European Parliament Blocks Copyright Reform With 113% Voter Turnout 297
New submitter mcmadman writes "In a bizarre turn of events, the legal affairs committee of the European Parliament, voted to weaken a reform of the copyright monopoly for allowing re-publication and access to orphan works. What is surprising is that the voter turnout happened to be 113%. That there were three votes too many, and that these three votes determined the outcome, was pointed out to the committee. Unfortunately, when this was done, along with formally requesting a re-vote, the re-vote was denied."
Whoops (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whoops (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whoops (Score:5, Funny)
You guys have it all wrong. On matters relating to the music and video industries, duplicate votes are worth exactly as many as the originals.
Re:Whoops (Score:5, Insightful)
This is standard practice in the EU. When Ireland held a referendum and rejected the Lisbon Treaty, the EU technocrats didn't like the results so they just held ANOTHER referendum six months later.
Er, no. They did what any sensible person would do when their proposal was rejected: listen to the objections and fix it. They changed the stuff the Irish didn't like and then the Irish approved the changes. What's wrong with that? You expect them to give up totally at the first rejection over any aspect what-so-ever?
Re:Whoops (Score:4, Insightful)
I think we witnessed that crap in the US with Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and a few other recent caucus contests (where Romney won since he's the guy the GOP elite want).
Um, no. I think you meant to say 'he's the guy the *media* elite want'. The GOP faithful have been rallying around Santorum, as they say Romney's not 'conservative' enough.
The "GOP faithful" are not in the same set as the "GOP elite". The GOP elite aren't crazy about Romney, but they REALLY don't like Santorum because he's a true radical and can't be controlled.
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Being Catholic myself, I had to look into this. According to Wikipedia (lol) he is Catholic, and does have some pretty wacked out views on morality. A small number of them even agree with Catholic doctrine. Yeah, this guy is a nutcase,
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Naw, just sometimes you get extra in the package if you buy in bulk.
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not a hoax. (Score:5, Informative)
mods, please see this:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2728627&cid=39375277
then mod this down.
Re:not a hoax. (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently it can be seen on the video recording of the meeting (can't watch since I am at work now), but the story is grossly exaggerated. The vote in question was not about the proposal itself, but some obscure amendment where one party still wanted some more discussions on the exact wording. If you see how these comittees usually go through votes on amendments at machine gun speed where every member just looks at his party-approved voting sheet, it's easy to understand that these things happen from time to time. And since the vote was for an obscure amendment to a non-binding recommendation to let someone negotiate on the topic with the commission, then I completely understand that it was just brushed over (even though it shouldn't happen)
Re:not a hoax. (Score:5, Informative)
Thank you for this. No, Andrew was not aware of this matter; but we have since looked into it and indeed discovered that although a great deal of confusion reigned over the vote in question the extra voters appear not to have affected the material outcome. At any rate, as you know, the final legislative votes will take place in plenary and not in committee, and my Liberal colleagues will ensure that we will table appropriate amendments.
You may be interested, therefore, in my recent proposal to change the rules of procedure of the House to insist on roll call votes at every legislative vote at committee stage (see website).
Thank you again for writing.
Yours sincerely,
Kilian Bourke
Caseworker to
Andrew Duff
Liberal Democrat MEP for the East of England
It is a legislative report (Score:5, Informative)
In other news (Score:5, Funny)
Putin's approval rating has plummeted to 112% in favor.
So the dead vote in Europe too? (Score:5, Funny)
113 percent? Where did they count the votes? Chicago?
lol (Score:2)
I know right
Sad times we're living in..
Re: (Score:3)
Re:So the dead vote in Europe too? (Score:4, Funny)
We in Illinois are so patriotic that even being dead doesn't keep us from voting!
Math (Score:5, Funny)
Hold on fellas, you've got it all wrong. Math is different in Europe (they've got their commas and periods all backward in many places), especially when it's attorneys doing the counting. Folks just have to understand this, and fortunately there's a great instructional video [youtube.com] available for those in need of further tutelage.
