The Council Presidency today declared the software agreement of 18 May 2004 to have been adopted, in violation of the procedural rules and in spite of the evident lack of a qualified majority of member states and the requests of several states to reopen negotiations. More here.
Council Presidency Adopts Software Patent Agreement
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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116 Comments
2005-03-09 12:43 pm
2005-03-09 12:46 pm
2005-03-09 2:08 pm
2005-03-09 3:20 pm
2005-03-09 4:27 pm
2005-03-09 5:16 pm
Anonymous
Whatever. You seem to not even read what I wrote nor understand it.
I won’t go on discussing this anymore, it’s no use anyhow 
2005-03-09 6:17 pm
2005-03-09 8:35 pm
Anonymous
With libertarian I mean that I believe that we should leave more to market freedom, especially in Europe (in the US it’s better).
But I think that only a libertarianism with some restrictions works, and that these restrictions are FAR LESS than currently implemented in the USA or Europe. When all these stupid laws are gone, taxes could be reduced and social security and welfare even increased.
Okay, maybe that isn’t libertarian. However I think that reducing state is libertarian in a way. I don’t think I’m moderate in any way, compared to what most people seem to believe in.
With conservative I mean that I have traditional values. Not about religion, there I’m radical liberal. This has nothing to do with conservative parties, like in the US or Europe, it just means that I care about people, about the environment, and that I think Family is a good thing. So I’m a radical conservative to a leftist, and a radical liberal to a conservative. I’m too libertarian to be accepted by any party that calls themselves social and too social that libertarians would like me.
I agree with your last paragraph: those in power are just feeding on us.
I’ve written to my MEP with my protest and will vote against the European Constitution in the forthcoming referendum. That’s all I can do other than keeping rotten eggs and custard pies intact during the long march on Brussels.
”
Kaj wrote:
> How is […] misleading and your quiz not?
Because the original list contained items that are not personal, although they might be masked as such.
E.g. having an abortion and not sending your child to school are more about someone other than yourself. In my quiz I make this fact quite clear, imo.
”
That’s debatable, although I agree that abortion and home schooling are difficult subjects. But that’s exactly the point of the test: to ask you for your views on debatable topics to see how you score on one political scale.
”
> You just designed a test to insinuate that all people who
> like personal freedom are murdering, raping, animal-
> torturing terrorists, and if you don’t think that’s OK,
> you must not be in favor of personal freedom.
No. I just highlighted that the provided test is misleading. Or at least that was my intention. Very few things are personal. Most things are interconnected in one way or another.
”
What you are doing is to ask questions that should clearly be undebatable with the intention of sabotaging the test by imposing your own political conviction on it. I find it extremely odd that you would consider the original test misleading and yours not.
”
> Well, if your political conviction is that you want to be a
> slave,
Huh? Where have I said that I want to be a slave.
(Actually I want the net total of “goodness” in the world to reach its global maximum, and I believe that if we scrap most laws then a few (or maybe many) idiots will make this “goodness” level sink very low.)
”
You designed a test with a fixed outcome that personal liberty leads to criminal outrages, which seems to be your conviction. And you just said that your reason for that is that according to you, very few things are personal. So apparently you believe that you should have very little personal freedom, because everything you do could possibly harm someone else. Your intentions for the world are good, but you believe that you should be constrained by laws because otherwise a few or many “idiots” will ruin it for the world. Tell me, in the face of so many badly-intentioned people, how are you going to make sure that those laws will not be written by those idiots?
What you don’t seem to realize is that your recipe for world order leads to your own enslavement, and this is exactly what libertarianism tries to warn you for.
”
> then according to my political conviction you have that
> right – but I do have an opinion about it, and that is
> that it is not befitting for a Finn to think that way.
“Not befitting for a Finn”? What does my nationality have to do with anything?
”
As I said before, the philosophy of libertarianism originates in Scandinavia. It has been strong in northern Europe for thousands of years. Your forefathers resisted the invasion of Russia, did they not? And to get back to the topic of this thread, by railing against freedom, you’re not supporting free software and the Linux movement led by your countryman Linus Torvalds, who still regularly shows to have the spirit of these old ideals.
The proprietary software companies have one great VULNERABILITY despite all the forever Sony Bono copyrights and software patents they control. That is that their business is DEPENDENT on the upgrade treadmill. Therefore there is a way to win against the Miltinational proprietary software corps without having to do anything illegal like warez, crakz or other forms of piracy. That is simple DON’T GO FOR THE NEXT UPGRADE (Longhorn in the case of Micro$oft.) Just DON’T buy it despite all of the propaganda about better games, better office tools, better DVD movie watching experiences that you will be subjected to form the M$ and other International proprietary software corporations’s propaghanda machines.
Furthermore there should be public demonstrations before every major proprietary software corp’s offices on the planet that the boycott is BECAUSE of their attacks on software freedom and even competition by local “shareware” proprietary software developers through forever copyrights and software patents and it will not end until they cease and desist in these practices and starting donating not only to the GPL but to the PUBLIC DOMAIN and self nullify ALL software patents or they are destroyed to make way for the next generation of software companies from the FOSS and “shareware” worlds through NO FURTHER PURCHASES FROM THEM for “upgrades”.
Kaj wrote:
> > > How is […] misleading and your quiz not?
> >
> > Because the original list contained items that are not personal,
> > although they might be masked as such.
> > E.g. having an abortion and not sending your child to school
> > are more about someone other than yourself. In my quiz I make
> > this fact quite clear, imo.
>
> That’s debatable,
What’s debatable? That my quiz clearly contains choices that are clearly not about personal rights?
> although I agree that abortion and home schooling are difficult
> subjects.
The difficultness of the subjects is completely irrelevant.
> > No. I just highlighted that the provided test is misleading.
