Norway Liberal Party Wants Legal File Sharing 563
dot-magnon writes "The Liberal Party of Norway (Venstre) passed a unanimous resolution that advocates legal file sharing. The party wants to legalise sharing of any copyrighted material for non-commercial use. It also proposes a ban on DRM technology, free sampling of other artists' material, and shortening the life span of copyright. The Liberal Party is the first Norwegian political party, and the first European mainstream political party, to advocate file sharing. The Liberal Party's youth wing proposed the resolution."
Software? (Score:2, Interesting)
The article only mentions music - what about software? Would Apple and Microsoft have to provide DRM-free versions of their operating systems?
Re:Software? (Score:5, Informative)
Their english translation:
"Ban DRM: The Liberal Party states that anyone who has bought the right to use a product needs a technologically neutral way of using it. This means that distributors can not control how citizens wish to play back legally bought digital music. The Liberal Party wants to prohibit technical limitations on consumers' legal rights to freely use and distribute information and culture, collectively known as DRM. In cases where a ban on DRM would be outside Norwegian jurisdiction, products that use DRM technology need to clearly specify their scope of use before they are sold."
Trying to stay very literal:
"Ban against DRM: The Liberal Party is of the opinion that all that have bought the right to use a copyrightable work must have technology-neutral opportunities to use that copyrightable work as one wants. This means that producers and deliverers of technology can not control how citizens for example should play back the music that they have bought. The Liberal Party will therefore prohibit socalled DRM (Digital Rights Management), which are technical limitations to limit the consumers' legal right to freely copy and use information and culture. In those cases where a ban is outside Norwegian jurisdiction, products that contain DRM technlogy shall be clearly marked."
Worse English, but it preserves a little more of the meaning.
Ban on DRM is a terrible idea (Score:5, Insightful)
There is absolutely zero need to ban DRM, for one simple reason: DRM doesn't work, has never worked, can't ever work. All DRM schemes are fundamentally flawed, at a deep technological level. The only course of action necessary is to remove all laws protecting DRM, thus making it completely legal to make, distribute, even sell software and/or hardware for the explicit purpose of breaking DRM. Completely legal copies of DeCSS, FairUse4WM, QTFairUse, BackupHDDVD, etc would be available everywhere. Entire companies could be founded to muster the resources to perform sophisticated attacks on DRM hardware and software (perhaps even a brute force cryptological attack would be feasible in some cases with enough resources). Modchips, firmware hacks, replacement toner cartridges with DRM lockout chips, etc would all be readily available.
In such an environment, all DRM would be futile. After a few more thwarted schemes, even the most stubborn holdouts in the RI/MPAA would have to see the light. DRM would go away of its own accord, and it would all be the result of *repealed* laws instead of new ones. Fewer laws on the books is a good thing.
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It can work sufficiently well that a large portion of the people with playstations, for example, are in practice unable to make a backup of their game and have that backup work.
This is a fact -- despite you being correct: there are ways to break it, and determined people can indeed manage to copy and play playstation-games.
I don't think banning DRM is needed. I would however advocate an either-or approach:
For a work to enjoy copyrigth, it should be publish
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We should welcome this as it is the first big step of defiance against the EUCD. If Norway banned DRM it would give the anti-EUCD lobby some much-needed ammunition.
Re:Ban on DRM is a terrible idea (Score:4, Insightful)
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What if I owned a PSP and wanted to play the New Super Mario Bros. on it? Would I be justified in warezing the rom and hacking my PSP's firmware to play it, so long as I sent my $30 check to Nintendo Norway? Could I request Microsoft release NT3.5 for my super nintendo so that it's cross platform?
Re:Technological neutrality (Score:5, Informative)
So from this we can expect that authors would not be required to release works for all platforms, but cannot interfere, e.g. by using DRM, with attempts by their customers to make those works function on other platforms.
So you could not download a ROM and hack it, but you could buy a copy of the game, rip the ROM, and then hack it to run on a PSP. You could not force MS to release NT for the SNES, but if you bought a copy, you could try to get it to run on the SNES. That's how I'm understanding it, anyway.