Re:Math (Score:4, Funny)
Hold on fellas, you've got it all wrong. Math is different in Europe (they've got their commas and periods all backward in many places), especially when it's attorneys doing the counting. Folks just have to understand this, and fortunately there's a great instructional video [youtube.com] available for those in need of further tutelage.
Very true. For a start - we call it Maths
Re:Math (Score:5, Funny)
Hold on fellas, you've got it all wrong. Math is different in Europe (they've got their commas and periods all backward in many places), especially when it's attorneys doing the counting. Folks just have to understand this, and fortunately there's a great instructional video [youtube.com] available for those in need of further tutelage.
Very true. For a start - we call it Maths
So that's where the vote count went wrong! They were counting plurals where there should be singulars!
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Hold on fellas, you've got it all wrong. Math is different in Europe (they've got their commas and periods all backward in many places), especially when it's attorneys doing the counting. Folks just have to understand this, and fortunately there's a great instructional video [youtube.com] available for those in need of further tutelage.
Very true. For a start - we call it Maths
So that's where the vote count went wrong! They were counting plurals where there should be singulars!
No, that's the 'S' bend. They're going to need a plumber because someone has clogged it up with due process, and people are starting to notice the stench.
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Re:Math (Score:5, Insightful)
Because if the temparature is above that, it rains. If below, it snows.
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Knowing whether a given storm system is going to drop rain or sleep can be a life-or-death bit of information.
Indeed. Nothing more dangerous than getting caught in a sleep storm when behind the wheel.
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Seriously?
Here's a simple one: It's winter. You have to drive somewhere. Is there likely to be ice on the roads you need to look out for? You check the thermometer.
It's near zero centigrade = there's likely to be ice. Simple & intuitive. Whereas with fahrenheit, you actually need to remember the number which represents water freezing. More work for no gain.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Celsius is directly related to Kelvin, just offset so that 0C is the freezing point of water instead of Absolute zero. It's easy to convert between the two, just +/- 273.15 depending on where you're going. 0C - 273.15 is 0K.
I don't think either counts as "Metric" though since there aren't any milikelvins or anything like that, but you can still have a fraction of either if you want more granularity than a single degree.
I believe Fahrenheit has an equivalent called Rankine, whereby 0Ra is absolute zero and t
Re:Math (Score:5, Informative)
Celsius is directly related to Kelvin, just offset so that 0C is the freezing point of water instead of Absolute zero. It's easy to convert between the two, just +/- 273.15 depending on where you're going. 0C - 273.15 is 0K.
It's the other way around, but yes. Celsius was calibrated to the freezing and boiling points of distilled water, and for Kelvins, they said "hey, that's an easy to calibrate scale, but let's set 0 at absolute zero".
I believe Fahrenheit has an equivalent called Rankine, whereby 0Ra is absolute zero and the difference between the two is a fixed value, however that does bring the question - what's the point of 0F? What does it represent? Aside from the benefit of having "more" values between boiling and freezing water, is there a benefit to Fahrenheit that Celsius doesn't have?
0'F is the freezing point of salt water. Which salt water... unknown. It has different freezing points for different salt densities... I think it was supposed to be sea water, but again, sea water has different saline densities depending on where in the world you're taking it from, and also how deep you're taking it from.
100'F was supposed to be the human body temperature, but it was calibrated against somebody who was running a fever that day. Normal human body temperature is supposedly 98.6'F, but it does actually vary from person to person, depending on their health and metabolism at the time.
Ultimately, Fahrenheit is a completely arbitrary scale, calibrated to completely unrelated points in nature, some of which aren't reproducible outside of the human species. The reason it still exists is because it was proposed earlier than the Celcius scale, and it caught ground. Also because the only country that still uses it absolutely refuses to consider anything metric, because the French are using it, and that would be wrong.
Re:Math (Score:4, Funny)
I mean come on, that's stupid. No one likes the French...it isn't just us. Give us a little credit here.
