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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Brough, Tom wrote: > <rant> > Sorry about this post but I just had to get it off my chest. How on earth > can lexmark be so petty > > http://news.com.com/2100-1023-979791.html That case was originally announced ages ago, but nicely supports my contention that it will be used to suppress competition unfairly. Ironically the very companies pressing hardest for the legislation were all from industries the EU was, and in some cases still is, investigating for anticompetitive practices. Unfortunately the argument that the people you are legislating in favour of are an unsavoury bunch who will abuse the legislation as much as they can doesn't carry much weight with legislators > God help us all if ... or should I say WHEN we get DMCA in (OLD or NEW) > Europe. I believe only 2 of the 15 member countries of the EU have adopted the changes by the deadline specified. Word from the patent office is their 31st March (already slipped deadline), has slipped further (to spring 2003), whilst they try and decide on the definition of an "on demand service". At the public meeting last autumn it was clear the patent office representatives hadn't a clue what the scope of that phrase was suppose to be, or even a clue how the WWW works, which I guess is rather sad for those supposedly in charge of drafting copyright rules. The world has moved on, the legislature will probably never catch up ever again unless they sort out their procedures. Goodness only knows what they will make of tools like freenet. The EU is already discussing proposals likely to effectively repeal large sections of the EU copyright directive, because they are seen as too draconian, before they have even been enacted into law in the vast majority of member states. The world is no crazier than usual AFAICT, YMMV. Perhaps if France had the right to veto the newly discussed proposals we might get them quicker -- okay perhaps I shouldn't have gone there... -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQE+e77mGFXfHI9FVgYRAq38AKC1U+KXRDaL9DT/DJNXyLpEQWhw6QCeMN4i bvR1H2Q+0XlCixLYSLzkjsw= =izPu -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.