[pp.int.general] Attaching a file to releases in filesharing networks

[Helmut Pozimski]

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Some time ago in the international forum there was the idea of
creating a file to attach to releases in file sharing networks. There
were some drafts but as far as I could see, it has never been finished
and not been used widely. A few weeks ago we in Germany decided to
take up on this project again since we were not content with the
current german text. We added some ASCII-art and asked some people
from different countries to translate it for us to reach as much
people as possible. Up to now there's a german translation, an
international (English) version, an almost finished French translation
and a Swedish draft. You can have a look at them in our Wiki:

http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/index.php?title=AG_Filesharing/Infotext-Datei_NG/Franz%C3%B6sisch
(French)
http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/index.php?title=AG_Filesharing/Infotext-Datei_NG/Englisch
(English)
http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/index.php?title=AG_Filesharing/Infotext-Datei_NG/Deutsch
(german)
http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/index.php?title=AG_Filesharing/Infotext-Datei_NG/Schwedisch
(Swedish)

I already posted the drafts in the national forums (except of Sweden)
and in the international one. The answers were really different. This
(and the wish of pers from France) is the reason why I start this
discussion on the mailing list. I will first try to summarize the
arguments already named in the discussions and then state my point of
view.

The first argument which I heard several times was that this project
was about promoting illegal downloading and violating copyright and
therefore shouldn't be done.

The second one was that we would get even more in the fame of a file
sharing party.

Some people wanted to attach the file only to legal downloads but
other people argued that this would be useless. I there were more
arguments I forgot, just add it!

At least, the Austrian party (ppoe) decided not to take part in the
project because they feeled the risks were too high and I think the
French pirates haven't decided yet.



My opinion about this is the following:

There is no legal danger in projects like that since we are not going
to spread copyrighted material ourselves. Instead we'll ask file
sharers to do it for us. I don't know any laws we could violate with
that (but I must admit that I am not an expert in the laws of other
countries, knowing the german ones is hard enough). There's always the
danger of being known as a file sharing party but since we decided for
the name pirate party I think we'll always have to deal with that. And
I think dealing actively with this question is easier than trying to
avoid it for ever.

We launched the campaign with the german and international files some
time ago and want to continue on the international basis. The direct
feedback was of course some kind of strange. There were some people
calling the project ridiculous and/or us "thieves" and things like
that but I think these people just wanted to spam around a bit because
they didn't respond to our attempts to discuss with them. Other people
were really skeptical and some just liked the idea. I don't know how
far the file has spread yet but according to the statistics of Alexa
the traffic on our page increased like on other projects.



At least I want to invite every single pirate party to join the
project. If there's no translation in your language yet, just ask
someone to translate it or write a text yourself.

Regards
Helmut aka Hoshpak
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