Advice On File Sharing For a Swedish MP?

theper writes "A little over a week from now, I have a dinner planned with an old friend and a member of the Swedish parliament. I know a thing or two about the internet, piracy and file sharing, and she's asked for my advice on new legislation on that subject. Her (and her party's) stance is not very controversial: Rights holders must get paid one way or another, and at the same time record companies has to change their old business models and must do more to keep up with technology. With this kept in mind, what advice should I give her?"

Comments

You should tell her

[Chabil Ha']

that the government shouldn't be responsible for sustaining someone's broken business model. The market should decide what that model should be and if a business can't adapt to changing market conditions, it deserves to die.

There are myriad ways that the **AA can adapt to piracy, most of them involve earning less than when they had direct control over distribution, but such are the winds of change. There are many cost reducing alternatives that they can entertain (pun intended), so I'm not sure they have trimmed the fat necessary for me as the consumer to feel too bad for them.

Re:You should tell her

[Xemu]

the government shouldn't be responsible for sustaining someone's broken business model. The market should decide what that model should be and if a business can't adapt to changing market conditions, it deserves to die.

And please show her this youtube'd old Rapport news broadcast from Swedish National Television. It's from the 70's and the music industry says they want a DISCO FEE because the new DISCO music is killing the [old] music industry. Sounds familiar? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdjcSGo1hJg

Remind her of the point to copyright.

[i kan reed]

The reason for copyright is the generation of new content to benefit society. We get stories on slashdot quite frequently about copyrights being placed on downright useless things (take down notices). That's an example of copyright being used merely to suppress the exchange of ideas and works against the original goal. We also hear about copyright being used as an excuse to prevent users from modifying their software/data for convenience's sake. That's an example of copyright being used to suppress creativity in order to(questionably) support an outside monopoly. The idea I'm trying to convey is that Fair Use as a strictly academic tool is behind the times. Copyright should be about granting a monopoly on distribution(real money making) not complete control of any copies/changes made to the original work. My idea of what could help with protecting this kind of use is some legal definition of a standard single user copyright that someone would have to sign a physical contract to override. Reserve rights for showing the material to small groups of people without charging, being able to modify one's own personal copy to suit one's needs, making personal copies that aren't redistributed, and reselling the original copy with all the standard consumer rights carried with it.

Re:not very controversial

[bugnuts]

You won't get much support for that from the Slashsheep. Information wants to be free - unless it's information about how much porn and music they've been downloading. -1 for responding to a troll.... Apologies in advance.

Many slashsheep are programmers, and likely not software pirates. Many are musicians and also realize that copyright infringement is wrong. But most also understand the American Home Recording Act and know damn straight that they can make copies of music for their friends, and dislike bullies like the RIAA. Most are also intelligent and believe that examining their own computer's RAM and operation is an inalienable right no matter what a EULA says.

Most are also suspicious of trolls like you, so someone had to make this response.