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The Netherlands revokes its software patent vote
The Dutch parliament has voted to force the government to change its vote
in favor of software patents in Europe; that vote will now become an
abstention. See this FFII
page (also available in Dutch, French and German) for more
information. "This measure is possible because at the present moment
there is only a 'political agreement' and the 'formal vote' can only take
place after the contested text has been translated into the 20 European
languages. An emergency brake move in the procedure such as this has never
been exercised before." (Thanks to Daniël Mantione).
There is also a brief article in The Inquirer about the change. (Log in to post comments)
The Netherlands revokes its software patent vote Posted Jul 2, 2004 14:03 UTC (Fri) by bbencic (guest, #9213) [Link] Great and strong decision.I hope Poland and Danemark will follow this example. Maybe Germany too ...
The Netherlands revokes its software patent vote Posted Jul 2, 2004 14:35 UTC (Fri) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] Well, it would have been more great and strong if the abstention had turned into a vote against.-Rob
The Netherlands revokes its software patent vote Posted Jul 2, 2004 18:39 UTC (Fri) by bbencic (guest, #9213) [Link] I think it's not "abstain" or "against" which is important.The important thing here is that it's possible to change things if we fight for what we believe in. For me, there is no problem for to you to express your opinion on this subject. Any opinion is welcome. I am glad to see problems or solutions in different ways ;-)
The Netherlands revokes its software patent vote Posted Jul 2, 2004 19:36 UTC (Fri) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] According to the FFII article, there isn't any practical difference between voting against and abstaining.
The Netherlands revokes its software patent vote Posted Jul 2, 2004 18:58 UTC (Fri) by The_Pirate (guest, #21740) [Link] Don't have too much faith in Denmark. Our present right-wing government is not likely to undo _any_ of its often very silly doings. And it will take another year before we will get rid of them - traditionally, they cling to their chairs to the last possible moment.Lots of cheering for the Dutch government. IMHO they deserve it....
The Netherlands revokes its software patent vote Posted Jul 3, 2004 13:57 UTC (Sat) by jeroen (subscriber, #12372) [Link] The goverment didn't even want to change their vote and their opinion is still that the council text is okay. The parliament didn't agree (probably because of our lobbying) and forced the government to change their vote. So I don't think the Dutch government deserves any cheering (in my opinion it's the worst government since the Second World War).The Spanish government really deserve cheering, because they voted against as the only government.
The Netherlands revokes its software patent vote Posted Jul 2, 2004 14:06 UTC (Fri) by cdyson37 (guest, #12102) [Link] How are they so sure it means the same thing in 20 languages? Hopefully they alltranslate from the original, rather than translating each copy from the previous one, so they don't get translational artifacts like "my hovercraft is full of eels" appearing. (Yes, that's Monty Python.)
The Netherlands revokes its software patent vote Posted Jul 2, 2004 14:15 UTC (Fri) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link] Most politicians speak multiple languages, changes that an error getsunnoticed are low. If one would get through, an EU directive would contradict itself; all languages are considered equal. I don't know what the procedure is, but you can assume that it'll get retracted.
The Netherlands revokes its software patent vote Posted Jul 2, 2004 14:19 UTC (Fri) by jeroen (subscriber, #12372) [Link] AFAIK they all translate from the English text. It's also done by professional juridical-linguistic experts who probably know what they are doing.
The Netherlands revokes its software patent vote Posted Jul 2, 2004 15:37 UTC (Fri) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link] This is correct. The EU uses three working languages internally: English,French and German. Directives and other documents are originally written in one of these languages and then translated into the other languages.
The Netherlands revokes its software patent vote Posted Jul 2, 2004 20:50 UTC (Fri) by jneves (subscriber, #2859) [Link] Two working languages: french and english. And sometimes there are mistakes. At the time of the european parliament vote we spent some days revising the several translations. Some of the changes had a real impact (not on purpose, but legal translations are hard).
The Netherlands revokes its software patent vote Posted Jul 3, 2004 19:30 UTC (Sat) by lenov (guest, #15428) [Link] The _European Commission_ uses english, french and german as official languages. For the parliament it is different. There are 20 official languages in the EU:http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/policies/lang/languages/lang/europeanlanguages_fr.html#offi
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