Weekly Edition
Return to the Announcements page
| |||||||||||||
No European software patent vote this year
The NoSoftwarePatents site is carrying
the news that the EU Council will not proceed with software patents in
2004. "According to the Belgian minister of economic affairs, the
past qualified majority for software patents no longer exists, and no
decision will be taken under the current Dutch presidency. The latest
development is that members of the European Parliament are looking at the
possibility to restart the entire legislative process." (Thanks to
James Heald).
(Log in to post comments)
Alan Cox "barred" from UK patents meeting Posted Dec 8, 2004 20:07 UTC (Wed) by alanjwylie (subscriber, #4794) [Link] In related news,http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651,3917989...
Alan Cox, having written to his MP on the subject of Software Patents,
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/talkback/?PROCESS=show&ID=2003...
<cite>
I too was mysteriously overlooked despite having written to my MP and
I'm apparently important enough both to get invited to talk in the EU
Unfortunately with all the underhand game playing both in the EU
"Freedom is when the people can speak, democracy is when the government listens."
Alan
Alan Cox "barred" from UK patents meeting Posted Dec 8, 2004 20:42 UTC (Wed) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link] In my experience, "democracy" is the favorite word of "alpha males" who want power over others, but prefer to hide it behind a sham.
Nowadays, "government", "politics" and "corruption" seem to all mean the same thing.
Where are our flu shots?
Alan Cox "barred" from UK patents meeting Posted Dec 9, 2004 0:34 UTC (Thu) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link] The problem is we have a Government with an agenda , An Agenda to spend every penny it can with that lot in Redmond no matter WHAT the peoplw think say or do !.Democracy Bah when was that went out wiiith the ARK i think .. they are running scared witless incase the people that can see thru there ducking and weaving get the upper hand (which for what it is worth i believe we will do in the long run) and force a big change on them just when they are feeling secure .
Pete .
Alan Cox "barred" from UK patents meeting Posted Dec 9, 2004 9:39 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] What, in the UK? Who to? The Lib Dems (who may not be in MS's pocket but, well, zero government experience) and the Tories (still pretty much burnt out and likely to be much more pro-MS than the Blair government).
(admittedly, it is not clear who `we' is in your comment. LWN crosses jurisdictional lines, and the rest of us can't tell which country you're posting from...)
Alan Cox "barred" from UK patents meeting Posted Dec 9, 2004 1:13 UTC (Thu) by kornak (guest, #17589) [Link] I wouldn't exactly put George Bush in the "Alpha Male" category. More likebeta, gamma, or even zeta ;-)
Alan Cox "barred" from UK patents meeting Posted Dec 9, 2004 5:41 UTC (Thu) by The_Pirate (guest, #21740) [Link] Are you willing to put Bush in the 'Male' category?????:)
Can't tell the players without a scorecard Posted Dec 9, 2004 2:17 UTC (Thu) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link] I have to expose my (USian) ignorance of EU governance. I gather that the EU Council is an executive body with (to say the least) wide-ranging powers. The EU Parliament is a legislative body which needs to work hard to overcome EUC dicta. Is this a fair statement of the situation? I was unaware that there were larger groups within the Parliament, as implied by ``Austrian Conservative MEP Othmar Karas, vice president of the largest group in the European Parliament (EPP-ED)....''. Are these along the lines of parties or coalitions in other parliamentary governments? What is the range of these groups, how are they constituted, and how is their makeup modified, if other than via EUP elections for members of the various states? What I really need is an introduction to the EU for newbies. Apologies for having to ask, but it's becoming obvious that I need to learn. Thanks for any clarifications.
Can't tell the players without a scorecard Posted Dec 9, 2004 3:23 UTC (Thu) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link] Most EU citizens are pretty vague about how it all works too, especially in the UK. The Council is the body at which the various country governments are represented (where things get 'vetos' and 'qualified majorities'). One representative per country but with voting weights according to the size of the countries. The parliament is made of of elected representatives from the countries. There is also the commission which is a sort of civil service body that runs things but it is also responsible for proposing legislation for the other two bodies (council and parliament) to vote on.
