European Parliament Blocks Copyright Reform With 113% Voter Turnout

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."

vote fraud

[From A Far Away Land]

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.

Time to complain...

[solidraven]

I don't know about you guys. But I'm writing a complaint and asking for an investigation into this later today. These sort of things are simply unacceptable and should be stopped, no matter what the subject of the vote is.

Re:How can that even happen?

[pegasustonans]

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.

This may be an error

[SecurityTheatre]

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.

Rubbish

[Kupfernigk]

The main reasons for the negativity directed against the EU in the UK are:

• Rupert Murdoch wanted the UK to be a low-cost production area for his newspapers with poor worker protection - the EU prevents that
• If the EU survives its early problems - so far no Civil War like the one the USA had on its way to union - it will eventually have more power than the US, and the US doesn't like that
• Most European countries have standards of journalism which embarrass the likes of the Sun and the Mail - even Bild is moving up market slowly - and UK media owners are afraid of EU regulation
• Small Conservative businesses who don't see why they shouldn't exploit their workforces
• People who still think there is a British Empire.

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.

Re:Math

[chrismcb]

I never understood why so many people care about the thermometer in relation to when water changes state. Sure a scientist cares, but the average lay person?

Re:It's only a committee

[Hentes]

Easy: it's impossible to purchase. You either sell the stuff, or lose the right to it.

The choice for F has a lot of sense in it

[Anonymous Coward]

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:Math

[wed128]

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 half-gill units, but there you go.

The imperical system may seem arbitrary, but there is justification for a lot of the different units.
that's not to say it's better then the metric system, which makes the math so much easier.

Re:Math

[MightyYar]

C is just as arbitrary as F. Temperature scales are one place where the metric system adds nothing of value. Everything must me converted to Kelvin in most useful calculations anyway.

The original F scale was based on the temperature of icy seawater (0) and the human body temperature (100), which are no more or less arbitrary than the boiling and freezing point of pure water. In fact, icy seawater and a human body are much easier to come by, depending on where you live :)

I'm a big fan of meters, grams, and liters - mostly because I work in engineering. But I really don't care what temperature scale I'm working in, except when I'm doing thermodynamic analysis - and even then the conversion is trivial and generally has to be done anyway (because most thermometers are in C or F and not K or R).