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Why not? Considering that in your example Nintendo still got their fair price for the game, can you think of anything that's actually ethically wrong with your scenario anyway? I can't.
Re:Technological neutrality (Score:4, Interesting)
Does this mean that software bought to run on a Windows PC should also run on a Mac, Linux PC, whatever?
No, it means it should not be artificially restricted from doing so.
This is a completely separate issue from _requiring_ software to be multiplatform.
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I mean, a copy of Vista playing mp3's or DVD's from Pirate Bay won't begin starting up its DRM junk.
Re:Software? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Software? (Score:5, Informative)
The DVD player software contains DRM software (though thoroughly ineffective, DVD-Jon has seen to that).
I've also heard there may be some DRM in OS X to prevent hackers from running Mac OS X on a generic PC -- but I'm not clued in on that area sufficiently to make a positive assertion of that.
Sure, you can argue that the DRM isn't active unless you have DRM:ed files, and it's the files that are the problem, and not the OS itself -- but the fact is that the DRMed files wouldn't be there if they weren't supported by software.
Re:Software? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not joking, either.
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Re:Software? (Score:5, Informative)
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Really? Apple sells a version of OS X that I can run under vmware? I guess the osx86 project [osx86project.org] can shut down now.
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
As Pirates (I am a member of the Swedish Pirate Party) we believe there is no inherent right in getting paid for copies. We do however believe in a right to charge for performing a work.
If artists who are out to make money stop producing due to copyright reform -- good riddance. There'll still be plenty of music and culture left, just as there has always been.
To take one example, in the Music Industry, even the big labels don't see recorded music as a product any more -- but rather as advertising for other events and products.
The fact is that technology for unlimited copying is here -- and the laws preventing private exploitation of this technology are outdated and counterproductive. With new technologies, people and products are made redundant. This happens all the time -- today nobody sees the sharp decline in sales and production of horse-whips after the widespread adoption of the automobile as a bad thing for example.
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1. Music isn't the only thing that can be copyrighted. Movies can't exactly be performed live and neither can software.
2. Since the invention of the printing press there has been technology for nearly unlimited copying save for a small cost for the actual copy. The xerox allowed for private individuals to make copies. Copyrights exist exactly for this reason, saying technology makes it pointless means you don't know the first thing about them.
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Please God, no. The last thing I want is for the government to be paying for movies to get made. There are a lot of movies made that absolutely fucking suck and I don't want tax dollars going towards subsidizing that. Or music, or books. I don't like it when the government bails out farmers or airlines, either.
If the government pays for movies to get made, not only are you paying for the movies you like, but you're paying for every
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But there are other possibilities. There's no reason movies can't be done as performances - Rocky Horror Show being one example. Movies can still make plenty of money as free downloads from sites with ads (text based please). And special edition collectors DVDs will still sell for movies at the thin end of the distribution tail.
(Note that under the proposed Norwegian system
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Movies will still survive through private patronage or government subsidies.
There's another option, one that we've already seen. Sell the 'bugs' on your show (those little ghosted images that are normally used for network ID.) Why advertise a network when you don't need one? Skip the network, get the advertisor to fund the project, and put his logo up in the bug's place. Then release it everywhere.
Fun part is, the more copies that are made, the more bang the advertisor gets for his buck. Later, you can s
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
That explains why the Swedish movie industry, instead of the evil capitalist studio system in Hollywood, USA, dominates the global market for movies.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a big difference between the printing press, the xerox machine, and file sharing.
The printing press meant that organisations could suddenly print large numbers of copies of a single work. Production of copies wasn't the largest cost any more, it was the actual production of the content. Rightly, copyright was instated to prevent other bookprinters from profiteering off somebodyelses work. To this day, the Pirate Party does not condone or support copyright infringement for commercial gain.
The Xerox machine was a revolution in copying technology, but was very limited in its scope. It took considerable work to copy books with a xerox machine. It's self-regulating in that way. There wasn't really any pressure to update copyright laws because the societal impacts of the Xerox machine weren't nearly significant enough.
