[pp.int.general] WIPO DG mentions Pirate Party in speech to Blue Sky conference

[Jack Allnutt]

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I've just stumbled upon the transcript of a speech the Director General
of the World Intellectual Property Organisation gave on the 25th
February to the Blue Sky Conference entitled "Future Directions in
Copyright Law" where he mentions the Pirate Party. It's worth giving the
whole transcript a read but here's the party where he talks about us:

> Beyond law and infrastructure, we have culture, and the Internet has, as we know, developed its own culture, one that has seen a political party, the Pirate Party, emerge to contest elections on the basis of the abolition or radical reform of intellectual property, in general, and copyright, in particular. The platform of the Pirate Party proclaims that “[t]he monopoly for the copyright holder to exploit an aesthetic work commercially should be limited to five years after publication. A five years copyright term for commercial use is more than enough. Non-commercial use should be free from day one.”
> 
> The Pirate Party may be an extreme expression, but the sentiment of distaste or disrespect for intellectual property on the Internet that it voices is widespread. Look at the incidence of illegal down-loading of music. We may argue about the right methodology to use to measure that phenomenon, but we are all certain that the practice has reached alarming dimensions.
> 
> In order to effect a change in attitude, I believe that we need to re-formulate the question that most people see or hear about copyright and the Internet. People do not respond to being called pirates. Indeed, some, as we have seen, even make a pride of it. They would respond, I believe, to a challenge to sharing responsibility for cultural policy. We need to speak less in terms of piracy and more in terms of the threat to the financial viability of culture in the 21st Century, because it is this which is at risk if we do not have an effective, properly balanced copyright policy

http://www.wipo.int/about-wipo/en/dgo/speeches/dg_blueskyconf_11.html

- -- Jack Allnutt
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