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On Monday 07 March 2005 5:13 pm, Aaron Trevena wrote:
On Mon, 7 Mar 2005 15:26:29 -0000, James Wonnacott <jwon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:I've tried to make this point before, but no-one listens:- The EU and democracy are mutually exclusive. The only way is OUT!This isn't the case - the european parliament has been reformed and a lot of the system did the right thing - the directive even brings the treaty-controlled EPO under the remit of the European Council/Parliament. The alternative to this is far far worse - exactly the backroom deals, secret treaties, unaccountable power and corruption that we are fighing in the European Council.
As testament to that, I've posted an open letter from FFII to the Wiki: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/wiki/?id=FFIIPressRelease (And revealed a bug in the wiki at the same time - the page doesn't show the edit links because it's too large!) :-( I've posted it as my own, like any other part of the Wiki it does not represent the group - as it clearly says on every Wiki page. These things normally have a webpage of their own but it wasn't there. If there are strong objections I don't mind hosting it somewhere else.
The shady corners of the EU where the light of accountability and democracy fail to reach are getting smaller and if we carry on pushing they will go.
I hope so - this whole episode isn't so much shady as pitch black!
Rather than giving up, you could contact your MP, MEP and try and reach people like Lord Sainsbury and Peter Mandelson who are clearly responsable for failing to act and do their jobs.
There's more to it than that, it's more about the politics of the Presidency and EU Council but discussions around that DO need to be off-list. (see below).
The failure here lies with the Tories and Labour for just rubber stamping bad legislation in europe. You could also blame the UK press for ignoring the huge news story that this is and focussing on crap like Charles Wedding, etc. You can't blame the european parliament or much of the EU infrastructure.
The blame, in my eyes at least, lies neatly at the door of the Council of Ministers. I will try to keep the group informed over the next three critical months (using the software patents pages of the DCGLUG Wiki and alerts to the list if time is short) before the EP gets it's second reading but if you want to be more involved, please join me on the FFII mailing list, uk-parl, via the FFII website. It can be a high volume list at times; at times of special derision it can be twice the volume of DCGLUG. Uk-parl maillist Subscribe through the project system http://www.ffii.org/assoc/knecht/proj/, fine-tune via http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/uk-parl http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/uk-parl That's the correct forum for all the political machinations, protest coordination, lobbying, law suits (being considered) and general up-in-arms-ness (!). The broad sweep of the directive itself and the problems that *WILL* arise for GNU/Linux if it is accepted in anything like it's current form are *definitely* suitable for discussion here. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.dcglug.org.uk/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/ http://www.neil.williamsleesmill.me.uk/ http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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