With file sharing and the Internet, suddenly anybody can make infinite copies at neglible cost of any information that can be stored digitally.
This is a *good thing*, and is a fact of life -- and the status quo can't be maintained through outdated legislation.
You make good points that making money off movies might be hard in the future, but the fact is that the big bucks in movies comes from movie theater tickets. The DVD sales are just extra cream on top, and those crappy cams and telecines you see on file sharing networks are definitely no substitute for the real thing.
Sure, DVD sales may diminish, but that's always been extra cream on top -- not the main bottom line.
Either way, if you start trying to charge for something that's more convenient than file sharing, they will come. It worked for All Of MP3 (shady non-compensation of artists aside), and it would work for the movie industry too. I for one would rather pay a few dollars to watch a movie in DVD-quality using streaming downloading (entirely possible with technology today) than having to wait a few hours to get it off bittorrent. Instead, the content industry has made their own "legitimate download" services more cumbersome than the illegal alternative, and it'll be their undoing.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not tell him what a great chance he could have of making *some* money by putting his book out on Internet, and selling hardcopies to interested parties.
This business model works. I have bought several books (technical books, but the idea should extend to fiction too) using this exact method.
Sure, you can't get paid for every single person who reads your book. Just like the way you can't get paid by every single person who listens to your music as they walk past you on the street. The Internet has made everybody a street performer, whether they like it or not. The only way to stop that from happening is not to perform.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
The Swedish Pirate Party, which I am a member of, advocates a reduction in the term of copyright to somewhere betweeh 5 or 20 years after the work has been produced, as well as a reduction in scope of copyright only to cover commercial copying.
This is a far cry from abolishing copyright.
And as far as I know, Norway's Venstre doesn't want to abolish copyright either, they also want it reformed, not abolished.
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I agree that copyrights should be reduced - do a survey, find out that 95% of all revenue occurs in the first X years and set it to that.
My concern is when you start giving a pass to certain interests (eg non-commercial) you start opening up loopholes in the system an
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Imagine an internet radio station that transmits a playlist instructing clients to automatically download the next song over legal P2P. Or companies that sell access to private trackers, even though users are still technically downloading from each other. Or a company that sells a cheap TiVo knockoff with Step 1 in the instruction manual: "Download TiVo Software".
The one thin
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Certainly the Pirate Party wants to go beyond this (since they want to include *all* copyrighted material, not only cultural, and they want to include mass media r
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There's already not much money in writing, unless you're named King or your initials are JKR.
It takes a long time to write, for example, a good fantasy or sci-fi novel. Yet they could be reproduced costless digitally.
Books are generally written by a single person, so it would take a very long time to write a book and work full time (which can be seen in the cases of authors
Not impossible, just different. (Score:5, Interesting)
In truth, there probably wouldn't be as many books written, but I'm not sure that's necessarily bad per se; I think our current system encourages the overproduction of many forms of "art" basically on speculation, far more than the market really demands and is willing to pay for, which is why there are so many out-of-work artists of various stripes, e.g. authors who have written books that nobody wants to buy. An approach that resulted in nothing being written without a market for it would result in less pages produced annually, but it would lead to only the stuff that people were actually willing to pay for getting written.
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I've read my share of crappy published books, that much is true, but it's one of the markets where publishers are less inclined to take risk publishing a crap book, because profits are so low. With the possible exception of self-help and diet books, which, like that stupid cheese moving book, are inexplicably popular.
I just don't think elim
That doesn't mean it's a good idea. (Score:4, Insightful)
But that doesn't mean it's a good system, or that on the whole -- when you include the costs of the current system, generally taken for granted -- that an alternative system that was more directly market-driven wouldn't be preferable.
And it's not as though direct-patronage systems don't work, they've obviously worked fairly well in the past; it's also well understood that subscription services work very well in many media, where you pay less for any individual unit of information than to a continuous stream of information -- the value of such services would likewise be unaffected.
