[pp.int.general] FYI - PP-CZ - press release: Criminal case against Czech Pirate Party for running a non-commercial website with hyperlinks

[Aram Gurekian]

Thank you.

https://twitter.com/partitopirata/status/691580358177980416

Aram



On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 12:50 AM, Mikuláš Peksa <mikulas.peksa at pirati.cz>
wrote:

> Please share:
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> https://www.pirati.cz/zo/tz_sledujuserialyen
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> *Criminal case against Czech Pirate Party for running a non-commercial
> website with hyperlinks*
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> Pirates insist that linking is not a crime - we do not want Chinese
> internet in the Czech Republic.
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> A landmark political trial for Czech Internet is about to take place! On
> Tuesday 21st January, Czech pirate party was officially notified that it
> will be prosecuted in criminal court. The reason is their long-term
> political campaign „Linking is not a crime“ in which the party ran a
> non-commerical website „sledujuserialy.cz“ [which translates as I watch
> TV series] highlighting an absurd interpretation of copyright monopoly law
> with regard to the Internet.
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> Czech police launched investigation due to complaint from Czech
> Anti-Pirate Union (ČPU, Česká protipirátská unie) which represents
> interests of entertianment industry in the Czech republic and so far filed
> criminal complaints only against students.
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> „Pirates welcome the criminal case. Until now, Czech Anti-Pirate Union
> targeted only randomly chosen individuals with its bullying. The victims
> were in unfair position as they faced expensive lawyers of lobby
> organisations which push current repressive copyright monopoly regime. This
> time it's different. Instead of teenagers, copyright industry lobbyists now
> deal with political party which didn't run the website for money but
> because of our conviction that linking is not and should not be a crime,“
> said Lukáš Černohorský, chairman of Pirates.
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> „Our goal is to change the copyright monopoly law so that people are not
> fined millions for sharing culture with their friends. However, until we
> achieve that, we will fight in courts over intepretation and enforcement of
> the law. Therefore we have decided to run a linking web ourselves so that
> Anti-Pirate Union and other lobbyists can no longer brandish precedents
> they've won against high school students who couldn't even afford a lawyer.
> The Internet is too important to leave to organisations such as ČPU,“
> concludes Černohorský.
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> Under the same standard that police used against Pirate party, servers
> like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube would also have to face prosecution in
> upcoming days. Unlike linking websites, not only they copy the videos but
> they also make profit from sharing and playing them.
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> In the next few days, Pirate Party is going to call on the general public,
> organisations and individuals who care about freedom of the Internet and
> organise a massive demonstration in support of Free Internet in the Czech
> republic. This criminal prosecution is not the only reason, several
> ministers have also repeatedly made proposals for censorship and
> surveillance of the Internet
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> If we concede even partially that any single link on the Internet is a
> crime, we would simultaneously forfeit the last existing space for free
> expression, denying the core function of the Internet.
>
> ____________________________________________________
> 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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