Slashdot Mirror
Why the UK Needs the Pirate Party
Barence writes "The UK Pirate Party wants to reform copyright and patent laws, abolish the surveillance state and increase our freedom of speech, and it's just been recognized as a political party. In this interview with PC Pro, UK Pirate Party leader Andrew Robinson explains how he's planning to shake up the political landscape. 'What we really want to do is raise awareness, so that the other parties say "bloody hell, they've got seven million votes this time out," or one million votes, or enough votes to make them care and seriously think about these issues.'"
The need is there, no doubt. But need does not equate success...
It sounds promising that we now have a "Pirate Party" in the UK who will stand up on copyright issues, but I suspect they'll take it too far. It makes sense to decrease the legislation that is heavily in favour of the company rather than the consumer (things like making it illegal to make personal backups or making fines for infringement hugely out of proportion) but if they get to complete freedom to pirate everything then they've taken it too far the other way and the economy will falter again.
People need the right to own what they've bought, but people don't need the right to own everything for free that's digital.
A political party that exists solely to adress internet copyrights?
Isn't that a little bit shallow for leading a political movement? I mean what about the important topics?
Pirate Party of Canada is getting started.
The UK political scene is completely stagnant, and will remain so regardless of any new political parties. Having taken public choice theory as license to be as corrupt as they like, politicians have given up any pretense of public service and now do what they are told for money. Simple as that. Because this same money controls the public discourse through the media, nobody who doesn't play this game has a chance.
The system is set up to resist any change to the social order. Class mobility has collapsed, wages are down and unemployment is up. Life is increasingly wretched for the poorest whilst being increasingly comfortable for millionaires in the City. Minor political parties are not going to change any of this.
Change will not come to the UK through elections, protests or revolutions. It will come through stagnation and then collapse
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
First things first. Top priority for the pirate party should be to make speak-like-a-pirate-day a national holiday.
Break the sound barrier - bring the noise.
This is great. When do we get one of these in the US?
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
In Germany, a recent poll showed a 2% support rate for the pirate party (Piratenpartei).
And lo and behold! Suddenly, politicians of other parties are discovering their love for the pirates' topics...
(links in German, and I'm too much a of a lazy ass to translate)
The concern is about how much the media owners and government have the "right" to monitor what you're doing. If you stipulate that the government should prevent copyright infridgement, it's not a big leap to say that they should monitor people to check that they're not breaking the law and punish those that do. Which is fine, until you realise that you've just said that the government should monitor all your communications, and the public shouldn't have the right to have private communications that the Powers In Charge don't read.
Now, I'm not overly worried about this in the UK right now with our current government (who, let's face it, are under the thumb of the press and more likely to try and waste taxpayers money to clean their private moats than oppress the masses), but if history has shown us anything preventing citizens from being able to privately critique government bodies without those bodies being able to read all the criticisms is not a good thing... I'm not really sure where the line between upholding the law and curtailing the citizen is drawn - and it's not just on this issue that it's worth thinking about, but it is, at least, worth thinking about. So I welcome the discussion.
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
Power outages might help (Economist Aug 8, 2009, page 49). Britain's projected capacity will fall below projected peak demand sometime in 2015, nothing like turning off people's TV's and kettles to make them uppity.
Very few people want "no copyright" but an awful lot of them want "less government"
No sig today...
If you think the UK's power distribution and generation infrastructure is bad, you should see America's.
[FUCK BETA]
The UK has a two party system, just like the USA. For this reason, new parties, almost make no chance to get any political power. This is due to the district system, in which it is not true that all votes are equal. Because you need to gain majority in a sector to get someone in the parlement. People are not inclined to vote on a small party if it is almost sure that they will not get any significant representation in the parlement.
If such a party would be established here in the Netherlands, it might make a better chance of getting at least a few representatives in the parlement because we do not have a district system and each vote has the same weight.
Maybe the should also include the abolishment of the district system as a part of their program.
All the other parties are useless anyway:
Labour (Sorry, New Labour) is just a conservative in sheeps clothing, spend too much on public services that then go cut those services...ABC Bin collection in point, my bin is emptied every 2 weeks...My babies nappies and the flies are horrendous
Conservative are just out to enrich their own pockets (well, so are labour TBH) and make rich people richer and support companies.
Liberal Democrats have some really odd policies and I don't believe they have the strength to be a valid ruling party.
UKIP/NBP etc - racist, facist bigots that I would rather fight than have these people in power.
The rest (Pirate party included) - Too small to make a difference.
At least the Pirate party has a policy that I AM interested in...