> > Or at least that was my intention. Very few things are personal.
> > Most things are interconnected in one way or another.
>
> What you are doing is to ask questions that should clearly be
> undebatable with the intention of sabotaging the test by
> imposing your own political conviction on it.
No, I do not.
I wanted to point out that the questions in question are not what they say they are. I’m all for personal freedom as long as it won’t affect others, but those questions are not about personal freedom imo.
> I find it extremely odd that you would consider the original
> test misleading and yours not.
The original test is misleading in the sense that it tries to portray some things as “personal freedom” although they aren’t. I just extrapolated it ad absurdum to make it clearer that the questions are invalid.
> You designed a test with a fixed outcome that personal liberty
> leads to criminal outrages, which seems to be your conviction.
I hope that you don’t still believe that after reading this message.
> So apparently you believe that you should have very little
> personal freedom, because everything you do could possibly
> harm someone else.
I believe that the level of “freedomness” should be proportional to the level of “personalness”.
> Your intentions for the world are good, but you believe that
> you should be constrained by laws because otherwise a few or
> many “idiots” will ruin it for the world. Tell me, in the face
> of so many badly-intentioned people, how are you going to make
> sure that those laws will not be written by those idiots?
Now that’s a very good question. For starters I think people should make elections based on some better voting system than the popular, bad ones. I’d recommend some form of condorcet voting. That way at least the people that aren’t completely apathetic could express their true opinion in an election.
> What you don’t seem to realize is that your recipe for world
> order leads to your own enslavement, and this is exactly what
> libertarianism tries to warn you for.
I wouldn’t call it enslavement. E.g. I happily give up my right to kill other people in exchange of other people having to give up that right, too.
> Your forefathers resisted the invasion of Russia, did they not?
Yes, they did, but that’s irrelevant to the issue at hand.
> by railing against freedom, you’re not supporting free software
Sure I am. I very much believe that keeping software free (libre) will do a lot more good than locking it up using patents, draconian DRM, etc.
(I’m actually against patents in general, not only software patents, although I don’t have much experience with other kinds of patents.)
Coral Snake wrote:
> Just DON’T buy it despite all of the propaganda
I’m with you. That makes two of us. Now we’ll just have to convince a big portion of the 460 million other EU citizens to join the fight. Unfortunately most of these don’t know anything about computers/patents/DRM/whatever and couldn’t care less. That is, until it’s ten years too late.
So, what’s plan B?
”
Kaj wrote:
> > > How is […] misleading and your quiz not?
> >
> > Because the original list contained items that are not personal,
> > although they might be masked as such.
> > E.g. having an abortion and not sending your child to school
> > are more about someone other than yourself. In my quiz I make
> > this fact quite clear, imo.
>
> That’s debatable,
What’s debatable? That my quiz clearly contains choices that are clearly not about personal rights?
”
You yourself agreed with AdamW that it is debatable whether having an abortion is personal or not. Regardless of that subject, the fact that you’re now denying it again tells me that you just want to argue with me, so I’m not going to continue this much longer. A good libertarian principle: if an activity is not fruitful anymore, move on to something better.
”
> although I agree that abortion and home schooling are difficult
> subjects.
The difficultness of the subjects is completely irrelevant.
”
See, you even want to argue with me when I agree with you.
”
> What you are doing is to ask questions that should clearly be
> undebatable with the intention of sabotaging the test by
> imposing your own political conviction on it.
No, I do not.
I wanted to point out that the questions in question are not what they say they are. I’m all for personal freedom as long as it won’t affect others, but those questions are not about personal freedom imo.
”
Then we will have to agree to disagree, and I have to suspect that your definition of freedom is very different from mine and the writers of that quiz.
”
The original test is misleading in the sense that it tries to portray some things as “personal freedom” although they aren’t. I just extrapolated it ad absurdum to make it clearer that the questions are invalid.
> You designed a test with a fixed outcome that personal liberty
> leads to criminal outrages, which seems to be your conviction.
I hope that you don’t still believe that after reading this message.
”
You presented your questions as fixing the alleged misleading nature of the test. Now you say your questions were absurd. What am I to believe? You haven’t retracted your FUD about freedom. And no, you did not extrapolate the questions, you turned them around to mean something completely different.
”
> So apparently you believe that you should have very little
> personal freedom, because everything you do could possibly
> harm someone else.
I believe that the level of “freedomness” should be proportional to the level of “personalness”.
”
That’s exactly what it says in the ethics outlined here, if you would just take the trouble of looking into it:
http://www.friesian.org/moral-1.htm
”
> What you don’t seem to realize is that your recipe for world
> order leads to your own enslavement, and this is exactly what
> libertarianism tries to warn you for.
I wouldn’t call it enslavement. E.g. I happily give up my right to kill other people in exchange of other people having to give up that right, too.
”
You don’t have a right to kill other people according to libertarianism. Please stop making things black and white. If your main concern is to keep people from butchering eachother, I think you are setting your standards very low.
”
> Your forefathers resisted the invasion of Russia, did they not?
Yes, they did, but that’s irrelevant to the issue at hand.
”
If you don’t think my explanation for my opinion is relevant, then don’t ask me for it!
”
> by railing against freedom, you’re not supporting free software
Sure I am. I very much believe that keeping software free (libre) will do a lot more good than locking it up using patents, draconian DRM, etc.
(I’m actually against patents in general, not only software patents, although I don’t have much experience with other kinds of patents.)
”
Then I say you have an inner conflict. These issues are very much related to eachother, even if you don’t see it.
Brinkhorst didn’t do what the representatives of the Dutch public said he had to do: vote for B item. Why not? His microphone didn’t work (yeah right). Liar, liar..
http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/20989.phtml&lp=nl_en“ rel=”nofollow”>http://babel.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?url=