Re:Math (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, I'm sure it has nothing to do with what an enormous pain in the ass it is to convert the entirety of the United States to a different system of measurement. It's not like this is a big place or anything, we could do it in a weekend. No, it must be because we hate the French.
And yet Canada, Russia, China, and several other countries that are bigger, both geographically and by population, had no trouble switching to the metric system. You do realize that Brunei is the only country in the world other than the US that still uses the Imperial system at an official level?
There's a lot of resistance to change in the US, but no more than exists elsewhere in the world. Besides which, do you have any idea how much it's costing industry to have to switch between measurement systems when you move between countries? Several large businesses and industries have already switched themselves over to Metric, because it just makes it easier to work with the rest of the world. It's a question of political will, but it really is about time the US joined the rest of the world in a common measurement system.
The comment about the French was facetious... I'm glad to see it was appreciated.... It was either that, or a joke about Americans being confused by all the multiples of ten.
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The choice for F has a lot of sense in it (Score:5, Interesting)
The freezing point is that of Brine (IIRC) at saturation. Since small impurities in *pure* water make a huge difference in the freezing point, but bugger all difference in brine, brine water is a lot easier to see freezing reliably to calibrate your lowest temperature. And a saturated brine solution is easy: keep adding salt until it starts precipitating out, then decant off the top.
Simple. You don't need a pristine chemistry lab to set that.
And as for "boiling point of water", well, what pressure?
Re:The choice for F has a lot of sense in it (Score:4)
Simple. You don't need a pristine chemistry lab to set that.
All metrology is done to astonishingly high precision and does need pristine laboratories whatever the scale. What made sense in the mid 1700's probabl yisn't so much of a concern now.
And as for "boiling point of water", well, what pressure?
Mean atmospheric pressure at sea level, which Celsius calibrated for at about the same time that Fahrenheit decided to use mammalian body temperature, which is also not well controlled.
Both systems are quite arbitrary, but when it comes to relation to physical situations, I would guess that more people have experience with freezing water than saturated water-salt-ammonia mixtures.
But the best reason for Celsius is that it is part of the metric system which is frankly superior to the imperial one in pretty much evey way, even if there's not a hugh different in the temperature part of the system.
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"Since small impurities in *pure* water make a huge difference in the freezing point, but bugger all difference in brine,"
The freezing point depression of water is 3.7 K for every mol/l of dissolved salt (assuming two mol ions per mol salt). Adding the same impurity to the saturated brine will lower the freezing point by the same amount as for pure water. Moreover, medium hard water is about 1 mmol/l, so it's just a few mK error anyway.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freezing_point_depression [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only the the point made by my sibling poster (who should be modded up btw), but at least some imperical units were designed for easy divisibility.
12 inches in a foot, for instance. 12 is easily divided by 2, 3, 4, and 6. 10 is only divisible by 1, 2, and 5.
also, volumes are mostly powers of two.
4 tablespoons in a gill, 4 gills in a pint, 2 cups in a pint, 2 pints in a quart, 4 quarts in a gallon, 2 gallons in a peck, 4 pecks in a bushel. We seem to be missing half-bushel, half-gallon, half-pint, and hal
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You mean like 12 pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound?
A penny had a 1/4th unit called a farthing, too. And check out the origins of 'Pieces of Eight', from spanish gold coins (which were often cut into halves, fourths and eighths).
Have never looked it up, but I suspect these were commonplace because even unschooled math-illiterate people could become competent enough to trust physical/visual math by splitting or combining groups. And that simplicity is essential for easy commerce and employment
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But you knew that, since slashdot draws that funny squiggly red line under a misspelled word.
1. Slashdot doesn't, your browser does. Unless you're using IE 7 or less, in which case everything is spelled correctly, even grobatrelovs.
2. imperical: originating in or based on observation or experience . Your spell checker doesn't flag it if you're using the wrong word. Substitute "yore" or "your" for "you're" in the previous sentence and it is incorrect but unflagged.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone knows the one true way is YYYY-MM-DD so that the numbers are you know, larger to smaller when reading left to right, like real numbers read. Also easier to sort. So suck on that.
