Ask the UK Pirate Party's Andrew Robinson About the Issues 391
VJ42 writes "With the 2010 UK general election fast approaching, the Pirate Party of the United Kingdom will be fielding elections for the first time. The Digital Economy bill and ACTA are hot topics for UK geeks, and the Pirate Party is looking to pick up some votes. Their leader, Andrew Robinson, has agreed to answer your questions. Normal Slashdot interview rules apply."
Forcing authors to lose rights over work (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems Pirate Party UK's one of the core policies is reformin copyright and patent law so that non-commercial file sharing would be legalized. While certainly a noble goal, shouldn't content producers, artists, programmers, and basically anyone producing something have a right to their work?
This is not only limited to music, movies or other kind of entertainment - among other things, it also affects open source coders who release their code under GPL. If there weren't copyrights, there couldn't be GPL either, nor Creative Commons Attribution, No Derivative Works and Share Alike licenses. In this exact case copyright is used to allow the author to make sure he is attributed and his work isn't misused.
Wouldn't the world be less controlling if the authors actually had some saying over their works instead of being forced to lose control over their work?
Cooperation (Score:1, Interesting)
Does the UK Pirate Party collaborate with pirate parties from other countries? If so - which ones?
The only question... (Score:4, Interesting)
In Principle vs. Practical (Score:5, Interesting)
In Principle I really support what the Pirate party works. But in practical sense, there is a left-of-center ground for compromise. Copyright probably needs to go back to what it was around 130 years ago when it was a sane compromise. Now that ever happening in the western world is next to impossible unless there are large scale changes in governments. I'm sorta in favor of the idea that Copyright be fair, not non-existent. And not perpetual, and not in favor of massive IP holder trusts.
PPAU apathy (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm wondering if you had any trouble getting members for the party as opposed to what is happening in Australia. The pirate party here is suffering from member apathy, no one is going as far to fill out the paper work in order to help the party get the numbers needed to register as a political party. Has the UK pirate party had any similar issues?
Diluting possible change (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Forcing authors to lose rights over work (Score:4, Interesting)
"Subverting" in this context meaning more of "back to basics". Considering that it originated from the US and the US Constitution is quite specific on what "copyright type" things are ment to do.
Re:In Principle vs. Practical (Score:3, Interesting)
What is your stance on erosion of privacy in UK? (Score:4, Interesting)
What is your stance on erosion of privacy in UK? Will your party only follow the path of Intellectual Property rights, or do you plan to fight for freedom of speech, against invasion of privacy online and in daily life, censorship and other vital freedom-related problems.
Naming Rights (Score:5, Interesting)
Us nerds and geeks get it, but how does The Pirate Party aim to convince normal people that this political party is more than a modern Monster Raving Looney Party?
Re:Forcing authors to lose rights over work (Score:2, Interesting)
I buy Cd's, i have over 600 at last count, and none of those are from 'mainstream' artists (whom tend to suck badly anyway), if they insist on those levies, i want to be able to bring in my legal purchases as a reduction against those levies (hell, they'd owe *me* money that way) when i decide to buy a new memory card for my camera, and if that's impossible I'd at least appreciate having a say as to what artist gets my 'contribution', crap artists like 50cent and Britney Spears have no right to my money.
Monster Raving Loony Party (Score:5, Interesting)
(for the yanks, it was and is a genuine political party)
Knew all the old crew (Sutch, Hope, et al) well, great social events and parties, no hope of ever actually winning, just thumbing your nose at the system.
Why is the UK Pirate party any different, apart from the lack of great social events and satirical candidate names? Oh, and the lack of any other decent policies to counter the insanity worked by the likes of Harman etc.
Whereas a vote for the BNP (British National Party, often called British Nazi Party) really would be a protest vote, as more than a handful of seats might actually go to them, and NOTHING would shock british politics more than a notable proportion of the population electing wannabe Hitlers to the House of Commons.
This is not a troll, this is a serious question.
