Re: [Patents] Retroactivity of the law

["Christian Beauprez" <beauprez@beauprez.fsnet.co.uk>]

>In France recently, the government decided to limit the number of months
paid
>to unemployed people retroactively. People appealed and the Governement
lost
>in court. Yesterday, the governement announced he would raise new taxes to
>pay for compensation.

This kind of sums up what is wrong with democracy today (speaking globally).
The government do something that is illegal and are found to be liable. Then
they raise taxes so that the tax payer has to foot the bill for their
incompetence. Effectively the tax payers have to pay their own compensation.
I obviously chose the wrong proffession when I went into web design!

>Now, I realise that the main target of these lawyers are not free software
or
>entrepreneurs: it is Europe, they want Europe to pay the bill. How could we
>not realise it before?

I know what you mean. The more I hear from the legal profession at large,
the less faith I have that the citizens actually have any say as to the laws
that govern them. Even when we have explicit laws, they always find a
"clever" way around them that enables them to interpret the laws
diametrically opposite of how they were intended- quite frankly it disgusts
me..

I think that your example of the French system is very good, and hopefully
with courts taking a more pro-active stance on this kind of contempt for the
law there maybe a precident that can be persued.

 I fear that in Britain there is so little opposition to illegal
corporatocracy amongst the ruling elite that I really doubt that we are
living in a democracy, rather more an "illusion of choice". I have just
heard today that some of our "representatives" at Wipo are now proposing a
new broadcast law that would give broadcasters a right to restrict public
domain content. (This is also illegal under Berne.. The reclassification of
public domain content)  It seems like there is a full scale assault on any
rights to freedom of information that we once enjoyed (even with work that
is over 70 years old!).

Sincerely,

Christian Beauprez