Swedish Left Party Wants to Legalize Piracy
A Links entry from Monday, June 9, 2008Swedish Left Party Wants to Legalize Piracy
If the Internet is to remain open and file-sharing unabated, as it should, then there will be a need at some point, either now or in the near future, to mobilize and act collectively to exercise the political will needed to make the proper changes. We should not cede an inch. Let Sweden be the guiding light.
Jason
A guiding light for what? I don’t really understand the draw to that position, other than the whole “getting something for free” mentality.
It seems slightly disingenuous to claim that internet p2p sharing is akin to the public library system, considering, most importantly, that libraries operate on a lending basis. Last time I checked, sites like the Pirate Bay don’t have some system where your download becomes deleted after a certain period of days. Its interesting that the comments on that link neglect to see that.
I imagine that this sort of bill is popular with either the further left or the young, considering both espouse some form of entitlement policies. As for the bill extending legality to only “noncommercial practices”, I hardly see how this is somehow more enforceable than what already exists, especially considering the difficulty in tracking such things as paypal.
With this sort of bill, I can imagine no real limit to internet piracy, or the downfall of intellectual property as a whole. Any company or movie studio that releases software or entertainment immediately hands over their right to ownership, or patent for that matter. Its pretty much a blank check for anyone who wants something but doesn’t see the need to pay for it. Unfortunately, this is a severely short-sighted policy, as companies that fall victim to this bill would take ulterior measures in preventing dissemination, or, due to lack of revenue on the product, cease production altogether.
But then, no one thinks that far ahead anyway.
Bryan Klausmeyer
The point is to bring about the downfall of intellectual property. It’s a broken system that was flawed from the start, and the appearance of the Internet only made it more clear. The truth is that progress is on the side of the pirates and has found important organizational backers like the EFF, while multi-billion-dollar corporations are struggling to fight against them.
Now, it seems to me that these two things cannot find any “peaceful coexistence,” precisely because the existence of each means the death of the other, so the only option is “going nuclear.” On the one side, this involves the destruction of intellectual property, on the other the regulation of the Internet (ending network neutrality, implementation of bandwidth caps, throttling, lawsuits, etc.).
Yet, the legalization of piracy does not mean the pure self-indulgence of file-sharers at the expense of musicians and artists, who would then disappear. To risk stating the file-sharing party-line, it seems like the Internet has done an efficient job of offering itself as a medium for free advertising of artists, making the point of the record companies fairly obsolete (not to mention distribution).
If artists would again like to make money from music sales and not just touring, I think Radiohead’s decision to offer their album for free, but with the option that any price be donated, has succeeded in making them plenty of money. Perhaps, like doctors who are employed by national healthcare services instead of in private practice, not as much as before, but surely a just amount. Additionally, if the record companies were eliminated as middle men, I myself would feel far more obliged in “buying” from them, knowing that the money would go directly to them.
Finally, the Internet has done a tremendous job of cultivating communities that provide rare music and cinema in a broad range of quality that a traditional store and or company could never accomplish. The Internet is already “communist” in a variety of senses, and I think it should stay that way. This can only be done by ending the heavy-handed policies of the dinosaur corporations that threaten to eliminate and seek to impregnate its utmost mission.
The last line was sort of tongue and cheek.
Bryan Klausmeyer
bryklaus@umich.edu
2 Comments