Having said all that, I don't believe that people should have a free reign of music, games and other works of art...Companies will just stop producing...However, I believe that I should be able to copy, transform and move between devices that I own for my or my familys consumption...Soon they will require a purchase for each member of the family that will watch a DVD because in fact you ARE broadcasting to the rest of your family...
Patents, copyright and trademarking all need an overhaul...If that's what the pirate party are suggesting, or at least make one of the major parties take note, then I will look at voting for them...
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
It's already working in germany.
The piratenpartei there got just approved to be part of national elections, which will take place in about 2 months in 15 states. After the german government had decided on a stupid domain-blocking scheme against (so they say) child porn, the piratenpartei got 0.7% at the european elections a short while ago.
The Spiegel (an important german weakly) and other media are reporting about the issue and discussion about regulation of the net is starting in the mainstream media and also within the various parties, forcing the parties to develop a clear position on things before election.
Up until recently the issue was not taken seriously by the german parties and security freaks like Wolfgang Schaeuble were allowed to install more and more legislation to control and observe citizens more closely and broadly (his party is actually using the following slogan in it's election campaign: "we're strong enough for both freedom _and_ security", which is of course bullshit, as we all know (Jefferson anyone)).
So yes, what the UK Pirate Party is trying to do is very much viable and makes sense. It'll raise awareness of the political cast to a problem unsolved and to the fact that people will not let their freedom be taken away so easily.
Indeed. The City still hasn't figured out you can't generate electricity with smugness.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
The MP who had his moat cleaned on expenses was in fact a member of the Conservative Party - so not the current government, but quite possibly the next one.
The conservatives are at making more reassuring noises about privacy that Labour are - at least at the moment. Whether this remains the case in power is another matter entirely.
Mod parent up
Does "politics" == "American politics" as far as Slashdot is concerned?
Rob.
The extremes of the pirate party are worth supporting, in the interest of a reasonable compromise.
Even if I don't agree with 5-year copyright terms, I agree with them a lot more than I do unlimited copyright.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Found this, the Pirate party explained by the BBC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71YnRAugSHg
actually I would not be so casual about the current government. Never underestimate how toxic is power and how people who have been holding it for 12 years will do anything to keep it theirs. I am worried about these lot!
metageek
Perhaps 5year copyright should only apply to software code.
Just thinking that say for example an open source project has 3 main coders and each maintains copyright over their code (as is proper). Now say one of those coders has written 2/3s of the code and to redo that code would take the other 2 at best a year to rewrite. Now lets say that coder for some reason becomes unreachable (dies, moves to Mars, etc..). The other 2 cannot relicence the code base to say GPL v4 until his copyright is over or he gives permission. In the UK currently they would have to wait 50years. Suddenly for this example 5years sounds a lot fairer.
This would be the conservative party that used soldiers dressed up as policemen to crush the miners strike? The same one that abolished the right to silence? Don't believe the hype.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
It sounds like the bunch are yet another single issue party. Single issue parties get nowhere.
Sure, vote for them if you think that file sharing is the most single important issue facing modern society. Come the next elections I'm sure it will be depressing to see just how think it is. It'll be another in sorry indicator of just how detached people have become from real politics.
Personally I prefer my vote to go to a political party with a more rounded manifesto.
"you can't sing "Happy Birthday" in the UK without paying a license fee"
I was at my nieces' birthday party the other day and we sang happy birthday to them and nobody asked us for a licence fee. Parent poster is wrong.
Yes, I believe technically the parent poster may be right that the song is still under copyright and payment should be made for public performance but thankfully the UK isn't the USA (yet!) and so we don't have lawyers suing us for breathing. A judge would laugh you out of the court.
You guys in the USA have brought a lot of good ideas into the world but exchanging common sense for lawyers is not one of them.
http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/ Worth checking out the official website if you're interested in the topic.
Agreed that most of the power in *England* is in a two party system but in Scotland and Wales the devolved system means that other parties get a good shout, and have some power as a result. The SNP runs the Scottish parliament for example. There are signficant local difference between English and Scottish legal situations and the SNP / Labour divide on political issues means that people in England and Scotland can be in quite different situations (e.g. healthcare).
They'll just steal votes from the Liberal Democrat party, which is (shock!) actually both pro Liberty and pro Democracy. It's also not a major threat at the national level to the two sock puppets of right wing corporate interests ("Labour" and "Conservative"), and having its vote watered down even further will just empower both of them to get on with making everything either mandatory or prohibited.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I'm only casual because I see a tendency for hyperbole on slashdot, whereby people jump straight to extremes, comparing anything to a much more extreme regime (typically, Hitler's Germany, China or North Korea). This, while causing the sensation a sensational comment it meant to provoke, doesn't actually leave much room for reasoned discussion. This is not to say I've not been deeply concerned by actions of our government and I'm casual to the real dangers if left to linger, and the danger of not keeping a watchful eye on the watchers.