Re:Math (Score:5, Funny)
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But that's going to be the other way around soon, what with the Euro going down and the US$1 per bought-European-vote rate increasing.
Re:Math (Score:4, Funny)
What the heck? I was expecting a Rick Roll, and you gave a link to a real explanation.
$8 billion or 75,000 jobs? Damn. :)
This is end of democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Or at least, a visible proof of it. Perhaps it ended long ago, but now there is no possible denial.
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This is end of democracy
Parody or paranoia? I can never tell these days.
What was the count on the decision not to revpte? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a case of who watches the watchers. When you corrupt an organization it is best done in-depth and it is most successfully done from the top.
We "Americans" (e.g. the United States of part, but we are working diligently on spreading our scheme to the rest of America) have a system of Checks and Balances. That is it doesn't have to Balance if you can make sure nobody Checks. We use this system for nearly every purpose. It's nice to see Europe following our lead. Or perhaps they deeded it to us as some point, which doesn't matter, we will take the credit.
As to this being the end of democracy, well you are using the wrong definition: Democracy is the means by which we ensure we are governed -no- -better- that we deserve.
Seems to be working out pretty much "as expected" here.
Re:This is end of democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
You can be a democratic socialist. Democracy means basically the majority rules. If the majority is socialistic, then you will see socialistic policies in place.
Relax Francis.
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Hard right wing anti-unionist people call the EU socialist.
Hard left wing anti-unionist people call the EU capitalist.
Neither of these two groups are right.
Is this unexpected? (Score:5, Funny)
Europeans often point out to Americans the higher turn-outs in their elections. They aren't quite to up Chicago standards, but it is a respectable showing none the less.
Start the Day with Some Eurocrat Bashing [nationalreview.com]
It's only a committee (Score:5, Informative)
It's worth pointing out that it's only a preliminary committee. It being voted down in this committee won't necessarily prevent it from seeing the floor the full parliament, but it won't come along with the backing of the special committee.
There was a member of the Swedish Pirate Party in the committee and he's been the one agitating for a re-vote. The frightening thing about this is that there are only 24 members on this committee and one was absent, so with 23 possible votes, the final vote was 12-14.
BUT, if 12 people actually voted in favour of the bill, that would leave only 11 against.
Keep in mind, this isn't highly corrosive stuff.
The bill is talking about "orphaned works" which are those works that will never again see the light of day because no owner claims them. It is likely that when the copyright expires in 70 years, with nobody to preserve them, or assign their rights to a publisher who can, these works will be completely lost to humanity. This legislation would seek to prevent this and increase the overall value to humanity with NO money lost by putting them in public domain.
Nobody is arguing that this is a bad idea, but the recording industry lobbies see it as the "sharp end of the sword" when it comes to copyright reform, so they will fight against it vehemently.
If you live in Europe, write to your MEP. Vote fraud is no joke.
Re:It's only a committee (Score:5, Insightful)
This legislation would seek to prevent this and increase the overall value to humanity with NO money lost by putting them in public domain.
As there is a vast overproduction of entertainment today the competition is for the consumers time. Thus, any material that is presented for free cuts into the revenue stream of the for-profit production companies, and even worse, entrenches the idea that entertainment might come for free.
Remember, these companies consider basically any time spent not giving them money stealing.
Use of the word Basically (Score:2)
The word "basically" is improper in your last sentence. It should be removed, or replaced with the word "provably".
See..grammar natzi-ism -can- be used to advance the dialog... 8-)
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The bill is talking about "orphaned works" which are those works that will never again see the light of day because no owner claims them. It is likely that when the copyright expires in 70 years, with nobody to preserve them, or assign their rights to a publisher who can, these works will be completely lost to humanity.
Wait. Don't most of our historical documents and records meet this description? Yow!
