# Lessig on democracy in Europe

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2005-03-08T23:27:38Z


Lessig Blogthe "democracy" that is Europe

So despite the fact that the EU Parliament has rejected software patents for Europe, and despite the fact that there is not a qualified majority of member states supporting it, the EU Council has now endorsed their draft of the "Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions."

This struggle continues to astonish me. There's no good economic evidence that software patents do more good than harm. That's the reason the US should reconsider its software patent policy.

But why Europe would voluntarily adopt a policy that will only burden its software developers and only benefit US interests is beyond me.

They call it a "democracy" that they're building in Europe. I don't see it. Instead, they have created a government of bureaucrats, more easily captured by special interests than anything in the US.I guess this is "free" as in free markets, not free software or free beer. I am a capitalist, but looking at the damage that monopolies and strong commercial interests are wreaking on the world, I begin to question the "sanity" of our markets. Now that our media companies and it appears are policies are traded for cash, what is there to check the continuing consolidation of power and diminishing of democracy?





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