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Making money on books is *hard*, even today, and that hasn't stopped people from writing books.
So what is it that drives these people to write, even though they almost certainly won't get paid? Probably not copyright.
Creativity needs outlets, and they'll always exist. Why do you think there's so much great free stu
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And there's also a lot of crap free stuff on the internet. People who would never normally be given an outlet, and I have to wade through them.
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True. 99% of everyting is crap. That includes the 9
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I have no problem at all with severely pulling back the current ridiculousness of the "IP" laws. Most of those are designed to protect stupid business models, and there's absolutely no reason for "author's life plus 99 years."
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If you feel strongly about it, perhaps you should consider patronage [wikipedia.org]. It's a model that supported generations of artists before the advent of modern copyright.
Really, the modern music/publishing businesses are twisted forms of patronages. Arstists/authors receive advances from publishers/distributors who recoup their losses by profi
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Not until reading digitally is much easier on the eyes.
However, I'll always like actually holding the book. I don't know why that is, but it only seems to apply to books.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you seriously suggesting that if a company has a poor business model it's anybodies fault but their own?
The companies holding intellectual property do just that, *hold* it. They're not on anybodys side but their own, in fact, I could argue that they're damaging to society.
I see no reason to continue to support this "industry" based on reinforced outdated legislation. Do you really it's a good idea for a single company to have rights of redistribution to something that's so trivial to redistribute, that millions of people around the world are doing it without even batting an eyelid?
We don't need the companies help to redistribute things any more. If they don't like it, they're welcome to take their profits, close up shop, and pull out. Culture will find its way without them, even better than before they arrived.
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There is a subtle difference. Bad business
Not by a long shot. (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree fundamen
Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
The issue is not whether the creator has the right to do things with the work -- we're all agreed that he has that right. The issue is whether the creator has the right to prevent other people from acting equally as freely with regard to that work.
That sort of monopoly certainly does not inherently spring from the act of creation. Nor is it commonplace, really. For example, when sushi was introduced to American cuisine, the existing itamae didn't get to keep competitors from making the exact same food. Their hard work in creating the market was exploited by others and this is a fact of life and not a problem with the market or the law.
Authors do not inherently have the right to keep other people from making copies of their works. But just as the government sometimes grants monopolies to utilities in order to ensure greater public benefits than would be had from a deregulated market, it is sometimes acceptable to grant monopolies to authors provided that the public receives a greater benefit from this than they would if these monopolies, called copyrights, were not granted. The public benefits by having more works created and published but equally by having as few or no restrictions on what they can do with those works. So simply increasing copyright is not an ideal solution, since 1) there is an issue of diminishing returns as to how much creation and publication they encourage, and 2) that would run contrary to the public interest in having less copyright.
These anti-IP arguments essentially break down to the same knee jerk pro-communism arguments that were very prominent 50 years ago
Pshaw. If you want a free market then you have to be against copyrights, since they are governmental market regulation. Hell, they're basically a form of subsidy for authors, meant to benefit the public. So really, one would imagine that it would be socialists or communists that are in favor of copyrights, while free-market capitalists are against them. The only reason that the authors and publishers support copyrights is because they benefit so much from them, and they don't want to have to face the additional competition if they were reduced or abolished.
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thats communism right?
I'm not trolling, or being negative, I repesct people who believe in communist principles, but often (in my experience) they don't realise what they are.
You expect people who can manufacture products (songs, software etc) to do so without any expectation of being compensated for the fruits of their labour (assuming those fruits are desired and consumed). That remind
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Because people stop purchasing their music just because P2P exist and is used?
Well, in that case, Britney Spears ought to be living on the streets by now, right?
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Personally, I believe in freedom. People ought to be able to use their wares in any way they want. If you don't like how they're using it, don't sell it. If you don't like t
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, I'm all in favour of having a system whereby people who create stuff, gets paid. However, the current copyright system is not sustainable by any means. Digital technology has changed the landscape, and there's nothing we can do about it, no matter how good the arguments in favour of intellectual property rights are.