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
I was using the term "government" in the broader sense - all MPs can vote on a bill, and have a certain amount of power, no matter what party they belong to. The "clean their private moat" was just one ergregous example of the expense scandal that I used for its resonance. Not many parties emerged unscathed from the whole debacle, so I could have equally picked any number other stupid choices made by our elected servants.
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
just would like to point out on the encryption issue in the uk. two people are facing up to five years behind bars for refusing to surrender their encryption keys/password.
one in the uk could face up to two years in jail for simply being under investigation and refusing to hand over your crypto keys, five years if under investigation for terrorism. forget that there was an actual crime.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/11/ripa_iii_figures/
I like how this was modded "Redundant" - as in, "Yes, we already know."
And yet you keep on coming back. Say more about you than the rest of us.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
Wasn't that Enron's business model?
the government should prevent copyright infridgement...
Are you implying that some of these laws should be put on ice?
if copyright reform was so important to them, they would pick a more mature name then "The Pirate Party". these morons are going to shoot us all in the foot with their immature i can haz cheeseburger stylings.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
... is its own Revolution, and soon before it's too late to stop Skyn... errr, Big Brother!
Down with this sort of thing!
Up with this we will not put!
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
What about all the hot air the politicians generate? A wind turbine inside the House of Commons ought to generate a few MW...
What's so special about software that it needs a different copyright term than everything else?
... and then they built the supercollider.
A book written today ist most probably as valuable in twenty years as it is now. However what piece of software written 20 years ago is still useful for you?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The Monster Raving Loony Party is suffering yet another attempt to split its core vote!
Recent attacks on it have of course included the Labour party's expensive and worthless ID Card scheme, whereas the Conservatives have embraced Loonyism with a suggestion to send all UK health records to Microsoft.
Its a waste of my energys to engage in something so futile.
LOL
Don't ever think a small group of dedicated people can't change the world.
It's the only thing that ever has.
You sound like a teenager who needs a good kick up the butt. Either that our you want the government to tell you what time to get up in the morning and when to go to the bathroom.
People need the right to own what they've bought, but people don't need the right to own everything for free that's digital.
I think "need" is probably the wrong word---I think this is about what people want combined with what's economically feasible. But the choice of words is the least concern.
People want culture (music, film, literature), preferably well-made items of culture. They also want things to be cheap (preferably free). And they also want to obey the law. Those who make culture want to make money doing so (preferably more than less, but some are content with no money).
How they value each of those in relation to one another varies from person to person. Some prefer stuff with expensive (and maybe even good :D) production for free over obeying the law. Some prefer stuff that's free and obeying the law over expensive production. Some prefer expensive production and obeying the law over stuff that's free.
If a change to the copyright law, any change (including allowing redistribution for private purposes, or complete abolishment) gives the people as a whole something more valuable than what the current regime does, why shouldn't we make that change?
Your statement leaves me to conclude that you think allowing free redistribution of copyrighted stuff doesn't give people what they want (presumably due to the removed profit incentive on the producer side of the equation). Why do you think this?
I think it's an empirical question what the effect of changing copyright law would be. Would people stop making music? Probably not, but the amount and quality would probably decline. How about movies? They're much more expensive, so maybe we'd only have short films by film students posted on youtube. How happy or unhappy would people be about this? I think that's something we should measure (or at least approximate) rather than guesstimate.
Do you agree? If not, why not?
However what piece of software written 20 years ago is still useful for you?
Well, UNIX is extremely useful. And Pacman and Galaga, while maybe not useful, remain entertaining.
Moreover, why should the government act like a bookie, setting the odds on what we may or may not find useful in the future? One might say that music should have a shorter copyright term, because Britney Spears probably only has a shelf-life of 10 years, but on the other hand The Beatles continue to be of interest decades later.
... and then they built the supercollider.
so you align yourself with extremist idiots rather than actually campaigning for what you believe in?
People like you supported hitler because 'he wasnt the other guy'
Because before copyright we humans produced no culture at all.....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
To battle the Ninja Party. Damn that seems pretty self evident.
My other sig is a knife wound.
This idiotic hatred of politicians as a class must go.
There are good politicians and bad politicians, painting them all with the same brush discourages the good ones.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What is exactly your point?
Should people roll up and cry while in foetal position or should they try to do something about the situation, if anything to ensure there is a start point once the system collapses?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Many parties that changed whole countries were started in a bedroom between a few friends and relatives, against the ruling class and their cronies.
Somebody like you certainly will change nothing, because to affect change the necessary requisite is conviction.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Many big banks are moving data centres from The City and Canary Wharf to places where the power supply is guaranteed to be more stable (in as much as this can be assured) as well as implementing virtualization in more power efficient big servers.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Have been phased out for UK nationals and the Conservatives have promised to scrap them if they win power altogether.
