On 2004-06-09 10:59:26 +0100 BenEBoy psychoferret@ukonline.co.uk wrote:
I've been talking to a friend who works for the greens, who said that the party have been hearing from a lot of people that they will be voting green because of patents. So it looks like it's more of an issue than I thought.
Remember, software patents could cover data processing, so it is a pretty broad problem.
CON, LAB and LD have also been voting for more copyright enforcement measures in the last european parliament. That has annoyed some in the free media/indymedia and social forums and those groups are pretty good at spreading messages.
Europe-wide, most strongly against these issues were Green/EFA, GUE/NGL (left, maybe Respect if elected), EDD (right, inc UKIP) and then ELDR (inc Lib Dems, who voted the other way). The large PSE (socialist, inc Lab) and EPP-DE (popular, inc Con) coalitions generally voted for the commission or council views. I'm not sure which ED would join if elected, if any. BNP, ProLife and Independents are likely to be "non-attached" because they're either too extreme for those coalitions or "free vote"rs.