I love Sweden

[piratePenguin]

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

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.

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]

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.

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.

[Aloone_Jonez]

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 .

I agree, it isn't that simple.

I haven't given a "proof" (this is not a word we should use).

The trouble is that proof it's the kind of word you need to use to get laws changed, no government is going to do anything they think will  have a high risk of damaging the economy.

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

The main problems with current copyright law need to be fixed.

Before you buy a piece of software you should be allowed to see the EULA before you hand over the money. Ideally I'd like to make a law that says you should be able to return software if it doesn't suit your needs, although I realise that it wouldn't be workable as many people would buy it, pirate it and return it for a refund.

Business owners should not have to pay for a licence to have the radio on in their premises: the record companies already get royalties from the radio station and shouldn't be allowed to claim them again.

Fair dealing should be enforced more rigorously, there should be a list of rights given to the consumer which should override whatever is in the EULAs and common sense should be used when applying copyright and damage cases:

• A hip-hop artist shouldn't have to pay someone royalties because they used a five second sample of their music.
• Schools and ammeter dramatics companies should be exempt for paying royalties because they used some music for a performance.
• if someone buys software on a device such as a hard drive or flash memory which can be easily wiped or fail, they should have the right to make a back up copy.
• The length of an EULA intended for a home user should be restricted to something sensible such as 1000 words - it's not reasonable for someone to have to read through several pages of legal bullshit. This will probably effect the GPL too. ;D

I think that copyright should die with the owner, there's no point in rewarding someone's children for something one of their parents did nearly a century ago - that's what inheritance is for!

I'm also for a fixed term on copyrights which isn't tied to the life of the person who created it but to the owner. If a company pays someone to create something for them, the company owns the copyright for 50 years, regardless of whether the person dies or whatever and the company may sell the copyright but doing so won't renew it. I think 50 years is probably too long but it can be reduced in future.

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!

It's taken copyright that long to materialise so it's only logical that dismantling it should take just as long.

Sudden changes have always been detrimental to the economy, even if they do good in the long term. Think of all the businesses which depend on strong copyright laws and how much of a large proportion of the economy they occupy. Changing the law over a very long period of time would allow them to adapt or slowly decline, suddenly changing the law would trigger a gigantic collapse in the software, music and film industries which is the last thing we want.

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 would 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.

Of course if the record companies died, there'd still be music but it would be more like it used to be before they existed in the first place. People would still pay to see classical concerts, live bands, musical theatre and opera but we wouldn't have polished music videos or tracks. Everything would become more amateur, with less professionals and more people who make music purely for fun rather than money. A similar thing would probably happen to the film industry: no more multimillion blockbusters, just small films made by people who do it for fun, probably more like YouTube than Universal.

Again, go back to what I said before when you consider what a sudden change in the law would do: imagine the impact on Hollywood,.

[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 .

I agree, it isn't that simple.

okay

I haven't given a "proof" (this is not a word we should use).

The trouble is that proof it's the kind of word you need to use to get laws changed, no government is going to do anything they think will  have a high risk of damaging the economy.

Indeed - no government will ever change these laws because of this conversation here. But once the world starts having this conversation the technical information and studies can we worked on - I don't have any resources to work on this, I don't claim that I do. My only goal on here is to point out some under-thought points, and I will consistently make these points in such a conversation because it would be a useless conversation to listen to "without copyright we would have no art".

Of course if the record companies died, there'd still be music but it would be more like it used to be before they existed in the first place. People would still pay to see classical concerts, live bands, musical theatre and opera but we wouldn't have polished music videos or tracks. Everything would become more amateur, with less professionals and more people who make music purely for fun rather than money. A similar thing would probably happen to the film industry: no more multimillion blockbusters, just small films made by people who do it for fun, probably more like YouTube than Universal.

I like that you said 'probably' in the last sentence, but we don't know that the best artists won't thrive to create the best artwork - as that will be necessary to A. get rich, famous and B, most importantly - to satisfy themselves.

The renaissance time saw some of the most impressive artwork that was ever seen - artists received money through patrons who liked their work - I am thinking about a much similar system, except the patron can be a collective.

Again, go back to what I said before when you consider what a sudden change in the law would do: imagine the impact on Hollywood,.