We have always shared intellectual property:
Sure, (s)he can either keep it a secret, or (s)he can show it to others. Artificially restricting the terms under which it is copied is something that is an interesting idea, and might have worked in the past, but unfortunately, it no longer works. You can't keep teenagers from having sex either. Perfect digital copies is a revolution in how we communicate ideas. And even though intellectual property rights was a good idea before digital technology existed, doesn't mean it will continue to be so forever. Intellectual property rights will end some time in this century.
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There's a representative from the Ankh-Morpork guild of musicians here, he wants to talk to your kneecaps.
Near-exact copy of a Swedish Piratpartiet document (Score:5, Interesting)
The Swedish Pirate Party didn't explicitly permit this copying, except for declaring their pages to be "No Copyright". I guess Venstre practice what they preach, and the Swedish Pirate Party has also come out with a statement saying that they welcome this act of copying.
More information about this (in Swedish) from Piratpartiet can be found here [piratpartiet.se].
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The society where these singing muppets on Youtube [youtube.com] is technically illegal because the copyright owner has most probably not explicitly permitted Youtube to share that particular piece of video.
But does the presence of this clip and hundreds like it diminish our society? No! It improves it! I feel the world is a much better place now I know t
Translation (Score:3, Informative)
The Norwegian Liberal Party, equivalent to the Swedish Liberal Peoples Party, today took the program of the Pirate party and made it their own.
At the ongoing national convention a pronouncement was adopted unanimously, which excepting that it has fewer details is a direct translation of the essentials of the program of the Pirate Party with regard to cultural ecology, with further wording from the subheadings of the program. Intention to "encoura
Get ready (Score:5, Funny)
2..
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I say go for it. (Score:2)
tyranny of the majority (Score:2, Insightful)
That would certainly bring down prices for consumers quite a bit... for existing drugs. However, it would disincent pharmeceutical companies to make the mammouth R&D investments needed to discover new ones.
Re:tyranny of the majority (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, the Swedish Pirate Party (of which I am a member) uses the pharmaceutical industry as an example of an area where patents are harmful.
The pharmaceutical industry today spends more money on advertising than on R&D, and also receives a very large bulk of its funding through government grants and other subsidies.
Getting rid of the patent system would be a big win for society at large. Maybe then we'd get more drugs for things like AIDS and not as many drugs for erectile disfunction.
Speaking of AIDS drugs, a lot of people in the third world can't afford AIDS treatment because of the artificially inflated drug prices due to patents. Are pharmaceutical patents really worth their cost in human lives?
No -- let the governments continue to fund pharmaceutical research -- maybe more than before, and get rid of patents. It's better for everybody in the long run, except for Big Pharma.
Re:tyranny of the majority (Score:4, Insightful)
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In Europe, government funding of organisations for the advancement of arts has worked relatively well in the past, I see no reason for it to work in the future for pharmaceutical development, as long as it's not politicised.
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In case of a shortage, unless there is some kind of mechanism (like a patent) limiting production capacity, production capacity will increase, and more players will enter the market, lured in by the higher prices.
I never said the price of production should be subsidised. There's a difference between subsidising research and production. The current system is actually a kind of production-based subsidy, come to think of it.
(By the way. I vaguely re
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Only if you live completely isolated from society, which no human does.
All societies inherently have laws that govern the conduct of its populace. Claiming something else is nonsensical or wishful thinking; I could say "The question whether I want to save someone I see is in trouble, is ultimately a decision to be made by me". Just as yours, this seems rational,
Re:tyranny of the majority (Score:5, Insightful)
In any case, these companies most certainly don't have our health or best interests in mind. Investment in medicine should be driven by need rather than profit, and the existing system is clearly a massive failure.
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That company would close its doors right this second if they had no way to protect the fruits of their research. Why would a shareholder inve
Re:tyranny of the majority (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and what about the fact that some drug companies research and development aims are geared toward high value markets (dieting and beauty for example, which can be addressed through other means) rather than areas that would help large sections of the population with actual illness (where a drug may be the only option)? The market forces involved force company's to do what is best for their bottom lines, most of the time, Not what is best for society as a whole. With a shift of our IP related legislation, maybe that would change.