Now write to your Labour MP and tell him in no uncertain terms you will vote for other party unless they also scrap the ID card monster.
If you think this change of heart has nothing to do with political pressure, then I frankly believe you are living in a different planet, in which case you should not involve yourself with UK politics of all things.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There, fixed that for you, and now it is at least somewhat on topic!
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Canada's pirate party is just starting up. The second monthly meeting is set to take place on the 19th in different venues across the country. I've been reading the above comments and it seems there is scepticism that the political climate in Sweden and the U.K. is such that a third party doesn't really stand a chance. I think in Canada it may, Canada has a cross section of world cultures... with increased freedom of information we might produce results interesting to the world.
:)
Now for my personal vendetta
The Slashcode moderation system has created an enormously powerful and democratic forum for debate. While we have several issues to address one that's of interest is having a decentralized party where open debate is the norm and direct democracy the result.
To this end a modified version of Slashcode is being developed for the public forum.
If you decide to attend the meetings I'd appreciate it if you'd voice support for such a system, I think the idea of information freedom makes the notion of cabinets and party leaders slightly hypocritical, plus we don't need those things to get our message out.
Personally I am optimistic about the overall benefits of a small region where copyright and patents are abolished, this region would create integrated ideas that would be the wonder of the world demonstrating what mankind has accomplished. Black Government research projects probably already work this way, but it would be nice if we got some results for civilian use.
Well, UNIX is extremely useful.
Sure, but would you run a 20-year-old UNIX on a server you wanted to be secure?
What view does the UK Pirate Party take of the view that your platform will harm Free (libre) software, as expressed by rms ?
...and then I read what he had to say:
> There should be an exemption for non-commercial use in copyright.
I totally agree. Assuming you bought a work as a consumer (you most certainly didn't steal it in the first place) you should be free to use it for non-commercial purposes.
> We're not in favour of abolishing copyright, or artists getting nothing.
Great!
> When things are copied and somebody makes a profit, that profit should go to the artist.
Hell yeah, woo! Kinda hard to police at times, but at least the artist has the law on their side.
> When something's copied and there isn't a profit... well, that's a situation our law doesn't really have any way of dealing with at the moment...
Er, no. The law does deal with that - you can't copy stuff even if there is no profit. You might not think that this is the best way to do things, but you are wrong to say that the law does not handle this context.
> ...which is why people who copy a movie are lumped in with people who steal cars.
You seem a bit confused. People who steal stuff are theives and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. End of conversation. This is a totally separate issue to the non-commercial use of consumer-purchased media.
> Our copyright law is horribly outdated and its skewed one way because all the lobbying is on the side of big businesses.
Welcome to the real world, hippy! Big business has money to lobby with, people with no money (that's msot people on the planet) just get to vote. I guess that's why your move to form a political party makes some sense.
> This ties into our thoughts on patents. They've moved away from a way of encouraging invention to being a way for companies to lay claim to large areas of innovation. The Toyota Prius is an example of this. There's 2,000 patents covering the Prius, which isn't encouraging other companies to create environmentally cars, it's blocking them.
Bloody good point. Apart from the "environmentally cars" bit - that doesn't make any sense.
> We want to see laws in place before it happens, rather than after, so everybody knows where they stand.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. So you've got a crystal ball somewhere handy, have you Mr?
> We need to point out that we're saying very sensible things
I think you'll find it's more powerful to actually say sensible things, rather than have a mixture of great ideas and contradictory, ill-thought-out nonsense.
> when people actually listen to what we've got to say they'll realise we're being serious
Stupid people will flock to your defence on the internet. That means jack at the polls. If only your arguments weren't full of holes your enthusiasm might have been put to better use.
but i know for a certainty it won't involve you, or anyone who thinks in such mindlessly negative terms like you do
you've accepted the status quo. no wonder you speak of stasis and stagnation. its all you seem to know. this makes you part of the problem. you care enough to speak of accepting the unacceptable, but you don't care of enough to actually fight for anything better
you are what is wrong with this world as much as anyone else, perhaps what is wrong with the world the most. at least the fools who profess to enjoying the status quo are deluded. meanwhile, you see the truth, AND YOU ACCEPT IT. fucking pathetic
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It doesn't have to be the 20-year-old version to retain copyright. The Simpsons is 20 years old, but they still release new episodes.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Can we really trust a political party run by Andrew Robinson, a known Cardassian spy?
