[pp.int.general] Christian Engstrom on FT on July 7

[Mikko Särelä]

There is also a finnish translation available in the finnish pirate party 
blog. Using mobile right now so can't check the exact url but the blog can 
be found in

http://blog.piraattipuolue.fi/

-Mikko


On Sun, 19 Jul 2009, JaRrr wrote:

> 
> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/87c523a4-6b18-11de-861d-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
> 
> ;)
> 
>   ----- Original Message ----- 
>   From: Nicolas Sahlqvist 
>   To: Pirate Parties International -- General Talk 
>   Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2009 3:47 PM
>   Subject: Re: [pp.int.general] Christian Engstrom on FT on July 7
> 
> 
>   Excellent text, but where was it published on the 7th of July, URL?
> 
> 
>   - Nicolas
> 
> 
> 
>   On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 1:35 PM, Alex Foti <alex.foti at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>     for archive-minded pirates. ciao, lx
> 
>     Copyright laws threaten our online freedom
>     By Christian Engström
> 
>     Published: July 7 2009 18:10 | Last updated: July 7 2009 18:10
> 
>     If you search for Elvis Presley in Wikipedia, you will find a lot of
>     text and a few pictures that have been cleared for distribution. But
>     you will find no music and no film clips, due to copyright
>     restrictions. What we think of as our common cultural heritage is not
>     ?ours? at all.
> 
>     On MySpace and YouTube, creative people post audio and video remixes
>     for others to enjoy, until they are replaced by take-down notices
>     handed out by big film and record companies. Technology opens up
>     possibilities; copyright law shuts them down.
> 
>     EDITOR?S CHOICE
>     Curb on content threatens France Telecom - Jul-07E-retailers find big
>     brands hard to touch - Jul-07This was never the intent. Copyright was
>     meant to encourage culture, not restrict it. This is reason enough for
>     reform. But the current regime has even more damaging effects. In
>     order to uphold copyright laws, governments are beginning to restrict
>     our right to communicate with each other in private, without being
>     monitored.
> 
>     File-sharing occurs whenever one individual sends a file to another.
>     The only way to even try to limit this process is to monitor all
>     communication between ordinary people. Despite the crackdown on
>     Napster, Kazaa and other peer-to-peer services over the past decade,
>     the volume of file-sharing has grown exponentially. Even if the
>     authorities closed down all other possibilities, people could still
>     send copyrighted files as attachments to e-mails or through private
>     networks. If people start doing that, should we give the government
>     the right to monitor all mail and all encrypted networks? Whenever
>     there are ways of communicating in private, they will be used to share
>     copyrighted material. If you want to stop people doing this, you must
>     remove the right to communicate in private. There is no other option.
>     Society has to make a choice.
> 
>     The world is at a crossroads. The internet and new information
>     technologies are so powerful that no matter what we do, society will
>     change. But the direction has not been decided.
> 
>     The technology could be used to create a Big Brother society beyond
>     our nightmares, where governments and corporations monitor every
>     detail of our lives. In the former East Germany, the government needed
>     tens of thousands of employees to keep track of the citizens using
>     typewriters, pencils and index cards. Today a computer can do the same
>     thing a million times faster, at the push of a button. There are many
>     politicians who want to push that button.
> 
>     The same technology could instead be used to create a society that
>     embraces spontaneity, collaboration and diversity. Where the citizens
>     are no longer passive consumers being fed information and culture
>     through one-way media, but are instead active participants
>     collaborating on a journey into the future.
> 
>     The internet it still in its infancy, but already we see fantastic
>     things appearing as if by magic. Take Linux, the free computer
>     operating system, or Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Witness the
>     participatory culture of MySpace and YouTube, or the growth of the
>     Pirate Bay, which makes the world?s culture easily available to
>     anybody with an internet connection. But where technology opens up new
>     possibilities, our intellectual property laws do their best to
>     restrict them. Linux is held back by patents, the rest of the examples
>     by copyright.
> 
>     The public increasingly recognises the need for reform. That was why
>     Piratpartiet ? the Pirate party ? won 7.1 per cent of the popular vote
>     in Sweden in the European Union elections. This gave us a seat in the
>     European parliament for the first time.
> 
>     Our manifesto is to reform copyright laws and gradually abolish the
>     patent system. We oppose mass surveillance and censorship on the net,
>     as in the rest of society. We want to make the EU more democratic and
>     transparent. This is our entire platform.
> 
>     We intend to devote all our time and energy to protecting the
>     fundamental civil liberties on the net and elsewhere. Seven per cent
>     of Swedish voters agreed with us that it makes sense to put other
>     political differences aside in order to ensure this.
> 
>     Political decisions taken over the next five years are likely to set
>     the course we take into the information society, and will affect the
>     lives of millions for many years into the future. Will we let our
>     fears lead us towards a dystopian Big Brother state, or will we have
>     the courage and wisdom to choose an exciting future in a free and open
>     society?
> 
>     The information revolution is happening here and now. It is up to us
>     to decide what future we want.
> 
> 
>     The writer is the Pirate party?s member of the European parliament
>     ____________________________________________________
>     Pirate Parties International - General Talk
>     pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
>     http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
>   ____________________________________________________
>   Pirate Parties International - General Talk
>   pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
>   http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
> 

-- 
Mikko Särelä
"It is through exchange that difference becomes a blessing, not a
curse", Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain