On Tue, 2009-10-27 at 17:10 +0000, Andrew Turvey wrote:
- SIon Simon, another politician present, mentioned that the copyright
debate is highly polarised between the industry and free copyright advocates, both sides are deaf to the other and they need to engage. Despite this the discussions on copyright have been largely one sided, unbalanced, with some fairly extreme language used - "copyright warriors", "green ink brigade". "a generation of stealing" etc.
That's a complete and utter misrepresentation of the other side. It's a random representation from some file-sharer or other. He has obviously made absolutely any effort to talk to the other side. If you get the chance, suggest he talk to Richard Stallman, in fact, urge him to do so.
I've been following the Pirate Party mailing list the past few days. They don't want the abolition of copyright; they've read what RMS has to say on the topic, and their interest is more in seeing a complete reevaluation of copyright in the context of it being a social contract. Not just rights granted to a copyright holder by society, but responsibilities that come with them - like not just letting things enter the public domain when copyright expires, put actually taking the time to put them out there, freely available.
Creative works are, collectively, our cultural heritage; with regard to music, the vast majority creating it see little to no financial reward for doing so. The 'industry', on the other hand, has a long and shameful history of assuming they have a right to be paid over and over and over again for exactly the same piece of work.