It doesn't have to be the 20-year-old version to retain copyright.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. I wasn't suggesting that patched version of UNIX would be PD while the original remained in copyright. In fact, it's the other way round: assuming that at some point in the future copyright in HP-UX 6.0 expires the later versions will still be protected from copying. Derived works are works.
The Simpsons is 20 years old, but they still release new episodes.
What does that have to do with the rate at which software loses its usefulness?
I agree that the current social system(s) need to collapse to enable real reform. My counterpoint is that elections can BE the collapsing point. Revolutions certainly are, and civil war more so.
So, a new party that the people chooses because it will make "the change" happen, if voted strongly enough, can mark the collapse of an old social order, without bloody insurrection. 20th century example: the "Quiet Revolution" in the province of Quebec(Canada) provoked enormous changes in social and economic ordrer (including the nationalization of all electric power companies) and all started with the ouster of the established political party.
Money currently supports power, but if the gap between haves and have-nots widens too much, it loses any power it has. We have a saying here: "nothing is more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose".
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
i can't criticize your indolence until i send by certified mail my certificate of excellence from che guevara
god forbid i'm actually right about your rotten attitude
but you can only accept criticism from gandhi or mother teresa
which tells us volumes about how you came to have such a fucking pathetic attitude in the first place, doesn't it?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As is I'd NEVER so much as visit the UK. It's very very bad that the UK is starting to remind me IRL of V for Vendetta, and it's time for that trend to stop and start shifting back towards the middle.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
All those who were smart and would vote for the pirate party have already moved to canada.
i am not a "you first" revolutionary, you are, that's the entire point of your previous comment
why am i not the same? because i'm not asking you to do anything. in fact, do nothing, go on with your bad self. that's 100% fine by me
but don't happily speak words of acceptance of the unacceptable. if you open your mouth and speak, you may find someone criticizes your words. just like you tell me that if you put your body in harm's way for a cause, you may get killed or hurt or incarcerated, so why make that sacrifice?
i agree 100% with your position: why should you fight, why should you sacrifice considering the jeopardy? but, guess what: speaking words carries jeopardy too. and now you know the jeopardy for speaking: someone will call you fucking pathetic, like i have, if you say something fucking pathetic, which you did. if that's too much jeopardy for you, if you can't handle criticism, then shut up
or continue speaking, please, by all means. but say something morally coherent. because if you continue speaking the words you are now speaking, i will continue to call you fucking pathetic, because your words are FUCKING PATHETIC AND SPINELESS
if you are going to do nothing, DO NOTHING. but say nothing as well, or i will call you out for your hypocrisy
got it?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It saddens me greatly that the country that gave the world the Glorious Revolution is now utterly incapable of electing a government that acknowledges that the rights of the governed trump the power of the government.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Perhaps part of the problem is that politicians (or at least those higher in the ranks) very rarely come from a class that represents the majority of the people. Rather, the system stacks it so that they comes from the rich and wealthy, which often tends to have their own agendas/views above the rest of the citizenry.
This may also be part of the reason so many have hopes hinged on Obama, as he doesn't have the extensive background in a rich society, breaking the trend of a plutocracy in government. Of course, expecting him to be perfect is foolish, and perhaps hinging too much ends up with some fairly unreasonable expectations.
I don't think that people really *hate* politicians as a class - though it may apply in some cases to specific persons in politics - a better word might be "mistrust," which is in itself a rather sad indicator of the political situation in many places. When issues of corruption come to rise, the common reaction is almost "yeah, it figures, saw that coming" as opposed to garnering organized resistance. We almost *expect* to be trodden upon by the so-called "upper-class" and accept it.
Mistrust of politicians isn't a terrible thing, so long as it doesn't move towards outright paranoia, as it promotes vigilance. Unfortunately, current levels of mistrust are also tempered by acceptance and a feeling of helplessness. Hopefully some of the current political changes and applicants can even the field a bit and change that.
Is this another one of those loopy events predicted in the Shadowrun timeline?
If it is, please just let me sleep for another twenty minutes before telling me. Much appreciated.
-FL
i said multiple times its 100% ok for you to do nothing
but if you say words to the effect that its ok to do nothing, i will criticize you for that, because such words are hypocritical and wrong
if you don't like that, then say nothing as well as do nothing
but if you continue speaking the thesis that doing nothing is ok, i will criticize you for being a hypocrite
and just like fighting for something puts you in jeopardy of physical harm, speaking for something puts you jeopardy of criticism
deal with it. you are not above criticism, and your words are fucking pathetic
don't like criticism? then shut up. but if you do speak, and i am saying to you directly it is 100% ok for you to speak, then you may find out some people don't agree with you. get used to it
that's not my orders. that's the orders of life in a free society: when you say something, you may get criticized. i am asking you to accept that. you don't seem to want to accept criticism. i suppose then that you are advocating for something other than a free society? (snicker)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This party is, as far as I can see, yet another special interest party. They seem to pop up every now and again, and then they die out because they don't really have a policy about other things. That is why we still, after so many years of democracy, only have a small handful of political parties; there are only so many clearly defined, general ideologies out there - in fact, it is hard to really imagine more than two, isn't it?