Nobody is arguing that this is a bad idea, but the recording industry lobbies see it as the "sharp end of the sword" when it comes to copyright reform, so they will fight against it vehemently.
Oh. Well at least it's for a good cause.
This may be an error (Score:4, Interesting)
As someone pointed out below, the actual legislation passed by a vote of 22-0-1.
There is perhaps some amendment that failed under unusual circumstances, but I can't find it anywhere in the documentation.
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How do you determine what is an orphan work? (and who gets to make that determination?)
I bet Warner or Fox or MGM or Sony or EMI or Universal or Electronic Arts or Disney or any other major entity with a large body of work will have all kinds of things they own the copyright to but dont even know they own. (including all the stuff they may have picked up through acquisitions and mergers)
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Re:It's only a committee (Score:5, Informative)
The sad thing is, hundreds and perhaps thousands of films and sound recordings created before the mid 1960's are deteriorating at such a rapid rate that by the time any of this copyright mess ever gets sorted, they'll be gone forever.
Huge numbers of them are rotting away in vaults, with even well-known films such as Gone With The Wind apparently having to be made from later copies now because the original film masters are basically rotted to nothing.
Some Hollywood studios have however, invested the proper resources into caring for these historical cultural artifacts. Disney for one, keeps their film stock in better climate-controlled condition than the US Government keeps the Constitution.
There's a reason movies like Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp are in the vault for the next 50 years. It was determined that they would create new digital masters of the films and keep the originals stored safely while we wait for better and more permanent storage options to be invented for film transfer - in which case they will make new masters on that storage medium with the current digital masters used to work as a clean copy in case of further film deterioration of the original stock. Then the originals will more than likely finally be destroyed just due to rot and the process of transfer.
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One way to do it would be to pay a tax for everything that you want to keep under copyright. This could be a token tax even as low as â1 per work per year, but not paying the tax would place the work in the public domain. These folks are so keen to sue whenever they see someone violating their copyrights they ought to know what copyrights they own. This way the government has a tax record that can tell everyone who owns what.
Re:It's only a committee (Score:5, Insightful)
A tax or any other kind of payment would be complicated to administer. It'd require clever handling of works that are published and developed over time - such as a Wikipedia page or OpenSSH.
With any copyright discussion, the elephant in the room has to be the length of copyright terms. Drop the terms down to far more reasonably limits and we see many such problems go away. Publishers can continue to benefit from older works, so long as they can find ways to enhance them, thus creating a derivative work that is subject to a fresh copyright term. They already do this for movies, either through adding fresh content or by remastering.
Why we allow copyright beyond 15 years for anything at all is to me a travesty. A publisher that cannot make a reasonable return within 15 years really should think long and hard about their business model and the quality of their work.
Re:It's only a committee (Score:4, Interesting)
Easy: it's impossible to purchase. You either sell the stuff, or lose the right to it.
Re:It's only a committee (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares? If you live in Europe, or anywhere else for that matter, start scanning those books and put them up on the web. There are places like formerly library.nu [wikipedia.org] (now defunct) which will accept the scans, and replicate them. Fuck the publishers, and fuck the politicians. They can't be trusted with our human heritage.
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vote fraud (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess that's the next step for the Conservatives in Canada... instead of suppressing the vote by misdirecting people away from polls, they'll just send 110% of the electorate to ensure victory.
Democracy is withering all over the world, as good people do... not quite enough.
99%? (Score:5, Funny)
How can that even happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't some big election with millions of votes getting counted. This is 23 people in a room, 12 on one side, 11 on the other, and the eleven declaring themselves the victors while the twelve just shrug and accept it. Do the people on this committee care so little for democracy that they just blithely accept it when their opponents' imaginary friends cast ballots?
Re:How can that even happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
A re-vote was requested, immediately when this discrepancy came to light. Which I may assume is the moment the results are given - it's not that hard to add up.
This re-vote was denied however, leaving two important questions open. How come the votes were counted so wrong, with so small numbers? And why was this re-vote denied?
