DADVSI revisited: Pirate Party.
This would have done well just as an addition to the DADVSI note I wrote yesterday, but I’d prefer having it as a post of its own: Following the approval of DADVSI, now the foundation of a French ‘Parti Pirate’ has been announced. After all, this doesn’t sound that new, given that there already is a Pirate Party in Sweden which, according to a German report on heise.de, by now already counts 225000 members. What makes this notable in my opinion is the list of political demands as stated by the French Parti Pirate:
The French Pirate Party plan 6 major reforms :
1 – > Total and unlimited liberty of speech
2 – > The end of the author rights as they exist in 2006
3 – > The right to browse anonimously on Internet
4 – > The legalization of P2P Networks when used in a non-lucrative purpose
5 – > The suppression of all taxes on empty hardware
6 – > Free Internet access to all
Though most of this sounds reasonable, we all should really worry about the current state of our society seeing that point “1”, something that should be a foundational liberty granted by each and every constitution in each and every country on this planet to call itself “democratic” or “free”, right now has to be defended by a political movement calling itself “Pirate Party” – and it has to be defended not against some “terrorists” or other evil villains threatening our social order but against a government, democratically elected by the majority of voters and yet acting according to political influences of a minority of industrial lobbyists. At this point, we really should question our political system…
Honestly, I am torn about that very issue. I think there needs to be a good regulation trying to preserve both the rights of creative artists and ‘consumers’, ensuring there is a certain sort of fairness around not to make the internet just a huge “self-service” area for digital (and possibly copyrighted) data of all kind. But this should be subject to negotiations between, well, representatives of artists and consumers, not representatives of big media companies and their helpers in politics and society. I would add another point to the list however:
“7 – > Banish technologies and regulations made for the sole purpose of destroying possibilities and options provided by other technology”
We really should know how to do better about that than using DRM and crippled hard- / software.