The larger groups (such as EPP-ED) are indeed coalitions of broadly-similar parties from different countries (so the UK Labour party MEPs are in a party-grouping with other centre-left parties and so on).
I'm sure there is a good URL for 'EU government explained' but I can't find exaclty that. If you start here I expect you can get a reasonable overview: http://europa.eu.int/abc/index_en.htm
Can't tell the players without a scorecard Posted Dec 9, 2004 8:30 UTC (Thu) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] If we simplify a bit, it's like this:Commission = Executive body, government (and a commissionaire ~ minister) EU Council = Senate, upper chamber (EUC is one minister from each national parliament) EU Parliament = parliament, lower chamber (directly elected representatives) For a directive to pass, both the parliament and the EUC has to support it, the commissionaire is the secretary that does the grunt work. (And as in elsewhere in life, it's the secretary that has more power than her boss.) One reason things are so muddy, is that people are still vary of the idea of EU being a federation, it is only supposed to be a union of sovereing nations. So we have come up with new names for everything, so that people would feel comfortable with the eu. Thus, EU laws are not laws, they are directives. A minister (as in government official) is not a minister, he is a commisioner. And so fort. The EU parliament parties map somewhat to national counterparts. The Social democrats, Greens and Left are usually a direct mapping to their national equivalents, usually even the name is the same. The coalitions more to the right are not that clear. For instance, the Finnish agrarian party has ended up in the libertarian EUP coalition, which opposes EU farmer subsidies. Needless to say, the Finnish agrarian party in the Finnish parliament is very much for any kind of subsidies paid to their voters and are not that libertarian anyways. Most europeans are just as ignorant as the next guy about this, which shows in the EUP elections, where the turnout is well below 20-50%, whereas national election turnouts are 50-80%.
Can't tell the players without a scorecard Posted Dec 9, 2004 8:35 UTC (Thu) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] Just remembered one important thing: Note that since the EU (at least officially) has no common foreign policy, no military and no police, there are many things a national government takes care of which the commision has nothing to do with. Therefore the most important task left to the commissionaire really is just producing directives and he is not quite comparable to a minister in a national government.
Can't tell the players without a scorecard Posted Dec 9, 2004 11:20 UTC (Thu) by chepelov (guest, #23542) [Link] Well, there are attempts to have a common-ish foreign policy, Europol exists (as a national police cooperation/coordination body) and as for the military, you might want to look up who does what used to be the SFOR's job in the Balkans.
Yes, this is still very vague extremely muddy, but it's definitely a moving target.
The constitutional treaty should help clarifying things a lot (for instance, getting rid of the "directive" word, and calling a cat a cat).
Directives and laws. Posted Dec 9, 2004 10:48 UTC (Thu) by grantingram (guest, #18390) [Link] As I understand it a directive isn't a law, it's a sort of agreement/instruction to member states to implement something into their own laws which they can then do in their own way. Of course wikipedia comes to the rescue here: Link to European Directive Article But the whole thing is insanely complicated largely as a result of fifty years of fudging to keep everyone happy...
Directives and laws. Posted Dec 9, 2004 11:22 UTC (Thu) by chepelov (guest, #23542) [Link] indeed. This process is called "transposition". There can be sanctions for failure to transpose, though some member states are routine offenders (mine in particular). As usual, both the laws to be transposed, and the fines for non-transposition are subject to barter, negociation and pork barrel.
Thanks for the scorecards Posted Dec 9, 2004 17:38 UTC (Thu) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link] Thank you all very much for the answers and links---now I can at least have a feeling for who relates to what, and where the power centers are. It's all much clearer, in a Surrealist sort of way. :-)
|
|||||||||||||