Re:How can that even happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
Better question: Why isn't a re-vote automatic in this kind of circumstance? Or, why is it even possible to deny a re-vote after such an obvious error? This is why politicians fail us...anyone with half a brain would implement more sensible procedures.
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I was about to make a smug comment about how those zany citizens in Europe need to demand better accountability from their political representatives.
Then I remember that I live in this U.S.. Where the politicians have purported to make this law, despite the Constitution rendering it void the moment it was penned. And then people salute it regardless, because it was signed and must therefore be official.
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For those of you playing at home, the link that Slashdot invisibled from my post was: http://nothingchanged.org/ [nothingchanged.org]
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I've the feeling that US politicians have less accountability than European politicians. Well save the ones on EU parliament maybe...
And in this committee case, I would expect the votes are not anonymous. So it should be known who voted how. That's at least the normal situation when votes are done - and how voters can know how certain politicians think. I hope the case will roll on a bit, not as much because it's about copyright but for the apparent vote discrepancy. I'd really like to know how that came to
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And why was this re-vote denied?
Just theorizing here..
It seems to me that re-votes could be frowned upon because the act of releasing the results of the first vote might effect the second votes outcome.
The problem isnt this specific vote. The problem is obviously their voting method. Holding a re-vote doesn't address the problem.
Re:How can that even happen? (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't some big election with millions of votes getting counted. This is 23 people in a room, 12 on one side, 11 on the other
Yes, this is exactly the situation. Say I'm a big multi-national corporation...
Show me the contact info for millions of people. Sorry, but I'll just pass that on to marketing for now.
Now, give me the run-down on 23 people in a room making decisions on copyright reform. Wait, there's no need, I already know about them, and, what's more, their checks are in the mail.
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This is Europe. They get cheques, not checks.
Balance that out (Score:2)
Just send them a few of the negative votes received by Al Gore in Florida, then the universe will be in equilibrium again.
Time to complain... (Score:3, Interesting)
democracy in action (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't have one. The Yanks don't have one, nor do the poms.
When was the last time THE PEOPLE had a REAL VOTE on how their country worked?
What we have is an obscene extension of the patent system extended into a politically domineering overlord system. We vote for a bunch of self interested morons to make stupendously bad decisions, rewarded richly for doing nothing or worse, followed by being given the chance to revote on our next oppressors when the previous ones fail (but only when they let us).
This isn't democracy. As article shows, it is corrupt.
This one billion line program has been hacked together for too many years. Too many exceptions. Time for a rewrite.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Great News For The US Trade Imbalance! (Score:3)
The minutes of the meeting disagree (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=COMPARL&reference=PE-483.867&format=PDF&language=EN&secondRef=01 [europa.eu]
"The Committee adopted the amended Commission proposal and the draft legislative resolution by 22 votes in favour and 1 abstention"
Re:The minutes of the meeting disagree (Score:5, Informative)
Yes they adopted the amended proposal. But the vote this article is about is a vote on an amendment, not the adoption of the proposal.
Re:The minutes of the meeting disagree (Score:5, Informative)
Falkvinge refers to that meeting i JURI on march 1st. Nowhere in the minutes is the voting results he refers to mentioned. Where are those?
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Parent needs to be modded up.
Re:The minutes of the meeting disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Anti-EU story turns out to be manufactured or grossly exaggerated. Color me surprised. If these kind of stories didn't turn out to be BS 99% of the time, I'd be a lot more concerned.
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http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=COMPARL&reference=PE-483.867&format=PDF&language=EN&secondRef=01 [europa.eu]
"The Committee adopted the amended Commission proposal and the draft legislative resolution by 22 votes in favour and 1 abstention"
This is apparently about a vote on one of the amendments to the proposal. The minutes linked in the parent list accepted amendments, but don't give votes on the individual amendments. Similarly, the committee voting records ( see here [europa.eu]) don't seem to include the outcomes. It should be possible to check however, as the meetings are recorded:
The vote occurred during this session [europa.eu]
Unfortunately, the wmv sound doesn't seem to work with flip4mac and I get all interpretations at the same time, so I can't check it n
Working mothers? (Score:2)
A lot of members must've brought their kids to work [euronews.net] that day.
