[Marcus]

Most software will become illegal to use in Europe if this dangerous directive is adopted without proper amending.

The Commission *and the Council of Ministers are covertly pushing for unlimited patentability of software, heavily lobbied by multinationals and patent lawyers. They are ignoring the democratically voted decision of the European Parliament from 24 september 2003, which has the support of more than 300.000 citizens, 2.000.000 SMEs, dozens of economists *and scientists.

Enligt ett förslag ska mjukvarupatentlagarna i Europa ändras - vilket gör att man kan bli anklagad för brott mot patent för i princip vad som helst på nätet (det mesta är patenterat sedan tidigare). http://webshop.ffii.org/

http://www.gimp.org/ (förstasidan ändrad i protest mellan 5/4 - 15/4)

GIMP developers are living and working in Europe. The proposed changes to the European laws would put these developers at risk of being sued or threatened by companies who may hold patents that have been harmless so far (and unknown to the developers). Software patents are too easy to get and impede innovation instead of promoting it. Several studies have shown that software patents are bad for the economy in general, and could be a disaster for Free Software. Follow the links above for more details.