Urgent Action Required - Important EU vote

[GhostShip]

Folks the European Union about to pass unfair and anti open source legislation, this will affect us all and put us into the hands of greedy fat cats businesses that already milk us dry, while denying small software companies the ability to develope there own software, this is unjust and immoral.

If you are in an EU member state, please make sure that your EU representaive is informed of your wishes, as once this sort of legislation is in place it will be extremely hard to get rid of it.

Read this for details of why it is not in your interests to hand over your existing rights to big companies like Microsoft

http://swpat.ffii.org/log/intro/

At the moment the big companies are unable to acheive the monopoly position in europe thanks to the law, which states  many of the patents they hold in other countries for software are not patentable in the EU, all this could change if this vote is passed unamended  
   

http://noepatents.eu.org/index.php/NO_Software_Patents


Please make your voice heard, this is your chance to make a difference and keep open source free.

[GhostShip]

YAAY we did it folks, thanks to those that did, for making the effort to protect small software companies and open source  

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/06/eu_bins_swpat/

The European Parliament has voted by a massive majority to reject the software patents directive, formally known as the Directive on the Patentability of Computer Implemented Inventions. The vote to scrap the bill was passed by a margin of 648 votes to 14, with 18 abstentions.
The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) says the rejection is a logical response to the Commission and Council's refusal to take parliament's will into consideration.

This has been a worry for many, with big business interests pushing to monopolise much of the market, even yesterday, many not so small vendors had reservations regrding this issue.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/05/patent_directive/

Telecoms equipment maker, Alcatel, says that a departure from the Common Position would be dangerous to the future of the company, and would threaten jobs in Europe. Meanwhile Philips has said that an amended directive would be legally confusing, adding that it would rather see it withdrawn.

Thankfully common sense has prevailed over Europe  

[KM]

You barely mentioned the most important part of that news...

The vote to scrap the bill was passed by a margin of 648 votes to 14, with 18 abstentions.

not only was it thrown out, but then the floor was wiped with it, and it was incinerated - then the ashes were collected up and mixed in to some dog food

The next question is, how stupid do those 14 who voted for it feel now? i hope they are extremely embarrassed for making such fools of themselves