[pp.int.general] [Cafe] levies

[Amelia Andersdotter]

On 24/03/2008, Carlos Ayala <aiarakoa at yahoo.es> wrote:>
> If we reach Strasbourg -and I believe we can, though it's an obviously hard
> goal to achieve-, what are we going to do there? I think that, apart from
> introducing new issues in the political scenario, change the communitary
> laws that oppose our ideas, our goals, our core issues; and 2001/29/EC is
> one of those laws. That directive allows levies to exist, and if we want
> levies to not exist anymore, we need to change it properly ... provided that
> it's included in our common goals; is it included?

The parliament has very little power overall as it is today. But when
the Pirate Parties are in the parliament, one of the long term goals
should be complete reformation of all the current directives treating
copyright. I think that there's consensus against all levies in the
Pirate parties?

> Because I believe it's not worthwhile investing time in finding out how to
> implement levies until we find out if we, as a group, accept or reject
> private copying levies.
>

The below text is mostly thoughts, and slightly strategical, I think.
Don't identify me too much with them, I often change my opinions when
I find a reason to.

The levies do not necessarily need to treat private copying. I
remarked you could very well see them as compensation for the lack of
distributive control instead. So you'd be levying the fact that the
artist can't control how/where distribution occurs, rather than the
copying of a work from one person to another.

It's basically the same thing: levies will be the result. But it would
be switching the debate from all the millions of private copies made
every day, to just one thing: loss of distributive control.

It carries perhaps a risk. Anyone could feel inconvenienced from lack
of distributive control, so it would perhaps become a legal problem in
the future. However, no one could possibly claim that we need to
filter or censor the web to protect copyrighted material, if we have
already adopted a levy because all distributive control is lost once
something goes online.

It's like bartering.

> > Or you would want the fee to be explicitly tied to the material that's
> copyrighted, in which case my third thought about
> > loss of control would work.
>
> As I also commented before, your guessings will find an answer after reading
> about our ideology:

I don't disagree with the ideology, neither of Partido Pirata nor
Piratpartiet. I was merely trying to state that there are several
different approaches you could take to levies. Personally, I find the
one I've kept in this e-mail the _least_ appealing. It feels
counter-intuitive to put levies on broadband because it's like
strangling its development.

But like above, if anything should at all be compensated, it's _not_
the fact that private copies are made, but that the artist/copyright
holder _loses the right to control distribution_. And if we get into
the European Parliament next year, we'll probably have to keep an open
mind for rhetorical ways to by-pass the current private-copying
hysteria.

/amelia