Now I’m Really Wearing My Tin Foil Hat

Just when it looked like things had got back to reality….

I’m getting sick of this, and worried too. Here’s a letter I’ve just penned to Robert Evans
MEP:

Dear Robert Evans,

I read today that the European Patent Directive is not likely to return to the first reading 
as previously demanded by Parliament, and that the Commission may ignore the Parliament's vote 
on restarting the legislative process for this bill.

While in the past I have contacted my parliamentary and other representatives about software 
patents, and concentrated on the fact that software patents cannot be anything other than 
deeply corrosive to innovation, consumer choice and the health of the UK software industry, 
I want now to turn to something that has made me even more worried: the overwhelming evidence
I am starting to see of democracy being simply ignored in Europe.

How can it be that obviously bad legislation is being railroaded through by the Commission 
when nobody other than corporate lobbyists support it? 

- The elected European Parliament are 100% AGAINST (this version of directive)
- The majority of the The European Council of Ministers are AGAINST (with new 
countries joining the against all the time)
- European citizens/software users (who know about it) are all AGAINST
- European software-industry alliances/coalitions are all AGAINST
- European software companies are nearly all AGAINST
- European programmers are (probably) all AGAINST

Who does this leave in favour?

- The UK & European Patent Offices
- A small number of very rich companies
- UNELECTED civil servants

What is going on? Where is the democratic process here?

I am very, very concerned at the events that have taken place in the last 
12 months on this issue.

Yours sincerely,


Jonathan Baker-Bates

“Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state
and corporate power.”

– Benito Mussolini, Encyclopedia Italiana.