[LUG] Software Patents - do you want Fisheries Ministers to decide?

[Aaron Trevena <dclug@xxxxxxxxxx>]

No really,

The EC Council has decided that its better to bamboozle some environment 
and fisheries ministers into agreeing to bypass the consensus of the EU 
Parliament and pass the Software Patent legislation without further 
discussion.

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/54199

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/12/13/1248202.shtml?tid=155&tid=219

http://kwiki.ffii.org/Cons041213En

Not good news, our government ought to be ashamed.

FFII reccomend writing to
a) Your MP
b) Lords Sainsbury
c) Peter Mandelson

I have already written to my MP on the subject, as well as about ID Cards. 
Luckily we have plenty of Liberal Democrat MP's in cornwall who are quite 
sensible about these things. Others may be able to try and persuade people 
like Candy Atherton (Falmouth & Cambourne) that neither town will benefit 
from software patents and how much harm they will do.

If even a handful of us write to the correct people and make our points 
well, combined with the press and others we can possibly shame them into 
doing the right thing.

A.

--
Aaron J Trevena - Perl Hacker, Kung Fu Geek, Internet Consultant
AutoDia --- Automatic UML and HTML Specifications from Perl, C++ 
and Any Datasource with a Handler.     http://droogs.org/autodia

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