We can iron out the implementation details later, of course it won't be a case of "everyone, I'm taking your copyright off you tomorrow" - firstly people will be on board, and creators will be given time to start getting their heads right as to how they'll "pay bills" (or make a shit load more money), and media cartels given the time to wonder can they play a part in this great new thing (most likely they can't - as from now on creators will probably deal with the public directly and collect 100% or close of what people are coughing up for them).

Is this really in line with your frame of mind: (this is how most people 'comprehend' it)
 - Lack of copyright means ticket sales are going to sink AND
 - DVD sales are going to sink AND
 - merchandise sales are going to sink AND
 - nobody is going to give them any money! AND
 - they are going to either stop creating films or they will be seriously low quality
This is exactly what needs to be challenged. As you said above:

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 .

I agree, it isn't that simple.

But it seems like you do have it figured out?

So ya know, I'm just trying to say that in my mind this is all complicated. I don't know that Peter Jackson will/won't be able to get another budget of ~<$300m together to create a new war trilogy. Note that LOTR trilogy raked in almost three billion according to wikipedia (of course, that's with copyright) - that's enough money to last him ten trilogies. I hope that it's only people with a true passion for the (new) business who can get together money such as $300m. Btw, I also don't think that removing copyright lives and dies on the answer to this question.

[Aloone_Jonez]

The renaissance time saw some of the most impressive artwork that was ever seen - artists received money through patrons who liked their work - I am thinking about a much similar system, except the patron can be a collective.

You can't compare then with now, back then you couldn't duplicate the artwork at no cost at all which you can do today.

Again, go back to what I said before when you consider what a sudden change in the law would do: imagine the impact on Hollywood,.

We can iron out the implementation details later, of course it won't be a case of "everyone, I'm taking your copyright off you tomorrow" - firstly people will be on board, and creators will be given time to start getting their heads right as to how they'll "pay bills" (or make a shit load more money), and media cartels given the time to wonder can they play a part in this great new thing (most likely they can't - as from now on creators will probably deal with the public directly and collect 100% or close of what people are coughing up for them).

Is this really in line with your frame of mind: (this is how most people 'comprehend' it)
 - Lack of copyright means ticket sales are going to sink AND
 - DVD sales are going to sink AND
 - merchandise sales are going to sink AND
 - nobody is going to give them any money! AND
 - they are going to either stop creating films or they will be seriously low quality

To an extent that's probably true but I doubt it will kill enough the film industry, just drastically reduce the amount of money coming in which enough to cause a huge recession.

Don't forget that sales of DVDs, merchandise and tickets no longer make  the creator of the film and money now because you've just got rid of copyright law:

• Any company can legally sell DVDs without giving and money to the creators of the film.
• Anyone can buy a film projector, open their theatre without paying any money to the film company
• Anybody can now manufacture merchandise without sharing their profits with the creator of the film.

So where's the money coming from?

Maybe people will pay to watch the films being made?

Perhaps there will be less films and more theatre?

I don't think the current model for the film industry can continue to exist without copyright.

This is why I think totally eliminating copyright altogether is a bad idea, at least as things currently are. I think that keeping copyright and the right of the film creator to have contracts with DVD companies and theatres is a good thing. I just thing that the current system of aggressively enforcing copyright and going after people for downloading is unsustainable, without censorship and restriction of civil liberties.

[piratePenguin]

The renaissance time saw some of the most impressive artwork that was ever seen - artists received money through patrons who liked their work - I am thinking about a much similar system, except the patron can be a collective.

You can't compare then with now, back then you couldn't duplicate the artwork at no cost at all which you can do today.

The point is that the artwork was done back then, and people were getting paid for it.

Again, go back to what I said before when you consider what a sudden change in the law would do: imagine the impact on Hollywood,.

We can iron out the implementation details later, of course it won't be a case of "everyone, I'm taking your copyright off you tomorrow" - firstly people will be on board, and creators will be given time to start getting their heads right as to how they'll "pay bills" (or make a shit load more money), and media cartels given the time to wonder can they play a part in this great new thing (most likely they can't - as from now on creators will probably deal with the public directly and collect 100% or close of what people are coughing up for them).

Is this really in line with your frame of mind: (this is how most people 'comprehend' it)
 - Lack of copyright means ticket sales are going to sink AND
 - DVD sales are going to sink AND
 - merchandise sales are going to sink AND
 - nobody is going to give them any money! AND
 - they are going to either stop creating films or they will be seriously low quality

To an extent that's probably true but I doubt it will kill enough the film industry, just drastically reduce the amount of money coming in which enough to cause a huge recession.

