Norway Liberal Party Wants Legal File Sharing

dot-magnon writes "The Liberal Party of Norway (Venstre) passed a unanimous resolution that advocates legal file sharing. The party wants to legalise sharing of any copyrighted material for non-commercial use. It also proposes a ban on DRM technology, free sampling of other artists' material, and shortening the life span of copyright. The Liberal Party is the first Norwegian political party, and the first European mainstream political party, to advocate file sharing. The Liberal Party's youth wing proposed the resolution."

Comments

What?

[gravesb]

The political process working for the people?

Re:What?

[pv2b]

Yep, working for the people who want to get stuff for free.

Now the people who aren't going to get paid for their work... that's a different matter entirely.

This mentality is behind a lot of misconceptions when it comes to pirate politics.

As Pirates (I am a member of the Swedish Pirate Party) we believe there is no inherent right in getting paid for copies. We do however believe in a right to charge for performing a work.

If artists who are out to make money stop producing due to copyright reform -- good riddance. There'll still be plenty of music and culture left, just as there has always been.

To take one example, in the Music Industry, even the big labels don't see recorded music as a product any more -- but rather as advertising for other events and products.

The fact is that technology for unlimited copying is here -- and the laws preventing private exploitation of this technology are outdated and counterproductive. With new technologies, people and products are made redundant. This happens all the time -- today nobody sees the sharp decline in sales and production of horse-whips after the widespread adoption of the automobile as a bad thing for example.

Re:What?

[pv2b]

Except that:
1. Music isn't the only thing that can be copyrighted. Movies can't exactly be performed live and neither can software.
2. Since the invention of the printing press there has been technology for nearly unlimited copying save for a small cost for the actual copy. The xerox allowed for private individuals to make copies. Copyrights exist exactly for this reason, saying technology makes it pointless means you don't know the first thing about them.

There's a big difference between the printing press, the xerox machine, and file sharing.

The printing press meant that organisations could suddenly print large numbers of copies of a single work. Production of copies wasn't the largest cost any more, it was the actual production of the content. Rightly, copyright was instated to prevent other bookprinters from profiteering off somebodyelses work. To this day, the Pirate Party does not condone or support copyright infringement for commercial gain.

The Xerox machine was a revolution in copying technology, but was very limited in its scope. It took considerable work to copy books with a xerox machine. It's self-regulating in that way. There wasn't really any pressure to update copyright laws because the societal impacts of the Xerox machine weren't nearly significant enough.

With file sharing and the Internet, suddenly anybody can make infinite copies at neglible cost of any information that can be stored digitally.

This is a *good thing*, and is a fact of life -- and the status quo can't be maintained through outdated legislation.

You make good points that making money off movies might be hard in the future, but the fact is that the big bucks in movies comes from movie theater tickets. The DVD sales are just extra cream on top, and those crappy cams and telecines you see on file sharing networks are definitely no substitute for the real thing.

Sure, DVD sales may diminish, but that's always been extra cream on top -- not the main bottom line.

Either way, if you start trying to charge for something that's more convenient than file sharing, they will come. It worked for All Of MP3 (shady non-compensation of artists aside), and it would work for the movie industry too. I for one would rather pay a few dollars to watch a movie in DVD-quality using streaming downloading (entirely possible with technology today) than having to wait a few hours to get it off bittorrent. Instead, the content industry has made their own "legitimate download" services more cumbersome than the illegal alternative, and it'll be their undoing.

Re:What?

[emilv]

A big part of the Swedish movie industry is funded by the government.

Re:What?

[pv2b]

Then can you explain why companies holding intellectual property try to prevent its theft? They pay money to create something that can easily be copied, why should they not have exclusive rights on its distribution?

If you actually go back and examine the logic of that statement it borders on the absurd.

Are you seriously suggesting that if a company has a poor business model it's anybodies fault but their own?

The companies holding intellectual property do just that, *hold* it. They're not on anybodys side but their own, in fact, I could argue that they're damaging to society.

I see no reason to continue to support this "industry" based on reinforced outdated legislation. Do you really it's a good idea for a single company to have rights of redistribution to something that's so trivial to redistribute, that millions of people around the world are doing it without even batting an eyelid?

We don't need the companies help to redistribute things any more. If they don't like it, they're welcome to take their profits, close up shop, and pull out. Culture will find its way without them, even better than before they arrived.

Re:What?

[pv2b]

Now try to tell a writer how they're going to get paid, when it will be perfectly legal to scan and post a book after sale number one. Once more, for the learning disabled; Copyright is not about money at all, it is about the author getting to decide how to distribute their work, not a bunch of I want it free'ers.

Please tell a writer how they're going to get paid, when there's no guarantee that the manuscript he sends out to a bunch of publishers will be accepted or not.

