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

Mon Jul 20 13:42:38 CEST 2009

German translation available at
https://wiki.piratenpartei.at/Engstroem_FT_7-juli-2009

Not proofread yet, corrections in progress.

Feel free.

Greetings,
kybernetes (Vienna, Austria)
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>> 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
>>
>>     
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