Re:Help for British copyright holders (Score:1, Interesting)
There is nothing they could do even if they ran the government and the PM was your Tuesday golf buddy. Last I checked UKGov don't have a say in the US legislative process by constitutional decree.
Also the DMCA notice is almost identical to the demand letter you would send to a British publication doing the same thing so writing it shouldn't really be an issue to write it. The fact they wont pull it without the DMCA, unlike British counterparts, is to protect themselves from civil liability - pulling it without one could be viewed as an admission of guilt by courts.
Questions (Score:2, Interesting)
(In order of importance)
1. How are you going to improve our Schools and Hospitals?
2. What is your stance on the "War on Terror"?
3. The economy is facing another nosedive before the end of the year, how are you preparing for it?
4. How are you going to tackle the uncontrolled immigration problem?
5. Do you have any plans to control anti social behaviour?
(loads of other more important questions later)
4432. What will you change in copyright law, whilst still making sure that the 2 years+ unemployed bloke next door can come up a new idea and use it to get out of the rut that he's currently stuck in?
Re:Forcing authors to lose rights over work (Score:3, Interesting)
Creators currently mostly do not have any rights over their work ....
If I create software, my company owns the copyright not me ..., If I publish a song, then the record company will have control of the copyright even if it is nominally in my name..., If I have any creative ideas it is likely that someone else will have more control than I as the author have .... this is the reality
Even if I have control over my work, (software I wrote at home, self published books, songs uploaded to the internet) I would have little chance of enforcing the copyright since I have little money and no expensive lawyer ...
The real point is why should I have control anyway? Do you have any control over the work you did for a company a year ago ..? If I take a picture why should I be able to charge people to make copies, or stop them if I don't like what they want to do with it .... the original I understand, but why are copies protected in this unique way ?
Re:Money (Score:3, Interesting)
While I don't take a hardline stance that all copyright should be eradicated, playing devil's advocate for a moment, you can't say that artists wouldn't produce worthwhile work in the absence of copyright, because we already know that for hundreds of years they did just that. Some of them did very well for themselves, too.
Charging for performances (for music artists, gigs, for movies, make the cinema experience actually something worthwhile to compete with the home cinema experience, for painters, exhibitions, etc); patronage (actually corporate sponsorship in this day and age would be more likely, and we've already seen how lucrative that can be for artists); asking your fans for donations (much easier now than ever where anyone can set up a page on the internet to accept donations and can use blogging/micro blogging tools to get their message out).
Removing copyright would, of course, mean that artists had to survive on merit rather than having a god-given right to make money, but I honestly can't see how that would be a bad thing. If the ones who don't care passionately about what they do just slink off into the night, has society been cheapened by their loss? Maybe not so many artists will be able to live the millionaire lifestyle, but again, the ones who are only in it for the money are probably not a great loss (and nobody guarantees the rest of society to live a "comfortable" lifestyle but they seem to still turn up for work every day...).
Re:Forcing authors to lose rights over work (Score:3, Interesting)
Couldn't you write a Facebook-like P2P program that just copied files from people you knew personally, or if they didn't have it, sort of copied from someone they knew to them, then to you?
Like, I don't know Dorothy, but I know Alex. And Alex knows Bill who knows Carrie who knows Dorothy. Alex and Bill and Carrie don't have Timberlake's "Motherlover [hulu.com]" (Low quality, non-hulu link [youtube.com]) song, but Dorothy does. She sends it to her friend, Carrie, who sends it to her friend, Bill, who sends it to my friend, Alex. Now I can get it, and all the sharing has been perfectly legal.
Of course, the natural result here would be that everyone and their sister would either a) have a copy of every single piece of media on the internet, or b) be constantly downloading/uploading/deleting tons and tons of data. But it'd be legal.
Re:Money (Score:3, Interesting)
Even with copyright there is no guarentee that you will make money. At least in a "capitalist" economy. The other thing is that plenty of people "give away" plenty of stuff right now. Sometimes without expecting any financial reward, sometimes asking for donations, sometimes to encourage sales of something else (even the same content in a different form).
