[MLUG] Another view about eliminating DRM (Off topic read) (an embedded link inside)

[Leslie S Satenstein]

Cant say it is about linux, except to legalize using your favourite DRM elimination software.  

Here goes  remove blank characters between the URL

http: // falkvinge.net / 2011 / 10 / 07 / huge-pirate-victory-as-eu-party-group-adopts-perspective-on-copyright-monopoly/


The fifth largest party group in the European 
Parliament has adopted the Pirate Party positions on the copyright 
monopoly straight off the bat.
This is a huge victory for the pirate perspective. Just like the 
Greens needed time and effort in their time to explain their new and odd
 perspective, the pirate perspective of openness, transparency and 
accountability gradually gains its foothold. Now, the European Green 
group (of which the Swedish Pirate Party is a member) has adopted the 
Pirate Party’s perspective on culture completely. This expands the 
exposure area of the pirate perspective considerably.

(A primer on the European Parliament is that it is not composed of individual parties, but of party groups.
 The elected parties join together in groups. There are seven such 
groups in the European Parliament, and these groups act like individual 
parties would in a national parliament.)

These are the positions on the copyright monopoly that are now adopted by the Green party group:
It must be made absolutely clear that the copyright monopoly does 
not extend to what an ordinary person can do with ordinary equipment in 
their home and spare time; it regulates commercial, intent-to-profit 
activity only. Specifically, file sharing is always legal.There must be exceptions that make it legal to create mashups and 
remixes. Quotation rights, like those that exist for text, must be 
extended to sound and video.Digital Restrictions Management should preferably be outlawed, as it
 is a type of fraud nullifying consumer and citizen rights, but at 
least, it must always be legal to circumvent.The baseline commercial copyright monopoly is shortened to a 
reasonable five years from publication, extendable to twenty years 
through registration of the work.The public domain must be strengthened.
And a bonus unrelated to the copyright monopoly:
Net neutrality must be guaranteed.

This is a huge win for the pirate perspective on culture and 
knowledge and an advancement of our positions by miles and leagues. 
Also, I understand that more people in Parliament are interested in the 
newly-adopted perspective. This progress keeps on mirroring when the 
Green perspective entered politics 40 years ago.
We were elected to the European Parliament in 2009 with the promise 
of fostering understanding, endorsement, and adoption of the pirate 
perspective on society. This is the largest delivery on that promise to date.

Here is a pdf link to the freshly-adopted position paper.
 The entire paper is worth reading, but the really interesting parts are
 paragraphs 23 to 26, 28, and 29, quoted below, with emphasis by me:
§23. Up until twenty years ago, copyright [monopoly] was 
hardly anything that concerned ordinary people. The rules about 
exclusivity on the production of copies where aimed at commercial 
actors, who had the means to, for example, print books or press records.
 Private citizens who wanted to copy a poem and send to their loved one,
 or copy a record to cassette and give it to a friend, did not have to 
worry about being in breach of copyright. In practice, anything you had 
the technical means to do as a normal person, you could do without risk 
of any punishment.
But today, copyright has evolved to a position where it imposes 
serious restrictions on what ordinary citizens can do in their everyday 
life. As technological progress has made it easier for ordinary people 
to enjoy and share culture, copyright legislation has moved in the 
opposite direction. We want to restore copyright to its origins, and 
make absolutely clear that it only regulates copying for commercial purposes.
 To share copies, or otherwise spread or make use of use somebody else’s
 copyrighted work, should never be prohibited if it is done 
non-commercially and without a profit motive. Peer-to-peer file sharing is an example of such an activity that should be legal.

§24. DRM is an acronym for “Digital Rights Management” or “Digital 
Restrictions Management”. The term is used to denote a number of 
different technologies that all aim to restrict consumers’ and citizens’
 ability use and copy works, even when they have a legal right to do so.
 It must always be legal to circumvent DRM restrictions,
 and we should consider introducing a ban in the consumer rights 
legislation on DRM technologies that restrict legal uses of a work. 
There is no point in having our parliaments introduce a balanced and 
reasonable copyright legislation, if at the same time we allow the big 
multinational corporations to write their own laws, and enforce them 
through technical means.

§25. Much of today’s entertainment industry is built on the 
commercial exclusivity on copyrighted works. This, we want to preserve. 
But today’s protection times — life plus 70 years — are absurd.
 No investor would even look at a business case where the 
time-to-payback was that long. We want to shorten the protection time to
 something that is reasonable from both society’s and an investor’s 
point of view, and propose 20 years from publication.

§26. Today, works that are still in copyright but where it is 
impossible or difficult to locate the rights owner is a major problem. 
The majority of these works have little or no commercial value, but 
since they are still covered by copyright, they cannot be reused or 
distributed because there is nobody to ask for permission. Rights owners
 who want to continue to exercise their commercial exclusivity on work 
they already produced should register them within 5 years. This would greatly reduce the number of orphan works and facilitate diligent search.

§27. The problem of orphan works urgently needs to be solved. [...goes into details that don't originate in pirate policy, but aren't antithetical either...].

§28. From now, and within a time frame of 5 years after the 
production, registration of copyright work should be compulsory for 
authors to enjoy commercial exclusivity. This would greatly limit the existence [of] orphan works in the future.

§29. Today’s ever more restrictive copyright legislation and practice is a major obstacle
 to musicians, film makers, and other artists who want to create new 
works by reusing parts of existing works. We want to change this by 
introducing clear exceptions and limitations to allow remixes and parodies,
 as well as quotation rights for sound and audiovisual material modelled
 after the quotation rights that already exist for text.
Huge winnage. Let’s keep it up. People who are exposed to the pirate ideas and perspectives, and whose paycheck do not depend on the opposite, always connect the dots
 after some time of exposure. With this new large exposure area, and the
 recent successes by German Piratenpartei, I predict that understanding 
and endorsement of the pirate perspective will accelerate. 

------------------

Regards  
 Leslie
 Mr. Leslie  
 
 
 
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