Text of proposal (Score:5, Informative)
Can be found here: http://pippi.euwiki.org/doc/CELEX:52011PC0289:EN [euwiki.org]
Interesting stuff, hopefully it'll eventually pass. In short, if you do a "diligent search" and are unable to locate a rightsholder, the work will be considered orphan. This is basically an area "between" copyright and public domain; you're allowed to reproduce the work "for the purposes of digitization, making available, indexing, cataloguing, preservation or restoration."
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But how much is dilligent? Somehow I doubt a fre google queries will count. Large companies may be able to hire a historian to go and trawl through old newspapers of the period looking for advertisments or reading actor biographies in hope of finding a passing reference, but that effectively excludes amateurs who don't have the time or money for that level of checking.
It's actually defined int he text too.
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Doy, there's a whole list of appropiate sources at the end of the document.
Funny it it were true (Score:3, Informative)
It would be funny if the story was actually true. However, the official press release of the EU parliament states:
"MEPs (Members of the european parliament) unanimously approved a mandate for Lidia Geringer de Oedenberg (S&D, PL), to start talks with the Council to agree reach an agreement on the legislation.
Ms Geringer de Oedenberg said "This regulation would finally make it possible to get some hidden treasures out of the closet and make them available to the general public. Now it is time to start negotiating with national governments and stand up for our points"."
So to sum it up, one wannabe journalist/blogger picks up something from an unreliable source, quotes an MEP who didn't even post anything about this "scandal" on his own blog, and suddenly this is big news?
Video of the voting (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Video of the voting (Score:5, Informative)
It includes the following documents for this dossier:
* Text proposed by the EU Commission [europa.eu]
* Committee rapporteur's draft report, with her proposed amendments [europa.eu] (1 to 48)
* Amendments proposed by other members of the committee [europa.eu] (49 to 170)
* Opinion of the Culture committee (CULT), and their proposed amendments [europa.eu] (CULT 1 to CULT 55)
* Opinion of the committee on the Internal Market (IMCO), and their proposed amendments [europa.eu] (IMCO 1 to 41).
Unfortunately there does not appear to be a copy of the "Compromise Amendments", including the disputed amendment in question, "Compromise 20". One of the MEPs complains in the video at the end of the agenda item (10:51) that the text of these were only circulated on the night before the meeting.
It's not unusual for new texts to appear as heads get bashed together in the days immediately before the actual voting (in fact, it is an essential part of the system); but in this case they don't appear to have been placed on the website, or at any rate I didn't know where to find them.
The amended report from JURI, consolidating the results of these votes, appears now to have been formally prepared with the document reference A7-0055/2012, though I couldn't find the text of it yet on the Parliament website. This will now go forward for a short debate before the whole parliament, before voting on the amendments proposed by JURI, the amendments proposed by the other two committees, and any other amendments to the Commission text proposed by a sufficient number of MEPs.
Re:Video of the voting (Score:4, Informative)
Seems unverifiably (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Is there a valid source on this? (Score:3)
This just seem to be a bunch of blogs linked to each other. Where can we verify that 113% percent voted? I have no idea what that means.
The automatic assumption is that there was voter fraud but it's possible there is some procedural thing going on here. I have no way to verify anything because these links always use themselves or a sister site for authentication. That doesn't work.
Anyone have a legitimate link?
healthy democracy (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
It might as well had been the people voting against the reform doing it, knowing it would be scrapped because they didn't expect to win if the vote had commenced in a proper way.
They could have just retaken the vote, this time making sure people didn't cast a vote more than once. Getting a proper vote tally isn't rocket science.
Rubbish (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I feel that the European parliament is far more likely to do the right thing than the British one, simply because (a) it is far more diverse and (b) it has members from countries who know that war is a really bad thing.