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P.S. Links are to my blog. I do know the subject - if you want my background go to the about page on the site in my sig.
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Maybe they wouldn't. Maybe you're right, maybe drugs would be produced faster that way. Would you be willing to risk your life? How abou your mother's life? Or your arthritic grandfather, would you be willing to risk increasing his pain, just to make their research methods more scientifically pleasing?
Re:tyranny of the majority (Score:5, Informative)
Well, you're doing it now, and you have no choice.
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UberBan (Score:2)
DRM technology
free sampling of other artists' material
shortening the life span of copyright
Couldn't quite grok that..
How dare those communists... (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone in their right mind can see the horse clearly inside its stall within the barn, lazily chomping out of its nose-bag. If you can't see it, your vision must be impaired - get to your nearest RIAA office and book in for the next available seminar.
I'm sure there must have been a lot of ferry operators put out when the Channel Tunnel opened up to connect road traffic between the UK and France. But in that case, the ferry operators didn't have any significant pull with government, so the tunnel went ahead.
To borrow Russel Crowe's line from Master and Commander, we have to choose the 'lesser of two weevils':
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Wish we had medium size political parties (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wish we had medium size political parties (Score:4, Informative)
The United States system prevents there being more than two serious parties. European countries tend to use proportional representation to solve the problem. In the United States, that doesn't work because our congresmen represent geographic areas - but the problem could be signficiantly reduced if we used a voting system like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_Voting [wikipedia.org] or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method [wikipedia.org] that didn't severely punish third party votes strategically.
Another potential tactic would be to promote subparties. The final elections are solidly locked down to Democrat or Republican, but the actual Democrat/Republican primaries are much more open - an organized "branch" of a major party could probably get their candidate nominated with an effort that is possible to achieve.
Get over here! (Score:2)
We have the Pirate Party, but it would be awesome for a party to stand behind a clear language like this.
Wow, even shortened copyright times from the currently ridiculous ones? And pay to use samples commercially?
One's mind boggles!
Holy mother of cow !!! (Score:2)
Don't hold your breath! (Score:2)
I can's answer for the USA but in Europe, we have had Youth Sections of major political parties coming out with sensible ideas for years.
Then the old farts in the "grown up" sections deny that they would ever do such a wicked thing.
For example, we have all heard for years that banning certain recreational drugs should be dropped. Everybody knows that this would be a good thing. Then the 50something year old hypocrites put down their cigars and whisky and prevent it!
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Youth sections holding opinions like this (albeit less well-defined) is nothing new. It's a joke among us in the Swedish Pirate Party that we actually have 8 youth sections. Our own, and one for every single major political power currently represented in parliament.
5.9%.... (Score:3, Informative)
The next party down the line is the Workers Communist Party =)
Election results from 1906 and onwards can (of course) be found on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venstre_(Norway)#Ele
Terrorist State (Score:3, Funny)
Slightly Exaggerated (Score:3, Informative)
Liberal in Europe == Libertarian in US (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:The current law in Norway is pretty reasonable: (Score:5, Informative)
1. Was illegal for computer software since long ago, became illegal for music, movies etc. in the new copyright law of 2005
2. DVD-Jon was never in the supreme court, the prosecution dropped the case after having lost twice. Furthermore, his trial was before the 2005 law introducing the EUCD which added anti-circumvention to the law.
3. True, unless it's covered again by the 2005 anti-circumvention paragraphs - it preempts it explicitly.
Also you might want to read this (norwegian) [forbrukerportalen.no], which shows that nobody agrees on what rights we have exactly.
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That being said, I don't think that abolishing copyright is the best thing to do, but I do think that serious reform is needed.
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If anything, by US terms, they're closer to Libertarians than anything.
Whether that makes you for or against DRM is up to you. But holding opinions depending on who happens to share those opinions is counterproductive.
By the way, I hear enjoys breathing air. Maybe you should consider that next time you take a breath?