p2pnet - rss feed: Pirate Party of America
p2p news / p2pnet: The US now has its very own Pirate Party. The party is founded by Brent Allison, a PhD candidate at the University of Georgia, inspired by the Swedish pirate party “piratpartiet”.
The pirate party has three issues on its agenda, one of these is to reform copyright law:
The official aim of the copyright system has always been to find a balance between the interests of publishers and consumers, in order to promote culture being created and spread. Today that balance has been completely lost, to a point where the copyright laws severely restrict the very thing they are supposed to promote. The Pirate Party wants to restore the balance in the copyright legislation.
All non-commercial copying and use should be completely free. File sharing and p2p networking should be encouraged rather than criminalized. Culture and knowledge are good things, that increase in value the more they are shared. The Internet could become the greatest public library ever created.
The monopoly for the copyright holder to exploit an aesthetic work commercially should be limited to five years after publication. Today’s copyright terms are simply absurd. Nobody needs to make money seventy years after he is dead. No film studio or record company bases its investment decisions on the off-chance that the product would be of interest to anyone a hundred years in the future. The commercial life of cultural works is staggeringly short in today’s world. If you haven’t made your money back in the first one or two years, you never will. A five years copyright term for commercial use is more than enough. Non-commercial use should be free from day one.
We also want a complete ban on DRM technologies, and on contract clauses that aim to restrict the consumers’ legal rights in this area. There is no point in restoring balance and reason to the legislation, if at the same time we continue to allow the big media companies to both write and enforce their own arbitrary laws.
You can read more, and join the party over here.
Torrentfreak – The Netherlands
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June 8th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
If the commercial life of cultural works is so staggeringly short in today’s world then why are the media companys pushing so hard to extend copyright? Percentage wise not many of the products the media companys release stand the test of time, but the works that do are sources of HUGE profits. A couple years ago I saw copies of a “collectors edition” of “Gone With The Wind” selling for NINETY DOLLARS US. This is a 70 year old movie. What is the 40 year old Beatles catalog worth each year? I agree with the positions of the Pirate Party (BAD NAME!!!) for the most part. I just don’t want people to underestimate the monitary and cultural value of “back catalog” media holdings.
June 8th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
Everything is fine other than the name. If we want to be taken seriously than there needs to be a name not containing PIRATE in it.
June 8th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
Damn straight. Pirate Party is a TERRIBLE name. Maybe they should take a cue from the US guv and call it the Copyright Owner Protection Party.
June 8th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
copyright should be for a set time OR until a certain $ value is reached….If it is truly ment to benifiet society as the *AA’s and pupet politicians proclaim.
June 9th, 2006 at 12:49 am
Is so that if, on the off chance, you create something fifty years from now that borrows from their copyrighted work, they can sue you.
They look at copyrighted work as a simple “asset” not necessarily an “income producing asset”, so it doesn’t have to be producing money for them, so long as they completely control it.
You know the deal with Happy Birthday being copyrighted and how you have to pay royalties if you use it in a movie? That’s a perfect example of the world they are trying to create.
Essentially, it’s patent trolling, but for longer and using our cultural heritage instead of a functional invention.
June 9th, 2006 at 2:43 am
In the parliamentary system, a party who gets 5% of the votes statewide gets 5% representation in parliament. But the US system is winner-take-all in individual races, with the losing party getting nothing - which is why only 2 viable parties have ever existed in US politics.
June 9th, 2006 at 3:28 am
Damn straight! Last thing anyone wants is to end up at the wrong party meeting, especially if you’ve just bought a brand new fake parrot!
June 9th, 2006 at 6:48 am
Is it just me, or is their site unbuilt as of yet?
June 9th, 2006 at 6:52 am
Or the consumer protection party… but wait! isn’t Ralph Nader already on this agenda?? Strange we never hear of him…
June 9th, 2006 at 8:51 am
I think copyrights held by the *actual artists / authors * of a work should be held as long as that author wants to hold them .. that is, no one should be able to use that work / claim any part of it as their own work and not give due credit.
June 9th, 2006 at 8:53 am
Seems that way as of 08 Jun 2006.
June 9th, 2006 at 10:40 am
An anti-plagiarism law would be better for that than copyright.
June 9th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
Fluff
Why should copyright holders be given protection for their creation for life plus ?
Their end effort produces a product of no value.
Drug companies spend years developing a drug that saves or improves life, yet are protected for only twenty years
Farmers spend millions and get payed at rates that their grandfathers were payed.
The man who repairs your car does not get payed each time the car starts after a repair.
The plumber does not get payed each time you flush after a repair.
When Girl scouts sell you a cookie it,s yours.
When you buy a car, the manufacture does not have the right to tell you how to drive it.
If no music was played from this day on:
People would not die from its loss
There would be food to eat
there would be cloths to ware
there would be water to drink
there would be homes to live in
there would be cars to drive
there would be air to breath
there would be planes to fly
Life would change very little if at all, music is nothing more then fluff, how it’s become a top priority
for the government is beyond me.
The fluff salesman has done their job well i guess.
The rape of the cosumers in this country by copyright holders needs to stop.
RETURN copyright to default, as the founding fathers had it.
The current copyright laws, pure sewage, the copyright holder as it stands now contribute nothing to the common good of this country, which in turn make them a parasite.
RIAA is a sham. It represents German, Japanese, English and Canadian
interests, and approximately 3% of American interests.
The corporate whores in washington have sold out the American people for a buck!
June 10th, 2006 at 2:11 am
for a buck… and then some!
July 3rd, 2006 at 7:03 am
I simply LOVE the name. Names like consumer protection party and such I don’t take seriously…or even like. Cool names are cool if the names simply imply what they do then its all boring. With that in mind would you want a “Mustang” or a “Gets you from point A to B Fast” car.
I am taking them seriiously Not only because of the name but also I too am feed up with draconian copy-right laws.
January 31st, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Haha we should call this the Butt Pirate Party!
Butt Pirates!