Pirates and open source
Many in the "web 2.0 community" are silently or vocally supporting the Pirate Bay movement, as it is seen to be speaking from freedom in the internet. Everyone loves freedom. Many were also surprised by this article on GNU website, where Richard Stallman is realizing that if the party would manage to get their claims through and abolish copyright protection, it would backfire on free software.
Open source
From the article: "The GNU General Public License and other copyleft licenses use copyright law to defend freedom for every user. The GPL permits everyone to publish modified works, but only under the same license. Redistribution of the unmodified work must also preserve the license. And all redistributors must give users access to the software's source code."
If copyright is only valid for 5 years, after this period the GPL governed software goes into a public domain, it can be mixed with proprietary software, and the new versions no longer need to provide access to the source. The idea of free software is lost, and any new open source projects would not be that attractive any more.
Use of proprietary software is often governed by both the copyright, and an End User License Agreement (EULA). Even if the copyright is abolished after five years from the launch of the software, the EULA is still valid and can be used for control. In other words, the Pirate Party is here - unintentionally, I'm sure - boosting the role of proprietary software over free software.
Pirate agenda
I'm not a Pirate fangirl, so I am ready to openly say that I'm not surprised about this finding. Reading through their Declaration of Principles screams incompetence. It's great that the boys are enthusiastic and have energy to fight the evil. But when you go into their level of political action, a member in the European Parliament, you should be able to present more concrete and detailed proposals than this.
They do have good things in their declaration that I can support. People's right to privacy is at threat, in some countries the anti-terrorism acts have gone too far in limiting people's right to walk on the streets and take photographs, for example. Also, I do think that the ways copyrights are implemented do need fixes. It's idiotic to demand a hair dresser or a taxi driver to pay license fees to an artist if they happen to have the radio on in their salon or car, and their customer hears a song by accident. Also, I agree with the Pirates in thinking that no one needs to be making money 70 years after they are dead.
Also, of course I support openness and freedom as general ideas, just as the Pirates do. But their program doesn't really say how they will increase the freedom, openness and people's right to privacy, except with this: abolish all patents and limit copyright to 5 years. To me those sound like half-thought ideas, and I'm sure other examples like the free software dilemma will pop up.
They write: "patents are increasingly used by large corporations to hinder smaller companies from competing on equal terms. Instead of encouraging innovation, patents are being used as "mine fields" when waging war against others, often patents the owner has no plans on developing further themselves." and "Large corporations diligently race to hold patents they can use against smaller competitors to prevent them from competing on equal terms. A monopolistic goal is not to adjust prices and terms to what the market will bear, but rather use their illgotten rights as a lever to raise prices and set lopsided terms on usage and licensing. We want to limit the opportunities to create damaging and unnecessary monopoly situations."
Talking about large corporations, Nokia is releasing thousands of unused patents available for free to all.
The little guy
Their writings on both copyrights and patents assume that only large companies are using these "weapons". That is not the case. There are many succesful companies that were founded on one patented idea, for example Marioff, MS Eagle Oy, Roboline Oy, etc. Roboline's link goes to a page where this one man company is selling licenses for his patents. This guy earns 80 million euros every year, he filed his first patent at the age of 17 and has patented over 100 innovations. Is it wrong for him to be rich? Would it be better that instead of inventing new things, he would have spent his youth ripping mp3's off the internet?
My father has a patent on a special furniture structure. Would it be right for some "evil" corporation to start making money on productizing his invention, and he would get nothing? No it wouldn't. My grandmother makes paintings, sketches, and carves beautiful artifacts from wood. Would it be ok for an "evil" publishing company to use her paintings as a book cover or a poster and make loads of money, and nothing for her? No.
Patents and copyrights are there to protect the artist and the innovator. The way copyright is implemented does need tweaking, that is true, but having no patent system or no copyright would not increase "freedom" for the little guy. Viewing the world as one big Orwellian conspiracy theory is childish, these boys being voted to the EU parliament says a lot about our selfish times. "All for me now for free with zero effort."
Open source
From the article: "The GNU General Public License and other copyleft licenses use copyright law to defend freedom for every user. The GPL permits everyone to publish modified works, but only under the same license. Redistribution of the unmodified work must also preserve the license. And all redistributors must give users access to the software's source code."
If copyright is only valid for 5 years, after this period the GPL governed software goes into a public domain, it can be mixed with proprietary software, and the new versions no longer need to provide access to the source. The idea of free software is lost, and any new open source projects would not be that attractive any more.
