

Pirate Party wins a seat at the European Parliament - daviday
http://www.stockholmnews.com/more.aspx?NID=3368

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BjornW
I haven't read all comments yet, but some commenters seem to make the
presumption that copyright is about artists. It is not. It is about the
rightsholder which may in- or exclude artists. I'm writing this on my commute
so I don't have the research to back it up at the moment, but I remember
research has been done on the rightsholders and if I remember correctly only a
small percentage were creators and thus actively contributed to culture. The
larger percentage of the rightsholders were merely parasiting on ip rights
created by creators already dead or who (had to) sold their ip-rights off for
a meager sum. Copyright is therefor also less about incentive since it mostly
benefits those holding on the 'old' creations and milking it instead of
creating new works. I recommend reading the essays of Dutch professor Joost
Smiers. He makes some interesting (and some wacky) points and is an
interesting read.

~~~
Sam_Odio
Copyright law gives ownership rights to a work's creator. What (s)he does with
those rights (keep it, license it, sell it, or trade it) is his/her choice.
Just because they have made the choice to sell or bequeath the copyright
doesn't mean they didn't benefit from its existence.

Your point akin to saying that startup founders aren't rewarded for innovating
because a public company's stock is rarely owned by the company's original
founders.

~~~
asdflkj
One major difference: it takes a lot of work and resources to turn a startup
into a public company, but it takes little to turn an artistic work into a
product. One might argue that record labels provide most of their value by
finding good music, and saving customers the time it would take to do that on
their own. (IMO this view is far too charitable to the labels.) Even then,
internet is already doing this job better than the labels, and is still
rapidly improving. The law should keep up.

Saying that artists benefited from their arrangement with the labels is akin
to saying that indentured servants benefited from theirs. That is, true in a
narrow sense--the indentured servants did get food and shelter, didn't they?

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jgrahamc
From their manifesto:

"All non-commercial acquiring, using, bettering and spread of culture should
be actively encouraged. The Internet is filling the same function today as
popular education did a hundred years ago. It is something positive and good
for the development of society.

The copyright legislation must be changes so that it is made perfectly clear
that it only regulate use and copying of works done for commercial purposes.
To share copies, or in any other way spread or use someone else’s work, should
never be forbidden as long as it is done on an idealistic basis without the
purposes of commercial gain."

So, what's the motivation for me the author of a book or software to actually
write a book or software. Believe me that monetary gain is part of the
motivation.

If you take this route and say that all works must be freely shared then you
have to ask where 'artists' get their money from. If you do not give them a
supply of some money then you end up going back to the middle ages and
requiring that artists have benefactors who keep them alive.

Sharing a copy of my 'work' may well be non-commercial for the sharer, but
it's not non-commercial for me. In fact, I may well have lost money (of
course, there are some people who would never have spent the money in the
first place).

And the idealistic part about cultural works being good for people seems valid
to me, that's why we have art galleries, museums, education and libraries (of
books, CDs and DVDs) funded with public money.

~~~
sp332
If you don't care enough about writing the book, just don't write it. Someone
who cares (is internally motivated) enough, will write it or pay you to write
it for them (external motivation). We don't necessarily need legislation to
create an extra, artificial external motivation for artists, authors, etc.
Writers will write, artists will express themselves, and the world will
benefit with or without copyrights.

~~~
mynameishere
You're just wrong. Off the top of my head Dostoevsky and Sam Johnson and
Charles Dickens all openly wrote for the money. I don't doubt that almost all
authors do, without being so open about it.

~~~
gaius
It doesn't even matter if you're doing it _for the money_ , at the end of the
day you _need_ money to eat, have a roof over your head, blah blah. I'm not
sure society benefits if the only people who can create intellectual assets
are independently wealthy dilletantes.

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samueladam
I'm really happy they are bringing online people worries (privacy, narrower
copyright, less patents) to the european political level. I think this is an
important turning point, just like when the ecological ideas popped up.

Looks like they are organizing themselves to conquer the world :
<http://www.pp-international.net/>

~~~
limmeau
They got 0.9% in Germany, which, given that Germany contains almost nine times
the population of Sweden, is even more, although less impressive.

~~~
samueladam
Every election, I vote for another party because I'm disappointed by what the
people I've put my hopes in have done.

I've run out of parties and none would define what I want to fight for better
than the ideas behind the PP.

If they are opening a PP in my country, I will not only vote for them but
militate a long way.

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jacobian
Before y'all go celebrate the mainstreaming of copyright reform, keep in mind
that the white-only British National Party won _two_ seats in the same
election (<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/8088607.stm>).

So neo-Nazis are twice as well represented in the European Parliament as
copyright reformers.

Sigh.