Voting for the BNP is an extremist vote (Score:5, Interesting)
Voting for the BNP is not a "protest vote" - this is not a warm and cuddly hippy protest option like voting for the Monster Raving Loony Party.
Voting for the BNP is voting for an extremist party, a party that grew out of the National Front (look all these up on wikipedia) and until they were forced to change by European law this year had as part of their constitution a ban on people that weren't "white" from joining the party membership.
To my mind that's quite an extreme position for a party to take if it declares its goal to be getting political power, ruling over people of a variety of different ethnic groups. I think voting for the BNP is a dangerous way of expressing your protest at the current political system. The BNP is serious about some of its extreme politics, and is likely to get some seats and have real influence in UK politics if people start voting for them in the misguided belief that they are just offering up a protest to the system.
Re:Help for British copyright holders (Score:2, Interesting)
Presumably you have already been paid by one of the aforementioned British newspapers/sites in exchange for your time and effort in producing these photographs?
Why do you feel you deserve to be paid a second time for the same piece of work, even though you have put in no additional time or effort?
Re:Is fielding candidates the best course? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is fielding candidates the best course, for a single issue group like yours?
As well as the PPUK there is a lobby group: Open rights group [openrightsgroup.org] & a business coalition: Coadec [coadec.com]. To change policy we need to work through all these channels.
Artifical Digital Scarcity Vs Digital "Pirate" (Score:3, Interesting)
The "Pirate" in The Pirate Party's name implies the duplication of digital information. One side of the "Pirate" argument, mostly being represented by large digital distributors such as the Music Industry [wikipedia.org] and Motion Picture Associations [wikipedia.org], believe that our society needs strong legislation enforcing Artificial Scarcity [wikipedia.org] into the digital medium via treaties such as ACTA [michaelgeist.ca]. In other words, they appear to hold the view that only certain rights holders should have exclusive legal right to make and sell unlimited digital copies for fixed cost [wikipedia.org], just like any physical good for sale. On the other side of the debate we have the "Pirates" who appear to hold the view that digital information should not be treated as a scarce good [wikipedia.org], that digital distribution [wikipedia.org] is just a natural property of any digital medium and should be available to everyone.
How does the Pirate Party intend to allow those wishing to distribute original creative digital works to make a profit without legislating artificial scarcity into the digital medium?
Re:Forcing authors to lose rights over work (Score:3, Interesting)
How do "realistic fair use" provisions in copyright law and practice help you gain access to the (trade secret, unpublished) source code for a proprietary application so you can fix a bug or enhance it?
Re:Artifical Digital Scarcity Vs Digital "Pirate" (Score:2, Interesting)
How does the Pirate Party intend to allow those wishing to distribute original creative digital works to make a profit without legislating artificial scarcity into the digital medium?
this is the big question. i guess we can try to put the shoe on the other foot. should a person who makes screws/nails for a living get residuals for anything that the screws/nails are used to build? should architects get a cut every time a building they designed is sold? those sound exactly the same as studio engineer or singer getting a cut every time a song is sold or, if the powers that be have their way, played.
.iso if you won't sell it in stores, but don't price it like there is still a bunch of middlemen.
personally, i'd like to see the following added to any future copyright legislation:
1. make available. if you want protection, the work must be made available. in the digital age, nothing should ever go out of print. there is no reason i shouldn't be able to just buy&download the
2. mandatory, global licensing. wasn't the internet supposed to get rid of all these bullshit boundaries/regions/etc. and level the playing field? in this day and age, shouldn't the works be globally and readily available upon creation? additional licensing streams be damned.
3. limited time. let's go back to the 14 +14 scenario. that is more than enough time. it sickens me that nothing made in my lifetime will ever be public domain in my lifetime. i'm surprised they haven't just made them forever by now.
well, those 3 to start.