Don't forget that sales of DVDs, merchandise and tickets no longer make  the creator of the film and money now because you've just got rid of copyright law:

• Any company can legally sell DVDs without giving and money to the creators of the film.
• Anyone can buy a film projector, open their theatre without paying any money to the film company
• Anybody can now manufacture merchandise without sharing their profits with the creator of the film.

So where's the money coming from?

Again, you're saying this will happen for sure. I agree it will happen, but it will be met with stigma I am certain, and you will not get significant numbers on board with this carry on. (people actually have a sense that people should work for what they get - and they will know that the movies etc are, by default, free)

Also, by far, more and more media consumption is happening in one location - that is our computers (and mobiles, which will be our music players and storage devices in the near future). In the future, all of our favorite bands, films, etc will be on there, and I've talked about some simple system where people can send out money to artists they enjoy. We might get people who pay 3 euro to watch a film with their girlfriend who go home and send 25 euro to the creators online. Or they might add them to their favorites so that at the end of each month 40 euro will be shared between all favorites. We might have rich movie buffs who'd love to call themselves patrons and who share 10,000 euro a month between their favorite film creators. Maybe other people will become famous for their patronage - locally or globally.

Wrt radio or tv stations, I'm sure that they will take pride in who they are contributing to, and that people will be aware of this.

There was a post I made in which I was looking for the average household expenditure on, as an example, music cds, but I didn't get any figures after some quick googling. I'm sure that this figure is not massive, and to keep the music flowing at the same pace we would need to achieve a fraction of the amount coming from donations - probably around 60% (this not accurate), because without copyright people will give money direct to artists, but today they do not get close to 100% from sales.

[Aloone_Jonez]

The renaissance time saw some of the most impressive artwork that was ever seen - artists received money through patrons who liked their work - I am thinking about a much similar system, except the patron can be a collective.

You can't compare then with now, back then you couldn't duplicate the artwork at no cost at all which you can do today.

The point is that the artwork was done back then, and people were getting paid for it.

Of course they were but you're still missing the point, you can't compare how things were before computers to now.

Copyright was created with the advent of technologies which could copy large volumes of artwork at a low price: namely the printing press. Before then, books had to be copied out  by scribes, a process so costly in itself, no one ever thought of copyright. If copying a piece of art is nearly as costly as creating it in the first place, so-called piracy isn't an issue so there's no need for copyright.

Now copying large of artwork is cheap, the price per copy is near zero and copyright exists to make the price artificially high to theoretically compensate the author.

Again, you're saying this will happen for sure. I agree it will happen, but it will be met with stigma I am certain, and you will not get significant numbers on board with this carry on. (people actually have a sense that people should work for what they get - and they will know that the movies etc are, by default, free)

Well I'm not saying it's certain and I don't want to get anyone on board with the idea of eliminating copyright because I think it's a silly idea.

Also, by far, more and more media consumption is happening in one location - that is our computers (and mobiles, which will be our music players and storage devices in the near future). In the future, all of our favorite bands,

But people still go to watch films at the cinema, buy CDs, DVDs and go to see live music. Many so-called industry experts have been predicting the end of cinemas for years but it's not happened, although lots of the smaller cinemas have closed.

films, etc will be on there, and I've talked about some simple system where people can send out money to artists they enjoy. We might get people who pay 3 euro to watch a film with their girlfriend who go home and send 25 euro to the creators online. Or they might add them to their favorites so that at the end of each month 40 euro will be shared between all favorites. We might have rich movie buffs who'd love to call themselves patrons and who share 10,000 euro a month between their favorite film creators. Maybe other people will become famous for their patronage - locally or globally.

This is  becoming a circular argument, you're assuming people will give enough to fund multimillion dollar films produced in Hollywood which I think is very naive.

Do you know how many people pay per download vs the amount of people who download for free?

Of course I could obtain figures for pay per downloads but pirate downloads aren't recorded so it's difficult to know.

I do believe that people will donate money but I don't think it will be enough to fund the current business model for the current film and music industries.

For a start you should look at how many people donate money to a certain open source project vs the amount of revenue made by a proprietary software vendor selling exactly the same product with a similar market share. If indeed such a comparison can be done, I'm pretty sure that the amount received in donations would be a fraction of what the proprietary vendor makes; this is the sort of comparison you need to make. Then of course you can't compare software to film and music as it's a collaboration between 100s of people not at few.

