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I love Sweden

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piratePenguin:
http://openvideoalliance.org/2010/08/amelia-andersdotter-piratpartiet-mep-at-ovc/?l=en

--- Quote ---At 22 years old, Amelia Andersdotter is the youngest member of the European Parliament, representing a new Swedish political party. That’s interesting in its own right.

What’s perhaps more interesting is that she represents Piratpartiet, a political movement for freedom of information, transparent government, and intellectual property reform. Piratpartiet (“Pirate Party”) has a full legislative platform, but to many concerned copyright holders it’s just a platform to legitimize file sharing. Perhaps that’s because Piratpartiet recently announced its intent to host the Pirate Bay servers from inside the Swedish parliament, invoking parliamentary immunity.

Boosters of the Pirate Party insist that it’s not simply a political stunt. Instead, it’s a fork in the road: “New technology has brought us to a crossroads,” reads the party platform. Either we find new ways of compensating artists, and ask the market to adapt—they say—or we embrace ever more extensive government control and surveillance of what citizens do on the internet.

Copying and sharing are essential parts of the success formula for the web. And though the web has long been a wild west, with frontier zones of varying danger, it’s now an essential part of everyone’s lives.

There are fundamental questions we must be asking: how deeply should governments be involved in policing and protecting information? What expectation of privacy should web users expect? And how will creators be compensated in a thoroughly media saturated world?

Piratpartiet is the third largest political party in Sweden, and Amelia is its leading spokeswoman. Whether you agree with her or think she is destroying the creative economy, her perspective is pressingly relevant and interesting.

--- End quote ---
I had no idea the pirate party was so successful in Sweden. This is god-damned incredible to learn. Clearly, the people there have poorer morals or a better desire to make new technology fit in in a manner that brings them, as a society, forward.

Aloone_Jonez:
I agree with lots of the above, the trouble is ensuring people can still make some money from their creative works and not ruining the economy.

I think this is the start of a trend, a recent study found the majority of young people believe it's all right to freely download music of the Internet.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/357991/file-sharing-should-be-legal-say-young-brits

If this is the attitude of then how much of a future does strict copyright law have? It's only a matter of time before these young people end up in a position of power and unless their attitude changes they're bound to do something about it.

piratePenguin:

--- Quote from: Aloone_Jonez on  5 August 2010, 10:40 ---I agree with lots of the above, the trouble is ensuring people can still make some money from their creative works and not ruining the economy.
--- End quote ---
Well, I've said plenty about how I believe this will be resolved, certainly I think it is inappropriate to assume that without copyright (which was invented in relatively recent times), it would result in an artistic depression and so on and so forth. In fact, I've pointed out to friends that wrt films and tv shows, I think (in my opinion) we're in a depression of sorts now as studios make shit to get an extra shit film or remake or sequel out there or to drag out an otherwise great series (e.g. Lost). This is just my observation, but certainly with no copyright I can imagine a shift in the motivations of our artists will be in order (a good thing, I say).

However film and tv it seems to me would be more money-driven than for example music, where people will always write and perform because they love doing it.

Here's something mildly related to paying people - I haven't researched it much, but it's approaching a system that I always imagined would do good deeds in a free culture world. I may write more about this after I look into it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr

Aloone_Jonez:
There is no definitive proof that removing copyright law would not damage the economy and that lots of film, record and software companies wouldn't go out of business.

Removing copyright law would be something that once has been done would be very difficult to reverse.

I think that Kintaro made some perfectly valid points regarding contracts regardless of how much of a troll he is and Calum did too irrespective of his arrogant attitude.

There's a difference between not bothering to go after people who download files from Pirate Bay  and an outright elimination of all copyright and intellectual property law, which is what I think you're advocating. I think revoking such laws would have many unintended consequences, for example, the problem with Chinese companies ripping off our products is already bad enough but legalising it would mean we loose both our manufacturing and design to China. I think the idea that people will make enough voluntary contributions to pay an artist a fair wage very naive.

If copyright law is to be phased out, the correct way of doing so would be over a very long period of time, over centuries (the same amount of time it took to emerge), not immediately. At the moment, I don't think it should be phased out altogether, just reformed so the consumer gets more rights.

I was quite annoyed that other members (Kintaro and Calum spring to mind) assumed that other people here, such as me, have the same views on copyright as you, although I know that's not your fault.

piratePenguin:
Aloone, the almost-universally held assertion that (btw- strict) copyright is necessary to allow artists to thrive is something that I think hasn't been challenged in peoples heads (I'm referring to the majority of people). Imo there are many easily overlooked points and it turns out to be a complicated question rather than a simple one - this one about money. In the other thread I pointed out some things that I think are interesting but I haven't given a "proof" (this is not a word we should use). I know that I haven't written exhaustively to support this point about thriving artists (that may happen someday not so soon), but something I do feel strongly about is not about money or making a living (which is complicated as above) - it is about an individuals right to copy for society versus an artists right to control distribution. I believe that empowering the individual here makes the most sense (for reasons that any work is inspired by work the artist had their hands on, great artwork comes from something the artist takes from it that is not counted using $ signs, and reasons such as that) and that it would benefit society in an unforeseeable great manner (more pointedly).

Will you outline the copyright reforms you think are important? What consumer rights do you mean?

I do not see why copyright should go out over hundreds of years? Maybe it should be phased out slowly but I think a comparatively minuscule timescale makes sense. This isn't too important but I don't understand hundreds of years! I think it may be that copyright abolishment should be achieved when free culture is already successful - is this something you're getting at? That is certainly a respectable plan, and the only alternative is to get society to make a massive U-turn. Well, I think it all can't be knocked except for being ambitious.


edit: I have to remark about the contents in this "There is no definitive proof that removing copyright law would not damage the economy and that lots of film, record and software companies wouldn't go out of business". It's complicated about film and software, but I trust that almost all of the record companies will be dead and buried in a free culture world. People will be finding music from friends and other means, and connecting with artists where desirable to pay money direct! I'm sure that there will be a centralized (but open) platform similar to Apple's iTunes - except including all of the worlds media - because it will all be free, and where artists can register payment details so that people can contribute to them. Probably a system similar to how Flattr works will be popular, but this is all mostly an outside point. This edit is important because we need to notice that some of these differences are critical to mine and others pov.

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