In the EU, if a Member of the Parliament presses the wrong button on a vote, they can have the record amended to show what their true intention was, but the vote is binding.
Today, the European Parliament voted to pass the whole Copyright Directive without a debate on Articles 11 and 13 by a margin of five votes.
But actually, a group of Swedish MEPs have revealed that they pressed the wrong button, and have asked to have the record corrected. They have issued a statement saying they’d intended to open a debate on amendments to the Directive so they could help vote down Articles 11 and 13.
We lost on a technicality, and there is no recourse.
This is the most significant piece of internet regulation ever undertaken by a democratic government (that is, excluding Russian and Chinese internet regulations). It will do untold damage to the whole internet.
And it’s because someone pushed the wrong button.
It’s the Edward Tufte apocalypse. It’d be funny, if it didn’t make me want to smash my laptop.
SD have now announced that they’ll add to the record that they intended to vote differently, but that doesn’t change the vote itself. When it comes to voting buttons in the European Parliament, what’s pressed is pressed.
Thus, Parliament was stopped by only a single vote from voting on the decision to delete Articles 11 and 13 of the Directive. One wrongly-pushed button fewer, and the result for all of Europe could’ve been very different.
Sweden Democrats & Swedish Social Democrats Defeat Motion to Amend Articles 11 & 13 [Emanuel Karlsten]
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Cory Doctorow
I write books. My latest are: a YA graphic novel called In Real Life (with Jen Wang); a nonfiction book about the arts and the Internet called Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age (with introductions by Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer) and a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it’s the sequel to Little Brother). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.
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