Mesanna's Weblog

Read an excellent article in (UK newspaper) The Guardian today with Andrew Robinson, the leader of the UK’s Pirate Party.

The UK government is pledging to reduce illegal file-sharing by 70% over the next couple of years, and is threatening to cut off people’s internet access in order to achieve this goal. This directly contradicts their plan to ensure every household has a broadband connection so that they can move more services online.

There are alleged to be around 7 million file sharers in the UK, and given that the UK’s population is around 60 million, this is a fairly significant chunk of the population. Andrew Robinson points out that the UK’s court system handled around 2.2 million cases last year. If 70% of file-sharers were taken to court, this would represent 4.9 million new cases. The court system would collapse under the weight of it. The gov’s answer therefore is to cut off file-sharers – on the say so of an extremely biased entertainment industry – and flaunting a recent ruling by the European Parliament that this contravened the Human Rights Act.

It seems slightly ironic that the only people who are speaking sense about the whole copyright and file-sharing debate are named “The Pirate Party”. I’ve copied some text from the article below:

The Pirate party UK understands that authors, artists and performers need to be rewarded when their work is exploited for financial gain, which is why it campaigns for copyright reform rather than the abolition of copyright. Drafted long before the birth of the internet, our copyright law is concerned purely with the right to exploit works for financial gain. It has nothing relevant to say about peer-to-peer file sharing, where the duplication cost is zero, and therefore works are spread without any financial gain, an unimaginable concept when our copyright regulations were written.

When the government say that 7m Britons share files, it is important to understand that they are not referring to a greedy or avaricious process, but an altruistic system. The public have a right of access to our cultural heritage, many choose to preserve it through donations of internet bandwidth freely given to unknown strangers, a concept that is alien to our outdated law.

I must confess that I rather like what they are saying. I generally distrust most politicians as a matter of principal, but I find myself considering sending them a tenner to join up for the year as a protest against the current government’s policy.

The whole concept of copyright needs to be looked at again. It needs reform as, in its current format, it simply doesn’t address the issues of an on-line world. Most people seem unaware of how outdated copyright is, and how the system is gamed entirely in favour of the copyright holder. Copyright is a contract between a creator and society, to ensure they are fairly paid for their work. Now, I fully support artists being paid, but given that in the UK copyright extends to the life of the artist plus 70 years, is it right that the grandchildren of artists should be paid too? All art eventually returns to the public domain to benefit society as a whole, but current and future generations are being deprived of their cultural heritage for the benefit of big business.

The Pirate Party are calling for discussion on copyright reform. They are also unhappy about the current “surveillance society” – another issue I feel strongly about. I think they deserve some time in the spotlight as these are serious issues. But they really should change the name. Unfortunately, they just won’t be taken seriously by many people with a name like The Pirate Party!

The Pirate Party’s Andrew Robinson discusses filesharing in The Guardian

UK Pirate Party