The Case for Copyright Reform

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The Case for Copyright Reform | The Case for Copyright Reform

http://www.copyrightreform.eu/sites/...ght_Reform.pdf

Leaders of the international Pirate movement Christian Engstrom and Rick Falkvinge, that in 2006. in Sweden, founded the first Pirate Party, presented this week to the European Parliament their views on the reform of copyright law. Instead of their repeating criticism of the existing proposals, this time they went a step further and presented its alternative.

"Today’s copyright legislation is out of balance, and out of tune with the times. It has turned an entire generation of young people into criminals in the eyes of the law, in a futile attempt at stopping technological development. Yet file sharing has continued to grow exponentially. Neither propaganda, fear tactics, nor ever harsher laws have been able to stop the development." reads the introductory part of the file of 107 pages.

The file gives a comprehensive overview of how the current provisions of the copyright law violate free speech and privacy of individuals. In its proposal Pirate Party does not dispute the existence of moral rights of authors, but advocates for legalizing non-commercial sharing of content.

Pirate Party proposals can be summarized in six points:

1. No invasion of the moral rights of authors - none other than the actual author has no right to ask to be recognized as the author

2. Feel free to share all the content for non-commercial purposes

3. Reduction of commercial monopoly to 20 years since publication from todays, absurd to say, 70 years after the death of the copyright owner

4. Registration of Copyrights after the first five years if we want to retain the exclusive commercial right

5. Feel free to use portions of copyrighted content (for example, free movie clips for parody or parts of songs for remixes)

6. Sunspension / prohibition of DRM (digital restrictions on the system)

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