Not tell him what a great chance he could have of making *some* money by putting his book out on Internet, and selling hardcopies to interested parties.

This business model works. I have bought several books (technical books, but the idea should extend to fiction too) using this exact method.

Sure, you can't get paid for every single person who reads your book. Just like the way you can't get paid by every single person who listens to your music as they walk past you on the street. The Internet has made everybody a street performer, whether they like it or not. The only way to stop that from happening is not to perform.

Re:tyranny of the majority

[KonoWatakushi]

A similar argument should be made that IP rights to pharmeceuticals should be overturned, so that any company should be allowed to produce knock offs of drugs. Agreed.

That would certainly bring down prices for consumers quite a bit... for existing drugs. However, it would disincent pharmeceutical companies to make the mammouth R&D investments needed to discover new ones. What mammoth R&D investments? At best, this would would kill the mammoth advertising expenditures, which arguably should not exist in the first place. Most of the (minimal) investment is in researching replacements for existing high-margin drugs, which are dissimilar enough to avoid patents but functionally identical.

In any case, these companies most certainly don't have our health or best interests in mind. Investment in medicine should be driven by need rather than profit, and the existing system is clearly a massive failure.

Re:tyranny of the majority

[Ajehals]

See, I don't get this argument. Ignoring any principals and/or pro-anti patentability stances, are you suggesting that if the pharmaceutical companies didn't get the huge amount of protection they get the would simply close up shop? they would go from making less money, to making *no money*?. As I understand it pharmaceutical companies benefit from all sorts of things they don't pay for, from R&D at universities, through to government subsidies. They make a huge amount of money, making less, or having to collaborate wouldn't be a bad thing for the users of their products. And anyway, what use is a treatment for a disease you have if you cant afford it?

Oh, and what about the fact that some drug companies research and development aims are geared toward high value markets (dieting and beauty for example, which can be addressed through other means) rather than areas that would help large sections of the population with actual illness (where a drug may be the only option)? The market forces involved force company's to do what is best for their bottom lines, most of the time, Not what is best for society as a whole. With a shift of our IP related legislation, maybe that would change.

Re:tyranny of the majority

[Arker]

Would you be willing to risk your life, your mothers life, your arthritic grandfathers pain, just to ensure the profits of the big pharma companies?

Well, you're doing it now, and you have no choice.

Re:Software?

[Kjella]

The actual resolution is quite more general, it uses the word "åndsverk" which can be translated pretty much to "copyrightable work". E.g. our copyright law is called "åndsverkloven".

Their english translation:
"Ban DRM: The Liberal Party states that anyone who has bought the right to use a product needs a technologically neutral way of using it. This means that distributors can not control how citizens wish to play back legally bought digital music. The Liberal Party wants to prohibit technical limitations on consumers' legal rights to freely use and distribute information and culture, collectively known as DRM. In cases where a ban on DRM would be outside Norwegian jurisdiction, products that use DRM technology need to clearly specify their scope of use before they are sold."

Trying to stay very literal:
"Ban against DRM: The Liberal Party is of the opinion that all that have bought the right to use a copyrightable work must have technology-neutral opportunities to use that copyrightable work as one wants. This means that producers and deliverers of technology can not control how citizens for example should play back the music that they have bought. The Liberal Party will therefore prohibit socalled DRM (Digital Rights Management), which are technical limitations to limit the consumers' legal right to freely copy and use information and culture. In those cases where a ban is outside Norwegian jurisdiction, products that contain DRM technlogy shall be clearly marked."

Worse English, but it preserves a little more of the meaning.

Ban on DRM is a terrible idea

[Spy Hunter]

I can't believe that people are seriously considering a ban on DRM. I suppose I should have realized that it's natural to try to fix a problem by making a new law, but when the problem *is* the law, you should fix it by repealing the problematic law, not making more.

There is absolutely zero need to ban DRM, for one simple reason: DRM doesn't work, has never worked, can't ever work. All DRM schemes are fundamentally flawed, at a deep technological level. The only course of action necessary is to remove all laws protecting DRM, thus making it completely legal to make, distribute, even sell software and/or hardware for the explicit purpose of breaking DRM. Completely legal copies of DeCSS, FairUse4WM, QTFairUse, BackupHDDVD, etc would be available everywhere. Entire companies could be founded to muster the resources to perform sophisticated attacks on DRM hardware and software (perhaps even a brute force cryptological attack would be feasible in some cases with enough resources). Modchips, firmware hacks, replacement toner cartridges with DRM lockout chips, etc would all be readily available.

In such an environment, all DRM would be futile. After a few more thwarted schemes, even the most stubborn holdouts in the RI/MPAA would have to see the light. DRM would go away of its own accord, and it would all be the result of *repealed* laws instead of new ones. Fewer laws on the books is a good thing.