Conor Daly <conor.daly at oceanfree.net> writes:
> The big worry here (to my mind at least) is that big business is likely to
> be telling the 10 accession states how much they plan to invest in their
> countries so long as there is proper "intellectual property protection" in
> place.
(For anyone interested in the politics and tricks of global->EU->national
legislation, I highly recommend "Information Fuedalism" by Peter Drahos -
this book is the result of ~7 years research, very high quality stuff.)
US Coercion & the new states was a concern of mine too, but it could go
either way. They could strongly oppose to software idea patents since they
certainly don't own any large software developement companies.
Stallmans recent 6 week tour of eastern europe seems to have had a big
impact. Most importantly, Poland - the only new state with Big Voting Power
- where Stallman addressed the national Parliament, have voted absolutely
against software idea patentability (in the recent Council vote). So
pessimistic outlooks are not justified (IMO/yet).
I don't know what we can do to generate/assist activism in the new states
(suggestions/translators welcome). In the mean time we just have to work
with the english speaking EU reps. (I have friends that can translate to
dutch, french, spanish, and german, but that requires having lead time to
translate our letters etc.)
--
Ciarán O'Riordan
http://www.compsoc.com/~coriordan/
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