Pirate Party Coming To Canada

An anonymous reader writes "After scoring a surprise electoral win in Sweden and getting high-profile support in Germany, The Pirate Party is coming to Canada. The party's goals are fairly simple. People should have the right to share and copy music, movies and virtually any material, as long as it is for personal use, not for profit. It opposes government and corporate monitoring of Internet activities, unless as part of a criminal investigation. It also wants to phase out patents."

Comments

First Vote

[scream at the sky]

I'm a DAMN proud Canadian right now

Re:First Vote

[SausageOfDoom]

I know you're a troll and all, but I actually agree with your point (though not how you made it).

There's a fine line between fair and unfair use. If I like a film, money should go to the people involved in creating it and bringing it to my screen. If I like music, money should go to the people involved in creating it and bringing it to my speakers.

Sharing for non-commercial gain was fine back in the days of copying tapes for your friends at school. A group of you could club together, buy a tape each, and share them between you to get a good collection. Sure, the content creators might not get all the money they wanted, but they'd get all your pocket money. And all the pocket money from similar groups of kids all around the country.

But things have changed with the internet. Now only one person in one country has to buy it, and suddenly the group size changes from a handful of close friends into an anonymous P2P network millions strong. No industry could survive something like that - and I'm not just talking about the RIAA et all who would no longer be able to rape producers and consumers alike, I'm talking about there not being enough money around to invest in creating quality content for us in the first place.

It's all very well saying that if the content is good people will go out and buy it anyway - but once you make it legal, mainstream hardware manufacturers will come along with P2P-enabled set-top boxes which will bring convenience to the mass market, and there will be no reason for anyone to go out and buy any content. It would destroy the content creators overnight, and then we'd get no quality content.

Don't get me wrong - I agree that recent court cases and fines have gone too far, and totally disagree with things like the three-strike law. The industry is used to having it their own way for too long, and they have to realise that their days of bleeding the customer dry are numbered. Piracy and P2P are here, and no matter what they try, it's not going anywhere. They should be adopting their business models to take full use of technology, and provide affordable, legal and practical methods of content delivery. No DRM, no ridiculous fines for piracy; instead of us vs them, they should be working with us to say "if you like something, pay for it - it's only fair".

But behind all of this, there must be a legal framework to say what's right and what's wrong. Something that says "if you like something, pay for it - it's only fair".

Re:First Vote

[grub]

No industry could survive something like that

The movie industry continues to rack up massive (and record) profits year after year, they're doomed if movie trading ever hits the intertubes...

Re:First Vote

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

The RIAA and MPAA are a big problem for copyright supporters, since they are admittedly the most outspoken spokespersons for copyright, yet they represent everything wrong with copyright. Don't get me wrong, they also represent a whole lot of what is right with copyright, but oh so much that's wrong with it. There is the greed, there is hard bargains with artists, there are the no court appearance lawsuits, and there is the DRM, but at the same time, there is a lot more to copyright. There's the culture, the inspiration, even the images of celebrity and stardom that encourage others to participate. There's the satisfaction in knowing that you have some input, via the free market, in the art you experience.

We need to stop looking to scuttle this for petty revenge against the **AA. If the pirate party supports a reasonable, reformed copyright, and they understand exactly how much we owe copyright to date for our culture, then they have my vote, despite their name (I would check, but the page is slashdotted). If they wish to undermine copyright, if they are foolish enough to believe that, as the summary suggested, that sharing is somehow less damaging just because money isn't changing hands, then I suggest they give their party points some long hard thought. If they want to simply take down the **AA, then I will fight them every step of the way, because that is, frankly, a simply idiotic approach to change.

How would I go about it? I would leave it to the market. Copyright doesn't grant you a free pass to money. You first have to earn it through creation or investment, and even then, it still has to go through us regular people in order for it to make money. If we don't want the **AA to make money, then it won't. Pure and simple. Sure, they'll kick and scream, but with enough support, even the government will be forced to turn a deaf ear, lest their political careers be over.

Re:First Vote

[l3ert]

I generally agree with you except for:

It's all very well saying that if the content is good people will go out and buy it anyway - but once you make it legal, mainstream hardware manufacturers will come along with P2P-enabled set-top boxes which will bring convenience to the mass market, and there will be no reason for anyone to go out and buy any content. It would destroy the content creators overnight, and then we'd get no quality content.

It would destroy the content industry not the content creators. Not that artists wouldn't be affected but it will not kill the arts. And, in any cases, if protecting IP rights involves any of DRM, communication monitoring, restrictions on technological development, taxes that go mainly to companies and a handful of top (already rich) artists then I'd rather see the whole entertainment industry die.

Re:First Vote

[slazzy]

Sometimes you have to push "too far" in the other direction to end up with a fair middle ground.

