July 7th EP committee vote to create traffic snooping

[Alex Hudson]

MJ Ray wrote:
> One of the pro-3-strikes report-leaders is West Midlands Tory MEP 
> Malcolm Harbour, who I think I remember from swpat.
> [..]
>
> Why is a UK Tory looking such an pro-American entrenched-industry proxy?
>   

Your memory is correct, and I've never figured out where his positions 
on IP come from. For a Tory, he seems to be quite set on brutal 
over-criminalisation, although perhaps that's what Europe does for you.

His main interests seem to be the car industry and small business, and 
his academic background is engineering. I wonder if the IP concerns have 
come over from the auto side of things (where, imho, there is very 
little innovation, so incremental advances "need" to be protected), but 
how that squares with the small business knowledge, I don't know - 
although many people believe strong IP is good for small business, so 
perhaps that's it.

Cheers,

Alex.