugabe has been voted in yet again!
And just as intelligent. Talk about ballot box stuffing and they do it right out in public.
A senator from Texas, got elected by dead men. As they say in Chicago "Vote early and often."