So what is this Pirate Party about? Well, freedom of speech - or Freedom of Speech, but it doesn't really become any more general by capitalising the letters. What has Freedom of Speech to say about the financial crisis, unemployment, EU and the military budget? You have be more than a one-trick-pony to tackle real life; it is amazing just how irrelevant the right to make a copy of a DVD is, when you look at the big picture - just about anything is more important.
The importance of Freedom of Speech was perhaps a bit clearer at a time when you could be hanged for treason if you turned your stamp upside-down on a letter, or later, when you could go to prison for organising a strike against the horrenduous working conditions during the industrial revolution, or for talking about voting rights for women. I think talking about big, fundamental human rights, when it really is about nothing more than wanting to distribute copied games and CDs, serves only to devaluate the important of the fundamental rights.
Let's try this again. Find me new hardware that can still run a 20-year-old version of UNIX. Twenty years ago, hardware barely even had paged MMUs, IIRC. Modern UNIX is quite improved compared with the UNIX of that era. Even if some of the individual tools were moderately useful at some basic functional level, they would still be almost completely useless when compared with any of the modern implementations of those tools. It would also be problematic to maintain the old versions because few people still remember how to write code in K&R C.
In software, there's a very definite "innovate or die" mentality, and that's not just because we want to see improvements; it is because we must have improvements in order to keep up with the evolving hardware. Code written more than a few years ago is nearly useless. There are apps that are less than ten years old that I've tried to rewrite to work on modern OSes and given up on because I would have to start by writing a compiler. That's the price of a fast-moving industry---software that does not continuously improve becomes worthless pretty quickly.
The same goes for games. In order for 20-year-old games to be usable, you either have to write an emulator for the hardware (which becomes practical after about a decade of CPU speed increases) or find somebody to build ancient hardware with chips that haven't even been made for a decade. I would argue that if it is necessary to build custom hardware or large software emulator infrastructures in order for the software to be in any way usable, the software is of dubious value compared with a modern rewrite of that software, and copyright really wasn't intended to protect things whose sole value is sentimental in nature. If it has no serious literary or artistic purpose anymore, then the copyright should reasonably be vacated.
More to the point, long copyright durations for software doesn't encourage the creation of new works, and thus is contrary to the fundamental purpose of copyright. More to the point, the absence of these durations would do nothing to discourage creation of new works. The software industry rapidly innovates and creates new versions of software, but they stop producing old versions after a short time. There are few (if any) recorded cases in which a software publisher suddenly started publishing (unimproved) an old piece of software that was previously discontinued. Therefore, once the previous version is discontinued, it no longer has financial value to the company.
What valid reason, then, could possibly exist for continuing to maintain copyright protection over the older versions of the work? The fear that he older version might be "good enough" for most of the customers? If so, then by that admission, the copyright owners are admitting that long copyright durations stifle innovation by allowing companies to make only minimal improvements in their software over time and continue to charge money for those minor tweaks when they would otherwise be forced to make real improvements. In effect, any claim that these works should have protection because they have monetary value simultaneously invalidates the claim that the work should have copyright protection by proving that the copyright discourages the creation of new works. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
i am looking at the UN building on 43rd st and 1st avenue in nyc
who am i? what am doing?
it doesn't matter
i could be, indeed, a fat 30 year old in his mother's basement, eating cheetos and wiping orange dust on his white t shirt. does that make my words more or less true?
again, it doesn't matter who i am, it matters what i say. or at least, that's the way it should be: judge the words, not the speaker
but no, what matters to you is that i have to be joan of arc before you accept any of my criticism
this speaks volumes about your psychology, and why you are such a loser: if someone else has the slightest imperfection, they have no right to criticize you (which allows you to reject all criticism, because you can find some imperfection somewhere in anyone who would criticize you). you don't actually believe you are perfect, you just believe no one has the right to criticize you... which has the same effect as believing you are perfect: you never feel a reason to change
its your life, but if i were you, i would indulge in some self-criticism at some point. of course, since i'm not che guevara, you can totally reject that comment ;-P
buh bye loser
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
These guys will never be taken seriously with a name like "The Pirate Party." Piracy has nothing to do with copyright reform. Piracy is about anarchy and rejection of the law. If these people want to reform copyrights, they should give themselves a name that reflects that. Otherwise, they come off as a college joke.
