

EU Green Party adopts the Pirate Party's position on copyright - sp332
http://www.greens-efa.eu/fileadmin/dam/Documents/Policy_papers/Common%20position%20on%20copyright%2028sept11_EN.pdf

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stfu
The Green Party has been notoriously flaky when it comes to individual rights.

One example is that with their help one of the largest scale surveillance acts
were pushed through the German parliament in 2005 (
<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Großer_Lauschangriff> GER).

Makes me really sceptically if this is is a heartfelt issue for them or just
some attempt to win voters of the pirate party over.

~~~
DevX101
In multiparty systems, a minority party (like the Green Party) will often
compromise on issues that are not on their core platform in order to get
support on their one or two key issues.

One of the key issues for the Green Party in Germany was the banning of
nuclear plants. They've had an enormous influence in actually getting Germany
to make a drastic change and abandoning nuclear energy. This was no small feat
as Germany is the leading European manufacturer and the home of Siemens, a
major producer of nuclear technology. Although Fukushima was the tipping
point, there had already been significant pressure on the German conservative
party to at least prevent additional construction of new plants.

Nevertheless, this success for the Green Party was due in part to them forming
coalitions to support non-core issues such as the one you've mentioned.

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0x12
This is not surprising and actually a textbook example of how single-issue-
parties see their ideas absorbed by parties with a more complete program.

It is actually a good thing, not a bad thing, as long as a political party
actually delivers on their campaign issues.

And therein lies the crux, more often than not these items become bargaining
chips.

Maybe democracy could be strengthened by putting penalties on the breaking of
campaign promises and non-performance on issues from the various programs.

It'd be great to see politicians and party bodies held accountable to the
promises they made to the electorate.

Already at least one party has written their program in the form of a
'contract', in that case there ought to be a penalty for breach of contract
too.

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qxb
Here's a list of parties that make up The Greens – European Free Alliance:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greens%E2%80%93European_Fre...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greens%E2%80%93European_Free_Alliance)

Interesting from a UK POV is that as well as the Green Party, the SNP and
Plaid Cymru are included, as members of the European Free Alliance.

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tzs
Why do they only want to legalize non-commercial file sharing? Why not all?

~~~
runn1ng
Try to think about yourself as a movie creator, for example. Or even an
investor.

You are sweating your blood, doing everything to get your movie made,
believing it will make you money in the future. Taking huge risks, if you are
an invetor, or spending huge amounts of time, if you are a moviemaker.

And then some asshole, who pays cheap buck for hosting, will make money on
YOUR creation, without you seeing any of the money he makes.

You have to balance the rights of the copyright holders and consumers' rights.

~~~
tzs
(Note: up voting you to counter the idiotic down vote you received)

That asshole who puts the movie up on cheap hosting and tries to make some
money off it will be swamped by all the people putting it up on cheap hosting
for free or on P2P networks for free.

That's my point--legalizing non-commercial file sharing but not legalizing
commercial file sharing has pretty much exactly the same outcome as legalizing
all file sharing without distinguishing between commercial and non-commercial.
All that distinguishing them accomplishes is make the law more complicated
because there will need to be some kind of definition of "commercial" and that
can get tricky.

I suspect they are making the distinction to try to make people think that
legalized non-commercial file sharing would not have much impact. They want
people to think of it as the kind of sharing you do when you loan your
neighbor a DVD, or borrow a CD and rip it...perhaps technically illegal but
because it is on such a personal level it isn't going to have a hugh impact.

~~~
icebraining
Filesharers may offer files on P2P networks for free, but they don't print
books or burn millions of DVDs for free. That would still be a privilege of
the copyright owner (and its licensees).

 _All that distinguishing them accomplishes is make the law more complicated
because there will need to be some kind of definition of "commercial" and that
can get tricky._

That already exists. For example, in the US copyright infringement is a civil
case, unless it's done for "commercial advantage or private financial gain",
then it becomes an actual crime¹. The EU law has also a bunch of
exceptions/fair use clauses that only apply to "non-commercial" use.

 _I suspect they are making the distinction to try to make people think that
legalized non-commercial file sharing would not have much impact. They want
people to think of it as the kind of sharing you do when you loan your
neighbor a DVD, or borrow a CD and rip it...perhaps technically illegal but
because it is on such a personal level it isn't going to have a hugh impact._

I doubt it; anyone who even considers voting for them knows that's not really
true. It's just to differentiate the intention, which is already extremely
important in most laws.

¹ <http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506>

~~~
kragen
> in the US copyright infringement is a civil case, unless it's done for
> "commercial advantage or private financial gain"

Unfortunately, the NET Act, passed in the wake of David LaMacchia leaving a
writable FTP directory on his server that was also world-readable and failing
to be convicted of anything, has redefined "private financial gain" to include
the expectation of receiving copies of data in return.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NET_Act>