Use of proprietary software is often governed by both the copyright, and an End User License Agreement (EULA). Even if the copyright is abolished after five years from the launch of the software, the EULA is still valid and can be used for control. In other words, the Pirate Party is here - unintentionally, I'm sure - boosting the role of proprietary software over free software.
Pirate agenda
I'm not a Pirate fangirl, so I am ready to openly say that I'm not surprised about this finding. Reading through their Declaration of Principles screams incompetence. It's great that the boys are enthusiastic and have energy to fight the evil. But when you go into their level of political action, a member in the European Parliament, you should be able to present more concrete and detailed proposals than this.
They do have good things in their declaration that I can support. People's right to privacy is at threat, in some countries the anti-terrorism acts have gone too far in limiting people's right to walk on the streets and take photographs, for example. Also, I do think that the ways copyrights are implemented do need fixes. It's idiotic to demand a hair dresser or a taxi driver to pay license fees to an artist if they happen to have the radio on in their salon or car, and their customer hears a song by accident. Also, I agree with the Pirates in thinking that no one needs to be making money 70 years after they are dead.
Also, of course I support openness and freedom as general ideas, just as the Pirates do. But their program doesn't really say how they will increase the freedom, openness and people's right to privacy, except with this: abolish all patents and limit copyright to 5 years. To me those sound like half-thought ideas, and I'm sure other examples like the free software dilemma will pop up.
They write: "patents are increasingly used by large corporations to hinder smaller companies from competing on equal terms. Instead of encouraging innovation, patents are being used as "mine fields" when waging war against others, often patents the owner has no plans on developing further themselves." and "Large corporations diligently race to hold patents they can use against smaller competitors to prevent them from competing on equal terms. A monopolistic goal is not to adjust prices and terms to what the market will bear, but rather use their illgotten rights as a lever to raise prices and set lopsided terms on usage and licensing. We want to limit the opportunities to create damaging and unnecessary monopoly situations."
Talking about large corporations, Nokia is releasing thousands of unused patents available for free to all.
The little guy
Their writings on both copyrights and patents assume that only large companies are using these "weapons". That is not the case. There are many succesful companies that were founded on one patented idea, for example Marioff, MS Eagle Oy, Roboline Oy, etc. Roboline's link goes to a page where this one man company is selling licenses for his patents. This guy earns 80 million euros every year, he filed his first patent at the age of 17 and has patented over 100 innovations. Is it wrong for him to be rich? Would it be better that instead of inventing new things, he would have spent his youth ripping mp3's off the internet?
My father has a patent on a special furniture structure. Would it be right for some "evil" corporation to start making money on productizing his invention, and he would get nothing? No it wouldn't. My grandmother makes paintings, sketches, and carves beautiful artifacts from wood. Would it be ok for an "evil" publishing company to use her paintings as a book cover or a poster and make loads of money, and nothing for her? No.
Patents and copyrights are there to protect the artist and the innovator. The way copyright is implemented does need tweaking, that is true, but having no patent system or no copyright would not increase "freedom" for the little guy. Viewing the world as one big Orwellian conspiracy theory is childish, these boys being voted to the EU parliament says a lot about our selfish times. "All for me now for free with zero effort."
Forgot to mention this:
How come it's ok for the pirates to be making 7,8 million dollars from selling the site? Does it not make them the "evil corporation" making money off of distributing digital content?
They have become the filthy rich politicians now. Sure, they say the money goes into a foundation to fund all good things, but isn't that how all the politicians are handling their money?
It's all just a point of view. Pirates are considered to be ok because they are young and they can use the internet. They are one of "us", not like "the others" who don't understand technology. This is irrational thinking.
Global Gaming Factory who bought the site is going to make big changes there, even introduce paid services. This goes against what the pirates announced themselves, making them either naive or plain greedy. Neither way, they are no heros.
http://thepiratebay.org/blog/164
http://www.globalgamingfactory.com/
http://mashable.com/2009/06/30/breaking-the-pirate-bay-sold-for-7-8-million/
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Ah, one more thing. There is an area where the pirates, myself, and my employer agree upon: the blank media tax.
According to wikipedia Finland has the highest blank media tax, not something that I would be happy about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
Also, Nokia and Philips have issued an open letter on the levy on mp3 players http://www.betanews.com/article/Will-EU-Consumers-Choose-DRM-or-DoubleTaxation/1160163458
I'm not suggesting that I would have an answer to how the problem on DRM or blank media tax should be solved. My point with this blog entry is just to bring these issues on the table, and to point out that in my opinion the Pirate Bay movement is not a heroic attempt to protect the little guys from evil corporations, as many seem to be thinking.
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