I suppose there are other sources of revenue such as advertising, for example  the producer could display company logos on billboards displayed in the scenery and mention their product names in the script but it might reduce the quality of the film and I doubt it will make as much money as DVDs, ticket sales, merchandise etc.

[piratePenguin]

The renaissance time saw some of the most impressive artwork that was ever seen - artists received money through patrons who liked their work - I am thinking about a much similar system, except the patron can be a collective.

You can't compare then with now, back then you couldn't duplicate the artwork at no cost at all which you can do today.

The point is that the artwork was done back then, and people were getting paid for it.

Of course they were but you're still missing the point, you can't compare how things were before computers to now.

But artists were getting by by using their skills to satisfy someone, or by simply impressing people with their work - no copies needed to be sold, that's the point I'm making. I wasn't suggesting what you think.

Also, by far, more and more media consumption is happening in one location - that is our computers (and mobiles, which will be our music players and storage devices in the near future). In the future, all of our favorite bands,

But people still go to watch films at the cinema, buy CDs, DVDs and go to see live music. Many so-called industry experts have been predicting the end of cinemas for years but it's not happened, although lots of the smaller cinemas have closed.

People can still look up the artists they like and contribute towards them. They will have the ability to come back from the cinema and look up the great film they saw, recommend them to friends, download the film, other things and optionally contribute back. (Also I trust they will not be paying ridiculous prices for the cinema anymore - but they should pay for the service they are offered)

films, etc will be on there, and I've talked about some simple system where people can send out money to artists they enjoy. We might get people who pay 3 euro to watch a film with their girlfriend who go home and send 25 euro to the creators online. Or they might add them to their favorites so that at the end of each month 40 euro will be shared between all favorites. We might have rich movie buffs who'd love to call themselves patrons and who share 10,000 euro a month between their favorite film creators. Maybe other people will become famous for their patronage - locally or globally.

This is  becoming a circular argument, you're assuming people will give enough to fund multimillion dollar films produced in Hollywood which I think is very naive.

I don't think you've read carefully enough - I am not making a statement - billions of dollars will be pumped into films, I am merely pointing out some pitfalls of simple thought about this topic.

I do believe that people will donate money but I don't think it will be enough to fund the current business model for the current film and music industries.

This may be true.

For a start you should look at how many people donate money to a certain open source project vs the amount of revenue made by a proprietary software vendor selling exactly the same product with a similar market share. If indeed such a comparison can be done, I'm pretty sure that the amount received in donations would be a fraction of what the proprietary vendor makes; this is the sort of comparison you need to make. Then of course you can't compare software to film and music as it's a collaboration between 100s of people not at few.

I'm sure that your conclusion is correct, but it doesn't help much. A big reason someone would make some software and release it free is because nobody would use it if they charged for it. They can add a donation page but they aren't doing it for the money - it's for the experience, for fun, or maybe they're like me and they're doing the most natural thing they can do? Most times they are not seeking money for any purpose - anybody who volunteers their time most likely has a job.

Additionally, if copyright is gone for everyone there will be a major change - fundamentally, nothing will be done if people copy whilst contributing nothing. People are not stupid and will understand this. I'm trying to say that average expenditure for films or music will not approach zero. If it approaches more than around 60-70% of the current average then artists (certainly for music) will be compensated by more than in the current day (record companies getting no cut).
Responsible people who can afford it will contribute, and that will keep the world spinning on it's axis*. Freeriders will exist, of course, and indeed if they become a social norm then we will have nothing to watch - but I think that's a naive assumption. It's a simple task to freeride currently - millions of people don't put their hand in their pocket unless they're back is against the wall and they gotta go to the fooking cinema. I couldn't tell you one person who I know spends 10 quid a month on music (of course I know people who do, but everyone I know well I know downloads everything or isn't interested in spending money on music - this is a prevalent attitude today).

http://www.kickstarter.com/

* this is almost the same case today.

This posts a bit messy, bedtime.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Wow, since going on holiday, I had forgotten about this thread.

I think you forget that the arts are already highly dependant on donations as it is, what makes you think that people will donate even more money?

Regarding free-loading; what makes you think that the majority will pay for something when they're not obliged to?

I read the FAQ on the Kickstarter site you posts a link to and it says that the project creator keeps their rights to the material so I'm not convinced it's a good example of  your so-called free culture exists. Also just because free software and information do exist, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's something which can successfully be rolled out across all creative industries.