Most studies I've seen show that Intellectual Property tends to slow down the economy, innovation and artistic expression. Do musicians make music for the money or the sheer joy of it? Do inventors create an invention for the riches promised in the patent lottery? Or do they just like to tinker? Doesn't it seem like more than a coincidence that a very large economic downturn occurred after a period of serious intellectual property rights legislation that increases the reach of those rights?
Here's a book that provides statistical, historical and anecdotal evidence of the harms of IP. If you can find a study that shows that IP is good for the economy, I'd love to read it. Good luck.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
I'm 22, and this is the first time in my life I can think of people I'd consider heroes who are involved in politics.
And if you can find a study that definitively shows that we won't have a loss of music/film/stories/games or a degradation in quality when everyone can freely copy it with no recourse or recompense then I'd love to read it ;)
Yes, IP law can be bad when used wrongly (things like stupid patents on things that shouldn't be patented, excessively long copyright periods, excessive restrictions on or removal of "fair use" rights) but that doesn't mean that the idea of someone controlling how the work that they put their own time and effort in to is necessarily a wrong thing in itself.
I'm not denying that musicians and inventors can make music/inventions for the fun of it, but as an open source (GPL) supporting software developer who writes my own GPLed apps I know I'd be far less likely to write anything if copyright were removed, destroying the basis of the GPL and its "payment" back to me of other people also making their work free. There may still be people who would do it, but if they can't make some kind of living from it (and I'm talking of a moderate living, not the excessive "everyone should be a superstar" living) then they have to do another job, and if they have to do another job then they don't have time to concentrate on music/invention/etc, and if they don't have that time then quality, quantity or both will have to drop.
Using the levels of Ackoff's hiearchy, data and information may be free, but that doesn't mean that the knowledge and wisdom that create them don't have a price.
and I'd support them provided they get rid of the monarchy and become a republic!
A "United Republic" if you will instead of united kingdom. Kingdom! what year is it again?
The german pirate party has started its election campaign for the election of the bundestag (german parliament) on september 27th. A good result will make it easier for all pirate parties all over the world. So maybe it is a good investment now to donate some little money for the campaign.
https://www.piratenpartei.de/wahlkampfspende (german)
Something they might want to include in their plans: What if They WIN an election?
As shown by the NDP Party once in the province of Ontario, when the much touted and over-confident Liberals called an election, the NDP was caught flat-footed by their victory, and had to scramble a great deal to actually fill the position of the Governing Body!
Sobering idea, isn't it? To find the regular, 'shoe-in' parties so unpopular that the Protest Vote party actually gets in... It's not unheard of!
Not that it should take entirely too much planing on their part. Even if the plan is to hold the office for a token period, then call a fresh election, it's worth the effort.
Ok, your points are well taken. I must admit that I don't know the solution to open source software without copyrights. The only thing I can think of is that proprietary software isn't really safe, either without copyrights or patents. Code can be decompiled, reverse engineered and reused from proprietary sources. That's the best answer. Yes it takes effort, yes it takes time. But the matter of trust will always be there. People who show their code will attract more trust than those who don't.
It is also worth pointing out that even if someone copied your code, they would still have to figure it out, and then find a practical application for it as well as a way to support it. People make money by supporting GPL code, not just writing it, and certainly not from the copyrights.
Now if you want a study that shows that the quality and benefits of life without copyrights, there are quite a few cited in chapter 2 of the book I referenced in my original post.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
There's another solution: Compiled software should have no copyright protection (just as houses have no copyright protection), but source-code _should_ (just as blueprints do).
How useful is software written 20 years ago? Just as useful as it ever was, if you have access to the source.
The value of books to society is not (at least not just) the story they tell, but the ideas they convey, and the language they invent which can influence culture. Those ideas are free, and copyright exists to encourage the creation of them.
So to is software not just "some program you run", but the ideas in the code, the individual pieces which can be re-used or learned from. Why should we give copyright protection at all to something which can't ever benefit society in that way?
Summary:
The goal of copyright law is the creation of public-domain works. It just provides commercial entities with a clear path to follow in order to allow them to make money when doing so. If something will never usefully enter the public domain, copyright has no interest in protecting it.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
At which point, if the market for an application is not predominantly commercial or relies on a large proportion of consumer purchases to support it, what is the point in the companies making the software in the first place when they're not going to make their money back?
There are alternate models such as subscription for your apps (which is the antithesis of freedom by removing copyright) and support contracts, but most users don't want to pay the current one-off costs at the prices they are and do without support contracts. If they don't want support contracts now, why would they want them when they don't even have to pay for the software?
But that argument should apply equally as well now as it would without copyright law, but it isn't generally the case. Most people consider proprietary software more secure because lots of free software is hobby-created (and so not thoroughly QAed) and because of misinformed ideas about having the source code being the only way to find bugs.
