03-16-2012, 08:57 AM
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Confirmed User
Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 7,082
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European Parliament Blocks Copyright Reform With 113% Voter Turnout
http://falkvinge.net/2012/03/14/euro...voter-turnout/
Quote:
The vote in committee on March 1 was supposed to end that (or, more technically, recommend a course of ending that to the European Parliament as a whole). However, the copyright industry lobby won key points in the voting procedure with 14 votes against reform and 12 in favor of it, according to the just-published protocol. This is according to a fresh report from our Brussels office ? I cannot yet find the protocol on the EU?s web pages (which are notoriously disorganized; it may actually be published).
There?s a problem with this. There are 24 seats in the committee, and one group (non-inscrits) was absent, lacking deputies to fill that person?s vote. So, there should have been 23 votes at the most. But we just counted 12 votes for reform and 14 against. That?s 26.
Yes, your reactions are correct here ? that means that voter turnout on this copyright reform issue was 113%. Also, if there were 12 reform-friendly people with actual voting rights, then there would necessarily have been 11 against ? causing reform to prevail, and the copyright monopoly to be substantially weakened in the European Union in favor of preserving our cultural heritage.
This rather embarrassing issue was pointed out to the committee, the fact that there were three votes too many, and that these three votes determined the outcome. When this was done, along with formally requesting a re-vote, that re-vote on the points in question was denied.
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so a law that would have passed was blocked by the copyright side ballet box stuffing with enough extra votes to block the bill.
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“When crimes occur through the mail, you don’t shut the post office down,” Steve Wozniak
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