[Beds] Fwd: [Free-sklyarov-uk] FFII-UK update (software patents)

[Tom Chance]

A letter to your local MP this weekend might be a good idea...

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: [Free-sklyarov-uk] FFII-UK update (software patents)
Date: Saturday 15 Nov 2003 4:51 pm
From: James Heald <j.heald at ucl.ac.uk>
To: ffii-uk <ffii-uk at ffii.org.uk>, fsfe-uk at gnu.org, fsfe-ie at fsfeurope.org, 
free-sklyarov-uk at xenoclast.org

New things on the FFII-UK website:

Summary of the latest situation:
	http://www.ffii.org.uk/latest.html

Extracts from the US Government FTC report, which is *devastating* about
software patents.
	http://www.ffii.org.uk/ftc/ftc.html

Much expanded commentary on important things in the Parliament
amendments which the Commission want to chuck out again:
	http://www.ffii.org.uk/nov2002.html

Side-by-side comparisons of the Parliament text and the Council draft text:
	http://www.ffii.org.uk/recitals.html
	http://www.ffii.org.uk/articles.html


Reminder:

The Coreper decision on how to proceed with the Directive is expected
any day now.  We really need to get the message over to MPs this
weekend, if we are to stop a stitch-up on November 27.

If you have already written to your MP, please write/fax again, thanking
them for their previous prompt reply, and updating them about the
situation.   You may also like to tell them about the FTC report and
send them some of the extracts.

If you have not already written to your MP, we really need your help
*this weekend*.  See:
	http://www.ffii.org.uk/latest.html
	http://www.ffii.org.uk/council.html
for the latest situation, and general advice on how to be most effective
respectively.

As usual, please copy letters sent to
	uk-parl-sent @ ffii.org.uk
and MP replies to
	uk-parl-replies @ ffii.org.uk
It's really helpful if you could put the MP name and consituency in the
subject line, eg "Second letter to Sue Doughty MP (Guildford)".

With the first wave of letters, we stopped the Council of Ministers
meeting on November 10 from adopting their November 2002 draft unamended.

But unless we can stop it with another, even bigger wave of letters, the
Commission and the EU Presidency are pushing for the Ministers to adopt
a rushed hack of a text at their next Competitiveness Council meeting on
November 23.

Every letter counts.  Yours could be the one that tips the scales.


All best,

	James Heald,  FFII-UK.


[Feel free to forward all or any part of this email to anywhere it could
do some good. These four are the only groups it's been sent to, so it's
up to you to propagate it from here].










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