And who is that a benefit to? And over what period? And making what assumptions about people's ability to produce creative content when they can't earn money from most of it (book writers wouldn't do well doing gigs, for example) and so have to spend what is currently creative time doing a 'normal' job instead?
Yes, in theory life without copyrights and everyone having access to all of the creative media would be a good thing, but without copyright you have no method that will allow all creative media to be recompensed, so the quality and quantity will go down. Given what's in the charts already, some of the crap that is on TV and some of the trash books that get published, I dread to think what we would get if the quality of various media went downhill from where it is now.
Or, in terms that some Slashdot readers will understand better: if there is no way to stop the free distribution of porn then porn sites won't make anywhere near as much money, so they won't be able to pay their actresses, so the actresses will have to find "proper" jobs so they can afford to live, so the porn won't have the "good" actresses, so the studios won't be able to afford to make films, so you'll be stuck with any old ugly attention-seeking whore who just wants to do it on the cheap in low quality in their own house to get their face (or other body parts) on the Internet.
So far, you're talking conventional economics theory about what drives people to create. "Against Intellectual Monopoly" reviews conventional theory and compares it to history, finding that the history doesn't really match the theory very well, if at all. It also describes the creative climate in the past, with statistics to show the difference between a culture that places emphasis on copyrights England and Europe which for the most part, did not have music copyrights until after 1780. The following quote from the book gives a telling example of why copyrights can be a problem for the creative process:
"The evolution of copyright from an occasional grant of royal privilege to a formal and eventually widespread system of law should in principle have enhanced composers' income from publication. The evidence from our quantitative comparison of honoraria received by Beethoven, with no copyright law in his territory, and Robert Schumann, benefiting from nearly universal European copyright, provides at best questionable support for the hypothesis that copyright fundamentally changed composers' fortunes. From the qualitative evidence on Giuseppe Verdi, who was the first important composer to experience the new Italian copyright regime and devise strategies to derive maximum advantage, it is clear that copyright could make a substantial difference. In the case of Verdi, greater remuneration through full exploitation of the copyright system led perceptibly to a lessening of composing effort." Page 212, "Against Intellectual Monopoly".
This quote and the data behind make it clear that rent seeking behavior tended to substitute for creative activity and effort. The examples in this book and others that can be found on the Internet (the work of James Bessen is highly recommended reading), demonstrate pretty conclusively that IP tends to substitute for creative activity and effort in general. The general behavior is that people spend more time and effort engaged in rent seeking rather than creating, when presented with the reward of royalties. In the realm of software, one look at Microsoft should be enough to give anyone pause for thought about the value of copyrights vs. quality.
In the end, it really comes down to accepting your creative talents as gifts and having faith that you will be sufficiently compensated for your efforts.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
It's always good to base things of worth (e.g. future quality of creative works or your ability to pay for your housing etc) on faith. After all, faith in the fact that people will pay up for creative works when they don't have to has no flaws in it at all(!)
As I mentioned to someone else, one difference between the older situations (Beethoven etc) and today is the quality and speed of copying. With the classical composers you might be able to play someone's work again from an "unauthorised" copy of the sheet music, but it wouldn't be the same as having paid to hear it performed professionally (which was the only way to hear it).
Today people want to hear music in their own home, they can get that in media such as CDs, and those CDs are perfect copies that play the same each and every time. Not only that but any copy can be a perfect copy and can be made very quickly, rather than some cheap knock-off performance from a bunch of friends that's no-where near as good as the original.
Music is a bit of a bad example, though, because there is the argument that people can move to live performances. Books, games and software are where the problems lie, since readings by authors can't be done on the scale of gigs and wouldn't be as well attended, and software could try to sell support or subscription services but the majority of people don't want support and are already noticing a trend towards "nickel and diming" with subscriptions/micro payments.
I'm also not sure whether the "rent-seeking behaviour" argument works or whether it is self-defeating. It tries to argue that, when given copyright, authors attempt to monetize all that they can rather than actually working. What it ignores is that a similar effect is also true - if people can't monetize their effort, knowledge and expertise then they'll have to find other ways to live, and those other ways (jobs) will necessitate a reduction in production. Basically if you don't allow profit from creative works (or allow people legal ways to avoid paying for it) then other jobs become the substitute for creative work.
It's purely anecdotal, but neither my wife (with her fanfiction writing) nor myself (with open source applications) feel we'd bother putting in the effort to make things for general distribution if copyright were removed, everyone was free to copy anything and there was no control to say "hey, that isn't yours, I made that and I at least want recognition for it". What's the point in wasting your effort if anyone can take it for free and do what they want with it?