[spectre] Thank You Poland (Modified by Geert Lovink)

[Seth Johnson]

. . . for their role in stalling the EU Council's attempts to
legalize software patents in Europe.

Pictures: http://iidea.pl/~arturs/thankyou/
Story: http://wiki.ffii.org/Sejm050216En

After the EU Parliament passed their astounding draft of the
"Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented
Inventions," that had definitively excluded software from its
scope, the EU Council began a process of trying to pass a
completely antithetical document, anticipating being able to
benefit from forcing the EU Parliament to reintroduce their
amendments in the Second Reading of the law, at which time a much
greater majority is required.

Breaking with diplomatic protocols that the Council is
desperately trying to preserve, Poland stood up and opposed their
passing their draft as a mere formality (See
http://wiki.ffii.org/Cons041221En for details).

Norbert set up http://www.thankpoland.info/ and collected 30,000
thank you signatures.  At the pictures above you can see him
presenting them to the Polish Government with his signature charm
and warmth.

Seth

> http://wiki.ffii.org/Sejm050216En

Warsaw, 16 February 2005 -- Today 30,000 signatures of a "Thank
Poland" letter were handed over to the Polish Government at a
ceremony in the Polish Parliament. The ceremony took place during
a meeting of the European Union Affairs Committee of the Polish
parliament. Representatives of various ministries and members of
the European Parliament took part. In their speeches, they
criticised the incoherence of the European Council's current
software patent directive draft, which Poland is being forced to
approve, and they stressed that by objecting against the adoption
in the Fishery Council three times, Poland thereby at least won
the time needed by the European Parliament for launching a
restart of the procedure. The goal of Poland had been to make
sure that the Council would have to renegotiate its current text.

Story

More than 30,000 verified signatures from people all over the
world were on the "Thank Poland letter" given to Minister
Marcinski today.

On December 21, 2004 Poland had surprised everyone by insisting
that the EU Council's proposal for a software patent directive
should be taken off the agenda of that day's "Agriculture and
Fishery Council" meeting where the item had been slated for
debateless approval as a so-called "A-item".

The European Union Contacts Committee of Polish Parliament has
formally received the thank-you from programmers and computer
users on behalf of Poland as a whole.

Almost all Committee members were present as well as MEP Jerzy
Buzek, former (1997-2001) Prime Minister of Poland.

Government was represented by Minister for Education and Sport
Miroslaw Sawicki, Undersecretary of State for European Relations
Tadeusz Nowakowski and Undersecretary of State for Science and
Information Society and Technology Wlodzimierz Marcinski.

The agenda started with "A-items for Thursday's ECOFIN meeting".
After brief information about other planned A-items, the
Committee Chair, MP Robert Smolen asked for a status of the
software patents directive.

Minister Nowakowski shortly presented the directive's history,
expected developments and future procedural options. He pointed
out that is was not easy to block an A-item, especially for the
first time in December, and Poland did it three times and
achieved its procedural goal: European Parlament got time to
procede with the restart request.

Minister Marcinski said that this action was possible only with
support from the whole parliamentary Committee, which twice
expressed support for his actions. Also the wide political
support from all sides of political spectrum was important.
Restart is the best solution because it will make possible to
discuss and prepare new text in an orderly manner.

MEP Jerzy Buzek thanked the Committee for its support and said
that the restart motion should be described as a joint initiative
of all Polish MEPs from all parties. All of them lobied their
respective european parties to get such an impressive result of
JURI voting.

According to Norbert Bollow, who created the thankpoland.info
website, the introduction of software patents would fundamentally
infringe an essential human freedom right, comparable to
requiring politicians to ask some big companies for approval
before the politician is allowed to say something in parliament.
Even when only a small percentage of people have programming
skills or a seat in parliament, it is to everyone's benefit when
programmers like politicians are allowed to express themselves in
freedom.