taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

So, the bad news — it appears that the European Parliament has passed the ‘Data Retention’ Directive, introducing requiring EU states to introduce mandatory electronic surveillance of all European citizens.

Tuppenceworth.ie has looked up how the Irish MEPs voted on the Directive. I was appalled to discover that Proinsias De Rossa (Labour) was the only Irish MEP to vote for this surveillance.

I generally give a high preference to Labour when voting, and before that, Democratic Left, and I’ve voted for him several times in the past. However, I think this may be the deal-breaker. I’m extremely disappointed.

By the way if party line was the issue — that didn’t stop Gay Mitchell (Fine Gael), who broke party line on this, saying:

I do not know why this proposal was rushed. The extremely accelerated legislation procedure has meant that there was little time for discussion, and translations were sometimes unavailable. There was also no time for a technology assessment or for a study on the impact on the internal market.

Major credit to him.

Tags: data-retention, digital-rights-ireland, european-parliament, fine-gael, gay-mitchell, ireland, labour, meps, proinsias-de-rossa, voting

Misc: So I was travelling last week — a very productive trip to the UK visiting the main work dev office, and getting a little socialising in too while I was at it. A pretty good trip overall, especially since I seem to have figured out how to use my frequent flyer miles effectively to get great seats! ;)

Here’s a good interview with SpamAssassin PMC chair, Daniel; well worth a read if you want to see what we in SpamAssassin think about the state of the onion in spam-filtering.

In not-so-good news, it seems Charlie McCreevy has managed to push the software patent directive through, despite massive EU Parliament unhappiness. Third time around at the Fisheries meeting, naturally; and there’s some serious questions about the legitimacy of the procedural rules invoked by the Commission in refusing to take the directive off the A-item menu. Now that’s what I call democracy…

It can still be defeated, but it’s an uphill battle now — for it to be thrown out in the second reading at the European Parliament, it’ll need a two-thirds majority of all MEPs (not just the MEPs present), reportedly.

In the meantime, thanks to the FF and PDs’ bullying tactics, Ireland’s small but growing pool of homegrown software developers are being ignored, and the Irish software industry looks more like a lame import operation for the likes of Microsoft. Our reputation is dragged through the mud for a few multinationals, and the rest of Europe resents us for it. Wonderful.

BTW, even if it does pass, there are ways to fix it — directives must be implemented into national law in each country. This means that Ireland could still write their implementation of the directive to exclude software inventions (even the ones where it’s supposedly a patent on hardware like ‘a CPU connected to a hard disk, with such-and-such software running on the CPU’). However, given McCreevy’s obvious bias in favour of getting this specific text into place, how likely is that going to be?

Tags: cpu, directive, meps, misc, parliament, patent, software, spamassassin, trip, week, work

Ireland: Now that the IP Enforcement directive has passed, Irish readers might be interested to find out how their MEPs voted on it.

First off, the good ones:

• PATRICIA MCKENNA - GREEN PARTY MEP (DUBLIN) since 1994
• NUALA AHERN - GREEN PARTY MEP (LEINSTER) since 1994

Both of the Green MEPs voted along party lines on a key amendment, amendment 54, which would have limited enforcement to commercial-scale counterfeiting rather than individual infringement.

But on the other side, we have these, who voted for applicability of the directive to all ‘IPR’, according to FFII. The hall of shame:

• JOE McCARTIN - FINE GAEL MEP (CONNACHT/ULSTER) since 1979
• JOHN CUSHNAHAN - FINE GAEL MEP (MUNSTER) since 1989
• DANA ROSEMARY SCALLON - INDEPENDENT MEP (CONNACHT/ULSTER) since 1999
• NIALL ANDREWS - FIANNA FAIL MEP (DUBLIN) since 1984
• GERARD COLLINS - FIANNA FAIL MEP (MUNSTER) since 1994
• JIM FITZSIMONS - FIANNA FAIL MEP (LEINSTER) since 1984
• LIAM HYLAND - FIANNA FAIL MEP (LEINSTER) since 1994

Unsurprising to see the conservative FFers (and Dana!) in there — but what do FG think they’re doing?

Considering that FFII read this as permitting ’surprise raids on teenagers in the middle of the night by private security firms on the flimsiest of evidence’, as passed, this is a ‘hall of shame’ issue.

The moral: vote Green!

Tags: amendment, directive, enforcement, fail, ffii, green, hall, ireland, mep, meps, party

Despite heavy opposition from a coalition of European SMEs and the Greens/EFA faction of the European Parliament, and despite 2 committees suggesting large amendments, Arlene McCarthy’s pushed the patent ‘reform’ through the JURI committee of the European Parliament. It is now going to be debated in an EP plenary in 10 days time. It seems likely there’ll be a vote on adopting it then, too. We’re being railroaded here. :(

If you are a European and bothered by software patents, now is the time to write to (or even email) MEPs asking them to oppose this directive; it’s the ‘proposed software patentability directive as amended by JURI’ (COM(2002)92 2002/0047).

The letter should support the Eurolinux and/or Green position.

I’ve already received one reply, from Nuala Ahern, a Green MEP for Leinster, who’s happy to take the Greens/EFA line (and responded very quickly, all credit to her!). But the question is, who else among the Irish MEPs is likely to vote on this issue – and how do we effectively lobby in such a short time?

Some background links:

• The list of Irish MEPs
• Why software patents are bad for software developers
• The results of the UK Patent Office’s consultation on software patents
• Examples of bad software patents already issued in the US
• Examples of bad software patents already issued in the EU (somehow)
• Details of the proposed directive amendment

Anyway, if it passes it’s not the end of the world, according to Karl Lenz; I’m not sure I agree with his conclusions though ;)

Tags: directive, efa, european, green, greens, meps, parliament, patent, software, time

GREENS/EFA: Patent vote fails Europe’s software programmers. Damn.

UK and German MEPs, in rejecting amendments to the report, have ignored the opinions of the Economic and Social Council, the Industry committee, the Culture committee, 140,000 people and 30 leading software scientists who signed two petitions to the Parliament, as well as the 95% of the European citizens who took part in a European Commission public consultation.

So I guess the next step is figure out who those MEPs were, and make sure they never get our votes again.

There’s still time though: Mercedes Echerer MEP (Greens - A) notes: ‘You can be sure that the report will have a very bumpy ride when it goes to plenary in September with one third of committee members in opposition.’ We can at least try to let our voices be heard by the other two-thirds…

However, in some good Euronews: the Czech republic has passed a referendum on joining the EU.

Tags: committee, damn, efa, german, greens, meps, patent, report, software, vote