[Fsfe-uk] swpat: Hewitt: Directive "offers benefits for both software developers and software users"

[MJ Ray]

Probably everybody has seen these, but I was recently pointed by Joe 
Ll G Blakesley to these written answers from the UK Trade and Industry 
minister Patricia Hewitt in February. Apparently, they believe the 
swpat directive has

"particular benefits for the SME sector" -- 
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2004-01-22.1387W.3

and they

"continue to support the proposal put forward by the European 
Commission" -- 
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2004-01-22.1387W.6

:-(


Another interesting snippet from Feb: the UK government had no 
measurement of use or effectiveness of the UK's copyright enforcement 
laws. http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2004-02-26.531W.2
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/wrans.php?id=uk.org.publicwhip/wrans/2004-02-23.114W.2

That recent "enforcement" law was proposed by the LibDem asking, by 
the way. Even without good data on the UK law, Labour, Conservative 
and LibDem all supported a similar "harmonisation to the harshest" 
(IPRED) in the European Parliament vote a few weeks later. Let's try 
to make the EU share UK mistakes, eh?

Open question on IPRED: will Labour use it to help pass even harsher 
UK "IPR enforcement" laws?

--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing
Help hack the EuroParl! http://mjr.towers.org.uk/proj/eurovote/