~~~
adw
The Hungarians got three neo-fascists in too (this mob:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_a_Better_Hungary>, who have some
particularly scary ideas about a "Greater Hungary").

Geert Wilders' list in the Netherlands are close to as extreme, and they got
17% of the vote. And we've not even mentioned the Austrians. Oh, the
Austrians. Or Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National.

Neofascism is Europe's dirty little secret. It's just this is the first time
in maybe thirty years it's had significant electoral success in the UK. I
would say the Anglosphere, but there's Australia's Pauline Hanson, and
apartheid-era South Africa...

~~~
adw
Shouldn't really reply to myself, but:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/08/far-right-
europe...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/08/far-right-european-
parliament) summarises the situation pretty well.

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illumen
Innovation is defined as taking an existing idea and improving it.

Copyright inhibits innovation by putting up legal barriers to innovation.

This is the main reason why copyright is bad for innovation.

Making original ideas is a good thing, but improving existing ideas is much
more common, and useful. Copyright fails to help this, and indeed places
significant blocks to this.

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danw
The Open Rights Group (like an UK EFF) sent a survey to all British MEP
candidates to find out their opinions on copyright extension, data protection,
etc:

<http://euelection.openrightsgroup.org/>

They found the Green party did very well.

------
erlanger
This has been a banner year for pirates. ARRGH!

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mynameishere
It's a trivial, and a solved problem. You might as well vote for the anti-
prohibitionist party. Really pathetic. The kids today have way too much time
on their hands.

~~~
ThomPete
Pray tell how is it solved?

~~~
mynameishere
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet>

I don't think that's a perfect solution, but it gets at the real solution. If
people think you can solve a technical problem (privacy) with a political
movement, they are _hopelessly incorrect_.

~~~
krig
The political movement is to fight legislation that would make using something
like Freenet illegal. That is, it's not a fight to make your data private.
It's a fight to make it legal to have private data. If I'm not incorrect, it
is already illegal to withhold encryption keys to private data in the UK.

~~~
jgrahamc
Then why tie that fight to copyright? If that's what they want to fight then
they should make that their platform instead of going on about file sharing.

Truth is that they've wrapped up the file sharing in a blanket of privacy to
try to legitimize copying of copyrighted works.

~~~
wlievens
> Truth is that they've wrapped up the file sharing in a blanket of privacy to
> try to legitimize copying of copyrighted works.

Upvoted for honesty. Let's be intellectually honest and admit that many people
pirate stuff, not because they believe in freedom of information and privacy,
but because it's cheap. I don't want to state an opinion here or there, but
let's at least keep the discussion honest.

~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
At least I can speak for myself. I'm a pirate. I download most of my music and
movies, buy the rest in 3rd party stores and pawn shops. I dont buy games any
more after all the crapware on them. My biggest things I download are books.
In fact, I even have most of my collection duplicated digitally (using free
formats) along with nice bound books. Even that e-paper stuff sucks. I just
like nicely bound, hopefully acid-free paper bound books. And yes, I usually
buy what books I download... most anyways.

I even downloaded that Wolverine workprint. Not a great movie, but OK.

I can also remember the times I've been burnt in actually buying media. I
remember the C64 games we bought that used disk drive_destroying calls for
anti piracy. I can recall movies that didnt play and the money we lost cause
we couldnt return them. I remember being screwed around with on DVD region
garbage cause we _bought_ legit dvds.

I've been burned by countless types of media and "policies" regarding them,
but never books. Even the bookstores have cafes in which they're cool for you
to take a book that you havent purchased to peruse. They're like for-profit
libraries. The only thing I wish is that book dealers would get their act
together and publish easily searchable text with each book... Oh, and these
days, vinyl is another thing I dont mind buying. Now, much vinyl comes with a
scratch-off card that the publisher provides all MP3s of what's on the album.
Cool and retro, and vinyl sounds good.

It's a really a "What Provides Value?" game. Books and vinyl+mp3s provide
perceived value. Badly done DVDs and CDs and crippled games do not. The
pirates provide better quality product with no hassle in opposition to the
DVD/CD/game sellers.