Re:First Vote

[SausageOfDoom]

That's not what I'm saying. I said that they need to adopt and provide a service that meets consumer demand, at a reasonable price in the new internet-based world.

However, the piracy party seem to be saying that all content should be available to everyone for free, entirely legally. Who is going to go make a big-budget film when they can't make any money out of it?

And don't give me "all big budget films these days are crap, people should do it for the love of art" - how is hundreds of people spending years of their lives working on something going to pay their rent?

Re:First Vote

[Blublu]

Not only that, but did you know that a HUGE chunk of movie "costs" are to pay big-name actors? These celeb wages are just ridiculous, they could easily cut down a lot of costs by lowering their wages down to something reasonable, or using new actors that aren't as spoiled and greedy.

Proportional Representation

[Anonymous Coward]

If we had proportional representation then the pirate party(and other minority parties) would have a chance at being represented in the house.

Instead we have rep-by-pop, which will be the status quo as long as the Conservative Party and Liberal Party continue to rule.

Re:Everyone

[hansraj]

Most of the time when I go to the cinema it is not because I can't wait to get to watch the movie for free but because I enjoy watching it on a big screen.

One Wallet

[castrox]

Your question is interesting and one which many people ask themselves. I think it's more like people have one wallet to use and instead of spending money on music they kind of like they spend it on other things - just because they can get it by downloading. The total economic output is however more or less constant. I can only refer to my own spending statistics so feel free to contradict me. I don't put that same money in my savings account! I use it to go to the movies (5 of them past 6 months), fuel my car, go on vacation.

So the recent legislations in e.g. Sweden and the rest of Europe has nothing to do with economics, but rather only distribution of money and "fairness" to the companies. Of course, to succeed they must squash many citizen rights and deploy surveillance to keep citizens in check. One could argue that the win from such legislation really is nothing in comparison of how trampled the citizens become. Of course, the new legislation opens up a can of worms to further reduction of rights sort of like Pandora's box. We end up moving in the wrong direction if what we want is democracy. //S

Re:It should appeal to the US too

[physicsphairy]

It doesn't make sense to value foreign IP unless you plan on pulling a big take from selling your domestic IP abroad. The U.S.'s position has coincided with its economic interests, not its moral opinion.

Right now China doesn't care much about copyright and patents, but you can bet in 20 years from when they have ceased trying to catch up to the superpower and effectively *are* the superpower, that they will be among those rallying for stronger enforcement.

Re:Everyone

[Korin43]

Conversely, I'm entirely willing to pay to watch a movie, but I hate movie theaters.

As a Canadian, my thoughts

[V50]

My thoughts on this. First of all, the part is irrelevant, they have no chance of electoral success, they probably will only even run candidates in a handful of ridings. Even if they did run in all 308 ridings, they have no chance to get more than, at best, 5% of the vote in their best riding (and even that is a stretch). Our system, which has been confirmed by several recent referendums, essentially makes any votes for them "wasted" in a few ways. I'd still recommend anyone vote for them, if they support their principles.

As for my thoughts on copyrights in general. I'm a generally libertarian leaning Conservative. I don't like how the RIAA/MPAA is conducting themselves. I don't like the abuses of patent systems, and I think copyright lasts way too long. I'd be completely in favor of reform of those.

That being said, I feel the general idea of copyrights and patents is a sound one. IMO, people should have ownership over ideas and works that they create. An aspect of ownership is the right to deny use of your property to others.

I see this in a similar manner as land ownership. Land ownership is a similarly abstract concept. One can only "own" land based on the collective agreement of the population, and the government. Likewise, even if one is not using a tract of land one owns, one can deny access to it from others.

That being said, like a typical goodthinking Slashbot, I hate DRM, think the RIAA/MPAA are a bunch of thugs, and feel that copyrights last way too long (I think patents last about the right length, but stupid crap shouldn't be patentable). I don't, however, feel this gives people a right to pirate whatever they feel like, nor do I think it invalidates the idea of copyright, in general. (For my background, I'm a 22 year old white Canadian male who buys his games, music and movies, and buys a great deal of them.)

I'd be interested in seeing well thought out disagreements, of course. I'm also sure my thoughts and my analogy could be worded much better. I'm usually terrible at getting my point across.

Re:As a Canadian, my thoughts

[Dunbal]

people should have ownership over ideas

      I disagree. How can you be so egotistical as to think that you are the only one in the world that has had a given "idea"? How can you prevent - no - PENALIZE someone else from having the same idea?

      This is why IDEAS cannot be patented, and never should be. Lawyers have been trying to do end-runs around this concept for decades now.

      The development of an idea into something useful - a working prototype, a unique machine, an application of that idea that requires time, money and skill to create - yes, this should be given certain LIMITED protection. But the idea itself? You don't deserve to be paid just because you thought about something and put it on paper.

