Posted on 10/27/2009 8:52:00 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Pirate Party hopes for free future
By Ian Youngs
Music reporter, BBC News
The Pirate Party, a political movement born out of music file-sharing, has gained support in Sweden and Germany, and is planning to field candidates in the next UK general election.
It wants to encourage all file-sharing and slash copyright - to the horror of many artists and entertainment executives. So are they a significant force or a fleeting bunch of freeloaders?
If Rick Falkvinge did not already know what the music industry thought of him, the Pirate Party founder found out at the In The City music industry conference in Manchester.
One delegate offered to "burn him at the stake", while another called him "seriously manipulative".
"Some very important people in the music industry have been shouting at me for the last month," said In The City organiser Yvette Livesey of her decision to invite Mr Falkvinge to the event.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Ping!
Why stop there, let's just get rid of patents period, let's have everyone put their time and effort into creating things, and not seeing a dime for their efforts.
My first reaction is that something like this would destroy the music and entertainment industry.
Then I recall that the industry has devolved into craptasticism, and wonder if what results could be all that much worse than what we have now.
Would it be worth having less “creativity” in return for fewer Alec Baldwins and Sean Penns? Hmm...
The problem with “free stuff for everybody” is that you inevitably end up giving away other people’s stuff until there isn’t any more of it. And no incentive to produce any more under the certainty that it, too, will be stolen. That’s socialism in a nutshell, right there.
It wouldn’t stop with music and video, they would also move into gaming, software, etc. to the point where innovation is stifled because no one would be incented to make free content.
14 years plus a 14 year renewal is enough.Nobody creates in a vacuum,everybody builds on what came before.
Demanding near perpetual copyrights is as wrong as demanding people give their work away.
A lot of “creative” entertainment product is virtually obsolete and worthless within a few years. Look at the bins of once blockbuster movie dvds during your next trip to Walmart or Target.
Music is even more throwaway outside the few “classic” records that sell for decades. Copyright duration could in most cases be severely shortened without much if any monetary damage in the great majority of cases.
It is a quandary, I agree. Of course anything that hurts the wallets of our idiot Hellywood libs would be great but giving it away for free is NOT the solution.
Months back here in L.A., I happen to talk to a copyright atty who has some clients at Paramount and he mentioned that as long as these “actors” get their “up-front(s)”, they wont get hurt to a degree... That’s why they’re libs and can afford to spout their divisive politics..
France just passed a law that says steal a song or movie and you could lose internet access for a year. Other countries in the EU are going to follow suit.
To be fair, at least according to the article, they are trying to get copyright coverage reduced from >50 years to 5 years.
Personally, I don’t think either is correct. If it were in the 10-25 year range, I think there’d be less of an issue.
Perhaps what needs to happen are two different copyright protections. One that prohibits sharing works for no commercial gain - that might be 10 years or something close.
Another would protect against commercial use, such as selling media with the materials contained, or using in another work (like music in a movie). That would have a longer duration.
I think, with a system like that, the more broad-based availability of works to individuals would then drive the use of the work in commercial ventures.
As it is now, there are all sorts of works that you can’t even obtain on any media because there isn’t enough demand to produce it. So everybody loses.
Well said.
An argument can be made that these young hacker tyros, who can crack anti-copyright security built into any commercial release software or media, within days, are a valuable national resource that should be nurtured and hired by relevant govt. agencies into elite hacker squads at very large salaries to protect national interests by attacking our enemies. Right now we only do this to the ones that get caught, ie., the stupid ones.
It’s not that the music and film industry are creating crucial products for the commonweal and, furthermore, the percentage of the profit that the artists sees from their creativity is miniscule, the rest goes into the pockets of production facilities that operate with inflated budgets, political agendas and monopolistic intent.
Basically the media industries are playing off a quickly dying monopoly on expensive production technologies, technologies that are becoming available to anyone with computer savvy and a fast box. Their monopoly on distribution is also an anachronism, anyone can distribute their music or film for free and pocket ALL the money coming in from their efforts and more cheaply and thus have the competitive edge. Without studio execs dictating every aspect of content and marketing, the artist operates in a more ideology free creative environment.
With digital media, I think piracy should be encouraged. It hastens the death of institutions that have been run as monopolies, that have cheated their artists, that have hidden political and social agendas, that can be easily replaced by democratized and independent self-production and thus allow a wave of new talent to have a voice.
Technology is inherently democratizing. It’s time for the captains of industry to cop to that fact.
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