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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
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?
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"
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
High voter turn out is a sign of a healthy democracy.
-- QED
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