This evening in Trinity College Dublin Richard Stallman gave a talk about Software Patents or to better avoid the propoganda maybe I should refer to them as exclusion rights. He is an accomplished speaker and even with the fairly dry material got a few laughs, and had some powerful analogies, comparing patents to land mines and describing patents as something to be feared similar to the risk of mugged on the street.
Most of the questions afterwards were answered with "I don't know you'd have to ask a lawyer". Patents are complex and incomprehensible mess, the best laws are straighforward and obvious and do not require legal training to understand.

Three candidate MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) made an appearance, two from my voting area, one of whom already had my vote and it will certainly heavily influence my vote for the other. Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to bring this to the attention to some of the other candidates. [Update: Neither of the two got elected, one of them was a sitting MEP from the Green party and I was dissappointed she didn't get reelected but it was as predicted, because the main parties belatedly realised the importance of the European Parliament and got their act together.]

If you are interested in reading more The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) has plenty to say.

He Gave a similar speech on software patents the Friday before in London but from the article at the Register it seems it seems he used some more colourful analogies that time.