Re:Bad idea

[swilver]

My problems with patents is that as more and more people work in a certain field, the change of independent discovery of an idea increases drastically (especially the so-called "ideas" one sees patented these days). In the software world, any reasonable competent programmer comes up with any number of ideas during the course of their work (sometimes also referred to as "reinventing the wheel", although perhaps on a smaller scale).

Programming software therefore is rapidly becoming a huge patent minefield, one which is not easily avoided since reinventing the wheel is pretty common in software development. Taking time to study patents to see if none were violated would make the cost of writing even the simplest software prohibitive. It would be like writing a message (like this one), except I'd have to check with the patent office if certain ways of expressing my thoughts (like one does in programming) aren't someone's exclusive property.

In my opinion, the entire of idea of patenting something is assuming that you or your company are so smart that it could not possibly have been discovered by the other 6 billion people on the planet (whether they already did it before you which is often the case, or discover it independently later).

The goals are *WAY* bigger!

[Hurricane78]

First and foremost, they oppose any kind of censorship and totalitarian government.
Then comes the goal to move from the imaginary "intellectual property" scheme back to what copyright, authors right and the freedom of ideas once were meant to be.
They are not for the exploitation of artists. That is what the **AA is for.

This TFS(ummary) is probably the worst summary of a party program I have ever read.
Maybe some people are just so used to parties an programs being meaningless because they all belonged to the same industry lobbies anyway, that they do not pay attention to them anymore. :/

Re:The neoconservatives are laughing

[IamTheRealMike]

I'm not sure I would describe the Pirate Party of Canada as "serious". Their website appears to contain no manifesto. It does link to the "International Pirate Party" website though, so I looked there ... but the section of that website to do with policies simply points you to a web forum where a bunch of people are arguing about what that should be.

That leaves the original Pirate Party of Sweden. What are their policies? At least they do have some. Unfortunately they are self-contradictory and poorly thought out. For instance they believe that copyright should not apply for "non commercial use", ie, file sharing should be free. But what counts as commercial use then? They appear to think that, for example, a musician who writes music for a video game should get paid (and the law would enforce that) but the creators of the video game themselves probably won't get paid, depending on the whims of their customers. That makes absolutely no sense, because then the musician just wouldn't get hired at all. They also want to abolish pharma patents, and their proposed replacement is "government does all research". Somebody needs to study some basic economics, starting with Adam Smith.

Was OK, until the dumb stuff at the end....

[Mathinker]

> intellectual property protects our DNA code, purchases, travel habits, and
> other information individuals consider private.

What universe do you live in? You have it exactly reversed (or, I really didn't understand what you meant to say). Large corporations have patented the human DNA of individuals for their own gain. They haven't started to sue the children of the people whose genes they sequenced, but if Monsanto can succeed in suing an organic farmer whose crops were contaminated by their patented genes (the link is for a more recent Canadian case, but they already won a similar case in the US!), it isn't unthinkable that it could happen in the future.

Other large corporations, Google, for example, keep all kinds of records of people's web preferences, credit card purchases, and tons of other "information that individuals consider private", and if anyone is protected by IP rights in those cases, it's the corporations, not the individuals!

IP rights only extend to "creative works", and there has yet to be a court system which defines "deciding to buy something" or "deciding to click a particular ad" as "creative".

Re:Bumper stickers?

[aurispector]

The pirate party's goals are too narrow. What the US needs isn't a political party solely devoted to IP and patent issues. What the US needs is a viable national 3rd party devoted to restoring a government for the people, by the people, ruled by the constitution. The issues that concern the pirate party would be covered if copyright went back to being a means for contributing to the public good i.e. copyrights that actually expire and go into public domain instead of perpetually feeding a corporations coffers. Rolling back corporate influence in government and lawmaking would result in an environment more conducive to IP fairness and privacy by default.

Re:Everyone

[Greyfox]

Ugh don't get me started. Last time I was in a movie theater (It's been a couple of years now) it was ten bucks for a ticket and half an hour of trailers and goddamn television commercials before the movie started. These days the only thing that could even remotely tempt me back to the big screen would be a new David Lynch flick.

Re:It's not just distribution

[NickFortune]

So copyright isn't just about recovering the cost of distributing a finished work; it's about recovering the cost of producing and marketing the work. Some of that cost has gone down with technological advances, but a lot of it has not.

That's not really my point. I'm not saying distribution is the only service the media companies provide. What I'm saying is the way they expect to be remunerated for these services is by placing a surcharge on the costs of distribution. I'm saying that the business model is fundamentally linked to distribution. And I'm saying that as real world distribution costs approach zero, it's going to get harder and harder to enforce the state monopoly that is copyright.

I'm not saying that the media company's position is wrong: neither because of falling distribution costs, nor any other reason. What I'm saying is that, regardless of the rights and wrongs of the situation, I think that a surcharge on distribution is rapidly becoming unworkable.

And for that reason, I think they're inevitably going to lose this fight.